Critique thread?

i want to bring you with me into this swirling ocean of my thoughts and not have to voice them i want them to wash over you and into you and i want you to decide what you think of me after you know all that i am i want to be honest more honest than i could be i want you to want me for everything and if you can’t thats okay i understand but i want you to feel every dream memory and thought i’ve ever had before you decide

and then i want to see you

All the beautiful and smart women of Veeky Forums hmu i'm horny af niqqas i'm outcheer jonesin for a fine lass to finger mah ass!

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pastebin.com/YChvD2wy
theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/24/elmore-leonard-rules-for-writers
pastebin.com/raw/FWK0Bjnc
pastebin.com/RMEjHaHW
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

What's this for? Is it part of a journal, a part of a poem, a novel? I like the flow. It's smooth enough, but has the potential for hiccups --
unless you're Joyce and want words to run into each other stumblingly for stream of consciousness feelings. I can't really say much about what is *says*, as such, as in, the soul of it... there's not enough here to read anything deep into. But what's there is nice. It's almost self-contained... if that means anything to you... In retrospect, I feel like
>i want to bring you with me into this swirling ocean of my thoughts
would actually do more thematic work without "with me"
>i want to bring you into this swirling ocean of my thoughts
This is just imo, and the recommendation probably seems completely antithetical to the fragment's theme of "you, I, together", since it gets rid of the "with me" ... But something makes me wonder if it would be the best idea to saturate the fragment's infatuation with "with-me"ness... Despite the self-directedness of the self who is narrating, the full passion they are throwing at the other would inspire them towards trying to eliminate themselves, wouldn't it? It's just a thought, but give it a spin.

This is mine:

Amy steps outside. Cold air to breathe once more, life-giving as water. She looks up for the first time that she can remember. The act of lifting her head feels ritual-like — something is completed.

Tonight the stars are washed black. Stormclouds swell grey. A great shatter of web-lightning breaks the sky, lingering in an after-image of brilliance and white wonder, then tinkles away.

Time had stopped for that moment, and it was forever that moment. All possibilities hung possible. At each ghostly fork was frozen the freedom to choose in any foreseen direction; all taken whitely at once. How possible is anything! Amy’s heart stutters.

Gallant lagging thunder rolls in overhead. It implodes, a huge subsonic rumbling down into the core of her. Movements of massive air, more massive than her: settling giants. Suddenly you understand why the Greeks did it. With a tingling in her fingers, Amy becomes an ant, nay, smaller, a mite. And the hillock becomes the entire cosmos of limitless direction she can never reach the end of, can never find the meaning of. Vertigo swoons her head. Her eyes roll. Weak-legged, she kneels, overcome by a faintness, some profound weightlessness, something almost religious — and for a fantasy of a fleeting moment, almost raises her arms in surrender to the sky and devotes herself to unfathomable Gnosis. But she would never come back.

Flinching, she returns, to the now. Jaw hanging, unattended lock of hair swishing across her eyes, sternum rigid, sphincter slack, she breathes worldly air again; vaguely underwhelming oxygen. Molecules. Explainable in terms of explainable terms. Electrons and nucleus components. Outer shell 6e, inner shell 2e, nucleus of 8p and 8n. Diatomic non-metal, electron configuration 1s2 2s2 2p4, atomic number eight. Strength returns to her limbs. Blood — erythrocytes carrying bound oxygen, leucocytes feeding on pathogens, plasma carrying all sorts of goodies, thrombocytes/platelets with nothing to clot just yet — circulates. As a matter of fact, Amy stands. There’s some grass clinging to her knees, itching. She brushes it off and looks over her shoulder at the yellow-lit doorway. No one’s there. But the glass-clinking, the bantering, the chair-skidding, the table-knocking noises of joviality rollypolly out. They sound oddly near in the motionless night air, with nowhere to go, like they’re right behind your ear.

lightning spiders shatter the sky with their cast webs

no. lightning spiders casting webs that shatter the sky

I wrote a bunch of random shit, let me know what you think

Honestly you're just jerking off describing things rather than telling any actual story. The meaning (If there is any) is so buried within your writing the reader would struggle to give a shit about the story.

Why should I care that the stars are washed black? If this had an impact on the vision of your characters it would be relevant (The stars weren't visible therefore the scene was dark- this means your character might not be able to perceive a threat for example)

The entire thing dwells on one scene/moment and uses an amazing amount of cliches ("Stormclouds swell grey"). It comes across as pseudo-intellectual literature rather than something with substance or a purpose.

Also
>tinkles away
>ant, nay, smaller
>rollypolly


Sorry to rip it apart so much, but you should consider taking a different approach to writing than one that appears in high school creative writing classes.

I just realised stars don't even help your vision so there's no way that information could be relevant.
I get that you're trying to paint a picture for the reader but you're describing irrelevant things- makes it seem like you have a word-count you're trying to reach.

File name is accurate.
Some of this stuff is pretty edgy- like an 18 year old considering philosophical concepts for the first time.
When you write down ideas revisit them in 1-4 weeks, you'll cringe at a lot of it but keep the stuff that you don't want to delete immediately and try to refine those ideas.

Mara lifted Jessie onto a stool and served her a plate of vegetables. 'Eat up now, sweetie.'

Jessie crossed her arms. 'It's icky.'

'Jessica.'

'Okay, mummy.' She lifted a spoonful. A few peas spilled.

Mara sighed. 'Duffer. It's okay, just eat the rest.'

George watched from the head of the table. 'Jessica.' Jessie looked at him. 'Clean up your mess, then eat.' She looked at her mum, who looked at George, who looked back. There was a moment of silence. Jessie whimpered.

Mara looked down. 'Listen to daddy, sweetheart.'

Jessie gasped. Peas spilled everywhere.

Mara put a hand over her mouth. 'Oh honey. I'm so sorry. I meant to say George.'

'Mummy.' Jessie started to cry.

'Oh, dear.' Mara glared at George and carried her out of the room. George finished his meal and poured a glass of wine. He listened to Mara soothe Jessie and poured a second. They spoke in hushed voices. He emptied the bottle.

Mara appeared. 'You need to leave.'

'Fine.' He left.

Mara rushed back to Jessie and held her tight. 'He's gone.'

She sniffed. 'I want daddy.'

'So do I.' Mara put her to bed and threw the bottle away. She showered, dried her face and looked in the mirror for a long time.

Jessie was still awake when Mara kissed her goodnight. 'Love you.'

'I love you. Get some sleep.' The lights went out.

Jessie was alone.

Carries well but it's fairly dull. I guess it's only a snapshot of a bigger plot so I wonder why you chose to share something so mundane, but it's functional.

Some lines are a bit too succinct which makes it read more like a script. For example
>'Fine.' He left.

Try embellishing more but don't forget that you're trying to tell a story about people doing things, saying things, how they affect other people etc.

Thanks. It's supposed to reveal the drama (mother and daughter dealing with loss of husband/father) in a seemingly mundane event (dinner with step father). Would probably be clearer in context but will consider your advice

Actually yeah I did grasp that part, didn't mention it though.
It's good in the way that it explains the situation of the family and what the characters are like through dialogue rather than lame exposition.
Also the fact that George is at the head of the table is good if that relates to his personality.

Good to hear.

>if that relates to his personality.

It does

Wut u think

Fuck off Rupi

I'm sure it made some sense to you but it's just a bunch of words honestly.

pastebin.com/YChvD2wy

PLEASE help me fix this. Also please ignore the autistic parts. This is an excerpt from a much larger work, but it's an important scene so I want to make sure it's good.

read this user

theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/24/elmore-leonard-rules-for-writers

>being this pleb

Yeah sure buddy, I'm the one who is the pleb.

this succeeds at showing tension (mara's mistake, the wine) without the narrator telling the reader that there is tension.

I won't read it all and give you feedback but here's some quick advice from skimming the first paragraph

Starting with the subject (Especially when prefaced with 'the' e.g. the tricopter) every sentence makes your writing sound amateur and very basic. The thing did this. That thing did that. George ate an apple. etc.

How about instead of
>Myron unbuckled his seatbelt, falling onto the opposite wall
try something like
>Unbuckling his seatbelt, Myron fell onto the opposite wall
My version still isn't very good but to me it makes the image of Myron doing things appear more frantic and less robotic (Which makes sense since he is in a frantic situation)

Move your subjects and verbs around to make images more vivid and to draw attention to specific ideas in the sentence.

Hope this helps

Well then post your own shit and see if it can be held to the same standard

>I guess it's only a snapshot of a bigger plot so I wonder why you chose to share something so mundane, but it's functional.
yeah this is really restrained. i don't see the user showing off anywhere in the passage. that's a good thing.

After discussion with the user I realised the subtlety of the passage and grew to like it.
Still, if you're going to post an excerpt I would normally expect something that encapsulates the tone of the entire piece such as a climactic passage or an opening.

Nah it's too pleb

Yeah a bit, the example makes it soudn shittier but your point is valid. I'll try that, maybe it will help. Sometimes I feel like I am rearranging sentences for the sake of the doing so, like I get angry when it feels like three sentences in a row are starting with "he," when I am trying to describe the action. I move the descriptive parts around to tag them onto one sentence but then it feels long and run-on, or else unnatural. I was trying to avoid passive voice and "is/was" like the plague but then i realized I was just making my writing feel forced, yet even without that it still reads like shit.

I feel like cutting out a lot of adjectives would help, and making the sentences shorter and easier to read. I want to write in the style of Hemingway, but with a bit more descriptiveness. Maybe a bad goal but I prefer readable to purple. I don't know though.

Party scene. There are a lot of people at Miles's house. I'm surprised that I don't know all of them. I know everyone that matters at Terranatura High.

What constitutes a party exactly? With my parents there's usually activities and expectations. Activities like my father practicing his putting in the host's gigantic backyard that has a canopy that would put most public gardens to shame. Or maybe it's my mother pretending to be swept away by a live piano concerto that I guess is supposed to make us all pine for the eighteenth century. What everyone expects is that compliments will be paid to the host and the host will at least pretend that the compliments are genuine. It's all phony really.

But teenage parties seem to be less planned for social engagements and more so open houses to be taken advantage of. Which is exactly the case tonight with Miles's parents not in attendance. The certainty of an open house is the seed of the party. The petals stir and push up the surface toward the sun as the host and their friends spread the word. Kids will poke their head into classrooms to announce the where and when before the teacher registers that they aren't in the class and are basically intruding, at which point the messenger is off on Nike-clad feet, swiftly avoiding the pathetic hall monitors.

Far more often the party spreads textually, in pink and yellow ink on folded, crumpled looseleaf (crumpled because the paper makes less noise than would a fresh sheet). And if a teacher sees the note being passed around, all that means is that it must be read aloud, so everyone knows about the party anyway. There's rarely any disciplinary action when this happens . There's nothing embarrassing about a kid throwing a party and none of us are afraid of the teachers as long as our parents donate enough to the school. A certain renegade hardass algebra teacher is currently exiled at a school in the worst part of Fort Lauderdale as a result of this misunderstanding that she had power over the parents of Terranatura High.

It's electric, kinetic. The hope that now, after a week of hoping, study hall daydreaming, and early morning mirror pep talks, you get a change to talk to and or make out with that person you're after. And after the makeout sesh, who knows...Parties are all about possibilities for the reliably hopeless. No one is immune to this horny optimism, at least no one who matters is. But some people are over it, past it because we've already found the person we're meant to be with.

I am one of those people. I have been ever since June's Halloween party in freshman year when I first kissed John and knew then and there that something, maybe the first thing in my life, had just clicked into place.

Four years ago he thought of monsters.

There is a man in Colombia known as The Beast. He lives in Villavicencio. He has tortured, mutilated, and beheaded over 100 boys ages 6-16. His drink of choice is a cheap, local brand of schnapps. He will be released in 2021, after serving 22 years in prison. In China, there was a Mr. Xinhai. He would break into homes and slaughter entire families using meat cleavers, axes, shovels, and hammers. He would also rape the women. 67 was his total. He was arrested while visiting a nightclub. While in Portugal, a man disemboweled 3 prostitutes and removed several of their organs. All 3 of the prostitutes were named Maria and from the Lisbon area. The Lisbon Ripper was never found, but a man suspected of the crimes was taken into custody. The man’s son had given him up in an attempt to be on a reality tv show.
I am not in China, Colombia, or Portugal though. I am on a Greyhound bus along I-57, zooming north. I am listening to a late night talk show host on 890 AM and that is how I know of The Beast, Mr. Xinhai, and the Lisbon Ripper. When I couldn’t sleep and had been younger, I would listen to AM radio to escape. I’ve never even thought about visiting China, Colombia, or Portugal. I think Amanda has mentioned something about visiting Portugal before, but I’m not sure. I would text her if I had my phone, but everything in my pockets had gotten lost the other night. Mark had said I’d overdone it.
“How bad was it?”
“Pretty bad.”
Overdone it.

that's quite a cliffhanger user. but i'm engaged. is this the first chapter of something?

desu i couldn't read past the first paragraph. like unless you're aiming for YA there needs to be more like stakes for me to give a fuck about what a teenager has to say about a party.

As I keep reading I get elliot rodgers vibes. But he was at least demented and made things interesting. I'm forcing myself to keep going but I don't even know what i've read - apparently something was pink. And now I finished, and yeah I guess you are aiming for YA?

first paragraph desu. i don't feel comfortable posting more

kind of YA. it's a novel about teenagers who are shamed for being virgins. The above is very expository but most of it isn't.

i guess the elliot rodger connection makes sense.

Sorry, I had gone to sleep. Thanks for the input mate, I will tweak and fiddle. :)

And to answer your question, it's not part of anything. Just a a thought I had about alternate ways of connecting with women.

>Greyhound bus
I'm sure nobody's ever decapitated and cannibalised someone on one of those, user.

it's literally like you tried to take all the fun and sense out of Vile Bodies, even down to the character names. which is an achievement because part of Waugh's modernism was ambiguity of sense and speaker, but not a good achievement.

one of my favorite books. i can't remember if i had read it before writing this though.

i'm seriously considering doing the abrupt unattributed lines of dialogue thingy.

Don't. You can't construct a sentence yet. It's awful. You need to get basic, then try getting good. Waugh without humour is basically spending a weekend with one of his more awful characters in a draughty house as one of his more humourless characters. Your ambiguity isn't masterful, it's retarded. I cannot stress enough how much that was not a compliment but basically calling your work crude fanfiction equivalent to 50 Shades.

thanks for the feedback user.

i've been debating for a while now whether to get rid of the multiple 1st person pov narration in favor of just one 1st person narrator.

i'm sure you would agree that 1 narrator would be better, if that's what you mean by basic.

You only heard about Saint Bosco’s in hushed whispers. The very name only seemed to function as a punchline to the sickest forms of eleventh grade gossip. Sally McMansion (sophomore) cut her wrists in the bathroom sink during lunch period last week? She’s at St. Bosco’s now. Sebastiao de la Soccer Scholarship (senior) had his mother detained by ICE over the summer and shut himself in at his uncle's place? He’s over at St. Bosco’s now, too. The upper-crust children of private Brooklyn secondary schools had found both boogeyman and barrio in the Catholic boarding prep. The Specter of St. Bosco’s loomed large over every misstep, every mistake was you punching a ticket to the asylum.
We only had the vaguest idea of its location -- anywhere north of Central Park was a mystery for most of us, and the Bronx? We might as well be crossing the tartarus aboard the 2-train. In our minds, it either sat high above majestic cliffs overlooking the Hudson, or buried in some mysterious woodland valley in the wild depths of Van Cortlandt park. It used to be a college campus run by The Seven Sisters, as we were told by a teacher who had recently earned himself a gag order from the guidance counselor on discussing it further. Too many transfers, too many people talking about it -- something like that -- which only added to its aura. It was both the forbidden fruit and the punishment from God.

I mean your sentences read like someone found and replaced with a thesaurus and no ear for narrative. The places where you have coherency are where you use stock filler and even those are shaky, e.g.
>But teenage... seem to be less... and more so.... of.
the but... of is bad enough but
>to be planned for
>to be x
that's grating enough to think this narrator has read half a sparknotes guide of a style and grammar book and is going to subject us to his stupendously bad English while probably offering it as the advisable course. I know that seems to keep with your character, but it doesn't translate to you character; it translates to the author. It makes you sound more vapid than the character you're trying to make vapid.

it seems to me like you're suggesting that a 3rd person narrative would remedy this as it would separate the main character's voice from mine.

but i find writing in 3rd person too stiff and constricting. i can't envision the story unless she tells the majority of it. i have about 80 pages done, with about 2/3 of it from the main characters perspective. i'm going to delete a lot of shit and consolidate some of the sections into her narrative, unless i get some better idea. so it will have 1 narrator, not 5.

who is the fucking POV of this?

Third person limited narrator.

yeah? well give the POV character some internal thoughts and emotions. because it's hard to tell who the fuck is the POV character or care about them at all

reorganise this. take the last two sentences of the first paragraph and put them with the first two. I'd recommend placing the last sentence after the first, changing it to "Its specter"; placing the upper crust children next, and removing the "very" from before "name" in the next sentence. You could maybe fit an "aloud" after function.
Then put in your jokes. Give them separate paragraphs.
Last paragraph is stronger but still needs work and possibly to be two paragraphs. Fix the grammar in the second paragraph too (Tartarus, and 2 train, new clause for , who.... etc) You stylize too much to not have a style guide and stick to it, because you're going to create discrepancies in your form and that is very unCatholic.

It has potential.

No, I'm saying that not trying to write a masterpiece and trying to write whole and sensical sentences is what your attentions should be focused towards.

I wrote that previous sentence that way because it seems you only understand things in a convoluted enough syntax you might have learnt it in a rote essay on fifth form Shakespeare with no real referent to its meaning. Get simpler than narrators; write something that does not sound like you were given a minimum word count. Try to pretend you were trained to write meaningfully, not just a lot and with a sense of form.

thanks for the feedback!

The obese whale of a woman was circling the poolside changing room like a shark, no doubt in desperation to switch into a better fitting swimsuit. In a fit of rage after hearing suppressed giggling from behind the curtains, she finally blurted out the question that had been festering in the back of everyone’s minds: Wer sind diese Jugendlichen?

I first became aware of the adolescents as the cruise ship rounded the island fortaleza of Fernando de Noronha, en route to Rio. My wife Mei had heard the rumors well before I did -- much to my chagrin -- but we were able to catch a glimpse of two of them taking in the view on the ship’s promenade deck altogether accidentally. It was seven-thirty in the evening, and the sun had yet to slip under the citadel of the decaying stone titan. Because of our westward view and the strong equatorial rays, we were unable to ascertain much -- but just catching a glimpse of these rumored teenagers was enough for the two of us.

We were both captivated by their silhouettes standing eye to each other’s eye in the evening’s setting sunlight. Through gossip my wife had been informed that there were five others like them aboard the vessel, the Botafogo -- the Monte Carlo of the seas, the ark of vice on the virtuous ocean. Under most normal circumstances, getting an invitation aboard the ship would be nigh impossible -- the cruiser had a capacity of just under one thousand, all who stayed in luxurious suites which seemed more like a celebrity’s SoHo penthouse than a temporary residence aboard a boat. This was rest and relaxation for the Davos crowd -- the movers and shakers of the Old World.

Even my reputation as a noted writer of nonfiction was insufficient alone for access. After our wedding, we were gifted tickets by my wife’s dearest friend from her college days at the Sorbonne -- the heiress of a publishing fortune -- Marie de Maupassant. She insisted we use it as a second honeymoon to the one we previously planned, because apparently that’s something that’s done by the jet-setting class. When it was found out that we’d be attending as opposed to Mme. de Maupassant and her husband, a cabinet member, a quiet fuss was raised by the company until a letter of recommendation was mysteriously furnished from the ambassador to Portugal, a friend of the de Maupassant's but utterly unknown to us. Even after all that I’m quite sure we are being treated as interlopers by both the guests and crew. But these teenagers, as I’m told, have full run of the vessel. And everyone -- from the diplomats to the heiresses to the oil barons want to know why.

>The obese whale of a woman was circling the poolside changing room like a shark
>obese whale ... like a shark
No

.

Before Ronald could finish his sentence the stainless glasses shattered into pieces as if a boulder was thrown at it, allowing the rays of the sun in blinding both Ronald and the Templars in the room. Ronald’s squinting eyes barely had enough time to register first the dark figure, an assassin falling down from the destroyed window pine, second within the multi-colored shards the distinct shapes of four daggers thrown from the assassin falling above. This was just a distraction, from right-side just peaking out from the corner of his eye, an arrow in flight only a foot away from his head. With no delay he relieved himself from the present moment and reversed time.


“Assassins” Ronald yells warning his men, as the glass breaks again. Once more his men are startled, with only one man reacting differently this time, diving out of the way. The rest were not quick enough to use their magic in time.” Were they even worth the stamina to attempt to save?” Ronald thought. Ronald turning his whole body to the right and jumping back, enabling him to dodge the impeding arrow and daggers fired at him, while allowing himself to get a glimpse of the assassin, he can now see hiding at a distance in the cathedral. But, Ronald was surprised by an third assassin, whom must had moved almost as fast as the arrow herself was quickly approaching him from his now left-side. Had he not moved his whole body to dodge the arrow and the daggers, she would have killed him from behind, out of sight, undetected.


Still he made a mistake. His dodge was a failure, the poor landing caused him to lose his footwork, bumping into the just getting up templar that dived out of the way. Ronlads life flashes before him as he witnesses the daggers above piercing the head of the other templars, and the assassin moving towards him, her blade closing in towards his throat. He need to figure a plan and with just moments, He reverses time.


“Sacrifices must be made” Ronald saying to himself as the glasses breaks again, the single templar dives, Ronald once more, jumps back avoiding the arrow, bumping into the fallen templar as the assassin dashes towards him from his side, the daggers kill off the rest of templars, bringing him back to the previous scenario. Ronald with one hand pulls the fallen templar up from the floor, allowing the blade of the assassin to pierce fallen templar's throat instead. With The assassin missing her mark she moves back, allowing the body of the slain templar to fall from her blade. They failed to assassinate him. Finally, taking the time to catch his breath from the half-minute onslaught, Ronald was in the clear. No more surprises. The assassins would have to fight him fairly.

I tried.

you mean wandered, not wondered. you don't know enough about punctuation to use a semicolon.
to be honest, it's mediocre genre shit, but if you got pulled out of the swelling mass of mediocre genre shit, most of the problems would be fixed by an editor who knows how2grammar.

Whenever I play guitar my right hand gets bloodied. Perhaps anger or pleasure leads my fingers farther up the plectrum and closer to string, but it always goes the same. Adobe huts and cramped plywood sheds. The burnt drafts I keep my ideas in. And when his brown puddle eyes look at me I have to look away. Not out of discomfort of honesty, but out of uncertainty. I don't let any of them touch my guitar no matter how they beg. I don't trust tweakers. I decided to walk back, but I lost my vision and the ground became non-newtonian. After I finished puking in the bushes, I walked up the rest of the hill. My heart beating and sore. The police sirens now became commonplace along with the white truck conspiracy, and the helicopter surveillance.
I sat down on the patio and seperated the last remaining weed from the pocket lint. A reflection of old friends smoking cigarettes in the car on my driveway. The third day awake is when things start to get really weird. I finished smoking and leaned back in the tattered lawn chair. The morning sun felt good. I felt good. If i died right now, it would be perfect.
"There's nothing I can do anymore." she said shaking her head. There were no tears in her eyes.
"He's gonna be home in 15 minutes, you better be gone before then."

Wow lad. This is the best example of purple prose I've seen in a while. Your writing is so bogged down in pointless, pseudo-intellectual description that I have no idea what is actually going on. Why are you writing like this? Have you read any great book that had anywhere near as much description as this? No, you have not. Stop masturbating while you write and actually think about the substance of what you're attempting to write. Descriptions that don't add anything to the narrative are completely useless and become jarring if you have too much of it.

>Whenever I play guitar my right hand gets bloodied. Perhaps anger or pleasure leads my fingers farther up the plectrum and closer to string, but it always goes the same.
cut this, it is more boring than acne. you don't need it for the later guitar introduction.
>Adobe huts and cramped plywood sheds. The burnt drafts I keep my ideas in. And when his brown puddle eyes look at me I have to look away. Not out of discomfort of honesty, but out of uncertainty. I don't let any of them touch my guitar no matter how they beg.
Fix the sentence fragment images into sentences.
>. I don't trust tweakers.
who the fuck does? cut it. btw your opening two sentences would make me smash your guitar.
> I decided to walk back, but I lost my vision and the ground became non-newtonian.
cut non-newtonian. it's boring and i'm currently on drugs that make everything fucking interesting. unclear, unsteady, any fucking thing else.
>After I finished puking in the bushes, I walked up the rest of the hill. My heart beating and sore.
make it one setence, add a comma after hill
>The police sirens now became commonplace along with the white truck conspiracy, and the helicopter surveillance.
this is awkward and you should keep it.

the rest is okay. i'm hoping you're young because you shouldn't be writing like this past 23.

Don stepped outside.

this was all stream of consciousness that I wrote just now. I did touch on a lot of things, but didn't back it up with enough to make it interesting or convincing. And yes very purpley, I was kinda trying to make it hazy and fragmented.
thank you both for the critique it is very helpful. also im 19

The second one's good for 19 (if you cut the guitar). Try writing like you're talking to a friend who would look at you skeptically if you were acting like a scarf wearing wanker. It will make you sound less like a purple prose wanker.

Second one? do you mean paragraph? I only made one post. That will be really helpful advice, I could see how parts of the writing equate to a punchable face.

You quoted two posts, which are two different critiques of two different pieces. I'm but not who is responding to a different piece but you also quoted. Please learn to Veeky Forums whichever one you thought I was

I've been on Veeky Forums for years im just retarded lol. Don't know why I saw a (you).

The doorbell chimed, stopping my cleaning as I glanced over at the newest customer. It was a little boy around six or seven, it was hard to tell especially with the sunken eyes and a ratty t-shirt that was three sizes too big for him. Shit. He’s back, for fucks sakes. I sighed and glanced over to Mohammed who was behind the counter watching some indian drama show. Dropping my broom, I walked over to him. “Ay, the runts back, you got the stuff?”
He rolled his eyes and got up walking up to the back room. “You know you can call cps right, you ain’t doing the kid any favors” The clean white floors only served to make the contrast between the grimy and worn out sandals the child was wearing. Dirty toenails, scrapes and sores all over his legs and a protruding stomach was making it harder by the minute to look at. “Hello” I said softly, getting down to eye-level with him. He looked to the side, avoiding my gaze. “Can you tell me your name”? I continued. He just shook his head, dirty and limp hair shaking with it. Oof, he definitely needed a flea bath. I heard heavy footsteps behind me as Mohammed came back, thrusting down a plastic bag stuffed with food. I noticed how the child flinched so I waved my hand shooing away Mohammed and held out the bag to the child. “Here, this way you don’t need to steal, but can you please tell me your name?” He stared at me for while before pointing to the bag almost cautiously. “Do you want me to tell you what’s in there?” He nodded. “Well, alright, well we’ve got some cooked rice, beans, lentils. A toothbrush, toothpaste and just some toiletries. Is that okay?” I smiled, hoping it would try to make me seem warmer. He just gave a blank face in return and took the bag, I opened to the door for him as left, his shoes having left dirty streaks on the floor I just cleaned. Well fuck.
“Watch, some drunk will take it from him. Told you, just call cps” I shook my head. “Look, I don’t even know even know his name, he’s only been here, what? Three times? And each time he’s only stolen food. Might as well help him, get his trust and then call cps.”

if theres a lightning storm how can i see stars

Cool McJones was a freaky cat
She liked to dance and wear big hats
She loved to dance around the town
And how her paws felt on the ground
But everytime she would dance outside
Her enormous hats fell over her eyes
So she danced and pranced with her big hats
Not seeing anything, not this, not that
Until while dancing down the street one day
She felt something in her way
Cool didn't want to lose her groove
But the thing was big, it wouldn't move
So she stopped dancing in a hurry
Lifted up her hat and saw something furry
A big brown dog was fast asleep
Right in the middle of the street!
Cool opened up her mouth to say
"You have to move, you're in my way!"
The dog woke up with a start
And accidentally let out a fart
Cool began to dance and flow
When the dog said, "Wait, please don't go!
I'm new to this town you see,
I don't even have a place to sleep.
Do you think we could be buds?
I like dancing and I like your duds!"
Cool said, "If you can dance and you like hats,
Then in my book you're one cool cat.
I'll be your friend if you want me to,
And we'll dance from here to Timbuktu!
The people of this town, my man
Don't like my dancing, in fact, it's banned!"
"Dancing banned?! What a crime!"
Replied the dog with a whine
Cool said, "Hey now, don't be sad
With two people dancing they can't be mad!
We'll go into town and make them see
That dancing's great, you and me!"
She then saw a tear in the dog's eye
As he looked at her and began to cry
"I'd love to dance and feel the beat
But I just can't do it, I've got four left feet!"
"Everyone can dance you silly pup!"
Cool laughed, "Now c'mon, get up!
First watch me and see what I do
Then you try it, you'll get it too!
Just close your eyes and think up a song
Then move your body, it won't take long!
Let your arms and legs do what they will
That's all it takes, you don't need any skill!"
So Cool danced and pranced and showed him how
And that's when her hat fell over her brow
She kept on going with her jig
And then she tripped over a twig!
The dog rushed right to her aid
And asked her if she was okay
"Don't worry", she said, "yes, I'm fine
That kind of thing happens all the time!
My music comes from inside
So I don't need to use my eyes!"
"That's not safe!", barked the mutt
"You could break a leg, or who knows what!
But I think I might have a plan
He said, while helping her to stand
Me and you, we'll form a team
The best one this town has ever seen!
I'll be your eyes, so just dance free
With me at your side, you don't need to see!"
Cool jumped up real quick
Then went close and gave the dog a lick
"I love your plan", she said, "a real lot.
Now let's go show everyone what we've got.
And no matter what it takes, just know
I promise to teach you to boogie like a pro!"
The dog was cheery, Cool was content
So off into town they went

O my spirit, my mask has fallen
Existence is a wretched thing
This brutal, butchering logic of the mind
Renders a madness of menacing corners and shapes
Making a sinister joke of meaning
Shapes surrounding and engulfing me
Restore the mask!
And let it never fall again
For my life
For my life

I couldn't bring myself to speak in a tone she recognized to be mine. I couldn't see the words, my head was blank, and I couldn't put them together. Texting had me in pieces, or my idea of a conversation. My wit didn't suffer, but I needed a visual. Time didn't slow down, it went by as it always did. I needed to clutch my penis to feel the power between my legs, the power she craved. But the skin around it was hollow. I wasn't interesting. I wasn't cute. I know it all even now. I tried, I failed. I can't evolve. My pseudo-intellecult, my own little band of merry virgins did a piss poor job of hyping me up. I needed to be on Veeky Forums, shitposting. I needed what I loved. I needed a vestige of humanity in me. I can't say she talked to me after that one conversation. That was the last time I ever spoke to a woman in person. And it's the last I ever will. I will end myself tonight.

What I'm hoping will turn into one of the opening chapters for my novel. Just an introduction into a character and important plot points around him. Tonight when I'm off work I will return and give out critiques until I'm fed up.

pastebin.com/raw/FWK0Bjnc

Very good, if a bit heavy. I'd take away "menacing" and perhaps do something about "brutal, butchering", which is like trying to speak with too much teeth.

There was a warm, concealed corner behind a crag. A long, uneven trail of totalled reeds, broken stems of gorse and ferns led away from the crag. It was a winding, wind-stricken path upon which the pastures had been macerated by impenetrable webs of weeds.
Somewhere near the end of this trail there was the man, holding nothing in his hands and looking deeply into this emptiness. He took one of them and pressed it against the mass of tangled thorny plants that stood tall before him with his bare palms, and in reaction to the raspy surface of this mass of succulent growth: he reeled backwards. He couldn't go any further, though he'd tried to. Massaging his forehead and looking inward towards himself: he tried to discover the direction he came here from. His stiff shape crawled across this ridge, in multiple directions, still with his eyes closed.
All the incandescence descended to the horizon and concentrated in a swirling vacuum, collecting more illumination from the surroundings at invisible instances.
Absentmindedly his numb hands parted with a small and empty glass flask; now it was invisible beneath the yellowed rotting nettles of a nearby bush. He sat down. Lowering himself to the floor: the water imbibed by the plants collected in the broken pieces of his clothing and scattered across his oily skin. Now that night had fallen he merely laid his hands frailly over his waist, and waited otherwise totally outplayed across the floor. A deep musk of sugar-water bit the frost of the night sky; it entered him, now a lucid narcotic drowning his awakeness. As his head tilted back and his throat flared.
A blue flat colour, a total and ungladdening shield, appeared behind his eyes.
His back was already soft and purple which caused him to arch his back into a sensitive shape while he slept. He was steered out of this world as he created paralyzed inventions in his sleep. Cold sweat sprinted across his forehead, straight to his agape mouth which sent out shivering wisps of soft air.
Sunlight illuminated less and less of the obscured shelter which he'd earlier stood at, until the visions inside of his body. He turned over on to his side and drew his legs to his chest, and finally: he drew his last of this day's breaths before his consciouness scattered.

There ensued a massive inebriation to the brightness in the transparent sky, championed by a web of faint sugary nimbuses which powerfully aggravating the circular radiator that bit the sky and ground at once.

I'm considering writing a dream in-between where I separated the two paragraphs. Is this too long just to describe a man falling asleep after walking a long distance and then waking up?

If a bit heavy-handed*

And now, because I criticised someone else's better work, someone do mine please:

Riddled was his mind, soaked in the swirlings of madness. Confusion coiled about his brain like a snake snarled in a broken knot, its tail bitten by its teeth. Grasping were his hands, and slick, and his forehead sweltered, and his hands held something heavy. He looked. It glared back without pity.

"You left your daughter behind, I think. I will say this outright. You will not return to her. Your body will be picked apart on the plains by the birds that wheel and the beasts that worry."

Gama kept his gaze on the thing in his hands. It was dull. But wicked. It was a gun, of course. He stared at it more. He wanted to talk, but his teeth moved only a little, and his tongue weighed on his teeth, and his lips did nothing.

"It will be a thing accomplished. Behold my spear. See how well it is made, how well the head and shaft are joined, how straight the maker carved its haft! How lucky you are."

“Open up, babe,” she said, with enough malice to kill an elephant. “It’s time to taste all of me.”

A single, pained scream was all she heard before he loosened her anal ring enough to let slip an enormous fart that blasted across Colin’s face. He screamed silently into the noxious deluge. Her ass was placed strategically so that the majority of her flatulence would go up his nose. His cock shook violently at the new sensation, and she continued to milk it delicately with her expert tongue, mixing abject pleasure with indescribable pain. She felt his body quiver as she let loose another barrage of gas against his unwilling nose.

“Don’t worry, babe, this will all be over soon.”

She felt the muscles of her sphincter relax. She pictured Colin, trapped and near;y passed out from the chemical warfare she had unleashed upon him, gazing helplessly up at her puckering asshole until it widened and a dark hole began to form. She felt the sweat of his brow cool her cunt as he realized the totality of his fate. She clamped down on his cock, creating a vacuum-like seal around it with her mouth as she gave herself to the bodily functions of mortals.

The log crept out of her like a snake from its nest, dark and brown with a repugnant scent the only drove Clarissa to suck harder against the cock in her mouth. Colin gave some trifle of a scream, but the shit from her bowels could not be silenced. She felt it coil out from her, brushing past her engorged clit as it did so and fell in open gravity towards Colin’s face. She bucked her hips so that her asshole was firmly clamped by her preys screaming mouth and released an ever greater log of shit directly into his mouth. She threw her head back in ecstasy and she felt the turd leave her and fall into the waiting mouth of her toy. Not knowing what to do, Colin received her gifts until he could swallow no more and began to chew for his life. Even as he took the bitter and earthy gift from his goddess, more shit fell from her unrelenting asshole onto his unprepared face. His vision grew dark as the torrent of shit enveloped him. Just before the light of him died, he came harder than any man Clarissa had ever seen. He shot what seemed like a gallon of hot cum directly into her hungry stomach. Clarissa gave herself to the Ecstasy and allowed the hot cum in her mouth and steaming shit the coated her ass to mingle in her mind. The shit kept pouring from her, and Colin had long since stopped swallowing. As her own orgasm subsided, and she swallowed the last bit of cum from her now ex-lover, she let herself exhale. After a few moments of basking she grew bored and reached for her cell phone where she dialed Steven’s number. There was a mess here, she told him, and she needed someone to clean it up.

what the fuck dude

You're trying for assonance and consonance but those first three sentences wind up being like an elocution lesson. It's uncomfortable to read aloud. I think reading the whole thing aloud would help you see where you lose and pick up rhythm in the rest, but the first paragraph is the worst offender.
You use semicolons and colons like you're translating Confucius or the Bible. Stop it, you don't need it.

Descriptions need work. It sounds like you only see mountains in a cinema, and I feel like I'd be more likely to smell popcorn than heather from your descriptions of the landscape. I imagine the sugar water smells like coke or pepsi depending on your local area.

The descriptions of his internal sensations are fine, you're alright on those parts if you fix the punctuation. Fix the mountains though.

Holy adjectives user.
>There was an [adjective 1, adjective 2] thing

STATELY PLUMP

This is delightful. This is totally fucked up and I enjoyed it. You could have a future in erotica if serious writing doesn't work out. It's all really gross and vile, so you did your job there.

My only question is if he's supposed to be dead or just passed out. Did she kill him by drowning him with shit?

It's from a demon-hunter erotica parody I'm writing. A succubus has invaded a tiny college town.

Yes

II. The Quarter Machine
There hangs a doll from the claw
Of some quarter machine
That shimmers and leers at you;

It chokes the cotton
From brown paws in the vitrine
Of childish hopes
Of the carnage of kids and crowns
Or the natch odds of success.
There hangs a doll from a machine
That pulls and screams cries and lies--

A glazy Tantalus on the glass
And in the glass,
My dream.
Not strong enough. You need to make the reader choke on the lettering with the precipes

I'm gearing up to write a new novel. I was playing around with my style and trying to get a feel for the main character. Interested to hear feedback.

pastebin.com/RMEjHaHW

Mahogany-Man

Please give a hand
for mahogany man who
steals your stares
and knights his path

"It's nice to be met"

He hands
his card then
chokes your palms:

accredited man.

A man of cigars his
black art is his charm,
bulging smoke for display,
awe at the dragon's work.

Now make way for this man's
such magnificent crotch!
One man rogue of the road!
Mind for his swelling rod.

Luscious lad!
See his wares this clockwork
that he wields
money talks tics and thwarts
he buys time with Rolex

Watch it glint at the wheel
He's a man of the deal
Stainless speech pleasing ears
Courtship wins your appeal

What a man such a man
mirthless chuckles and all
"Hah Hah"
O hear hear sycophants
as they drool

And then fall to their knees to
clean yeast with their tongues

"Gentle gentle" he squirms

"I am too young for love"

In their bastardised love they
lick thick sweat and slug the
wax pool of produce
from their master and bawl

"Oh Master! My Master!"

Sterile stirring fools

Connoisseur of the feast

bellyful of the fowl

You follow like a mule

Kept hollow like a tool
expended then disposed
as social capital

His pride built from the price
and soul buried in scaffold
You fall for his lies
lest he be suicidal

Your worth sits in his purse

With his assets accrued

Beware the big man

He makes business of you.

>tfw succubussy got a crit before me
There is no justice.
I think you need to restrain yourself. A lot of stuff is held back by belabouring. For example, to me your dialogue's too dumb. I know dumb is what you're going for but it's jarringly dumb as well as dumb dumb -- ex.
>"Dude that's fine"
or
>"So, um, what did you want?" "You"

Also, you might want to restrain your conversational style a bit. A few of-courses and kind-ofs go a long way. For example, you might want to cut out that first "for her part" (which doesn't make a whole lot of sense anyway).

This also extends to the rest of your narrative, like
>But she put her face into a dumb girl’s puzzled expression, one she’d carefully cultivated in high school
could lose that "one she'd carefully cultivated in high school" entirely.

And then there's that God-awful exposition.
>on the counter of the desk of his expansive dormitory room along the Western edge of Fallingworth University
is just as awkward as humanly possible, while
>"My dad’s in contracting, right? Baby, you know that. He’s done a ton of work for them over there. He’s celebrating a new casino he built, and he told me to come. He told me to bring a date, too, so… huh?”
is weirdly factual, and therefore out of character. You could explain that stuff better with less, and in character.

I think it'd be a lot more interesting if you gave the reader a deeper look into Milly's emotions and motivation. As it is it's kind of hollow, like in a YA novel where the writer wants to do this so-cool actually-I'm-a-murderer thing but doesn't really know how to make it interesting.

A lot of stuff is pretty good though. The general tone's close to spot-on, and your descriptions are good.

reading this makes me feel like I have rocks in my mouth. Are you deliberately trying to be obtuse

That might be what I'm going for, depending on what you mean. Could you explain a bit?

it sounds like Yoda and Conan the Barbarian writing their gay memoirs overlaid on a copy of the KJV.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to delve deeper into her as a character in the book itself. This is my first stab at writing her or writing in anything like the way I'll write the book, so I know I need to refine it a little.

I will say that the belaboring may be useful if I tune it a little. I was trying to get it a little off-kilter and wordy, sort of faintly channeling American Psycho, for obvious reasons. I think I might be able to make it work as long as I figure out the "right" way to do it.

Oh wow, that's exactly what I was going for. That's confidence-boosting.

Do you have any specific points, like any words should be cut or replaced or whatever else?

If that's what you're going for, then mazel tov. I can't offer any real critique, because, as is, I'd refuse to read anything by you if I read that excerpt online

>I'm definitely going to delve deeper into her as a character in the book itself
Understandable, but as it is in the start I feel a bit -- loose from the action. I don't really have much reason to urge on Milly or Chris.
Psssh, your loss, pleb.

nothing personnel, kid

nothin*

how embarassing

don't you EVER fucking reply to my posts again unless you have something to add

My every word is a calculation. Every letter, every space is placed to provoke maximum cognition. I slave over my posts for WEEKS and you imply I have EVER given you anything less than superlative addition? And in a shitty little post with no capital and no full stop, no less.

How ironic.

you're stupid

would you want to read more of my poems?

we will live actually

take your friend
out to the WIND
NUMBER lodge—
where we wing
heaven miners
who have honey
pockets—
take them
with your airplane
made of snow
and paint.

we will race
over nerdy turfs
to unstuck realities,
our eyeballs golden
with the sun transmission;
until the rimy brine
from ICE EVENTUAL
floats unwounded
for us.

slide this translucent
steak down
your throat,
and breathe fresh
dormitized air —
this is your life,
I believe!

i have been burned

or is it burnt?

perhaps, in an innocent time, i knew the answer. but no more

now i wander, wondering, always feeling, >tfw no gf