CRITIQUE REDHAT

Namaste, Bazooka Joe,
how does it really go?
A-OK he says today,
but I think he means
he can't quite say.

I sensed his pain
I truly did–
clouds of rain
above the kid.

Come bowl with me
I said to him,
Let me be!
he said so grim.

I pleaded him to come–
and even invited Jane Gum–
but he denied and decried,
never wanting simple fun.

So I banged on the door
begging some more
but minutes I waited,
and waited some more.

Then came a pop!
And a big wet plop,
and I knew just then
Bazooka Joe was dead.

>worthless opinion
don be so hard on urself user (its unbecoming(

i love when girls can manage to look slutty and wholesome at the same time.

Too many purple phrases; 'chariot of perplexing fortune', 'that precious creature' and 'I compose the dissonant chord-laced piece' are the biggest offenders. It'll do for a poetry class, but it's pretty bad otherwise.

Smooth the poem out, reading-wise. The fourth stanza is a mess, and hardly any lines go together outside of the rhyming. Could work, for something that ends with 'this is really easy to pick apart.'

The two addicts deliberate
soberly on what film to view.
The mosquitoes suck and such,
"I gotta shit," says the Texan.
But fallen fixtures say the same thing
when pressed to put out on prom night.
"Nostalgia for I don't know what,"
says the Swiss, secured in context
lost by those outside the joke.
"Amazon is better than Netflix," says brisket.
"They're just different," replies fondue.
Chores, the luxury of the able-minded:
bodies washed ashore with the jellyfish.
"My mother was an actuary for farmers."
And the other yodels a nod, remembering his own mother
whose humble narcissism he inherited
carries him towards the Andromedan sun.
"Let's just watch Schindler's List" they decide
lusting for the color red.

The power went out
and they listened to wax melt instead.

I'm this user. Here's a fun one I never used.

Who me? Repeat? I’ll never, ever.
Adolescence makes us lose what’s clever,
and rhymes are dead except in Pop.
So Father Music eye me misanthrope
and He’ll not wrong, no He’ll not wrong:
he and they’d have me sing ‘Belong!’

Stubborn daffodil, so atavistic
and I say ‘no, a card, a mystic.’
In tone diseased, that’s dys and ease,
if wrongéd chord, there’s anti-freeze.

I aim for breath and miss for sense,
but a neurotic web’s no accident
and still I wonder who’s the spider.
Or was it what’s? That journey-rider,
white-line lit, a reflected glider
in a horse’s bit. user anachronism,
I suppose. I’ve thrice seen an ~ism,
but never so, close~d!

You picked one of the few decent lines

Dating is easy when you believe in things
like "all beautiful people are shallow.", and
you're not one of them,
and "I don't mind ugly children." Still,
sometimes it's difficult and you can find yourself thinking,
"ah Christ, not another zero-summer." It gets to you, and
you start to settle, lying on your back like a leaf in Autumn,
fetal and staring up at the sun like
all the others doing the same
in the pile. There,
you're part of something bigger -
society, even - and it's easy to feel
cozy but also
paranoid that some troubled youth might just
give in
to the urge of jumping
into things that are bigger than him
and just ruin everything. Anxiety
seeps in like the unwanted moisture
it is,
and you count off the ways
that it's biology's fault, mother nature's
responsibility, and not
yours.
Why, you weren't born fruit,
and when you fell off the tree there was no one there
to eat you. You are gravity's fruitless endeavor.
But it's nothing to get worked up over. Perish
the thought, while you make dry angels in the grass.
Sunny days
are over,
so you must settle,
in a way.

Try using dialogue to introduce your characters. And don't include so many actions, most can be implied. Stop using adverbs until you've improved as well.

This reads like what I would imagine a Soviet propaganda poem to be.

The dialogue does not follow.

Can Veeky Forums help me with something? I'm trying to write a rich-ass character who smokes ridiculously expensive, fine cigars.

Does anyone here know much about cigars? I'd like to know if this would be any good, and what kind of price it'd be per cigar, considering artisanship, the multiple types of thoroughly-aged tobacco, the size of the cigar, the infusions, and final aging.

>A blend of 10th century Mayan, 1907 Dominican, 1903 Cameroonian and 1834 Cuban tobacco, rolled into a cigar one inch in diameter and six in length, and infused with 1715 French cognac, aged Ecuadorian chocolate and Vietnamese coffee before aging for another 90 years.

Nice body, don't like the face too much, 7/10, but would fuck for sure

>Nice body, don't like the face too much
it's the opposite for me. nice face but meh body

Mark yawned and scratched at the hair of his stomach. The room was dark, dark and filled with the sound of static from the television on the counter. He was smoking a cigarette, and it had been dangerously close to dropping out of his hand and onto his skin. It was 4:18, and he was supposed to pick the girls up around 3. He wasn't about to jump to action, though, no sir. He finished his cigarette groggily, then went to put on his pants. They were loose on him now. He almost got into the car shirtless, but thought better of it at the last second. He started another cigarette while working to get the SUV going, then made his way out the driveway.

He pulled up to the park, irritated at the extra minute and a half he had to drive to pick them up now. They were sitting on a bench, watching ducks muck about in the pond. A few feet away a young man pushed a child in a swing, and a young woman cheered the child on. He couldn't see, but Mark could tell his girls were watching them from the corner of their eyes. If he had bread, he would've offered to let them feed the ducks, but he didn't.

"Let's go," he said, standing behind them. They turned and got up, ready to head home.

"Can we get dinner somewhere?" Mia asked while they walked.

"There's food at the house," Mark said, clutching a few scattered bills in his pockets.

"It's bad food though. Think we could get mom to cook for us tonight? It's been forever since she made taco salad. Think we could?"

"Your mom's out, don't know when she'll be back tonight." Mia pouted, puffing out her lower lip, and Mark had to bite back the urge to slap her face back in to place. His head was starting to hurt and his hands were starting to twitch. It would be a long ride home.

At least Alice wasn't mouthing off; she was reading some book. He tried to get a look at the title, but the girl's grip covered it up.

"So today we did the mile run. My time was... uh... nine and half minutes. Or something like that. I kept up with the fastest girls for a while. I was so tired afterwards I fell asleep in math. But math is easy anyway, right? Also the guy who sits next to me gives me answers."
..........................
Mia told dad how her day was every afternoon. It was her way of pretending that he asked.
..........................
"You shouldn't cheat," Alice said.

"It's just getting extra help. And does it matter if I get good grades?"

"It's wrong," Alice said, as though that was enough to finish the conversation. Mark should be parroting her, chastising Mia.But he had cheated his life, and maybe she should learn life's lessons the same way he had.

"Okay, well if you feel so strongly about it I guess I'll have to stop... telling you I'm doing it."

"Better be careful. If they catch you they'll make you stand in the corner."

"We're not six anym-"

"While they throw rocks at you. Sharp rocks."

"No, no, no," Mia said, sinking into her seat and covering her face in exaggeration.

[Continued from above post]

"Yes. You know Pat Bunter?"

"The one with the lisp?" Mia asked. Alice leaned over so that she was above Mia, crouched in the seat.

"Yeah. He got hit so hard with one of the rocks he bit a chunk out of his tongue, and that's why he has the lisp."

"I think I'd be cute with a lisp though." She sat back up. "Anyway, not much else happened today."

"Good for you. Both of you wait in the car," Mark said, pulling up in front of an unknown house. He got out of the car and went to the door and a man came out of the door, and some words and other things were exchanged. The door closed and Mark came back, and they went home. When they got there, Mark disappeared into the bathroom. Alice kept reading, and Mia listened to music on her CD player.

The line pacing felt a little odd and the beginning felt maybe a little edgy/cliche, but I'll be damned if this didn't get better as it went. I really like the last four lines, and how they echo back to the beginning of the poem with the concept of settling. I would try for another revision or two.

This poem is good and fun to read and full of jokes I don't get but know they're there. See that?

Bump

If you think the thread is worth bumping, you should try and put something out there or critique something!

I think this is rad and would happily read a book of it and things like it.

I like this. Especially the last line and 'bodies washed ashore with the jellyfish'.

it's a poem. it doesn't need to linearly follow.

Sci-fi novel in the year 2086.

pastebin.com/pis247kz

Ghengis Caesar Richard Pizarro
led with plight death war and conquest,
to reign attain command and fight so
each could prove their right was best.

To disobey would born a slave,
torn from those they would obey,
to pave a way with shackled hands
while bleeding faith to dying lands.

Faithless on their hands and knees
drip their eyes to broken earth,
as soldier ants from cracks emerge
defending each their colonies.

What a sight to slave indeed
must these voluntary fighters be
that bite their prodding fingertips--
to die to fight god's hand who rips
their life long pits they call their home,
is cause a thrall has never known.

Crawling up their limb and skin
the insect burrows in their head.
Filling not with sorrow, dread,
but instead of voice of matron--

Serfs naked in the dirt exert
similar qualities to rats that
act in broods asserting
service to mother's dominance;
yet they're seen a shrimp-like-parasite
by their king's encroaching reich--

The lips which kiss their withered minds
then finds forgotten fealty
inside abandoned folds of thought
filled with love so motherly.

Suddenly their head is buzzing--
words in rhythm drumming
as a wasp-swarm war-march
stinging their passivity.

But as dirt will turn to sand -to dust-
must a slave forever know-- loveless
is the slave always,
even top their silver throne.

It's fedora based, I'll stick with Ubuntu thank you very much

i've always found that type of shoe to be particularly sexy

Den Of Snakes
Beneath the world of Hell
lies the land of Salim,
homeland of the Chimeras.
A sickening race
of nefarious scum
who spread ruin
and decadence to all

They are an arrogant race
calling themselves the Chosen,
due to a covenant with their so called “God”.

Through shadow governments
they degenerate nations.
Through subversion
they fabricate wars.
Through secrecy
they control races.
Through subterfuge
they amass wealth.

They know nothing of Virtue
and scoff at Honor!
Its only natural
when their history shows
they are bred to scheme.
The only way to stop this race
is to cut the heads off these snakes!

shite poem mate

you will never be a poet

Sharpening Sticks

On bric-a-brac blocks
The old tinker piroquets
And falls

And grubbling at the mound
He grabs a piece of scrap
And smiles

There's no more watches to fix
Only piles of bricks

So the old tinker sits
And sharpens sticks

good writing is infiltration
from the start. there are walls to climb
in people, and before they can
dig in they must be tasting it prior, so
put it in the air. you must reach
the olfactory and do your dirty work
before they even notice the fingers
in their fringes, your hand
around their throats, and
before they know it
you've left already.
it isn't personal, but it seems,
so you leave a number...
but there's nothing to make of it
at that point. text tends to be dry, and
it leaves your mouth dryer; best to
just forget about it. still, know that
at times
she will raise her hand to her throat
in memory, staring off the same way a blind
dog does a window.

Plagiarized* from van dyke parks

Wow gay, literally 0 effort

remember when
holding hands
in the summer rain
and i finished my
ice cream first
so you asked me to wait
till you finished yours
and i waited
i waited my whole life
for you

ahahaha you pussy

rupi kaur nobody here wants to buy your book

The rhyming scheme really makes this work, it makes the poem's darkly comedic tone come through with great clarity.

cut the last three lines and any careful reader will get the same message without being as annoyed as i am right now.

>good writing is infiltration
i don't disagree but i don't think this start is a good example

the theme could be handled better, but the last three lines are fucking great, i'd scrap everything but them. but god build them up.

neat, but a little too smirking

pls write something interesting

how do you guys feel about the Invocation to my longer work?

...

Attention to detail is key
to improving your
mediocre poetry;
fathoms are a measure of depth,
not of distance.

>fathoms are a measure of depth
poetry is 4D chess. checkmate.

This isn't mine, but I'd like to see your criticism for it.

-------

One mammoth-sized, fat, heavy guitar note blares at max volume from the tower of sunn amplifiers cementing shut the garage door in Erin Yagire’s house. Everything in the room is rattling from the intensity of this thunderous drone, and Erin stands affixed in a pose with her right arm to the sky, pick in hand, staring intently down at the vibrating strings on her beat-to-shit guitar--pulverized by as much metal thrashing as her tiny young body could muster in the seven years she’s had it. She waits until the blood has already largely rushed from her hand, and it’s just about to go numb in the same way that her ears have gone minutes ago, before finally and violently striking the pick over the strings once more, producing a blast of sound which shudders the very earth beneath her feet. She doesn’t even hear a small ceramic cup falling from the table in the neighboring room and shattering across the floor. There is no caution in her soul. She isn’t even wearing earplugs. She’s only twenty-two, and she’ll probably have tinnitus by the time she’s thirty, but she couldn’t possibly give less of a shit for now. This is the life that she’s chosen--the one that is meant for her. Reckless abandon into the pulsating sonic waves of pure drone overkill. And then, just when she’s about to strike those strings once more, to crush the air all over again, her drummer joins in.

The sheer force of Alexa Excellent’s kick, snare, and crash cymbal all blasting at once alongside the first droning bass chord from Beatrix Waifu’s down-under-tuned bass cracks one of the garage’s windows. All three girls have torn into their music so hard that the foundation of the house itself has cracked, and they will have long since skipped town by the time the landlord finally discovers structural damage beyond what he can explain or afford to deal with. If they played long enough, the Earth itself might just split and plummet them all straight to hell, where their rock-off against the devil will almost certainly end in their victory. These girls were drunk as hell and utterly unstoppable.

Enjoy your botnet.

I really like this kind of stuff, it's the only poetry that I can understand. the ending is too sad for me, though

:(

that was good user

bad...!

>Stop using adverbs
not that dude, what's wrong with adverbs?

That was a short story I wrote for one a poetry class I took. I want to write prose poems similar to the Odyssey, but I'm not sure what I should do. College professors don't gave me much advice besides grammar changes or using different words.

pastebin.com/BkrtULNw

Adverbs aren't necessarily bad, but excessive use of adverbs is. In amateur writing, adverbs are usually used to qualify weak verbs instead of using a more evocative single verb.

For example, if you want to say someone "ran quickly", the single verb "sprinted" or "dashed" might work better.

It's not always the case though. Sometimes adverbs do add a lot to the prose. Knowing when to use them is a matter of experience unfortunately. There aren't any hard rules. When I try to write/edit and notice I'm using adverbs, I try to think if there is a single verb that accomplishes what I'm trying to say. Often it's better that way.

>pastebin.com/BkrtULNw

>The procedure did not excite him, but he could not afford to be absent.
Is there a way to show that the procedure did not excite the officer rather than saying it. Maybe showing him hesitant about leaving his cabin or worrying or something. If done properly, I think it could be more compelling than it is now.

>it was some hollowed shrine
I think you mean “hallowed shrine”

>gave up and with a grunt tossed the stick away
probably missing and as in “grunt and tossed the stick away”

>Not much was known of the mans background
man’s background

>to boo’ing
I think “booing” works fine

>(shivering against its steel embrace)
If I’m understanding this correctly, you are saying that the mast is made out of steel. Maybe that’s true, but I always thought wood would be more common.

>many however next survived that far.
I don’t know what you’re trying to say. I think you might mean “many, however, didn’t survive that far” or something. Or maybe even “few survived that far.”

>his neck exploded all the deck
“his neck exploded all over the deck” probably makes more sense.

Your dialogue formatting is a bit off. No periods at the ends of sentences or commas outside the quotation marks. Also, there are a few grammatical errors: plurals instead of possessives and vice versa. A close reading will help eliminate those.

I found the story interesting. I like how you set the scene and mood. Some of the whipping scene stretches my believability though. I'm sure that being whipped is extremely painful and possibly even lethal, but your descriptions make me question the story. In particular when the whip takes out a chunk large and deep enough to reveal bone. Maybe I’m wrong, but that seems a bit more than a whip could do. I see that the point of that scene is to be gruesome, but I felt that was a bit much.

Take my comments with a grain of salt. I’m no expert.

thanks a lot.

Grammars my worst nightmare ngl because i usually get too caught up in the writing and dont pay too close attention

I really like the beginning of this. Really cool stuff.

Imo the rhythm gets butchered in the 4th and 5th stanza (in particular the "Jane Gum" line)

Last paragraph isn't bad though. Work on the middle some more and you'll have written something pretty good

Hm

i rly like this

The stairway to heaven
consists of 12 steps
the audience chants in unison.
Walter Kovacs to David Koresh,
with booze my breath stays fresh.
Laughter'll be my last breath,
the joker jokes—subduing a sense
of impending gloom. The tables turn
in the psychic's velvet parlor
as her niece tugs at the electricals
conjuring an apparition of confidence.
One may never know, Tootsie Pop
ads tell us as children, which wisemen
confirm later in life. Live the 8K experience
the producers of Survivor request
from their homes in Las Colinas.

The rain falls on us all equally
except those of us with roofs.

First paragraph and very rough draft of a story concept I have about a group of refugees fighting for survival against a force that wants to assimilate them and destroy diversity. Any criticism helps, whether it be on the idea or the writing itself.

The village was nestled on either side of a shallow which separated the thick gathering of forest trees. The river gave both the trees and the villagers life, like a vein streaming nourishing blood through a body. Here, in this shrouded paradise, birds chirped and flew in the trees and dogs barked and ran through grass and the villagers laughed and went about their days pretending that all was right in the world. The village was a beautiful lie that assured its inhabitants that, for at least one more day, they were safe from the danger that raged against their very existence. The villagers themselves were a medley of folk estranged from their original habitats. One villager had skin white like ivory with strong arms and a hairy chest and sat in a boat on the river holding a rod, tempting fish to their doom with the promise of a tasty snack. Another had skin of bronze and feathers in her thick hair and stewed the contents of a pot while she watched her three children play with the dogs that barked in the grass, each child with a different hue that reflected their mixed ancestry. A third villager had skin of iron, and he (if he could be called a he by any measure other than the being’s own self-declaration) sat by the river trying to mimic the beauty of nature onto a blank canvas as best he could. In truth, this villager was not a man or woman but was, like many of the other villagers, a robot. He and those of his kind represented the last of an endangered species and a lost age, where men and women and robot were alike in their freedom to live and to love.

Very good user; do u have more? Send me a book full of these!

>Elizabeth Ann Roberts

>Elizabeth's pictorial was a significant one in the history of Playboy because she was only 16 at the time her photos were taken. She had arrived at the Playboy studio with her mother, who provided a written statement that she was 18. After it came out that Roberts was underage, Hefner was brought before a domestic relations court on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.[1][2] The charges were ultimately dropped on the grounds that Hefner in all likelihood did not know the girl's true age.[citation needed]

o shit is dis ceepee

John Green? Why do you always shitpost here man.

I wrote a story.
It is my first.

pastebin.com/sQ8PkPyH

well, I'm pretty sure nobody has thousand-year-old mayan tobacco so probably a billion dollars

why don't you just google "most expensive cigar in the world" and use it as inspiration

>John Green?

What did he mean by this?

Nice hidden Jew diversity feminist liberal agenda that you got going there boi

followed you over from your thread so I'll just post it here instead of there:

I have some nitpicks as I do with most things I read but although I was pretty sure going in that I wouldn't like it, by the end I wanted to read more

The main pitfalls seem to me to be the risk of entering either the realms of edgy randumness or blatant self-pity, but the excerpt manages to skirt both, albeit coming dangerously close here and there.

Nitpicks:
That name is really rough, consider using a contraction more frequently. As someone with a four-syllable name, I introduce myself by the two-syllable contraction even in formal or professional circumstances, only have to deal with the "weird" name on paperwork. (being referred to as "Genny" or something up until an institutional official reads out the full name would also be a cool little effect).

From a realism perspective, would a therapist really be such an asshole about it, making a threat like that? I've been to a couple but not for a real condition just muh mid-20s crisis shit. Also cops don't usually snap at each other in public, I guess you could argue that they think they're alone. Although I considered the possibility of the unreliable narrator reporting either or both of those things differently than they actually occurred.

tl;dr: write more, worry about editing later. Not sure where you're going with it but want to find out. Try not to miss the opportunities of the concept because you're so close to it that some things others might find interesting seem mundane to you.

>would a therapist really be such an asshole about it, making a threat like that?

that's funny actually
that part is based on some phone calls my therapist made to another patient while I was in the room. Then she fought with the cops for a bit on the phone and it wasted my whole appointment. Basically the part about terminating the professional relationship is verbatim.

thank you for your critique, I will remember what you said when I am writing. I totally think your name idea is great though.

I want more.

Okay fuck off I don't care to placate to your own conservative mindset, can you give me criticism on the writing itself?

>that part is based on some phone calls my therapist made to another patient while I was in the room. Then she fought with the cops for a bit on the phone and it wasted my whole appointment. Basically the part about terminating the professional relationship is verbatim.

that's why I put it like a question lol, I thought it might be personal experience but I also was assured by everybody and his brother that nobody would ever do anything like that, in order to convince me to go in the first place.

I want to also not sand the edges off of the psychiatric experience of patients who aren't considered "competent", you know?

I will try

Not that guy, but did you really introduce it as:
>a story concept I have about a group of refugees fighting for survival against a force that wants to assimilate them and destroy diversity.

And expect any other response? Trying to be as impartial as I can, the tone of the prose sounds a little Maya Angelou-y and pretentious (redundant, I know). Is florid description going to be the norm throughout, or just in the introductory phase?

If you are female and/or a POC I'm sure you could not only get published but win awards with this as is though, so don't change it at all. I'm 100% serious. Look at Yanagihara's "A Little Life" if you don't believe me. Try to get it finished by the end of the year and you could see it on the NYT best seller list by November 2018

Keep in mind that in the original Greek, the Odyssey and Iliad were metered. The meter is almost impossible to reproduce in English translation (you'd have to write a new poem to do it, and it's a meter that works better in Greek anyway).

If you haven't read Paradise Lost, then do so. It is an epic (prose) poem written in English, and not terribly archaic English at that. It's difficult to write metered prose without coming off as singsong, so it helps to see examples.

I read an interesting essay by some 18th century jack-of-all-trades intellectual (can't recall his name unfortunately) discussing the epic poem (Homer's in particular) in a temporal sense. In a "normal" or "modern" novel, time is whatever the author wants it to be. He can freeze in the middle of a scene, or brush over an uneventful week or month or year etc., cut to a flashback or skip forward to the future and back, etc.

In homer, these effects are achieved in different ways so that the current moment on the page never stops being the current moment in the narrative. A "flashback" is a character recounting narrating past events to another; the etchings on Achilles' shield are described *while Hephaestus is engraving them* so "time" never freezes or pauses for a description, it is always continuously moving forward (in other words, it isn't "There was a guy holding a sword etched on the shield" it is "then Hephaestus etched a guy, and then he etched his sword").

The 18th c. author considered this a conscious differentiation on the part of the Greeks between written/spoken art, as existing in constant and uninterrupted linear progression from beginning to end, and sculpted/painted art as a frozen moment in time. I can't recall if he noted it, but the fact that the Odyssey and Iliad were originally meant to be recited publicly from memory by a performer and not read privately by an individual probably has some impact on these devices as well (repetition, for example, being used as an enabler of memorization in the Iliad in particular).

I don't know if that mess helps at all

Actually, I still have the pdf of it that I read for my class, it was "Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry" (1766) — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Writing unabashedly chuuni fiction, rate my context-less zinger

"But know this, Crimson King. When you march upon our gates, you will be beset by all that oppose you. When you traverse the cobbled streets, they will run red with the blood of all that can resist you. When you climb the steps of our palace, every person left will die for what they think right.
And what you sit upon that empty throne—
there will be no one left to kneel."

I actually didn't intend to pander to some Marxist/globalist agenda. It was just an idea that came to my head, and I realized after that some people (like Veeky Forums) would get that message from it, but I'm sticking to it regardless for the sake of the story.

The writing is intentionally florid in my description of the village because it is supposed to reflect the temporary, quasi-paradise that the village is until its enemies find it. Once I get into the meat of the story, my writing will still be descriptive (because that is how I write), but it will be a bit more tempered and short for the sake of storytelling.

I am a POC, but I sincerely doubt this story as-is will be good enough to be published for the sake of the Marxist ideals it seems to promote or for the sake of my color, which I guess you think means I selected 'easy mode' on the road to authorship.

I'll keep trying to improve though, I appreciate your feedback genuinely.

Cliché, but not badly written.

This next part i remember pretty well. When the bum releaesd the psychic hold i reached a point of clarity that could be described as euphoric. Enlightenment made easy. The kind of state of mind where you notice all the details. All those little pieces of the puzzle start matter and make sense.
He rubbedd the black hand threw his dirty locks, pulled his head back to a tilt. He relaxed.
Our connection is broken. My sloppy subconscious gains control over my body again. Spine curved i get back that natural slack in my posture. If you think my hunch is bad I've seen guys curled up and doubled over. Ive seen guys weighted down by the burdens of life and the descions theyve made. Like wearing a 200 pound pack on your shoulders for eternity. You can only carry that kind of weight and still look up at the world for so long before somebody throws on that last straw. I understand jesus and the crucifix now. I think its a metaphor.
Welcome to life. Welcome to the part we didnt choice but well agree to just keep doing. The here and now i guess. The moment.
He runs his hand threw his hair and points at me.
"Ill tell you what kid, since i like your style im gonna give you a taste test." He says taste test in the creppy animalistic double voice. He said , "a freebie"
One of those little dried up pieces of meat on a toothpick. Thats what i see in my head. The one thats been sitting out all day at the unnamed chinese resturant. Almost like beef jerky. The one that stays stuck in your tooth all night and makes your gums swell in the morning. Thats what hes offering me right now but i don't quite understand it yet.

a mouse is dropped into a garden
miniature, and around it are two Poindexters in
lab coats and conversation. "the mouse knows
to always head right for the apple
in the center of the maze. it's got a
remarkable ability to remember things and
has good spatial reasoning, like it's second
nature." "is that so?" "yes, and even when
I tell him not to he goes for it anyways. it's like
reverse psychology. I'm convinced that they even understand
sarcasm and wit these days. in any case, they are very much
enthused in the pursuit of the apples." "well
isn't that just great. they, I heard you say?"
"yes," he pushes up his glasses, "they
have been reproducing." the other 'dexter has a look
of mild amusement drawn on her face. "more trouble
than it's worth, isn't it?" the other looks away coolly, "well,
that's not up to us to decide. we are only concerned about
the data
on mice and apples and the pursuit of them.
everything else is secondary." "do you like
dropping mice and mice babies
into garden miniatures?" the look
of amusement is mirrored on the other
and he says, "well,
it's a living."

This reads like kind of a strange stream of consciousness. If I assume it's merely thoughts pouring out of a crack in somebody's skull, it actually kind of works. But it's not a coherent narration.

This is rather clever. I think I get it, anyway. Is it meant to be a prose poem?

The last time I posted this it was just an exercise but I like the ideas behind it. I wanna see if the tone itself is something worth building on.

The lights murmured a bit before settling on their usual discordant hum. Against their flicker, the room seemed less like a basement and more like a dungeon. If Mark squinted just right he could almost picture the scene. There would have been a picturesque panorama of the land on the east wall where his second grade art project hung. From the west wall there would be a tunnel leading further into endless caves. Rusted iron treasure chests, aged in the blood of travellers long fallen, would have been placed right about where the laundry machines sat now. And right above the broken down ceiling fan would have been the most wonderous tapestries, decorative works celebrating times and adventures nearly forgotton.

But where most dragon's lairs carried gilded treasures and intricate traps, Mark had storage boxes. Piles, piles, and more piles of storage boxes. Some already emptied, some untouched in over a decade. Mark dragged a trash bin behind him, nearly full of glass flasks. He was bent over, digging through a fantasy epic's worth of potion bottles. The whole box was the most obnoxious shade of green, bottle residue. These bottles were far brighter than they had any need to be. He wasn't sure why he had so many. There must have been a point. They had to have been remnants from some quest or another, but Mark couldn't quite place them. He examined the one in his hand Some of the markings on it seemed familiar, but the memory was almost completely clouded. It likely had something to do with an enchanted forest. That was about all he could remember about it.

Something else was there, buried between the bottles. It was jammed between the corners, where the eye wasn't quite so quick to look. It took a half minute of fidgety struggling, but soon enough he felt the grip of a handle. It was small. Mark pulled back. The sword dislodged from the junk with an unnerving degree of ease. He twirled the sword a bit. It reflected a bright yellow, a hue far more saturated than he expected. It clashed against the faded gray of his sweatshirt.

Mark raised the sword above his head. He swung the sword down in an arc. It still handled well. He laid it out flat again, between his hands, studying it like a sculptor would study a block of ice. His hands brushed over the cheap varnish. In the right hands, it could probably still be useful. It wasn't particularly sharp, but it could have been duller. In the right hands, it might cut through steel. It had in the past. In Marks hands now, both hands firmly gripping it with a strength Mark had thought long left him. And he broke it. Right down the middle. Snapped in two. And tossed aside with the other garish gold and evergreen things that could never match well with the more fashionable greys and off blues of the now.!

>5'11
stopped reading there
sorry but I don't read manlet manuscripts

The first paragraph seems a little amateurish to me. You can just say it resembles a dungeon in appearance, you don't have to go off on a tangent and spend the entirety of it describing each individual thing of note if it's not relevant to anything, the reader is supposed to be left to visualise it for themselves.

Again with the second paragraph I think you drag on the emphasise of the piles of boxes a little too long. Also, and I don't know if this is intended or not, but the transition straight into the fantasy similes is really jarring, and this is my main criticism, what's with all the allusions to fantasy? Is it supposed to be that way? As in like, some kinda scott pilgrim thing or something?

Other than that there's some grammatical errors and descriptions that are largely irrelevant as they're just there for the sake of being there I find. You also have a lot of unnecessarily broken and terse sentences:
>"And he broke it. Right down the middle. Snapped in two. And tossed aside"
Is the most glaring. Why is this so disjointed? It doesn't really make any sense--it's a mess in all honesty.

My critique

My story:

My father had owned land here and his father had so too. Percy, my grandfather, chiefly administered his land and periodically sold allotments to members of the family in increments tied to his health. Percy’s final acreage upon his death was bestowed to my father whom was renowned for his nonchalance in matters deigned to agriculture and the raising of livestock and swiftly burdened Henry, my brother, with the deed as was his wont with anything subjectively earmarked with responsibility not pertaining to his immediate achievability.
My brother, attuned with the imperialistic tendencies of an unmaintained familial bond, annexed the plots of land previously sold by Percy and centralised the powers of the family to his estate and his alone. I, through the same affliction, did not care, and my absence at the time lent me partially my indifference to the positively unabashed routing of my family. I nor Henry have spoken to them for some years and hardly few still inhabit the area.

Thanks for the advice! My main goal in writing is to write stories based off old European prose poems, such as the odyssey, aurthurian texts, and viking sagas.
Some problems with this are they don't teach classes on these subjects where I go to college. Also I have a hard time understanding the language of the poem without using sparknotes, Any advice for what I can do to fully understand ancient texts and write about them in a professional way?

>Also I have a hard time understanding the language of the poem without using sparknotes, Any advice for what I can do to fully understand ancient texts and write about them in a professional way?

College annotated (Norton critical, for example) editions can be extremely helpful because they are loaded with footnotes explaining what certain words or concepts meant to the author, as opposed to what they mean to a modern audience. They also tend to have thorough introductions. If youre reading something in archaic modern, middle or old English, they will give you a primer on the language and help with pronunciation and definitions through the text in footnotes. A cursory knowledge of modern German is very helpful to reading any earlier form of English, as well as feeling comfortable with nouns and pronunciation in translated Norse works (none of the above are identical to German, but sentence structure and letter sounds often have lots of parallels).

When buying a translation, say of the iliad or the eddas, read through Amazon reviews and you'll find people comparing any given translation to other translations. I look for the ones that do their best to simulate the tone and pace of the original. Puffin press tends to just use the driest, most turgid translation they can find, in my experience, and helpfully put their footnotes in the back so you won't want to keep flipping to read them.

Another benefit to a 1,000+ year old book is there are at least centuries of academic analysis available for them (like the 250 year old Lassing essay). If nobody at your university teaches it and you want to teach yourself, go to whatever academic database your school gives you access and just put the name of the work you want to study and search the titles of articles and essays for themes and ideas that interest you or seem relevant/helpful.

One of the key things I picked up in my classes was that every epic poem in the "western Canon" (which to an extent excludes Arthurian, Norse, Beowulf, Nibelungenlied, etc.) is in conversation with its predecessors. Virgil initiates the custom of imitating and building on Homer, and it goes on from there through Dante, Spencer, and Milton. All of them sprinkle their works with winkwink nudgenudge references to Homer and their predecessors (particularly Virgil). Milton spent his entire life preparing to write an epic poem, so he started out writing "pastorals" because this was how ancient authors customarily progressed their writing careers (iirc Spencer and maybe Dante did the same).

So, much like philosophical study, you can find yourself in a millennia-long chain of authors who are best understood when read in chronological order. That is a steep endeavor, so you may want to limit your scope, which is why an annotated edition might be an ideal compromise.

One helpful, if tedious, method I was taught for "absorbing" the tone of a work is to simply type a page or two of it verbatim into a word processor

A beam of orange sunlight focused between angled blinds momentarily dazzles John, exiting from the bathroom with his belt buckle and strap in hand. He raises one arm with finger-blinds shut to deflect the childish sun's magnified ray as he continues out the doorway, returning unsmouldered though unbuckled to the bar's dim and foggy lodgings. Passing through crowded highschool haunts, John then climbs top his bar stool with a huff.
"Ten minute wait to take a piss, what a shit-show!" he remarks over the loud music to a man sitting next to him.
"Yah, in't at ome it"
"What?"
"--Darts!" exclaims the man morosely.
"I've got no quar-"
Nathaniel was already making for the board. After a minute John waves down the bartender, asking for darts before receiving a shot--no darts--on the rocks.
"Seven-fifty."
"-Darts-!" barks John.
The bartender holds up a finger and turns away, pulling three darts from a plastic cup, and placing them next to an empty shot glass and ten dollars as John grasps them before shimmying with spirits for the dart board.

Well, then my follow up advice would be try to make sure the transition from the "descriptive mode" to the "narrative mode" isn't too abrupt, and feels natural. Off the top of my head, Dickens pulled this off pretty well if you'd like an example. Done right you can impart a cinematic quality, like the "descriptive" is a distant camera angle that gradually zeroes in on the target character(s)

Only good things in this thread. Everyone else should delete their work

Where is the Nyen Cat story guy? I fuckin loved that story and I wanted to read more from him.

Also, who remembers the buddhist/smokey the bear crossover?

Those two stories were basically the only good stories I ever found here. Ok, the only stories I read that I liked.

>My main goal in writing is to write stories based off old European prose poems, such as the odyssey, aurthurian texts, and viking sagas.

are you...are you me?

your sentences are too long, senpai

I always found European tales exciting when teachers explained them to us in high school/middle school.
Now that I'm starting to research these works I'm in awe over how wonderful they are. I'm inspired to write something just as good.

nice one.

you would? holy shit. maybe I'll keep writing my book then.