Critique Thread

"Alright babe. Would you at least look at the city? The smog makes the buildings look even more massive than they are; the only good thing to come of it I suppose. C'mon, it's part of the whole experience."

Jolene's demeanor lightens. She finally looks over to the skyscrapers veiled by a greying haze which does in fact make them appear very massive and distant--as if growing toward her yet moving away at the same time. She then thinks about the license plate, looking from the city again to the numbers on the back of the car before them.

"Imagine what the world would be like without cars driving everywhere polluting the air. The haze is beautiful in its own way. But only because of the city behind it. Otherwise it's just poison in the air."

Ryan digests the words a moment.

"I mean, yeah. But everyone can't just stop driving their cars. There wouldn't be a city in the first place."

The traffic has again come to a complete stop. Ryan taps his fingers anxiously on the steering wheel. Jolene watches him.

"People would have less health problems, there'd be less sickness in the city. There wouldn't be car crashes. Nobody would die from them."

Ryan looks to her, and she holds his eyes in hers a moment before looking out her window.

"Accidents--there'd be no car accidents."

"And crashes."

Hot air again fills the car as Ryan rolls down both their windows. Jolene doesn't say anything. She turns up the air and points the vents directly over herself.

"That storm is moving for the city Ryan."

"What do you want me to say? I checked the weather. I checked the traffic. It's not my fault they can't make up their fucking mind."

Ryan has one arm hanging entirely out the window. His fingers tapping against the door fill the car with rapidly pulsing triplets.

"You checked today?"

"I checked soon enough for it to not change right away."

"You checked yesterday?"

Ryan doesn't respond.

"Maybe we should go back."

"No fucking way. We need this trip, I'm not going to let a little rain ruin everything. We can find something else to do. It's early enough, maybe we can go to a museum. How does that sound?"

Traffic continues to hold still.

"You should've checked yesterday. We're stuck in traffic and it's going to rain. We should go home."

"What about the theatre? Maybe the Aragon has a show tonight. Or the House of Blues? I think you'd like the hostel if we stayed there. I can show you around. We'll still have fun I promise."

"What are the odds we crash on our way into the city?"

"None babe. Trust me. Tonight will be exactly what we needed. Forget I yelled and forget the haze, the rain and the plate. Look--the traffic is letting up."

Jolene watches the hazy city begin to rapidly approach and overtake them, fully expecting to crash before arriving.

I will never read this shit if you cannot learn to take a screenshot of the work. Either link it elsewhere or only post a small excerpt

God damn this just hurts to read. Unique does not always equal better dude. If anything you should trying something like fully cycling through the alphabet as it progresses. Not just one letter--my fucking eyes!

It's a thousand words. That is a small excerpt, it's probably only slightly larger than the dude with all the A's. Don't be a lazy shit, it's all the same to read. Some people in the other thread posted 4 post long excerpts and got crits. I read those posts as well. Get over yourself.

Is as nauseum Latin or French? Either way I think the language switch falls flat. And idk, something about this whole thing just feels kinda flat. I wouldn't say it's terrible, but it's certainly not memorable.

OP here. Please critique pic related. It's a flash fiction I've been working on. Does it show promise?

its show promise but makes me wonder if youve ever worked at a job before.

Well written, effective raising of questions and tension building. I would like to read more.

What program are you writing in?

Also, this isn't the point but
>sharp like ripped fabric

Nah.

marry me

Thank you.

Thank you! I am writing in Word. It's under a certain setting if you think the layout looks unusual. The blueprint background is very productive for me--I don't know why. And I agree about the simile... I usually just type placeholder similes and metaphors for the first draft, until I've really thought about the image properly in subsequent drafts.

Why?

A qt. woman I've been talking to wrote this and shared it with me. I don't really like it, but I dont want to hurt her feelings. Whats some constructive criticism I can share?

"I met you where we first began

when we were both certain and uncertain

but undeniably each other’s.
I don't think either of us knew
how to talk about the logistics
like the distance
or your most recent lover
nor my own
and the ways that they had marked us,
changed us,
recreated us.
So we chose not to talk with our words
but instead our bodies.
from early evening until the following morning.
and yet I still felt the urge to ask
"are you sure you want me?"
albeit laying naked,

my skin painted by the sunlight

that crept through the slanted blinds

covering your bedroom window.
and the smell of our union hanging still in the room
like sweet sage and perspiration.
a covenant had been made with our limbs locking together

our tongues learning a new language

in which to keep promises with.

still, I am left wondering
if the way our bodies communicated
is not quite as certain

as the way our hearts were once able to

spill from out our mouths
and demand attention. "

ladyslipper

Fuck around on the weekend,

am I the weak end of our link?

Spring breaks and the lady's slippers,

pink and fragile, are lined up outside.

But you're still inside, waiting for rain

and a little something extra,

to help with the pain.

>And I agree about the simile... I usually just type placeholder similes and metaphors for the first draft, until I've really thought about the image properly in subsequent drafts.

Sounds like a good idea for keeping up a rhythm, I'll have to try it.

I think you could benefit from reading a short story by Carver. You have so much dialogue... You should reconsider if it's all necessary and if it's engaging. You should be sparing with your dialogue, and if you must really use so much dialogue it ought to serve a purpose and be compelling to read. Too many straight answers in your dialogue. No misdirection etc.

Hey, i'm the user you asked to critique it yesterday, I posted in the other thread, but it was late so I don't know if you saw it. I'll repost it for you here.

First off I'm liking the voice in this piece so far. It's obviously flash fiction so it is very difficult to build character in such a short amount of time, but I think you are close with you main character. The quick scene with her brother plays into her development, and maybe another little flashback or aside could round out her character even more. Now this might just be me and a personal thing, but I am not a huge fan of leaving a short story open ended; though I assume it is not completely finished. There is something to be said to leaving something for the reader to continue onto after the end of a book, a sort of assumed ending or filled in ending by the reader, but in my PERSONAL taste I prefer more concrete endings. I would like to recommend a book to you if you don't mind, Literature Class by Julio Cortazar. He was a prominent Latin American short story writer during Pre-WW2 to his death in 1984. The book is a transcription of an 8 class series he did at UC Berkeley in 1980. It covers things not only from his personal career, but also in broader terms of the short fiction.

This was pretty good, I enjoyed it.

All you do is go onto thesaurus.com and look for synonyms to words that start with A.
Without out actually "understanding" the words and their use.
Acedia is related to spiritual stupidity.

acedia: apathy, boredom

Nice try hot shot

sounds like mad-libs. Also most of those words are not properly used, It's a decent idea executed poorly by a bad writer with a dictionary cramming words where they don't fit.

>forth and back, instead of back and forth
It's a bit excessive, otherwise OK
>''recreated us''. instead of just ''created us'' I would write "shaped us".
>the following morning. ''following'' is not needed
>yet I still felt. no need for ''still''
>albeit
>that crept through the slanted blinds
What?
moving on, too long
Yeah apathy to one's life or duty to existence.
Not depression.
Not sloth.
Not laziness.
More like nihilism.

I pulled into a Hardee’s restaurant. There is no rush in my line of work.
The yellow smiling star winked lasciviously above the dim establishment. I should have gone to the Center sooner, I’d waited until it was too late for me to have any chance of sleeping that night, but it didn’t really matter to me at this point. Maybe I was hungry; some food would make me feel better. I ordered a quarter pounder, large fries, and a shake, and returned to my car to eat them. Being in the car, enjoying what had become true rain, was indescribably better than sitting inside the glass rectangle pulsing with harsh light where the only company was teenage workers and downtrodden musty regulars. Hopper would have cried trying to paint it. It looked, from where I sat, like a museum exhibit on suburban depression.
I finished the burger and threw the wrapper away, then got back on the highway. Driving on the highway at night is one of those times you enter a meditative state without having to do anything. Some people find this state painting or running, but I for one have always found it on the highway. Take, for instance, the markers in the middle of the road, the reflective ones that return the beams of your headlights as you pass them by. They come with perfect regularity, one after another. You can always be certain there’ll be another one. And the traffic cones, my god. If you get into a construction area littered with cones, pay attention to them next time. I could drive through cones all day, just thinking about how much of a pain they must be to set up. That was someone’s job, hilariously, setting up traffic cones all day. Someone, for hours on end, took giant orange cones out of the back of one truck and put them in a line so you wouldn’t veer off of the interstate or onto the torn up part of the road that they were repaving. It was also funny that you never saw anyone setting up traffic cones. They appear organically, massive conical mushrooms fertilized by tarmac. The cones and reflectors really did guide you right along. Your mind could wander, think about everything or nothing at all. There’s your meditation.
I really don’t know why the fuck I was thinking about all of this random shit. The situation with Ellie, was, well, whatever. You couldn’t do anything about it, you really couldn’t. It wasn’t worth getting a divorce at this point. I didn’t want to lose the house, and if I’m honest with myself didn’t want to lose her. Part of me, (and call this a simple result of built up oxytocin if you like but that doesn’t make it less real) part of me still loved her. She wasn’t young anymore, but I still got hard when she came out of the shower and didn’t bother with a towel. So that really wasn’t anything worth considering, at least right now. There’s hope as well. Always is. Maybe we can get back to fucking like animals. Although it’s not all about fucking. In a way it is. I don’t know.

It was early when it happened, like I said. I was watching the stars with the telescope I’d gotten when I was a kid and wanted to be an astronomer. The moon was big and bright in the sky, and it scoured the earth with the gaze of a searchlight. The whole neighborhood seemed lit up. Everything was in high relief. I watched as a raccoon tried to break into a trashcan. I looked for the sparrows but they were asleep for the night. A car rolled past, trailing silky smoke that slid up into the atmosphere and, I imagine, was burnt away by indifferent stars. The light flicked on in Joseph’s room.
I thought it must be his Mom coming in. A memory came into my head, like a migraine flash, of me, sitting in that room when I was much younger, rolling around on the carpet. Someone was smiling in the doorway. The memory settled in the ridges of my brain like some warm and syrupy liquid. Was it real?
I didn’t think about it too much because it was him. He was finally there. When he stood up, he seemed gaunt and ancient. He moved slowly and deliberately. He was reaching for something under the bed, and I felt suddenly terrified, and hid underneath the crook of my window. When I raised the binoculars again, he was sitting on the floor.
He was sitting on the floor and just rocking back and forth. Back and forth. It was simple, first he would rock forward, then he would rock backward, then he would rock forward. He felt something rhythmic and ineluctable in the slow spin of the world that no one else had the perception to realize or else the will to feel. I noticed then that he was looking down at something as he rocked. I followed his gaze. There were little cars there, green racecars, yellow taxis, and a long, red firetruck. Playing with little toy cars. Little toy cars that you’d see a kid play with or something. I saw him sliding them across the ground, and I imagined him murmuring “whoosh” sounds to himself as he compelled his little cars to accelerate or turn, and I saw him surprise himself by having one of the taxis do a little flip in the air. We stayed there, together, for what might have been two hours. We couldn’t stop. He rocking, and I statue still, in the cold room, feeling the moonlight flood in and paint my skin. He was just playing with cars. Sitting and playing. Playing and rocking. It was… I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. Like I said, I can’t say how it felt.

>Opening paragraph to a short story I'm writing.
>The Story follows a government employed inspector for asylums in early 1900s England. He is tasked with finding suitable individuals for a government testing program. He himself does not know what the individuals are used for, merely is given strange criteria on what they must be.
>This short story is mainly about an inmate obsessed with an orange tree.

The asylum did not loom, as he had been told, but instead drooped at all sides. Every stone, brick, and hall sagged like a summer squash left out far past its season. The doctor packed his bag. From a small window the doctor could see the peak of the slope where a weather vane span, pointing an accusatory iron finger towards him. That morning the nurse had left green oranges and fresh milk on the table looking out of that tiny dusted window. In the quiet moments preceding dawn, after the moans of the committed's night terrors, but before their morning exercise, he had eaten the sour fruit. A finger rooted in his cheek, picking at a seed lodged into a molar. Accompanying the fruit had been a short letter, written to him by the nurse, explaining she had picked the fruit herself. During vigorous exercise he entertained two notions, first the possibility if the nurse was sweet on him, and the second beings some kind of indirect spite pointed towards him over his sudden arrival and displacement of the chief physician. Sweat dripped from his brow, and pooled in the small of his back to soak the over sized nightdress he wore. A cool towel pressed against his eyes soothed the dull headache, and as he prepared to bathe a pounding knock disturbed his routine.

Your prose isn't very smooth. Try reading this out loud:

> That morning the nurse had left green oranges and fresh milk on the table looking out of that tiny dusted window.

It's not all like that though, the first few sentences are pretty good.

I'm a virgin to critique threads.
p-please be gentle~

...ad nauseum is very easily identifiable as latin you pseud

Her emancipation had been a miserable affair. Untethered, her aspirations no longer monopolized by monogamous consortium, Grace now was at the precipice of life; behind her, a doting husband tyrannical in his affections, effeminate and emasculated by strong devotion, while ahead lay independence. She first found freedom in the arms of her co-worker, a frequent guest of the house who one night had placed a slightly wrinkled hand, adorned with an Omega and a tan line, between her thighs while her husband barbecued. On the pretense of his inebriation she drove him home, and he ejaculated down her throat; she kissed her husband good night and went to bed unfucked, her migraine too great a discomfort. And the longer absent her husband’s touch, the stronger grew her conviction against her once beloved, a maintainer of a now antiquated status quo that only served to confine and mold. Grace knew this to be true; or why else need she have left?

First line is useless and needs to be removed.
>Ad nauseum
this is one of those phrases that can completely shut down engagement with your poem.

Last two lines are p cool though.

Here's my piece (it's in a super rough stage)

The little dagger-ass, yellow flower shakers
attempt the power-play-- dying. Horse-hair threading
their stingers swinging high. Meadow-king erupting
in desert tears at burnt-whirls of strawing petals.
The tumblebrush’s rise shakes the summer morning.
The bumblebee’s demise wakes the satyr dreaming
of nymphs. The horse is torn open. Wasps will darken
the sky like locust-swarm. Earth will cry as Horses
for human blood. The bright augur sunlight scrawls
the writing on the wall. Daisy-death, the scentless
and wilting march of Rose, Orchid, and Hyacinth.

I'm again in Veeky Forums. I'm again looking at a board, killing time. I don't know how and I don't know why, but I've masturbated again trough a lapse of 10 hours. Again I have a test tomorrow that I didn't study. Again I lie to myself thinking I'll just wake up earlier than the usual to study and pass.
Again it won't happen, the questions won't be that easy and the ones that seam so I'll make dumb mistakes or the teacher will just think my answers where not good enough.
I don't care; should I?
Nothing to enjoy, I'm just a lonely boy.

I was going for a Hills Like White Elephants thing where there's this underlying tension between the two because in the past Ryan had gotten into a car crash which ending up causing their child to die. So the trip to Chicago was near the time of year which it happened. And the dialog all represents the strained nature of the relationship they're trying to maintain.

Thanks for tip though, will also check out carver.

The question was rhetorical you Mongol. The story is about Paris, France.

>ad nauseum
>latin
>you pseud

kys, you pretentious fuck.

btw it's ad nauseAm.

Murder in the Playground.

Summer.
I was sweating under my school uniform and the messy rucksack on my shoulders didn't help either. The school day was over and I had just arrived at the local playground I always visited. There was Josh, one of the cool kids from school hanging out with some older guys. They all looked really cool. We said 'hi' and we hanged out. The older kids stopped trying to talk to me after they got bored of my one word answers, so they said they'd take me somewhere. I didn't know my local area so well, I wasn't an outgoing kid.

We didn't travel far until we got there, just a few minutes of walking, but hell I had no idea how I was or how I got there (I wasn't a very smart kid either). It was this open field, neglected with patches of dirt, and under watered grass - Not somewhere I would enjoy going except for the rudimentary rope swing and rusty climbing bars in the corner. The cool kids showed me the rope swing, a piece of hardware rope with a metal bar on the end, and they took it in turns to jump on. I was now part of their pecking order so I had to wait to go last, but it was fun and I loved it.

Things were going well, I was being autistic and Josh gave me a few moments of talking bouts before he went back to his cool kids, that is until Frederick was seen in the distance. "shh!" "there he is" "hide" were fired back and forth in hushed tones between all the kids, even Josh! We all ran into the bushes and waited for him to get a little closer. This was fun, I thought to myself as well all stared intently at our to-be victim walk by. He had a funny walk where he'd sort of bounce, you could immediately tell from intuition this kid was one of the dorks from school. He probably had a runny nose and was bad at sports.

Frederick was now very close to us, still completely unaware of what was about to go down. So was I, I was just there for the ride. "Get him!" They all ran and I followed with a smile on my face "Class warsss!" they kids shouted as they charged at him. I realised at this point that this was all related to an on going war between two classes at school. We younger kids would watch the two classes battle each other with firsts, sticks and stones as they fought for no land or objective but simply for the purpose of fighting. They revelled in ambushing members of the opposite class and so this was what was going down now.

They surround Frederick who didn't look like he could stand his ground 1 on 1 let alone 7 on 1 (including me). He got punched and fell to the floor where he was immediately surrounded in 360 degrees and kicked repeatedly as he scream out in pain. Nothing was off limits, they were going for his head even! Something I had never seen before. The image still haunts me to this day, and boy crying with his eyes close, visible streams of tears rolling down his cheeks and trainers bouncing off his head. Poor kid, I thought. One of the boys ran off to get a metal pole and smJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ

I wrote this at work while pretending to do my real job. It's a first draft and probably dog shit but I wanted to know if there were any particularly stupid ideas or clichés that I hadn't accounted for.

Just for context, the girl at the end is the MC and this is part of her back story.

My nocturnal walks had lead me to an old, abandoned church, located in the middle of some vile spectral woods. The only thing protecting me from the downpour was my woollen greatcoat and my hat, both purchased from peasants in the more primitive, backward regions of the land, where old cults still worshipped heretical, unknown gods.

I stepped inside the church for shelter; and as a natural, morbid curiosity, and as my eyes adapted to the light I saw the old, winding entrance to a crypt. I sat on an old wooden pew, rotting and damp, and the rain stopped and the clouds broke and the moonlight shone it's meagre light through the windows. As the church got slowly lighter and lighter, and as the entrance to the crypt was illuminated more and more I spied the most ugly, foulest creature my eyes have ever seen. It was not human, it was not of this world, it was a wretch, an abomination, a completely degenerate and wicked being. It spied on me with its cold black eyes and grey mottled skin. As I sat wide eyed and paralysed in fear, I heard the pattering of hundreds of them come up the weathered stone stairs, I ran, and did not look back until I had reached the centre of the town.

I live far, far away now, but the sight of the moon and the sound of spectral wails in the night bring to mind that evil thing in the church.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm working on a different story now; it's about the same girl but makes for a much better story.

:)

>My nocturnal walks had lead me to an old, abandoned church, located in the middle of some vile spectral woods.
No. Nocturnal? No. Also, adjective adjective adjective noun adjective. . .
>The only thing protecting me from the downpour was my woollen greatcoat and my hat, both purchased from peasants in the more primitive, backward regions of the land, where old cults still worshipped heretical, unknown gods
quite clumsly.

Every thing else follows suit... Just slow it down or tone it down. Too many questions too soon with no good reason for them being where they are.

Im happy you're writing, and glad I could be of some help :). i'm going to shill Literature Class to you or anyone interested again.

Here's the opening paragraph to a flash fiction I was going to write. I'm not so sure now; the story is dull... I'm going to start something else tomorrow.

1/3

My corner was waiting for me. We were approaching each other at speed. I could see her white lines ushering me around her
bend toward an invisible unknown. My steel mare's bold back tires complimented the grey asphalt. Her polished chrome
power-house, the only part of her that wasn't black, was grumbling ferociously beneath me. She liked to announce herself.
People would prep their umbrellas to the sound of her deep rumble in the distance, only to realise they had been fooled by
a 1 litre engine.

Her rider liked to dress accordingly. I was in full black from my leather shoes to my tight tee, gripping at my biceps. The
summers air caressed my arms with it's warmth, moving up over my shoulders and brushing past my neck. My vision was
dominated by a mighty blue Mediterranean sky and snapshots of woodland trees, spaced enough to allow glimpses into the
deeper wilderness. The forest floor was covered in fallen leaves, sticks and branches - A more than ideal arena for the
light footed creatures who bounced along with careful footing, though not as much for the winged members of this
environment who would crash into the leaves with a crunch.

I was now very near to the curve, closing in on her as man and machine rocketed forwards. All manner of questions began to
fill my mind. What would I find? Where did she lead to? What secrets was she keeping from me? None of her mysteries could
be discovered, not until the brief moments, the milliseconds that I was with her. Only under those circumstance would she
reveal the obstacles she had to present me with.

My mare was just now dipping her front tire into the corner. The world I was in before had vanished from me, as if it were
my imagination giving it life. It was now just me, my bike and the corner engaging in an intimate performance, no-guests-
allowed. I guess to put this into less romantic terms, I was experiencing tunnel vision.

2/3 (there is no 3/3,,,whoops!)

I gripped my handle bars a little tighter, my eyes widened and my heartbeat picked up it's pace. I could feel adrenaline soothing my veins as I became hyper-focused. Now was the time to turn her. I slammed my bike onto it's side, wedging her jet-black rubber tires deep into the corner, and for a brief period I was weightless as my body dropped with the bike, and caught by centrifugal momentum. My face was now inches from the ground, I could count every individual rock embedded into the asphalt as the road zoomed past my vision. As if I was on my own personal roller coaster, my organs were left behind the rest of me as my buttocks -on account of the g-forces- were pushed into my seat, as if I were a jet fighter pilot.

It was at this point that I had realised I had been duped and deceived. My C-curve turned out to be an S curve. My mare was happily grumbling away, unaware we were leaning directly into the beautiful wilderness we were enjoying earlier. I took a sharp breath that felt icy cold, chilling the back of my throat as if I had minty chewing gum earlier. In an attempt to steer myself into safety I twisted my handlebars and threw my weight with them, but my bike was retarded - too heavy, she wouldn't lift in time, all the while her wheels are still chewing up the road inch by inch. There were only a couple of those inches left until we were all out of road, The brakes wouldn't stop me in time.

I think now is an appropriate time time to say that I am a firm believer in remaining calm until you are all out of options. In what may seem a nonsensical, even illogical move, I jammed open my throttle to max so hard, If my mare was grumbling before, she was now roaring as her engine was flooded with massive amounts of petrol, sending her rear tire into free-spin as it let out an unholy shriek. The entire bike seemed to rotate on the spot as if she were on tank-tracks turning in opposite directions. I struggled to hold onto her, my legs near flew out - only the grip of my hands kept me on her as she twisted herself into the new corner. Now both tires were screaming as they ripped the road. Wrinkled, flattened and smoking from the sheering torque they were put through. "ARGHH" I cried out in in excitement as we flew around the bend, the wind blowing through my hairs - cooling my scalp. Tears were rolling from the sides of my eyes and I slightly trembled either from the vibrations or the adrenaline being pumped around my body. "This is why I ride" I thought to myself as I looked back at the signature left by my tires. I continued down the woodland highway searching for the next adventure.

She walked back, feeling the older child’s eyes burning a hole in the seat of her skirt. She felt effluvious, heavy, as though brimming with a myriad of nectarine fluids, heavy saps tangling like honey and mercury inside her: the signal of the start of her period. Annoying but lucky I suppose, with Bri as he is always sulks and refuses to put one on can’t be bothered for the argument I suppose though need to talk about it. Says it doesn’t feel the same. Feels fine to me and I wouldn’t have to go for a shower after either, bent double with the shower head halfway up my bum need to be safer really. Will make sure to talk to him about it after work. Only four hours left, but more people ordering food in the evening. Table 32 being seated. The manager gestured angrily at her to go over and attend and she hurried over, face propped up with the skeleton of her welcome.
-Hi! Welcome to Cafe Strada. Can I get you a menu to get started with?
-Just a black coffee.
Mumbled assent: sudden flurry of hips and arse. He crumpled, rather than sat, in his chair. The sign above the door assured him that all the coffee in the cafe was hand-picked locally by farmers paid a decent wage. The pictures of grimacing Africans, surrounded by verdant scenery could not have been a further cry from the slice of space-age science-fiction that actually minced the beans and from which was milked the jet-hot cup of piss that now smoked in front of him. Kenyan, maybe, Tanzanian- Rhodesian. How can be local then? Local to this area? Or that area? Surely everything is local to its own area. Could ask. The steam rises from the bucket-mug in spiralled plumes both isometrically opposed and diametrically entangled; water teased and knitted into the air. Gold threads sewn into a favourite dress. As he watched, the water molecules were losing their kinetic energy: heat diffused from the coffee into its immediate surroundings; entropically stagnating. It has cooled sufficiently. He takes a sip.

>that quote
I swear, Japs come up with the most vacuous things to say.

The forty-six year old American writer, after watching the series finale of Cory in the House, and who had in the past few months watched in theaters WALL-E, which he liked, Disaster Movie, which he did not like, Burn After Reading, which he watched the same day as the finale of Cory in the House, and which he thought was okay, and Iron Man, which was apparently the first of a series of movies in a “cinematic universe”, and after contemplating the future of American literature, thinking mostly about John Green, Tao Lin, Rowling, Christopher Paolini, Stephanie Meyer, whose Breaking Dawn, the finale of The Twilight Saga, had come out recently, and a forthcoming book called The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, and contemplating the Chatsworth collision which had occurred earlier that day, and, as another aspect of the future of entertainment, a game he saw his nephew playing a few weeks prior on the internet, called Fancy Pants Adventures: World 2, and after contemplating all this, along with Cory in the House, went to his garage, wrote a note to his wife, who, surprisingly, was not home, looked at his papers, a novel in progress about boredom and mindfulness, and hung himself*.

*THE END.

i posted a stripped down version of this in a previous thread and everyone seemed to like it.

i added some flavor while drunk and, while i like it, i'm concerned other readers won't.

so watchu think!!??

>Rays of golden light peaked
You probably mean 'peeked.'

>He fastened
Simple past here (rather than pluperfect) makes it seem as if he is putting together the blanket now, but we were just told he was sleeping.

>Infodump
Awkwardly placed, interrupts narration, probably pointless since we'll see all this in practice later on

>In an instant
Careless diction, he can't do those things in an instant

>Neighborhoods were not savory spaces to...
Don't need to be told this, will be apparent from story

Are Terry and Lawrence different men?

In general it's confusing despite being overly expository.

Too on the nose, but the list of pop culture references has promise.

Critique Thread! I'm gay! I'm retarded! Critique thread! Rate my dick! Mary and Jesus! Rekt children! Critique Thread! I'm a faggot! Critique Thread! Fuck my ass! Critique Thread! Stop this shit!

You could use. Longer sentences. Not everybody. Reads like the wheelchair kid from Malcolm.

his name is stevie

How necessary is it to actually experience first hand the things you write about?

Do you actually need to have meaningful experiences and relationships in order to create characters readers can empathize with?

Is write what you know just a meme? Or does everyone that does not already have their shit together completely screwed?

I'm trying a bunch of ideas to find one that would be fitting for my first novel.

Here's one: docs.google.com/document/d/1SDoLkX0wQXnIViowR-DwpYF8e60jkUVnLpe4PtrdccU/edit?usp=sharing

I'd like to know what other people think of it first before I commit a large amount of my time to it. In terms of what to critique you can give me anything but for the most part I want an answer to the question "would you keep reading?"

my critiques:
>rate my dick
I would but I recently sold my microscope.

I don't mind the short sentences as much as the other user, I actually really like your prose. It sounds pretty.

Bit of a run-on sentence there.

>Annoying but lucky I suppose, with Bri as he is always sulks and refuses to put one on can’t be bothered for the argument I suppose though need to talk about it.
read that out loud. see if that sounds like you want it to sound, because on my end it sounds very awkward.
Actually the rest after that sounds very awkward all the way through. Just punctuation, grammar, and all that really hurting the passage. Tense too. It kept switching between past and present tense.

No not necessarily. It would certainly help though. Just write about being a NEET if you're worried about it that much

How would someone even write a story about a NEET anyway? What amazing adventures could a character possibly have while confined to their bedroom?

>adventures
Isn't there a classic that's just about someone walking across a single room?

This is by far the worst fucking piece of writing I've ever seen. That said, I'm trying hard to contain my laughter as I type this. Why? Because I see this post becoming Veeky Forums copy-pasta and being posted in critique threads for a long time to come. "Acrocentric posture". This is just the worst fucking piece of writing, ever. Period.

Mother

Mother,
I do not understand,
What it is that I'm trying to understand.
What is it?
It is that part of you

Allows you thus
To bare, yet not speak.
To stand
And never lift
Those beautiful hands
Of a mother.

Vox clamantis
In the wilderness,
No way in for happiness.
All doors shut on souls,
No windows to the heart.

I do not understand.
Beauty surrounds us, mother.
We never grow large
Enough to encompass,
Never large enough
To surround beauty.

On the streets, the dogs
Stray about like us
In this home.
Is this a home?

>There once was a man
>who browsed four chan
ƒℕ

Not all stories have to be about amazing adventures. People would pay to read a book about some depressed fuck wallowing in his own sorrow whilst failing to do any task he set up for himself. So long as it was written well of course.

The closest I ever came to losing my sense of self-awareness was in a New Delhi Metro station. You’re part of a crowd, you are it, you can’t escape it. Randomly arranged together in enclosed spaces, journeying together, walking, sitting, reading, listening to music. Individuality isn’t allowed past the security check. Rajiv Chowk, the central station, where everyone must invariably arrive if they need to go across town, is full of cafés. There’s a café after every entrance, so when you walk in, you enter into a large circular station, and are encircled by cafés. Each café is a franchise of an Indian coffeehouse chain, identical in name, décor, menu – and its crowd.
Anyway. I’m not there yet. The station is built to complement the place it is situated in – Connaught Place, or CP, as the locals call it – a congregation of white, colonial-era buildings built by the British, which form three concentric circles, and are appropriately called: the outer, the middle, and the inner circle. Inside the inner circle is the metro station, and every one of its various exits leads to a certain block of the inner circle.
I do not know which exit corresponds to which block. I also do not know which block I’m supposed to go to. I’ve a name of a lounge, it’s somewhere in the inner circle. 46 degrees Celsius, 3 pm. An old oven heating up, this city, and I felt slightly toasted. I walk briskly from the subway entrance towards the buildings to avoid exposure to the sun. About half an hour or so inside an air-conditioned train cooled my skin enough to allow me to walk a few metres under direct sunlight.
I stick to the shadows, as I walk with a pace that exhibits purpose. “Immigrant Café”. I was early. Good.

Meme request /denied/

Am I the only one who likes this?

I think you guys are being too critical. Maybe if you swept up some of the more abstract words it would read easier. How far are you into this?

What do you like about it?

“o may the emperor’s mirth last well over a hundred years!
O may the emperor’s mirth last well over a hundred years!
O may the emperor’s mirth last well a hundred years…
Or at the least for ninety nine more!

O may the emperor’s mirth last ninety nine years!
O may the emperor’s mirth last ninety nine year!
O may the emperor’s mirth…!”
And so went the song, counting down the years step by step. For many it was a quaint way to pass the time but for some it was a grim remainder that time on this earth was running down, that not the emperor nor his mirth could last that long and that the fate of the world depended on which ended first. The song was, of course, illegal. It was also being sung by some drunkard in the far recesses of the derelict apartment blocks through which the Foremost was walking down.
The Foremost was not the highest authority, not by far. There were other higher and more menacing agents yet. The Inquisitors or the Rectifiers, for instance, the ones who came with torture and scorch as heir primary tools. The Foremost was the one who came before or after these. His job was to appraise and clean up. In theory he answered not to the emperor but to the people. He was not a tool of the state but of the citizens. He was the last line of self regulation before the emperor’s forces had to step in and take matters into their own hands. He decided if the people could solve their disputes by themselves or if the problem was too big for them and the situation had to be delegated to more “official” channels. Afterwards he was the one who tied all the loose ends that the government may have left in its wake. Because of this he was considered the “foremost” citizen. The pacifying hand, reaching to the authorities in gesture of reconciliation, to bridge the distance between the governors and the governed. I stress the words “in theory”.
In practice everyone knew he was just one more lackey of the emperor, someone who answered to His-Holy-Mirth and to no-one else. Nobody knew his name, but amongst those who were courageous (or drunk) enough to call him by any less than his title, he was known as “Noble Jerry”. Supposedly he was some aristocrat whom, after the war, had climbed his way to the top, not the very top, but a comfortable and not very demanding place near it. And now he could be seen walking around the city, minding everyone’s business, in his impeccable uniform and thick rimmed dark glasses.

There were two.
There were two lights, hanging. There were two areoles of light ahead of me on a road in New York. There were two bulbs of light that were imprinted in my vision so deeply that I couldn’t see on some road in New York. Maybe it was The city.
It was the city. There were two lights that glossed rat tails on some road in New York. The street was some biological color wheel. Three pink tails on a black bag--a trash bag--in an alley to my left. Blood on the road, glazed. No, my blood, pooled on hot, black cement. There were two blue lights ahead of me. Green. The grass was green. Blades of grass, coltsfoot growing in the cracks of the sidewalk. Two blue lights, with no direction, had hurt me somehow. There were two wounds. There were two gashes on a limb--my arm. My left arm had been sliced.
I didn’t feel it. I moved somehow. I crawled, somehow through trash and dank alley ways to someplace. Cassock. Over me, a cassock. Orange, something was orange. Minivers too. I kicked and swung. Kersey with a dead body sprawled ahead. Flies, syrphbus ribessi, gnawing at cloth and flesh.
There had been four wheels. There had been no noise at the time.

Now, make way for the _best_!

Rate my story. I've been reading Hemingway.

I went to the lake. The lake was there. I sat down by the lake. A girl tapped me on my shoulder.
'What are you doing?' she asked.
'Nothing.' I said.
'You're a dumbass,' she said.
'I know,' I said.
I followed her. She didn't hear me coming. Bam! Socked her. I rubbed my tent-like ballsack on her face.
'Fuck yourself,' I said.
'Kill yourself,' she said.
'Why?' I asked.

[It's left open-ended for effect.]

I stopped reading by the 4th paragraph. The 1st paragraph was good, compared to a lot of the shit on here, but the subsequent ones were not so good...

pastebin.com/wMxNmyAY

I can see that, I definitely put more effort into the first paragraph. Cheers mate

You know, I I thought it was just gonna be a shitpost for a moment there, but it actually isn't that bad. I think I would read something like this if there were less pronouns overall (especially starting the sentence) and it was longer. Good job overall though. The ending for effect also seemed like a shitpost addition but on a meta-level it actually completes the story.

Here's my story:
pastebin.com/T1vzuMvw

If you read it, even if you don't feel like giving a full critique, where do you begin to lose interest?

Search engine sadness,
Anonymous artifacts,
Billion points of data redacted,
The face; a crass misrepresentation of facts.

>My name is Gobu. It is a short name, but that’s fine, for we goblins have no need of long ones.

Quit reading there. It sounds like shit I wrote when I was thirteen.

>I calmly ate my own supper and then walked to the town informing our relatives of the loss. That night I cleaned my armour (sic) assembled it next to my bed.

I'm going to ignore the grammar issues in this because it's the least of your problems. Is Gobu/Gobbu a psychopath? The complete absence of empathy or regard for his mother and the lack of any stream of thought on why she means so little is massively jarring. This continues at the end of the pastebin. To the best of Gob's knowledge, the knight he met the day prior has murdered everyone in that city and there's no reaction from him beyond relief. The fuck?

Why doesn't he care? Why isn't he absolutely repulsed by the violence if he wanted to be a knight because they're heroic? Why did he immediately join the fray? Wasn't there any sort of resistance that he might have struggled with? It sounds like you don't have a handle on your own character.

I've got to be honest, I'd go back to the drawing board completely m80.

You don't need to type out sound effects if you've already explained what the action was.
>The knight laughed heartily, “haha excellent!”
>“Sshhshh, “he continued, stopping me,

>intro to short story i just started
>any potential?

>subtext is basically:
>They're industrial painters, who've just received a phone call on their lunch break leading them to believe they've won a radio sweepstakes for a minority share in a casino chain. They're easily impressionable, and haven't yet realized they've fallen for a telemarketing advance pay scam. The story will briefly follow a series of hurry-up-and-wait events on their way to redeem their prize. All the while they never lose their sense of anticipation, as they wait for something that will never come.

Jack could only look on as the already bloated stakes rose. It was serious business, no doubt. He sat at a poker table and there were millions of dollars in the pot. He'd tilt his ballcap down a bit further and push up his shades with his index finger before being dealt the next hand. It was better to get the jitters out before-hand, he thought, even if he didn't experience many 'jitters' to begin with. He was sitting at a table with some hard-hitters; real unforgiving guys and the sorest of losers, to be quite honest with himself he might have been worried were it not for the security in the Casino Royale.
Next round.
The river was laid out, and Jack had already a full house. "Two aces and three kings..." he thought to himself. He had a pretty good hand, and a very good chance, but he had to play it off. Always, he remembered, as his father had taught him; always let your advantage linger until it is the most effective. So he called the other bets that were made and let the next card flip.
Four of clubs.
Nothing he had to worry about, or so he thought, but there was a man who wasn't wearing any glasses who upon the flip looked as if he had a glimpse of glee in his eyes. Jack was sensitive to these things; you make a living off gambling and you have to be. So he was wary, but at the end of the round eventually went all in.
The other players were dumbfounded, suddenly faced with such a decision. They all knew there was millions at stake, but this guy was confident--should they fold or call? Jack had a full house, no one else knew that. The others looked at him suspiciously, then one man did it.
He called. All in. Multi-million dollar chance.
Jack looked at the guy, unassuming as he was, he almost forgot he was playing with him. He wore plain clothes that looked aged almost a year and never spoke a word, the guy had the most stoic face he'd ever seen in a man. This was the man that just called his bet. He wondered how it would work out, but there was only one way to tell.
"Any more bets?" Came the inquiry from the dealer, and he was met with silence.
"Alright, lay 'em down." The soft green velvet almost comforted Jack as he flipped his hand, knowing his opponent would be hard pressed to beat a full house, but when he flipped his hand, the unassuming opponent merely smiled (his first real emotion of the night) and revealed his. Jack's heart dropped.

Unbelievably, Drin started to feel herself building up toward another intense climax. As she came, she clutched tightly onto the big lizard's dick, her arms and legs tightening on the throbbing, red-hot member. The Tyrannosaurus Rex yelled loudly as pints of white fluid shot from the tip of its fat cock to splash onto the rocks below them. Once, twice, and then a third time, the big lizard rammed its shaft against her naked body, each time more of its semen ejaculated across the canyon, wetting the rocks below.

I suppose I was going for something about how he's so totally wrapped up with his obsession that nothing else matters and that he feels everyones below him.

1/2 Chase Scene

*** DOMINGO CHASES ANTON THROUGH ALGIERS
All was confusion as Anton toppled straight from the window. He fell two yards before crashing into haystack piled on the housetop next-door.
Gunfire boomed overhead, lurching him to his feet. When he looked thataway, he saw tendrils of smoke pouring out the window. He could only hope that the witch-hunter had met his match.
That hope was doused as soon as smudge-faced Domingo came barreling through the smoke. In one brazen gambit, the cazador pressed his booted heel upon the windowsill and lunged his way downward. He tried breaking the fall with a somersault only to fall headfirst into the haystack.
The ill-attempted descent purchased Anton the time he needed to escape. Frantically, he turned around and made off in the opposite direction. Thus he fled: across the housetop, over a ledge, and barely onto the next roof. Here his hurry gained such momentum that he loosened tiles underfoot. They smashed onto the hard-packed street with a Crish! Crash! Crish!
Even though the clangor reduced all sounds of pursuit, Anton could almost smell the reek of peril. For the briefest moment he dared peek over his shoulder and saw his senses proved true.
Where Anton leapt gaps, Domingo crossed covered archways; where Anton teetered at ledges, Domingo hesitated not at all. This lumbering, ponderous, ox of a man seemed free and heedless of those bodily limits that normally cautioned against such recklessness.
The wine. Of course.
Well, Anton had some boons of his own. If he could only get them to work. To that end, he came to an abrupt stop on the other side of a shoulder-level clothesline. Its wall of robes, kaftans, and other such garments stretched the length of the landing.
Knowing fire would protect him where fabric could not, Anton threw up his forearm, flexed out his fingers, and – to his utter relief – summoned forth a swirl of flames. Brighter than starlight, the fire bounced across the clothesline in an all-consuming torrent.
The triumph lasted but a heartbeat before Anton’s fingers started seething as if dipped in molten silver. “AH!” he cried, “Hot! HOT!” He wagged the still-ignited glove back and forth while he backpedaled to the eaves of the roof. The only solace to be found was a water-trough at street level.
It was into that trough he plunged, splashing and steaming and sizzling.
As he regained his feet, so too did the camels resume drinking with bovine indifference. Their long-lashed eyes paid no notice as he yanked the infernal contraption from his forearm and flung it in the trough-water. But they did in fact startle at what happened next:
From the sky whooshed a rolled-up carpet that thumped not four paces from Anton. Tiny embers were snuffed from the fabric as it unraveled, seemingly of its own volition. But this was no enchanted carpet, and it was surely not Aladdin who wriggled free from its embrace.
Domingo.

2/2 Chase Scene
One glance was all it took for Anton to dunk his head deep into the trough. He kept his nostrils a hairsbreadth over the waterline while he tracked the progress of his would-be captor.
Only a few rays of moonlight were admitted beyond the close-set rooftops; still, it was enough to see Domingo’s hulky frame stalking the intersection. Eventually he sheathed his blade and lowered his chin until his bald patch glistened into visibility. If he was combing the sand for footprints, he would find none. Such was the beauty of a vanishing act.
Anton was reveling in that very notion when a foul-smelling wetness slapped against his cheek. He winced away from the camel responsible, but the animal refused to relent. At first he wished the musk he wore worked half so well on people as it did beasts. It was effective enough, he then cursed, to be his undoing.
As quietly as manageable he sloshed to the other end of the trough. Yet the camel nudged at him with utmost persistence. At last, when Anton could bear it no more, he cuffed the camel with the heel of his palm.
To that the camel responded as might a jilted lover: it spat right at Anton’s mouth.
Try as he might, Anton could not help but gag on the brink of vomiting. He protracted the sound as to mime the guttural noise of a beast rather than convey the disgusted reflex of a man. Alas…
“Reveal yourself!” shouted Domingo. One shadowed hand strayed to his blade’s pommel as he swiveled round. His fevered eyes searched in all directions until they settled on the trough.
The steps came slowly, one at a time. With each one, Anton’s beat quickened all the more. Then an idea dawned upon him. He sank into the water and reached into his robes. Therein he grasped his failsafe – the bean-shaped pellet. He casted it upward, rendering his fingertips visible by the moonlight.
“Got you!” shouted Domingo. Just as he made for the trough, he was tapped in the chest by the pellet.
KIK!
In that instant, plumes upon plumes of smoke spouted in all directions. The witch-hunter strove to grasp Anton’s sleeve but a fit of coughs enfeebled his grip. With pent breath, Anton pressed his hand against the wall and edged around the haze until slipping down the nearest-available passage.

Yeah, that condescension comes across, but it doesn't make me like Gob. In fact, it makes me wonder how exactly a kid who's born to snail farmers that live in bumfuck nowhere was educated at all. There's clearly some form of high-level goblin society in this setting if they can pass down anti-propaganda laws and honestly out of everything you've written, that interests me the most. It feels like a waste to not explore that a little by talking to others that have grown up in that system. Gob seems set to go off to human lands at this point, so I would absolutely include him trying to reconcile the differences between human and goblin way of life. Anyway, went off on a bit of a tangent there.

If there's going to be a point of no return moment like the murder of all of those people, I think it's important to have someone who may have known him ask about that obsession before that happens. They don't have to understand his motivations, but the reader needs to know why he's not showing basic concern for others. It would also be useful to have an outsider challenge his views and see how Gob reacts. The nod to him visiting relatives seems like a perfect excuse for this - people lash out when they're upset and someone appears to be an asshole for no good reason. Regardless of whether he's a hero or anti-hero or anything else, there needs to be a human element to him otherwise your reader will struggle to care about his journey.

There's hints of fun stuff in here and DEUS VULT always makes me laugh, but you need more depth in general.

Thanks a lot, that all makes sense and I'm sort of kicking myself for overlooking it all. Thanks

No problem, mate. Trying to get that perfect story in your head onto paper and communicate everything that you (as the author) know is tricky as fuck.