New critique thread. Old one is in its stage of death

is that the famous elephant lynching of alabama?

I can't bring myself to comment negatively on something that somebody has written. Writing is hard, and learning to write is agony. Putting effort into something and have some well-meaning know-all rip it to bits may be good for your writing, but it tears you up and I don't have the heart for it. Do it anyway, but don't expect to enjoy it.

Real fuckin awkward and clunky

it is
well how else will they learn

shame. i know an author who came out of alabama and adopted the san francisco life. he's especially embarrassed of that event and what it implies about his origins.

This excerpt deals with a young profiteer, who, after crossing some powerful persons finds himself under these same person's employ via clandestine communications, and, realizing his position, gleefully relates their failure to his friend.

"I have to admit, it feels pretty damn good. It all makes sense now, of course. I've untangled the web of lies and gotten to the core of the matter, and who did I find there? Not a soul but all my old friends!"

"Ah, friends, do you see me now? Where is your pride? Where is your contempt?"
"I say friends, but these people, they were only acquaintances, ones I had made before I really knew what a friendship was. Now they get to look on as I destroy their entire scheme whose purpose was to destroy me. Now I get to look with a cool contempt for them, knowing my own capacity for mere persistence; to them it is a harrowing, daunting foreshadowing as to what may actually occur: retribution."
"Well, you might ask me, what do I mean, retribution? I'd normally just say 'just desserts' and be done with it. But these ones have earned a special place in my heart. These old acquaintances of mine have wronged me so, and against the laws of our people as well: I could sue them!"
"Here's the real kicker though: these idiots were so caught up in their own hubris that they actually put me in a position where I could WIN a MASSIVE lawsuit."
"Sure, these losers will do whatever they can to slow the trial, if it DOES go to trial, but they know they cannot stop the inevitable. No one entity can hide these felonies for long. There will be a reckoning! And I'll share it with you, friend, as I know I can truly call you that, when it is all said and done."

Wait, your MC crosses some powerful people, and then subsequently is under their employment? How did this happen? Clandestine communications doesn't really cut it for me.

Nice dialogue though. Even if it is sort of a monologue.

>I destroy their entire scheme whose purpose was to destroy me
As an ESL person, wouldn't it have to be "the purpose of which"?

It is. I can't edit posts. Normally why I write my stuff for critique threads in notepad, lol

Write your shit out in Notepad before posting in a thread like this. I mean, I get your concept, but jesus the formatting errors.

o-oh

She was late, but it did not disturb him. He was flexible today. He had been flexible for a while now, and had no reason to expect that this emotional plasticity would come to an end. Jacob did not give a fuck.
“I don’t even give a fuck,” he chuckled to himself. Let her be late. It wasn’t a date, that much he knew for sure. It wasn’t anything. She wasn’t anything. He wasn’t anything. That much he knew.
“Jacob!”
Shannon approached him for the left and called to him gleefully but with an apologetic air that that told him “The traffic is horrendous! I’m so glad you’re still here, I thought I had screwed everything up!”
“Hey, sorry I’m late, you look good!”
He did look good. He had spent the better part of his afternoon submerged in an avalanche of shampoos and fragrances, conditioners and body lotions, trying to eradicate any remnants of the metaphysical stench that dogged his steps. He had chosen a sharp, black blazer over a blue-and-white striped polo. His blazer was unbuttoned. His left shoe was untied. He had yet to notice.

“I thought maybe one of us had forgotten where we said we’d meet or something.”

“Oh no, I just lost track of time.”

The twinkle in his eye endured. In fact, its luster appeared to wax at the friendly, yet nonetheless lackadaisical tone with which she challenged him.

“Oh, I had no idea I was such a low priority on your list….” He forced his face into the expression he had been rehearsing in the bathroom mirror and it succeeded in drawing out her beauty. Shannon broke into a goofy, authentic smile and the sound of her laughter serenaded his thoughts.
It had struck him that she shared the same name as his sister-in-law. He wondered sadly if Shannon was truthfully cured, or if was was still dying.

“Oh no, no no, you’re not low on my list, Jacob. It’s just an extremely long list,” she explained as he held the door to the restaurant open for her. He smiled and maintained eye contact with her and the faded yellow tinge of his teeth was hidden in the moonlight as he opened his mouth and replied, “I know the feeling.”

yeah but what do you like about it?

I can't say any of it. The other writing is awfully obscured by the other mistake you make. For example, so many f your sentences begin with "Troy" that it made me want to hate and disagree with everything that character would say.

I'm not OP, I just think we need to remember that objective criticism cannot exist without recognition of what works in any piece....you know?

pastebin.com/Ng9sinPs

The death scene for a character in my story. I don't even know what to do with it anymore. I have tried many different styles of writing and they all go to shit. This is only a small sliver of this story, and it's toward the end: I've got 320,000 words, 568 pages but it's fragmented and unfinished and I realized I will probably never finish it so I don't know why I am even posting this.

>pastebin.com/Ng9sinPs

Not as bad as I was expecting based on the whiny bitch tone of your post, user.

I don't have a ton of time to really peer review this, but I will say this: avoid sentences where "the x was y" or "the x verb'd y."

I know that's the most natural way to write a declarative sentence, and I'm not saying writing declaratively is a bad thing, that'd be a stupid thing to say. All I'm trying to get at is a million instances of The X verbing Y and X being Y gets redundant, if only sub conciously, to the reader.

Overall, this shit is headed in the right direction. Keep going!

Thanks user. I just get frustrated with my writing trying to fix it.

I obviously didn't read all of it but compared to most prose in these threads you're miles ahead. It seems very effortless, there's a natural flow that has me read the next sentence. Usually I want to stop after the first.

It's too long and I'm too unpaid to help you out of your situation though.
Also, a baby bird is a chick or hatchling.
Also also
>Myron Gaines

That happened literally a county over from where I live. I've always wanted to write an essay about the area centered around that event. It definitely says something about the moral universe of this part of Appalachia. Harry Crews mentioned it in an essay once.

>Myron Gaines

I don't get it, Google makes it appear to be a meme but I can't find any easy explanation for it.

wow you've really baited us we've been what the kids called trolled

His hair is tousled, brown, darker than normal. Perhaps he had colored it but why would he do that? I'm just imagining it. Probably. He shifts very often, in his seat. He always seems so restless. Gazing out, hungry possibly. Starving for something, some thing. Some-thing. Anything, I suppose. Is he dreaming of adventure? Adventure’s become a story, some cheesy thing to say. You can't tell someone you want an adventure. We all need adventure, and he's starving. Look at him. Rumbling, he's shaking, in his seat. Tousled hair and rumbles, tousled hair and rumbles, tousled hair and rumbles. We all need adventure.

been there

I live in the lighthouse on the bay. For the past twenty-eight years I've lived here alone. People often come down to the beach, tourists I suppose, taking pictures of the sea.

Everyday for the past twenty-eight years I've watched the sun rise and set over the Atlantic, and everyday it's just as beautiful. In the morning I'll look down and sometimes see a shrouded child holding the hand of their camera wielding parent. Those damned things, those damned time machines.

In the past twenty-eight years I've fallen in love countless times, and I'm never sure if it's the same one. It's always the woman earlier and later than others, and leaves when it's too crowded in the hours in between. She would come before dawn in her day clothes and sit on the shore where the foam still ventures, digging her fingers in the sand. The sun peaks and grazes the waves, silently, without hesitation. Even that constant murmur of the sea seems to stop. They're all moments, moments whose beauty can't be fettered to a photograph.

in brief--a struggle for identity. the convoluted clunkiness has a purpose, and i know that doesnt make it any better, but i feel i can justify it to an extent. also, i really like hearing other interpretations. its quite literally verbal vomit that i havent cleaned yet if im being honest because i dont know how.

>I live in the lighthouse on the bay. For the past twenty-eight years I've lived here alone. People often come down to the beach, tourists I suppose, taking pictures of the sea.
>Everyday for the past twenty-eight years I've watched the sun rise and set over the Atlantic, and everyday it's just as beautiful

this part is perfect

ehh. I see what you're going for, but you lose everything in execution. The whole paragraph really just fell flat for me, you motherfucking loser

There is beauty in sporadic love; bursts of affection for its own sake. To be carnivorous, devouring the flesh that separates you from them. To trace the journey of hips and thighs with wanting fingers, clasping hands embracing shared vulnerability, entangled breaths within sheets, and witnessing the crawling of light upon their rising chest when the night has exhausted itself. To live so amorphous in abandonment of identity and ego solely for the sake of pleasure; to surrender constructed values and indulge for a moment, just a moment, a single moment of death.

It's really bad.

I like this, the ending's great because you cut it short and don't describe like in the other lines.

I agree with both of these critiques

I think I'm still alive. I felt frisson when I woke up to the alarm. I don't remember if I have a family. There is a large red gash right below my knee and a bandage half-peeled, with caked blood painting it's white surface.
Whether this light is Gods or Suns I'll never know.

YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES

Hey, I actually referenced this event in something I wrote recently. It happened in Erwin, Tennessee in 1916. Erwin gets all the blame for this even though it was authorities in Kingsport, a much larger nearby town, who decided that an elephant should not only be put on trial but sentenced to death. Erwin just happened to have the strongest crane in Northeast Tennessee. Otherwise, they would have had to go to Knoxville, where the city council had already denounced the decision. Today, Erwin still only has about 7,000 inhabitants and have a festival every year commemorating the incident (where all proceeds go to elephant sanctuaries).

I could've sworn this picture was the one from Alabama. It's very interesting stuff. I'd like to read what you wrote about it in if you don't mind
Nice

It was the only part that saved, I had to rewrite the rest. I'm glad you liked it.

Oh gee I've been holding off on posting it because I thought it was shit.

I think the biggest problem is that you are in want of editing. It's not all bad, really, there is some good writing there, but some of it awkward and eye-roll inducing.
>very dark blonde hair
Just say dirty blonde, or light brown. "Dark blonde" doesn't make a lot of sense.
>His one true love
Sentences like these can be altered so that they are both more tolerable and better flowing.
Overall, just edit more. Write some, and then return later and see what sounds good and what makes you cringe. Pare your writing down; it's better to write good Hemingway prose than to write turgid romantic prose.

Maybe a bit cliche and melodramatic, but I still wouldn't change much. I like it. >Metaphysical stench
Within the context of your writing, this doesn't mean anything. I don't know that it would mean anything in any context.
>Jacob did not give a fuck
Don't do this. Third person narration doesn't have to be completely impersonal, but the use of colloquialisms and swear words in it is just bad.
I would start completely over, but keep writing about what you wrote about this time. Your diction and syntax should be thought out and deliberate, and you should edit.

I will respond to this post with my writing, because I'm not going to try and fit it in on this one.

contrived topic desu (even if its true) but good enough execution

you can cut out a good bit here. too repetitive adding nothing.
love it :)

heres 2 of mine:

Feet slide softly over grass
Towards silver moon breaking dead night;

Deaf howls stop them scared
As the moon tears into stars

////

Time scatters keratin straw as the solstice nears
Like Autumn-curled leaves, lost in daylights wake
Frail, fragmented splinters of me mark
The damp-matte pillowcases of beds I've slept

sorry, maybe I should elucidate:
the poem is written about looking at a skyscraper. The title would have been helpful in that sense. Looking back on it, does it still seem contrived?

hm not as much i suppose, i thought you were talking about the city in general desu.

The tousled one is stream of thought, or at least my attempt at it. I'm not sure that excuses it, though.
I'm glad you liked the lighthouse as well

It's impossible to write something that's completely true but not a run-on sen
tence unless you write poetically fuck prose

She danced without rhythm,
And the sea filled her lungs.

Green stairs of leaflets
Climbs dry rot cases
To white Palatines in this sky
Birds climb these steep steps
To cerulean precepts
moving and brief.
its not bad user, just dont drag
just start anew

Go away George R. R. Martin
You makin' me sad

I'll take a spin a reviews tomorrow. Here's a poem dickweeds.

----
Disquiet

Disquiet is the word he’d use if he had
the occasion to employ it.
But the actual Master of Gratitude has been
too long behind himself looking at himself

Or reviewing the motions, not perfect ripples
as the brain does, or so they say. It’s like this,
science I mean. You know. Like I said, science.

Disquiet belongs in leaders,
and not in innovators, industries.
Because when each house of games becomes decadent,
voters take on the disquiet themselves.

If they’re not worring, I’m fucking worring – and I have no guile!

The characterization
given to him by some guy, and him
being associated with this, whatever thing,
this meme: Master of Gratitude.

And it shows him on tv giving thanks,
communing, and just being gracious-
he thinks is false, is not himself,
like some fake news becoming relevant.

And so he listens, listens like no one listens.
Because he is taking on that role, and he is rational.
No questions are being asked, and a space is made for religion.
Cause god fucking damn does a prayer ever work some magic for him.
He rubs his hands together and claps them wildly.

He is at peace in his success, and stressing over idle time.
He experiences a modern Epoche, tranquility in pragmatism
He has decisions to make and he does not give a fuck.
He just does them, and he feels good doing them.

He gives into a thought that happiness exists
only to make the cruelty of pain and suffering
much, much more worse than it could be.
So worse. So, so much more worse.

A practical style modern mansion without lots,
except it’s on the moon, inside a crater, and
the moon is on the dark side that doesn’t see light.
It’s hard to see there. Really, really hard. So hard.

That’s where he’ll take them to build heaven, the big lights.
After everyone sees that it’s only been lords jousting.
Over how the logos will structure hell after the singularity.
Whether the gods laughed when they fornicated, or cried.
Just a bunch of guys, some nobles just doing whatever,
speaking solemnly about how the war of the gods might end

If ever the emperor should lack the ability to feel disquiet
the bureaucrats, and business class shall then take on that burden
and thus see a need to produce a solution which in turn
will hopefully give the emperor some sense.

Philosophies and religions are evolving, little by little.
Technology will make god more lovable, more chatty.
And the humane parasite will devour the earth, unfortunately.

But just before the beast is born, they’ll be eating a meal somewhere,
drinking a flavoured gin. Dark side of the moon will play,
and he will realize, everything will die, even him and them, too.

He will tell himself he smokes too much weed,
spends too much time in bliss, on his personal development vacation.
It is much too much to be thinking how he
if he were him would act as emperor.

A message Long Overdue
A blade carved two frassy letters;
A bee stared at the runes
And a vine colored the letters
Two letters marked R and P
Of young loves brew,
Now briared and green,
A message long overdue.

too long to even read right now. I'll do it tomorrow.
Good, I would just stop there. Any more and it may look like you're trying too hard

pastebin.com/wbjVmMdJ

I really like this even though I'll have to read it a couple more times before my feeble brain completely grasps it

I’ve realized her eyes were mere mirrors of the Flame
trying to escape from my oil-drenched heart

Pungent smog, smothering stench
Encased in ashen ecstasy;

My two shameless lips, again invited, to
Kiss her
so deeply, lovingly,
Suckling like a babe on a tit.

too harsh

To close my eyes while walking.

Tinctures of God; The disassembled pitter-patter
Of sole off brick is no longer
Mere relation, but sings
With one soaring voice.

Chains cast off, eyes now blind,
I peer beyond the veil.

xD

Thanks for the interest, but it's not actually about the hanging, I just reference it in the story. I write about the South a lot so I like to pepper my writing with the bizarre stories and references you can really only pick up by spending your life down here.

Alright well I can't even post my shit without getting slapped with a connection error. Website sucks cock and is riddled with generic porn advertisements anyway.

ok nic pizzolatto

it's too long, then

post it in parts and stop bitching so much, it's not healthy user

try again, user. I'll critique. Also make sure ad block is off

They would find food or they would die. That was the only thing certain on this trip. Arthur knew it, the colony knew it, and the queen certainly knew it, for why else would she have reassigned every ant in the colony to foraging? Things were bad. The food they harvested was not fit to eat anymore. The leaves had turn to poison. Many had died from it, and now many more would soon die from starvation if Arthur and those he marched with could not find a new source of nutrition for the Queen.
How long had they been marching? How far were they from the nest? Every step further from the safety of home was a step closer to death by heat, dehydration, predators, or any other deadly force waiting for them in the wilderness. This was far. This was too far. Arthur stumbled as he climbed yet another hill, only to be caught and pushed forward by the ant behind him. No words. No thank you. No acknowledgment that the Ant had just saved Arthur from a grotesque, likely fatal injury. Words were trivial, a commodity of times before the famine. Before the dark times. Words could not be eaten. Words could not feed or comfort. No, the Ant behind Arthur said nothing. They continued on.
Occasionally the call of some wild beast would attract the attention of the group. A strong wind would knock them off course a moment as they needed to regroup, but these were the only interruptions. Amongst the barren landscape of hard brown earth and long green stalks, Arthur could see nothing but the long line of bodies obediently crawling in uniform fashion. The cruel temptation of the vegetation surrounding their path was unbearable…..if he could only have a bite..
But he had seen the bodies; those disfigured shells of what used to be Ants he had known, contorted and screaming. Their last gift to Arthur had been the memory of their tormented deaths. The images burned in his mind would not allow him to forget that the sweet, seductive grass swaying in the wind would surely kill him much faster than the aching hunger that consumed him.

Yeah, sorry. It's been a rough few days, and it's had a bad effect on my mood and mental acuity.

The Sun was beginning to retreat under the horizon. The golden twilight glow made everything—pine trees, dandelions, rooftops—appear softer than they ever did during the day, and the wind blowing over the grass and through the trees created a calm mood in the neighborhood.
Tucker Hertz sat by his bedroom window, watching the natural scene from the second story of his house. He had a tendency for melancholy, and watching the sunset from his window every evening had a mollifying effect on his mood. He would listen to the breeze, and, defying the listlessness in the rest of his body, his eyes would follow the undulating flight paths of birds with alacrity as they moved from rooftop to rooftop.

See the eagle in the tree
See the snake coiled in the grass
See the seagulls on the river
See mailman driving past

Little creatures, little soldiers
Battlefields of the mundane
Just running
Just running

See the lamp up on the pole
Shattered casing on the ground
Waiting for the sun to make its way down

You know everybody wants something
Someone, some place,
some peace of mind
Nobody ever got out of bed for nothing

I'd post more, but there are only one or two more paragraphs that aren't mainly dialogue.

>he Sun was beginning to retreat under the horizon. The golden twilight glow made everything—pine trees, dandelions, rooftops—appear softer than they ever did during the day, and the wind blowing over the grass and through the trees created a calm mood in the neighborhood.

turn this into dialogue somehow

It's not much but it's good

>same ESL question about "moments whose", that never sounds correct to me

I was mainly working on rhyme and rhythm with this one, but I still think it cold use work:

The red-running river makes me shiver
because I know it doesn't differ
running quicker and quicker
the rust ever thicker

It inevitably stains the drains
Who's to blame?
Doesn't the pain outweigh the day?
No, these woes, though cold, know no soul
Coal, but only for a time we hope

But who's to say who's tomb will say
who slew to save or loosed the grave?
It's all news too late
because when the river washes away
and the blood fades
I won't know why I ever cared anyway

'mirin gains

Kill yourself for not knowing memes

May I ask why?
I don't mean that in a rude or defiant way; I'm just curious and want to get all the tips I can for improving my writing.

It was great before it got erased and I had to rewrite it, and yeah I couldn't figure out how to put it

I never like the feeling that I'm being told anything in literature. exposition is horrible. exposition is looking behind the curtain at the magic show.

I like it when the author finds a way to slip in exposition in any way more subtle than telling me what is.

Alright, that's a good point. Think I'll do it.

Exposition wasn't the right word for it, but yeah I was just tryin' to say I like to forget i'm reading when i'm reading, and i feel like changing those lines to some sort of dialogue would make me feel like that. Shit's not bad though!

...

Goddamn I love this man
---
Rain drops often out of place in open spaces
Picture a blank based paper weighted empty space eluding wet pavement
Crinkled paper in place of human frailness
A new kind of ailment regarding staying stainless
The constant drip drop contact causes colored pain backed sneak attacks when touch is attached
Soft soggy limbs attempt to attract and receive selfish self indulgent origami constructs
Open air compels my form to blow and tear
Open sky's attract demise to my otherwise unified disguise
Paper cuts through air in a single strut
Speaking of which I'm crumpling in faith
You'll prefer wrinkles and folds
Rear minded esoteric infractions
Imbued In an archaic fashion from irrational distractions to reverse entrapment
Don't tear at the parchment, parted at key points, portioned upon my misanthropic, surface
Paint stained paper thin scars resemble escher like "skin" drawn to life
Painted figures that stand and walk through stained glass to wear the mask and chain their owners mind gave
I'm without a drop to drain
Walk into the sun a rainy summer day
Walk into the sun a rainy spring day
Only make it 3 steps deep before...
Its open season for reason, no reasoning behind the silenced upheaval of skin off bone replacing what's dear for fear and who isn't for who's near

It's been five years since you took everything
Purgatory feels a lot like hell
Lack of purpose is de-evolution
Reverted to fucking carnal

O, Angel of my armageddon
This fire does not cleanse
It doesn't burn away my sins
I can't deny my own truth
If this is sacrifice for her peace of mind,
her peace of mind is not worth this.

Let's see if your blood runs black, you thief in the knight
Now your wounds will run just as deep as mine
The final cut comes too soon it seems
A quick death isn't justice, but I couldn't stand his screams
There is nothing left.
I was dead long before I killed you.

An exagerated piece of my edgy religious phase. Still religious, but that was quite a roller coaster. Be brutal.

Scotheren stood on the precipes of his final hour. Long, grey hair flowing in the wind. The stain of mud and blood shrivelled up to his nostril. The cries of men yearning for death in his ears like a mantra spoken again and again till it was all he knew. The day was tired, and so was he. The warm of the sun skulked behind the curtains of grey as the ravens descended on the feast of early dead, whining for more, whining for him. It was on a hill of spears that he would reach the peak of his demise, the seeds grown full of their measure to return their fruits; and there, on the hill atop of all he needed to kill, was Jaeger, the last thing he needed to be free of his mortal coil. The apple of his eye, the man who was once called friend, once called brother, and everything that he was not. Golden armour shinning amongst all the black, Scotheren hated him the most. He was wrong, a traitor, and nothing but a puppet who didn’t know any better. He was an enemy of the Lord’s, so he was an enemy of Scotheren’s. At least, that’s what Scotheren wanted to believe. Shaky as he tried. What else could he use to convince himself the questions of his innocence?
How did it come to this? How did all the fortunes of the world turn against just men to meet such ends? Scotheren looked down at his sword and saw the man with hollowed eyes ask the same.
Gouging the heavy air with his blade he led the final charge of horsemen into the fray of spears. Ten men to his every one, the odds could never be clearer. As long as he had the faith, as long as he had the Lord of Mercy.
“The first man to turn gets fed to the dogs!” said he, no more vicious or beaten than the very dogs he threatened to unleash. He was a withered man full of age, bearing scowls of a lost youth so long forgotten in his old, forgotten heart. Paranoia burned deep like a brand on his soul, the ache constantly seeking the story of that boy so long ago in hopes of finding him again. To find that innocence, those simpler days, and the liberation of that wench who had made it all possible: Yellena - the Lady of the White Wolf: his love, his addiction, and the last toxicant he needed to convince himself he hadn’t yet turned mad. She rode beside him, giving him that smile that used to set a fire to his heart and a rustle in his loins, and he, now being wizened in all his ruinations, turned his sword on her without a flinch.
The day was tired, and so was he.

Nah

Oh shit I feel stupid; the sun can't rise and set on the Atlantic from one place. That's another thing that I need to fix but it has a lot of potential.

hey man

You can actually get a lot from this mistake. Tell how the sun rises on the Atlantic and sets on the town on the bay, make the story about the birth in nature and the death in civilization.

Thanks man.

Yeah that's a nice idea but
>I just want it to be about a guy in a lighthouse for now, if it progresses into a story I'll consider it
>I don't view civilization as separate from nature, and that view of 'man destroying nature' is ironic in the sense that it establishes ego and man ≠ nature

And I'm not saying humans aren't a cancer, because we are, it's just that we are another force of nature.

Well then just keep it but highlight it in red or something so you can decide later when the story is more fleshed out

Soaked like a sponge in the last few minutes, his eyes red and wet
And a slug trails down his face from its peak, weighing on heavy cheeks.
Tunnels snort up trains, shoot up rails, and spit them out,
Mind the gap, every station
The left hand leads home, across the borders, bridges,
And steaming woods, the rolling prairies.

Little town, little burrough, pinned to nowhere bound, got
Change in his pocket, home on the outside, a corner store
With the TV on
Crumpled with nerve endings.

White Lightning in bottled in plastic
Poor man’s cider, just a fiver,
returns a pound and 58 p
Viscous like the breeze breathing Marlboros,

Shadows are sitting on the couch, shrinking away
As white light spreads from the twist of a finger.
Here he fits in
He sinks- And feels around in his pocket
For a small bag of ketamine.
He puts the on stove and flicks on the Telly,
The powder sticks in the glass.
He lays it out, like white noise,
Cuts a line straight through the living room,
Crumpling it up,
And leaving it be.
Anybody home?

Ok, I get what you're going for and I like it. Personally, I believe man is separate from nature, but everyone has their own worldviews.

I need some help with something. I'm writing a story about a world where consensual death games have been legalized and people hold brutal as fuck martial arts tournaments, most fights ending in permanent injury or death.

The main character is a great fighter, and a good person with a good sense of morals, but I don't know what motivation to give him to fight and kill people despite him not being an edgemaster.

I don't want him to be obsessed with being the best fighter in the world, and I don't want him to be obligated to fight out of necessity or blackmail or anything like that, those are both dumb cliches I want to avoid. I also don't want it to be like, "fighting's all I know how to do" or anything stupid like that, like he doesn't have anywhere else to go.

Does Veeky Forums have any suggestions at all?

Parents were killed, he/she's the chosen one.

Care explaining why you think that? It's a very good topic to discuss. Anyway, I rewrote it and it's probably the best thing I've ever written (I don't write often).

I live in the lighthouse on the bay. For the past twenty-eight years I've lived here alone. People often come down to the beach, tourists I suppose, taking pictures of the sea.

Everyday for the past twenty-eight years I've watched the sun rise over the Atlantic, and everyday it's just as beautiful. Sometimes I'll look down and see a blanketed child in the arms of their father or mother, indifferent to that spectacle.

Over the past twenty-eight years I've fallen in love with some faceless woman. She's always the one earlier and later than others, and leaves when it's too crowded in the hours in between. She would come before dawn in her day clothes and sit on the shore where the foam still ventures, digging her fingers in the sand. The sun peaks and grazes the waves, silently, without hesitation. Even that constant murmur of the sea seems to stop. I sometimes wonder if it's for her.

When it rains she's always there, almost challenging the roar. And for a moment I remember her, so many years ago, in that damned storm. As she fought her way into the chaos, trudging through the shallows. She danced without rhythm, and the sea filled her lungs.

>No I didn't steal the end, I wrote all of the following:

Never make up justifications. Find reasons in real life. If your situation doesn't exist, find parallels in real life. Why do sports stars do what they do? Because they're good at it, and it brings them a lot of fame and money.

Lonesome tones and Aeolian modes,
Where sand replaces the asphalt roads,
Where the sun shines bright and the rain comes in droves,
You played for an audience of one.

Your fingers slip with morning dew,
A light-hearted dance played in 2/2,
But you lift your eyes and see couples too few,
As you played for an audience of one.

Thirty-six black keys and fifty-two white,
Long taught metal coils that drone out of sight,
Housed in an old brown box that has taken character in place of might,
So you could play for an audience of one.

You rest your head on the keys striking one last discordant cry,
It hums in harmony with the gulls that fly by,
Where life survives and thrives but no one asks why,
You played for an audience of none.