/crit/ - Writing Critique General

The information dump was annoying as I read through it, but I really liked the last paragraph and it probably justifies the previous rougher sentences(because honestly, even annoying, it takes no time to read).
If this is the opening, where does the story go from here?
Not sure the letters instead of names is working, I've seen Bolano pull it off though.

Niqqa u tryin to fuck a dog?

So my name is pronounced like pee-noose. What do you think?

And so the tide rose, bringing in foamy tracks, embracing the sand further up its top, and by nightfall it had gone back out, washing away its marks and taking something extra, as if to compensate for the evidence of its presence that was no longer there.

Of course, the beach was still a beach, and there were still a few grains too many for for the liking of Elle's feet, which paced towards the horizon in the day's early hours. The sand chipped away at the blue paint on her nails, and the brisk wind sent her thin cover a-flutter, wanting to get a look at the tight stomach and appropriately blue bikini underneath. She thought of the warmth waiting for her, the coffee and donut, balcony and sunrise, baby face and muscles, and single blanket for all. She walked on.

Fair points, the dryness was originally supposed to be a little fun stylistic quirk for the intro that gets less bad as the story goes on, but it doesn't really seem like it's working.

Letter names are just placeholder.

If you're curious, here's one of the attempts at continuation:

[F] (Dartmouth, class of ’01) was an adjunct lecturer at one of the many interchangeable liberal arts colleges in the Northeast. He taught the history of Renaissance Italy. This was not a subject that he loved; although it was the subject of his doctoral thesis he chose it only in a misguided attempt to ransack the glory of his college days. He had spent all his life since graduation stumbling through dimly lit recollections, trying to resuscitate them by obsessing over the trinkets he brought back to the present. A major in history was transfigured into a non-tenure track teaching position. Various romantic flings with shining, immaterial young women were brought back as a marriage to a now excessively corporeal ex-classmate. Thus most of his life since graduation was spent five hundred years in the past, vainly searching the spires and domes of Florence for a much younger memory, resting on the other side of a wide ocean.

Its first scene opens with a zoom through heavy snowfall in a dark sky and then a casement window into the fourth floor bedroom of a brown duplex. A seventeen year old boy sits cross-legged on the floor, picking fibres out of a carpet. Immediately after her cue (dishes crashing), the boy’s sister, [A, recall A is bandmember from earlier], says the opening lines:

“Don’t you have college apps to do?

“...”

“Fine, you can chill here and listen.”

“Thanks so much sis, I love you.” (At this point in the script of the daydream, a thirty seven year old adjunct lecturer has scratched out the single typeset word “sweet” several times, and has added the current line as a correction above it in blue pen.)

She gets up from her bed and moves to the CD player. Her costume is a pair of jeans and a leather jacket. He will find them today, maybe, sitting in some undisturbed cardboard box, moth-chewed and lifeless. When she turns, her face is an empty white space, left unfilled by the artist. The music plays and the image stays static. The ponderous chords drown out the distant roar of a car engine against the road beneath him. The boy’s thumb traces circles on the smooth black leather of the plush carpet. Look at me.The girl’s face is still a blank blue white, a vitreous clump on the bright horizon. The chords trapped him here, staring at that unfinished sketch of his sister, unable to complete or dispel the image. The boy sits there, in a cheap blue sweater and jeans, relentlessly picking out carpet fibers and listening to his future for about fifty miles of bright open highway. The volume cuts out, wrenching [F] from his oneiric cinema and dropping him into a swerving car on an open expressway.

We just sent a weeb shit illustrated novel for publication and I could use some criticisms about it before we get a reply from the publication house.
>sigilworks.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/violas-chapter-1/

This is our first time taking our hobbies seriously. Hope the world will be kind to us this time

Benny crawled out of bed and traipsed towards a pot boiling water. Boxer clad and yawning, his stubble and abs belied (betrayed?) his innocence. The magazine cover, salivating at the roasted scent filling the kitchen, was in fact unemployed, much less an object of any teenage obsession. To say he'd had no chances would be unfair, but, simply, nothing much pulled Benny in one direction or the other. So he was here, slicing open a grapefruit, attentively severing the fruit from its skin in each section, and lightly dusting each half with sugar.

Nice spotting user

I'm writing something just using sounds.

Pffuhhh eugh huh wha- huh um hmph errrr ah ehhhh mmmmph uhuh hmmmm uhm ohhhh tsk eh

gay

spot brushed his nose on my face, his lips parted and saliva dripped, slipped, down my chin, seeped into my shirt. his tongue followed and touched my buttons. undid them, took it off, my pants unbuckled and his canine musk swept over. He was on top of me. He was inside me. Pulsating pink member curled inside my cavity, it wasn't rough but i begged for more. He pants faster and my anus heaves to the rhythm, to the beat of my flapping forskin because im rubbing my cock down and up with two fingers, his paws on my hips, lubricating mouth on my belly, tongue in my navel.

with The other hand i rub his ears: furry, supple, dog-like, edible. his thrusting hips start speeding up, and i feel his cock is widening. I let out a yelp, he replies with a bark, then another. My cock throbs and the motions of my manus jitter with pleasure -- im trying to keep up but his humps are fast, honed by daily walks and nightly fucks.

he's climaxing, I can hear it. A wolfish howl escapes his mouth, his head arcs up and leaves my slobbered chest -- I cry out, cum flies from out my cock, his fills my violated anus. Spot howls again, thrusts out and in: ululating all the way.

he stops, swells down, leaves me wide and gaping. A weight is off my torso and his paws depart my sides. I'm covered in cum, and Spot has fucked me doggystyle.

>just using souds

How is that different to language, friendo?

do any siblings actually call each other 'bro'/'sis' etc? I've only ever called my sister by her name

It began when I found the calcified remnant of a late casearian viaduct behind the bushes in the park. I was slowly rolling my tongue over it just to be sure when Mary arrived. She said she had heard I was here on the dispatch radio - I had been reported earlier today after I mistook an orphan playing on the swings for a diminutive Visigoth.

I had been there a day and a half. "I'm on the verge of a big breakthrough," I told her, "proving the Romans came to England." "Hasn't that already been proven?," she said. "If you say so." I gave her one of my less robust smiles, where I raise my eyebrows like little brown clouds up my forehead at the same time. She looked as though she was going to say something, but the words had gotten tangled around her tonsil in a vernacular cats cradle. Instead she spat out a little cough onto the ground, where it withered and died in the afternoon sun.

"You should come by sometime." Mary said. "Ronnie is sorry about what he said and he'd like to make it up to you." She dragged a little circle on the ground with her shoe as she went on. "Ronnie has a new exhibit coming up soon, and he'll be able to get you in." Ronnie was a pale little bohemian, with his hair dyed black like burnt sausage and little pedo eyes that constantly quiver in his eyesockets -
a result of his ketamine habit, Mary tells me. I acted disinterested and made a show of carefully considering the nearby shubbery as Mary explained that Ronnie had assembled the worlds largest collection of human appendixes (three hundred and eighty one) ever, all arranged in little glass jars with notes on their former owner. After the exhibition was over, he would gather them all up and grind them into a fine meaty paste to be fed the local poor, to make a point about society's detritus or something equally heart-wrenching. Apparently Brian May had funded the whole thing.

It had not dawned on him until it was far too late that Barry Baker lived in a crater for the damned. His memories made the case for notions like this, all passing like the blurred trees, houses, and streets of his upbringing which he would not see for a very long time. All that made him now comes back as he sits in this gilded and insular vehicle to remember his gilded and insular life. The car rolls forward without patience towards a certain solid future—only the past can explain his present.

Can't login to google, so only have the first par. First blush: Gogol likely did it better.

["The Overcoat," Akaky Akakeivich"]

Hahaha yeah, I've read that.

As a relative youngfag, my brothers and I call each other bro constantly. Not as often as we use our names, but close.

Rate this someone

My mother's final words to me were simple enough.

"Agiapimou." She muttered, her hand brushing my cheek. "You are not special."

Fourteen-year-old Eric blinked a few times, tears spilling with every flutter of his eyelids. "M-mama?"

"You have no magic in our family lines. No legacies to live up to. No prophecies to fulfill. You will inherit what very little we have, and likely be forced to live elsewhere." She didn't look like a sickly woman. She looked like the strong, confident soccer mom she'd always been. I swear she could still have lifted me from the ground, even in a hospital bed, with disease spreading through her blood like ink in water.

"Whatever you do. Whatever you achieve with your life... It will be yours and yours alone. You do not need me. You do not need your father. You need no one but yourself," She smiled softly as she saw the stars in my eyes. "And perhaps a few close friends. Be someone. Make people remember the name Eric Anderson." Anderson was her last name, not my dad's. I was always proud of that, for some reason.

"Mama, I don't know... I don't want you to..." I steeled myself and hugged her around the neck, feeling her arms, wrap around my back, soft but firm. "I love you." I whispered, shaking in my own skin.

"I love you too, agiapimou. More than you can ever know. I will see you again. But my story is over. And yours begins here."

I understood the joke. Very funny.

The plural of genesis and is geneses.

Thanks my bad wrote it rushed. Do you like the joke

it's good, you write good

I wrote the entire last chapter of Wuthering Heights in a series of sonnets. This is the last of the series. Enjoy, lads.

I actually enjoyed this more than Wuthering Heights itself. Good stuff.

This is cool, but like, what made you want to do this?

You're gonna carry that weight.
There's no one, nobody's gotta ask why,
because you're not made for happiness.
All the skies' beds'll drop your dream
since you're not made for happiness, Saturn.
Where off to, sunless, you've that jungle rain soul,
ain't no one who'll house a kink-in-a'-ring.
And you'll make be and move out forever.
You'll slingshoot the dark film, you'll be alone again.
Again and again.
And each second you'll be alone reminding yourself,
it'll be a cold month. Then?
There is no then.
You've got that load none's gonna ask you what for,
let the act yap tills it dries, do again do again.

And you're gonna carry that weight,
until there's no he or she left in the world to love.
Then you'll still carry on, loneliness ain't no less a vengeance.
And you'll die in sixteen languages,
but what does it matter, you'll sing till you're song,
even when you've no one to break the new day with in the morning,
even when you've no one to gaze at clouds with in the evening.
even when you've no one to warm the bed with in the night.
I'd rather be dead than do many things alone.

And you're gonna carry that weight alone,
until the black that bleeds through your white kills you slower.
That's because you aren't made for happiness,
otherwise I wouldn't send you so far away from here.
Day'll rain, does it. Day'll I come and drown it. Wrestle the canopy close and end it.
The sky'll press the dome in, malachite mad, and remedy this fault with open faucet.
With the calm dying, with the clothesline left drying, with snow and brazen thunder-glad
and the welterchildren whose syllables are now incomprehensibly sad, day'll thud on until
water and water can't fill me trying. Then, in ascending elan, drop the clouds name by name.
Adieu, butterflies. And adieu caterpillars, small in the consequence you are, I will not forget,
not the song of mice and bird, no little thing quits.

Is dark.
Is low.
The worst of it is it is.
I don't so much know what the feeling of her is.
And so much of her, so much good, that she deserves better than me.
I am content long as I make her happy.
World's between wonder, you say, and wander.
World between wonder and wander, I am alone.
Whirl on, though I'm alone to the World surround.
Wild, sophisticated, troubled, loud.
I can't hear out of the noise my self's music,
for, with every step, I lose it passo a passo, piu piano.
But if you'll add a little luster.
If you'll poke'round this cancer-addled body,
find a little spot for little you and me,

maybe.

You're gonna go, gonna carry that weight.
Time better hurry, best time not be late.
Time must not betray me.

And it'll be the end of you, Saturn.
No coffin can bear the weight of your ring.

These feel a little too rushed, and could use a slower development.

This is nice and self-contained, comfy.

>Here's a tiny little snipet of what I've written. I am a complete noob when it comes to writing, so if you find it to be complete drivel, do not be surprised, as I still have much to learn.

I hate you.

What a simple phrase. If I were to say it, the words would fall smoothly off of my tongue, and the resulting sting that would flash in your eyes would surely feed my vindictive pride for a few moments. Yet, as sweet as it would be, hatred is too kind a word for what I feel for you. The utter loathing that festers inside of me whenever you are near cannot be described with mere words. It is an eternal, black hatred, but all the same, I do not voice it.

I am a coward, for to admit my hatred of you... would mean that I hate myself.

Why would this be, you ask? Am I not clearly insane? After all, you are clearly not ME, and I am most definitely not YOU.

However, appearances can be... deceptive.

I can see that you are clearly confused. Even now, the cogs in your insipid little mind are struggling to creak along, aren't they?

Well now, boy, I would suggest that you sit and listen. I have much to tell, and not a lot of time to tell it.

Let us go back to the beginning, shall we?

stuff in the beginning of the book i'm writing

The ruins stood amongst the trees.

They weren’t a palimpsest of times gone by, or a destructive reminder of what hubris can achieve. Rather, it was a hollow corpse of what it once was. Dull gray slabs or rock half-immersed into the crusty soil underneath a canopy of trees. A few marble slabs that looked like staircases rising up only to be cut, and crumble back down.

Can someone rate this please

This speaks to me. Strange.

Interesting. Let me guess, the setting is either an ancient ruin or post-apocalyptic.

Love it

Care to post the complete story?

Caleb squeezed himself onto the carriage, pressing himself against the glass doors and squeezed between about five people, one of whom was a short middle eastern looking man with a trimmed black beard and no hair on the top of his head and fleshy and raw pink scars beneath his eyes and on his cheeks. Now and then the man would jerk unnaturally, his head twitching to the side, jerking forward, his shoulder lifting itself up to his ear, his hand raising itself to his nose, his body contorting like a glitch in a video game, alien and unnatural and disgusting to Caleb, who watched the man, feeling then as though every feeling and thought he had ever felt or thought was welling up inside him. Welling up behind this dam wall he’d built in his mind and realising then on that train that that damn dam wall was not made of stone or concrete or whatever but crepe paper and watching now the middle eastern man twitch that ungodly twitch and jerking his head back and forth like a simulation, like artificial intelligence teaching itself to walk, and watching now, helpless as all those feelings and thoughts burst through that damn crepe paper dam wall and flooded the train carriage in one single deadly torrential outpouring. Screaming and rabid, Caleb grabbed the malfunctioning middle eastern man by the lapels of his winter coat and shook him and shook him as much as he could and nobody stopped him but just allowed him to keep shaking the man until he was grabbed from behind by a tall man with strong white hands like bricks.

With a yawp he flung Caleb across the carriage knocking himself and Caleb into the bystanders who scrambled away like woodlice. The middle eastern man had collapsed into the corner of the train, cowering, the pink scars on his face covered by his fleshy brown hands.

Oi,” said the tall man, “what the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m not fucking doing anything,” Caleb mumbled from the floor of the carriage, and when the doors opened at North Strathfield he took himself off and ran for the stairs at the end of the platform, the tall man with the hands like bricks yelling something he couldn’t hear, Caleb not looking back, just continuing to run.

Rate this please someone

Glad you liked it. As mentioned, it was a story opening I had abandoned because it never got much further, but is one of the attempts at the next section.

>With the immediacy of a shut off faucet, the street din mellowed out as he closed and locked the heavy door behind him.

The street din - choose either shut off faucet or mellowed out. And a shut off faucet has no immediacy. Turning one off can be done immediately, but has no inherent immediacy in the act. And mellowed is to slowly move from one state to another, which is not how he is closing the door. Din's are usually muffled and not mellowed. And heavy door? Why is heavy here? Is this important? How about he closed and locked the door?

>sigilworks.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/violas-chapter-1/

"They were unknown to the words of peace and deny the concern of those whom they deemed as inferior."

That's not a coherent sentence, sorry. And your opener is bad, sorry again. The overuse of telling coupled with the under use of explaining who the fuck you're talking about is upsetting to me almost as much as your lack of proper punctuation. If you get paid for the writing, I'm going to be sad.

you need to break up the first sentence. honestly, some of your word choice is incorrect. "enigmatic" for instance. there's nothing enigmatic about his closing words--they're very straightforward. "eco conscious" is redundant because you're showing this next. you don't need to "tell" it.
"animals rights are always priority" is missing an article: always a priority or always the priority. "treason" is a crime against a government. apathy and demonic possession are very opposite things: lack of emotion or extreme behaviour. you should choose one or the other. genesis doesn't need to be capitalized and should be pluralized as "geneses" since it refers to the starts of both companies.

and so on

100 ands when describing one dude,, hmmm

I showed it multiple times now and the prologue always get a lot of our readers lol.

It was just your cliche "Humans got rekted by plot-device" that we re-wrote in the vaguest way possible. Was it that awful?

*rewrote

Not OP here. The spiritual realm is mysterious by nature and eludes reason therefore making it enigmatic. Depending on the delivery of the speech, if delivered metaphorically it can be understood, emphatically delivered it could lead to wondering if he believes that to be true. Demonic possession is one of many possible causes of extreme behavior and lack of empathy. In this case, it results in the implied animal cruelty. Also, treason is not exclusively pertinent to government. It can also refer to any treacherous or disloyal action.

Thanks for the criticism. Grammar definitely can improve. The demonic possession, Petite believes, is the reason his competition engages in animal cruelty. It is enigmatic if you are in a public setting and you yourself are not a clergymen and refer to demonic forces. It's a bewildering accusation. No one knows if he believes that to be true, so it can confuse people. Did you enjoy it however?
Did you enjoy it as well?

And Death rode on, spearing the men who stood in his way. Breaking through a rank of spearmen with the flick of his rapier, Death stopped, got off his horse, and floated above the clamour with his bony limbs outstretched.

‘I am here. Killer of all, they call me. Which of you wishes a release to the pain of life?’

Men recoiled, some bolted. But one raised his voice over the confusion.

Lips twitching, he said, ‘If you’re really Death, then prove it’.

They looked at him, an expression of awe on their faces. Although nobody would laugh, they wondered if a brain existed within his thick skull. Who in their right mind would question a floating skeleton?

Death didn’t even throw a glance. Curling his fingers, he could imagine the man’s pulsating fragile neck being crushed.

Spasming on the floor, the man gasped, ‘who are you?’.

‘My name’s Death’, he said. ‘And I’m here to help’.

Is this copypasta? it would make good copypasta

"With the abruptness of a disengaged faucet, the street din died down as he closed and locked the door behind him."

How about this?

T-thanks, y-you too.

"Aight, peace." The door would've closed behind him if there had been a frame. The now unaccompanied soul barely acknowledged the departure beyond a crossing of his legs, metal meeting metal with a slight clink. He watched the doorway for a moment before reclining fully. Minutes passed, not many but enough for the inhabitant to take note of the stillness. Music. Music would fix this. The base of his built-in antenna had long since become clotted with jury-rigged straps and adhesive. He shifted slowly into a suitable position, legs uncrossed and arms practically anchored to the table in front of him, he concentrated. More minutes passed. No reception, typical. Clearly the only solution to this problem was a verbal assault, lucky for the neighbourhood he was preempted before a single word left his speaker."Ain't no amount of reverb riddled cursing's gonna' get that shit working, T."

His cracked optics darted back to the doorway. "You could still make the cut ya'know, it ain't two strides down west, just a couple blocks, got a jack set up there myself and no filtered shit eith-" The dealer leaning in the doorway would not be allowed to finish his proposal.

"Aight, peace." The now upright 'bot relayed.

"The fuck is that. Yo, what did I tell you about recording our conv-"

"Aight, peace." This time with the pitch amplified. The dealer stepped into the room with surprisingly little presence for an individual with a personal power jack. "You better cut that shit now, I'm tryin' to help your punk ass." The 'bot stared for a second, optics flicking between the door and the dealer. Another playback of the words followed. The dealer got close enough to feel what should've been the hum of his associate's chest. There was no hum, just a slight spluttering.

"You know I can tell you're running on empty right?" This time the 'bot stayed silent. The dealer took note of this, giving him a few seconds of downtime in case the tinman wanted to make another joke. "Oh that's right, see. When I stepped up in here not 20 minutes ago you were pulling that old shit about your 'hybrid core'." He attempted to tap the 'bot's chest, but was countered with a push, light enough to stay standing with little recuperation but a push nonetheless.

The dealer backed away, admiring his sorroundings for a second, savouring the moment. "I looked into your little core soon as I left, and you know what I found?" He parroted the spluttering of the steel drum in front of him as he reached into his pocket, the imitation falling to laughter as he retrieved a small vial. "I found that you can't keep running on electricity alone forever." The 'bot did not take this kindly.

r u legit

are you from Veeky Forums ?

Yes, why was it bad?

It reads like that "CRASH" copypasta
It's just so cheesy man... reads like it was written by a ten year old
legit I'm picturing you dressed in one of those shirts with the flames guy fieri wears

Yes, it's satire, but what was wrong with the prose?

>nothing happens here but i hope it's ok

The summer had made it beautiful. In the process of parching but not yet dry, the earth was sometimes thick, muddy ooze, and sometimes little pools of sparkling water that caught and reflected a delicate shimmering sunlight. Among the water there lay twisted hunks of metal, car parts rusted and worn, piles of ancient bricks, machinery, plastic boxes deeply sunken into the ground. The years had leeched the colour out of it all, turned it into bog, sedated the tumultuous mess of once-vibrant, manufactured garbage, and now it rested amongst the earth with an easy peace. A small wind still worked at the world, and vastly overshadowing the deathly stillness of those rusted artefacts, a slow-moving blanket of marsh-grasses, creeping weeds and flowers held careful dominion over the scene. Amongst it all were the delicate, clockwork movements of Summer's beginning slowly bursting into motion. Far out a flock of long-legged migratory birds, picking their way minute by minute through their own nomad lives. They stood out, tiny, sharp pieces of black and humming gray, against the muted green. We walked into the water, leaving our boots, the plastic sack, all on dry earth. The wet was up to our ankles, and everywhere alive. Tiny mites, winged insects, made strange, erratic patterns through the air, their courses purposeful and unclear. Others skimmed across the surface of the water, snapped away from us lazily as we brushed across their paths – or else they clung to us, sticking to the skin, wet and glistening like tiny, dark beads of ash. The mud upturned by our movements rose in waves throughout the water, unsettling the tiny lives, swirling grey and marked by little silver flashes. There were some kind of fish here, disrupted by our arrival. We reached into the water and tried to grab them, always missing, our hands coming to air full of rotten plant life and grey-brown mud, and tiny, depthless flowers.

HOLY FUCKIN SHIT SOMEONE RATE THIS ALREADY, FUCK ME

you need to break up the first sentence. honestly, some of your word choice is incorrect. "enigmatic" for instance. there's nothing enigmatic about his closing words--they're very straightforward. "eco conscious" is redundant because you're showing this next. you don't need to "tell" it.
"animals rights are always priority" is missing an article: always a priority or always the priority. "treason" is a crime against a government. apathy and demonic possession are very opposite things: lack of emotion or extreme behaviour. you should choose one or the other. genesis doesn't need to be capitalized and should be pluralized as "geneses" since it refers to the starts of both companies.

It had been a sorry night followed by a crappy morning where he woke with pains all over his damn decaying seventy-four-year-old body. For weeks he had anticipated this morning and now that it had actually come he didn’t feel like getting up, felt more like dying right here on his piss-stained mattress. When the eternal radio in the kitchen announced that the clock struck eleven, however, he resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to die, or not at any foreseeable point in time, so he rose and shambled off into the kitchen. He was hungry, which was a rarity these days, but when he opened the old breadbox and peered inside he found that the bread had gone moldy overnight. Which wasn’t that much of a surprise, what with the dampness in the walls that no one ever seemed to care about and least of all his landlord. Grunting, he stalked across the kitchen to see what groceries were left for breakfast. The fridge was like a defiled cemetery. Two shelves empty altogether and on the third one a chunk of Emmental that was about as hairy as a hippie’s wife. No drinks. He opened the cupboard and tapped himself a glass of lukewarm UHT milk but dropped it when his hands got shaky and when he looked down at the mess on the crumb-strewn filth of the floor and saw that there was no rag hanging over the single defective chair or on the littered table either, he decided to not give a shit. Who was there to get worked up over some spilled milk, anyway? Not him. Not anymore. The times in which he had to worry about this shithole would be gone soon enough.

I already retorted to that, did you like the fiction scumbag?

Sometimes life takes stabs at you then you die

I feel like you spend way too much time describing the environment. It's good to get a picture of it, but I don't need to know to such an exhausting extent.

>Tiny mites, winged insects, made strange, erratic patterns through the air, their courses purposeful and unclear. Others skimmed across the surface of the water, snapped away from us lazily as we brushed across their paths – or else they clung to us, sticking to the skin, wet and glistening like tiny, dark beads of ash.

Just say "Our presence perturbed the mites and some of them clung to our skin"

I want to know more. Not many stories are about a 74 year old deadbeat.

Don't listen to that philistine. Your descriptions are good and I think they are heart-felt. I can not imagine a fucking mite to follow a purposeful course, because all I see is erratic shitheadedness when those motherfuckers fly, but still, you got some fine prose there. Work on it rather than dropping it.

He shuffled over into the living room and slumped down into one of the two armchairs — the one with the broken armrest but intact springs — and there he sat sullenly contemplating the mess around him. His stomach gave a splenetic grumble. How was it possible that he had allowed himself to become so utterly disarranged? Two years ago he couldn’t even munch down a sandwich in the living room without his wife Ann reproaching him for it. “Gerald,“ she’d say with a big accusatory sigh, looking down on him in his armchair, shaking her head in housewives’ agony before she would shuffle off into the kitchen to fetch broom and dustpan and sweep up a handful of breadcrumbs from before his feet with exaggerated exertion, wheezing and moaning like a slave laborer in the Vorkuta Gulag. And now the place looked like caveman’s trashsite.
For the next hour he sat in the chair and let his eyes wander about the living room, over the cupboards accommodating books and records and a bazillion trinkets whose sole raison d’être was to be bought and catch the dust of all those tiresome decades. Ann’s stuff on the shelves that clung pointlessly to the wall, next to the bright, virginal spots where the gold-framed excerpts of two lives spent together had hung. The wedding. Faded looking beaches, the background of some vacation of which nothing else was left but this picture. He took everything in, planning what to pack. You would better get up and actually pack a goddamn thing, you old waster, he told himself. But he didn’t.

His prose is alright, it's just that there's a name for it. He's telling a story, not proving how good his literary talent is.

There's always plenty of time to show off how good you are, it's just that you shouldn't waste it on mites and insects, you shouldn't draw attention to that, but rather focus on the story, the characters, what they are doing there.

>you shouldn't waste it on mites and insects

Had I known that you are one of those guys who see stories not as an art form but as a product, I wouldn't even have bothered to mention you in my post.

This has potential. It's pretty comfy to read too.

It's both, but you gotta balance it out.

Well fuck me, that's good news. It is actually the beginning of the second chapter of something that ended up being thefirst draft of my first major work. Thing is, when I finsihed it, I fucking hated it suddenly.

I like the voice petty much, but I wasn't able to apply it evenly. The plot line is, to put it mildly, badly planned.

Someone liking the prose actually yields a little motivation.

Alright, I'm willing t take this out?

Why do "you gotta balance it out"? How can you be so sure that the way you see it is the correct way? Can't you see tha someone else might actually enjoy a verbose description of mites, even when the story is not about them?

Thanks a lot friend. With the 'purposeful and unclear' line what I was going for was that the direction was unclear to the viewer, but had some purpose to the insect. I guess that was difficult to convey without lingering over and I sorta lost the meaning.

Ok I'm definitely not trying to be an overly-wordy cunt but prose is fun as fuck to write and plot is definitely secondary for me. Also, most of my novel is set in very grimy, oppressive locations, and this is one of two moments of 'release' from that, so I really wanted to linger on nature. I do appreciate this criticism though and finding a balance between prose and action is definitely something I need to work on.

I'm just one reader of your work. You should take what I say with a grain of salt, and just consider it. Get 10 people of some merit to tell you their honest thoughts and you get a pretty clear picture about what you can improve.

Okay noted, thanks. I'm mostly too anxious to share any of my writing so I'm way behind on criticism, I'll try getting around to doing what you said sometime in the near future.

Been working over this scene for a while. Have the plot of the short story worked out, but have been in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan -- I thought it would help, but began to feel further away from what I wanted to write. What is highlighted in red is a paragraph I think is terrible but also redeemable, like a evangelical might see a gay kid. I'd appreciate advice there, I think it's deplorable to have two introductory paragraphs for what should be a short story, but I'm on the fence on how to cannibalize it and segway into the awkward meal. Reading the dialogue, I realize it might sound a little to weird, unfortunately, it was that weird for me. Is it alien though?

...

This is good. Confident voice and a focus on empathetic direct experiences. I'd like to see more and I'd like to see how you'd deal with abstractions, themes, more characterization etc. I have this feeling with a lot of competent American writing is that they become deadpan rather than risk failure, but I've seen too little of yours to say that.

Similar to above. Liked it bu there's not enough to go on to say more.

As the other user said, this is good descriptive prose. The problem with descriptive prose, is that it has to be genius to really be worth the space. We're an ADHD generation and books are dialogue, dialogue, action -- keep practicing, but focus on other areas too. Just keep that honesty, you have it down.

>but was countered with a push, light enough to stay standing with little recuperation but a push nonetheless.

Clusmy, otherwise fine.

I really dislike modern metaphors like "video game". I think it takes time and experience, like age against wine, for a symbol to become pertinent.

This is me, more for proof that I'm not a leech. I'd comment more, but this bar limits my internet to fourty five minute stretches. Why is that Americans write so differently? I feel like I can spot it, perhaps I'm wrong, I know not all of you are.

> Why is that Americans write so differently? I feel like I can spot it, perhaps I'm wrong, I know not all of you are.

I'm the guy with the story featuring the old man and I'm not American. I'm not even a native speaker of english. Which makes me double happy that you liked my writing.

Here is another excerpt, featuring the other main character of the piece, and I'd like to know if my narrative can compete here:
He’d spent a restorative night, suspended between two red firs on his tarp after he’d fashioned it into a makeshift hammock, and he was relaxed, he was feeling tranquil and high-spirited, and the first thing he thought after he opened his eyes and sucked in the resinous scent of the trees was that this was the morning of mornings, the morning against which all other mornings ought to be pitted. Originally, the night had started worse. A lot worse. The idea to turn his tarp into a hammock had occurred to him only after he’d spent nearly an hour looking around in the blackness for a spot where he could lay down that wasn’t crawling with an army of insects or so interspersed with sharp rocks that you couldn’t ever hope to wake up with an intact spine. When he had spanned the tarp and slumped down in it, it had taken him perhaps two minutes to accustom himself to the swinging and bobbing and then he wondered why the fuck he hadn’t come up earlier with the idea. No hard rocks poking in your back. No grass leaves tickling your face whenever you turned around the slightest bit. No insects — except for the occasional wayward fly.
So his night had been great, best night in weeks, and his morning managed to compete, too. After he’d woken he had emptied his canteen in three large, satisfying swigs – his throat was parched and there was the faintest headache rebuking him for the booze – and then he’d sat down and treated himself to a can of surprisingly savory beef ravioli along with the rest of the french bread from the night before.

There's nothing wrong in what you write, un-American. I only think sometimes that you are redudant. I think often, of what a reader imagines that the writer does not even have to print. There's a kind of telepathy. I think truly good writers get this, and they know give enough to give the reader there own picture. Your fine writing seems almost nervous.

Tell me, could you rewrite this, in half the words, with the same effect?

>Tell me, could you rewrite this, in half the words, with the same effect?

No way.

I see your point though, and while I'm not much for circumcising my writing, you got me thinking with that mention of nervosity. Thanks man, I'll consider that.

...

It's pretty hilarious to see what other pseud sub-par writers thing of each other's work.

Then post your own.

Thanks user.

I enjoy insultings way more if they are not typed by imbecile twats who can not tell thing from think

Hey can anyone tell me if they liked this joke or not

he sat in
front
of a
glowing
display
of
filth
and
masturbated
to thoughts of
himself
exhibiting
greatness

No one on here is qualified to critique the writing of others kek. All you idiots who want to write:

LEAVE THIS PLACE NOW!

>discredits himself and his thread mid critique

trea·son
ˈtrēzən/Submit
noun
the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.
"they were convicted of treason"
synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness; More
the action of betraying someone or something.
plural noun: treasons
"doubt is the ultimate treason against faith"
synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness; More
historical
the crime of murdering someone to whom the murderer owed allegiance, such as a master or husband.
noun: petty treason; plural noun: petty treasons

trea·son
ˈtrēzən/Submit
noun
the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.
"they were convicted of treason"
synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness; More
the action of betraying someone or something.
plural noun: treasons
"doubt is the ultimate treason against faith"
synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness; More
historical
the crime of murdering someone to whom the murderer owed allegiance, such as a master or husband.
noun: petty treason; plural noun: petty treasons

trea·son
ˈtrēzən/Submit
noun
the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.
"they were convicted of treason"
synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness; More
the action of betraying someone or something.
plural noun: treasons
"doubt is the ultimate treason against faith"
synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness; More
historical
the crime of murdering someone to whom the murderer owed allegiance, such as a master or husband.
noun: petty treason; plural noun: petty treasons
ur a goof bud

Rupi kaur gracing us with her presence I see.