It was an hour after midnight, and it was still as hot as it was twelve hours before. Earlier that evening, people had poured into The Golden Grain to seek solace from the sweltering heat. It was a more-or-less average day of summer, and things in the inn took their normal course. As the hours went on, as always happened, the amicable, good natured patrons of the inn were gradually replaced by or were otherwise revealed to be a cantankerous belligerent bunch of drunks, and this group tried to stay as long as was possible, and tended towards the more extreme ends of “possible.” By one in the morning, though, even they had gone and now all that remained was the publican, Mr. Ygdhir, opening the door with one hand and dragging out the final, and incidentally unconscious, customer with the other. Ygdhir laid him out on the bench outside the inn and ensured that the drunkard wouldn’t choke on his own vomit in the night before going back inside and barring the door.
The publican hated using the truncheon, but some people simply weren’t receptive to diplomacy, especially not that late at night, and especially not with that much drink in them.
He ambled up the steps to the private rooms and knocked on each of the doors. No response. He let out a sigh of relief. Contact with other people, especially the kinds who would rent a room in The Golden Grain, was not something he wanted tonight.
Mr. Ygdhir, publican of The Golden Grain, dragged out the last drunken wastrel of the night and laid him out on the bench so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit overnight. Mr. Ygdhir wiped his brow. The sweltering heat would have been bad enough at midday, but this late at night it was ridiculous.
He went back inside, barred the door, and ambled up the steps to the private rooms. He knocked on all the doors to his relief got no response. Contact with other people, especially the kind who would rent a room in The Golden Grain, was not something he wanted tonight.
He went back downstairs and eased himself into the large red chair by the fireplace. His gaze went to the mantle where the month’s newspaper was pinned. Printed word was new and expensive, and people tended to be more generous when they thought you were.
Mr. Ygdhir, publican of The Golden Grain, dragged out the last drunken wastrel of the night and laid him out on the bench so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit overnight. Mr. Ygdhir wiped his brow. The sweltering heat would have been bad enough at midday, but this late at night it was ridiculous.
He went back inside, barred the door, and ambled up the steps to the private rooms. He knocked on each of the doors and to his relief got no response. Contact with other people, especially the kind who would rent a room in The Golden Grain, was not something he wanted tonight.
He went back downstairs and eased himself into the large red chair by the fireplace. His gaze went to the mantle where the month’s newspaper was pinned. Printed word was new and expensive, and people tended to be generous when they thought you were. Let’s see, he thought to himself. Possibility of a war off to the east. He stopped reading after that. He went back to the tap, poured himself some brandy, and settled back into his chair. After a few sips of brandy he quickly dozed off.
The sound of thunder awoke Mr. Ygdhir less than an hour later. Not being used to this kind of weather at this time of the year, he looked out of the window to confirm that it was in fact thunder he’d heard.
I don't think the wording in that last paragraph was very good... is it bad? How could I change it?
Mr. Ygdhir, publican of The Golden Grain, dragged out the last drunken wastrel of the night and laid him out on the bench so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit overnight. Mr. Ygdhir wiped his brow. The sweltering heat would have been bad enough at midday, but this late at night it was ridiculous.
He went back inside, barred the door, and ambled up the steps to the private rooms. He knocked on each of the doors and to his relief got no response. Contact with other people, especially the kind who would rent a room in The Golden Grain, was not something he wanted tonight.
He went back downstairs and eased himself into the large red chair by the fireplace. His gaze went to the mantle where the month’s newspaper was pinned. Printed word was new and expensive, and people tended to be generous when they thought you were. Let’s see, he thought to himself. Possibility of a war off to the east. He stopped reading after that. He went back to the tap, poured himself some brandy, and settled back into his chair. After a few sips of brandy he quickly dozed off.
The sound of thunder awoke Mr. Ygdhir less than an hour later. Not being used to this kind of rain at this time of the year, he looked out of the window to confirm that it was in fact thunder he’d heard. He saw a figure, shuffling slowly, out of the corner of his eye. I can’t let him just stay out in the rain! the publican thought. He unbarred the door and stepped outside. The drunkard from earlier was gone. “Hey!” Mr. Ygdhir called out to the shuffling figure.
The wanderer came up closer. “Hey yourself,” he said.
“What are you doing out here, in this weather?” Mr. Ygdhir asked.
“I’m getting wet is what I’m doing,” he replied.
The publican sighed. “Need a room for the night?”
“It’s free and it’s dry. Sure.”
Continued. I think the way the vagabond accepted the invitation was kind of awkwardly done. Any advice?
@ Kexruct: It's a promising start, concise, confident and entertaining, and dramatically improved in the revising. i'd keep an eye on the starts of your paragraphs - too much phrase repetition can sound clunky. i also wasn't sure about 'He saw a figure, shuffling slowly, out of the corner of his eye,' since you're switching back and forth between the two characters there; not exactly a problem since your meaning is clear enough, but it struck me as a little inelegant in comparison to the surrounding prose.
The vagabond's response does sound a little odd, you're right, although not knowing the character i'd have thought that was deliberate. Since the room is presumably not free, i'd probably have expected him to ask, 'How much?' but i'm guessing that might be the joke?
@ Cream: Is this from the story about the wanderer that you mentioned before? You use very long sentences, which can impair readability; i found 'Polaris, the winter sun, shines through the falling stars over the downs that point to endless North ahead (just one more step, dear, just close your eyes and have faith; believe you can fly), cityscape and foothills streaming from right and left and receding into hazy tides of cool violet-white rolling in over the wastes that, down below this Vault, below the cracked, caucasian stare of Jesus, had seemed so pertinent.' difficult to follow, for instance. Might want to think about breaking some of those up. Paragraphs are also a must.
You create and sustain a mood well, and there are some interesting word choices there. Like i said to Kex, i'd watch the repetition; 'welkin' is an unusual word, and stands out if used twice in succession (disregard if the word has a particular significance in your setting).
Keep in mind that i am in no way qualified to critique postmodern lit, but that's my two cents.
Ok sunn wolf offered to critique some of my writing so I am posting a more-or-less arbitrarily selected excerpt from the story I am writing, a single paragraph. Arbitrarily, except I had to include a paragraph with the term "skull-spaghetti" in it, as it is something of a meme between imi and I. :) The context for it btw is nightmares of cannibalism. :D ummm here is a typically indulgent paragraph from me; feel free to rip it to pieces.
At last she turns away. The remaining light has drained around her, though she is not sure where from, and she is alone with the frosted night. Noticing a door onto a mediæval terrace, she walks outside, enjoying the familiar wash of cold as she steps through the door, glass framed by wood, and closes it behind her, high winds rushing in her ears and hair, snow tickling her cheeks. The snow and stars, visible through the thinning clouds, mesh together into a welkin of white winter particles that flutter about the sharp spiretops. Maybe all the world’s forbidden places are the most beautiful. Disturbing the terrace’s pure vanilla icing to (softly, now) leave a trail of footprints to a crenellation, seeing its top is flat, she climbs on, barely registering that she stands above spiked buttresses that gravity, humanity’s eternal prison, would eagerly pierce straight through her, metal spines forcing their way in and emerging through tendons and skin, blood flowing from open arteries down the stone, like the boy in the tapestry. Perhaps he was impaled. She gazes out over the snow-laden World that unfolds below and beyond, white welkin-feathers fogging the sky. Polaris, the winter sun, shines through the falling stars over the downs that point to endless North ahead (just one more step, dear, just close your eyes and have faith; believe you can fly), cityscape and foothills streaming from right and left and receding into hazy tides of cool violet-white rolling in over the wastes that, down below this Vault, below the cracked, caucasian stare of Jesus, had seemed so pertinent. But up here, above it all, her skull-spaghetti well-fed and fully intact, nothing matters, because, why should she look down? What’s down there in the World below? She sees a long road of stone, frost and grilles, flyers, Gothic spikes, a bloody one-way journey, another precarious climb thrown into screaming reverse, into earthen snows, and beneath them, the fumbling masses who don’t know which way is up, cannot reach toward the stars, her stars, much less climb to them, and she understands why so many people never look down. It’s because she was created for this gradual, yet Sisyphean, ascent, and so long as her world was of towers, towers beneath which even she had taken so many years to find them herself, Vivi with all her wanderlust, she would climb forever, not hopefully toward complacent, boxed-in safety in some corporate grid (a vertical prison; the ceilings aren’t glass; they’re concrete and steel) but softly upward, always to put the labyrinths and wastes and stairs and vaults and towers and battlements beneath her against the gravity that pulls her with the world ever toward the fiery genesis of Gaia, the Chaos and Death for which God, that horrible sadist, made her. But… where does she go now? Her body is too much weight to climb the air. If only she could separate herself from it… oh, yes, yes, cast it down to frozen waste, *yes…* With it would go her mortality; Death can tear a body, but, a consciousness? No, only the vessel it’s connected to. Is any vessel truly immortal? And here is a cold truth again, so heavy here that she feels herself losing her balance, steps back and tumbles into the snow that wetly cushions her gloves and coat, gathers herself lightheaded among the freezing bricks, lower half soaked entirely through by now, giving in to a shivering paroxysm so violent that her head strikes the sharp corner of a battlement and she scarecely notices the pain until it's over. She endures it silently, waits for it to recede, a warm trickle of blood beginning to run down her face. But no, she can’t be afraid of death. As an infinite being, her pain would be infinite. Yet, the thought that one day the curtains will close and she will never be able to enter the theater again, and so joining the audience as a lemming to its Precipice instead, a helpless line of moviegoers descending (toward what?) in an infinite human waterfall, terminal velocity becoming stillness in a blank, lightless void, the single star of the theater always growing smaller but never disappearing (there are another 14 billion parsecs still to go for that. She will be equal with everything that has ever lived, but she will be blind and deaf, unfeeling, unknowing, mu), seems to her a hot, oceanic terror to one day drown in. She finds herself speaking aloud to the cold. “Take me away from here, then,” she says, whispering even with no one else around. “I think… I’m ready.” But the cold only shakes its head, throws a fresh splash of wind-borne snow into her eyes, as if to tell her, Quit the melodrama. She does, and with a sigh, she rests her head on the jagged stone and sinks further into the snow.
im going to echo a8 (bobby?) in saying holy jesus, break this up into a couple of paragraphs. as one paragraph this is kind of one big run-on splurge. in fact in a lot of ways it is kind of a big run-on splurge. you can have good big run-on splurges, though.
i think your language is making too much of an effort to be ornate - the best use of words like 'welkin' and 'wind-borne' and 'paroxysm' and 'fiery genesis' is when they leap out at you out of nowhere, youre using so many of them that it kind of ends up diminishing the impact of all of them - you can have a small passage with lots of them, or you can have one out of somewhere, but they have to be sandwiched in with relatively ordinary words, really... here i feel it becomes 'too much'. certainly if all your 30,000 words are like this it would become a slog to read - and thats not a good thing! and you know you dont need to use these ornate big complicated words to create beautiful writing. possibly my favourite part of all of that was:
"Her body is too much weight to climb the air."
that is lovely and poetic, really, and doesnt have any of those big fancy words. its simply expressing something in a unique way and its pleasing. it is not a slog to read.
i feel that conceptually youre trying to grasp at some interesting things, but i feel that (possibly because of the writing style) it comes across as muddled... maybe try reading some JG Ballard? hes very good at incorporating fancy flowery descriptions & things into his work, and the way he ties psychology into his work - it becomes almost a psychological or sociological analysis at times - is really fantastic and might give you a bit of direction with this. (thats another thing i was looking for and didnt find: direction. it was sort of rambly.) because apparently the context is "nightmares of cannibalism" and i was just not getting that. at all. none of this, to me, was suggesting that. Pynchon has his kinda rambly sections but even those use ornament more sparingly than this and you can tell what it is about, at least in a direct sense... if you hadnt told me at the beginning i would have imagined it certainly as some kind of dream (so there is a dreamlike quality to it...) but wouldnt have thought of cannibalism at all.
this is a sort of rambly "concept vomit" or that is how is reads anyway... refine it because i certainly dont think that there is nothing of value here but i wouldnt read a book that was all like this. it would be, as you say, indulgent.
sorry this has been kinda rambly too but hey you get a rambly critique for a rambly work. thats just my thoughts. if i think of anything else about it i will add another post
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
I feel so disorganized.
I have my characters and I have my setting and I have a rough semblance of a plot, but I'm not sure how to put it together. Part of me wants to dive in and just start writing the "blog posts" that will comprise the story's actual prose, but I feel like I'm not adequately prepared to do so until I hammer down every little detail of every little thing. Which, of course, becomes a catch-22, because often those little details only really come to me once I start writing and let the characters develop on their own.
So, as soon as I feel like I might want to get back to writing, my dad has to use the desktop computer, which has all of my work on it. I mean, I'm fine using the laptop, but if I write something here, I'll have to go find a flash drive and get it there and it will all be such a pain...
Hmph.
I've also been having a lot of bizarre but intriguing ideas lately.
hehe i have had these 3 lines or so of poetry knocking around in my head and no idea what to do with them and ive finally got a frame for them now
still needs improvement but i am just glad to have finally fit them into something, i havent been writing much poetry lately because all poetry devolved into 'trying to make these lines work' and now i can write some new stuff finally
it ended up being a kind of tale of 50s american military experiments (giving LSD to soldiers etc...) + general nuclear holocaust threat bundled up in the centre of a colonial slave ship story in which they encounter a "plastic bag island" sailing across the atlantic... yea its kind of disconnected in places and some parts need expansion but the connections will come with time and revisions.... :>
Just put the text down. Focus on that, and only on that, and then you edit.
Fun Workflow to try out:
Write six pages each day until your story is completed. They don't have to be the story itself. They can be beat sheets, treatments, whatever pre-story material you require or feel necessary it is to do.
Once you're done and have everything on paper, save it and keep it away from your eyes for a week.
Come back to it. Edit it.
Once you edited it, show that to people if you desire for beta-readers. Use their input according to your needs.
Boom, you got a fully realized work. Probably. Hopefully.
I wouldn't really know, since I don't draw. (Assuming you're referring to that workflow right there)
But in theory, you can simply divide the drawing in parts and then set a relatively short limit for the number of parts you're drawing per day until you finish a drawing.
I think he meant using the roughness as an advantage.
And yes, depending on what you are writing/drawing, I think that you can, but I am not familiar enough with your work to say exactly how I think that you could work it. You could show me more, though; then I would have a better idea.
Again, drawing isn't really my suit, but I'd suggest that you focus on one thing and try to get really good at it. Like linework, or shading, or panel distribution. Make the good parts of your work so good that they outshine the rough parts. And then work on the rough parts.
I think that the way that you draw people doesn't really play well to your skills. The facial features, in particular, just look kind of silly, flat and oddly placed. And that's not simply a skill thing: Your style just seems more appropriate to simpler, less video-gamey character designs. Which is not to say that you shouldn't make a habit of studying anatomy and proportion—learning the rules makes it easier to break them—but I do think that your people would look better if they were less realistic and more... not cartoony per se, not exaggerated, but more sparse and geometric.
That's actually a really good assessment; I'm a lot more comfortable drawing characters like that, but I'm not sure that those designs would fit the story well.
You can have a dark, serious story with simple, open character designs without the aesthetic detracting from the tone. It can even add to the tone, depending on how you pull it off.
Your wings could use some work, but I like what you did with they eye-beetles. That's the sort of thing I'd doodle back in the day, and you do a better job of it than I ever did.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
Five years ago, a transformative disease swept through the world entire, altering humanity to posthumanity. As of now, anyone - absolutely anyone - in the world may change their shapes and become a Hercules with weak bones, a ravaging man-eater, or a beast-man by night. One time, our president turned into a giant earthworm.
In spite of all that, life went on.
My name is Thomas Hawkins. I'm a private detective, a motorcycle enthusiast, and a grasshopper beast-man. I solve crimes.
Also? I'm Patient Zero of the Flux Strain. I don't what that's about. I hope I live to find out.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
That's not necessarily true; you just have to be sparing with that information and know when it's going to contribute to the effect you want to produce. For instance, it might not be in-character for Mary to notice a specific older model of traffic signal, but it might be in-character for her to note, in passing, a particular characteristic of the traffic signals which reveals them to be an older model, and in doing so conveys to the reader that this street looks old-fashioned without ever saying so outright.
"Race you to the pizza place!" I shouted as I took off running.
"You don't even know where it is yet!" Ben replied, chasing after me.
I raced down the street, Ben following closely behind. But I stopped suddenly as I reached the curb of the next crossroads--the cars were coming up and down Main Street, and there was no red hand or green man in sight.
I turned to Ben as he caught up with me. "Ben, how do we know when it's our turn to cross?"
Ben chuckled. "Are you serious? Let me tell you about this thing called a traffic light." Ben pointed upwards to a single four-way traffic light suspended over the center of the street. The side facing us was red.
"But...why is there no crosswalk light?"
"Crosswalk light? Oh, Mary, you're adorable." He ruffled my hair. "Adorable little city kid."
"I am not an adorable little city kid."
"Yes you are."
"Eh, yes I am," I admitted, smiling slightly. The light went green and we walked across the street. "So where is this pizza place?"
That's probably not very good, since I just made it up on the spot. For starters, it's quite obviously prose, rather than anything you'd see on a blog.
How did I do, though? I was trying to convey both that the town was very-old fashioned and that Mary, having spent her childhood in the suburbs of a big city, is still adjusting to her new small-town surroundings, all without letting myself get too sidetracked in the details.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
It occurs to me that she probably wouldn't know it was called Main Street if she was that unfamiliar with the town.
The inside of the taxi was a musty, unkempt affair. The seat leather was cracked and aged, with some splotches being ever so slightly browner than others. For a person of average eyesight the wear and spills throughout the interior of the vehicle that trundled along the slush filled streets in the dead of the December night would have no doubt gone unnoticed. Catherine's keenly trained eyesight, on the other hand, picked up on these things easily. Her gaze drifted out the window to the snowflakes racing through the flickering yellow beams cast by the streetlights that seemed to crawl past, causing her to instinctively pull her thick mink shawl closer around her neck. A slight sigh passed her lips as her mind quickly entertained and then dismissed the thought of asking the swarthy, heavy-set driver if he could go a bit faster. As if he could read her mind, the man cocked his head a little and smirked in the rear view mirror, keeping his eyes on the road.
“You know, I could speed up a little if you feel like covering my deductible when we crash.”
i'm writing a short story for my creative writing course, this is what i have so far.
It's not intentional exactly, it's just my natural mode.
Yeah immna clarify some stuff / maybe add more details to produce a more concrete location, this is more like a little sketch i did in like 10-15 minutes to see if i could get this to work right.
Yeah immna clarify some stuff / maybe add more details to produce a more concrete location, this is more like a little sketch i did in like 10-15 minutes to see if i could get this to work right.
I already have a good feeling about this, because most teenagers writers would have said something along the lines of "I did that on purpose! You're supposed to be confused!"
Comments
Mr. Ygdhir, publican of The
Golden Grain, dragged out the last drunken wastrel of the night and laid
him out on the bench so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit overnight. Mr.
Ygdhir wiped his brow. The sweltering heat would have been bad enough at
midday, but this late at night it was ridiculous.
He went back inside, barred the door, and
ambled up the steps to the private rooms. He knocked on all the doors to his relief got no response. Contact with other people, especially the
kind who would rent a room in The Golden
Grain, was not something he wanted tonight.
He went
back downstairs and eased himself into the large red chair by the fireplace.
His gaze went to the mantle where the month’s newspaper was pinned. Printed
word was new and expensive, and people tended to be more generous when they
thought you were.
The vagabond's response does sound a little odd, you're right, although not knowing the character i'd have thought that was deliberate. Since the room is presumably not free, i'd probably have expected him to ask, 'How much?' but i'm guessing that might be the joke?
@ Cream: Is this from the story about the wanderer that you mentioned before? You use very long sentences, which can impair readability; i found 'Polaris, the winter sun, shines through the falling stars over the downs that point to endless North ahead (just one more step, dear, just close your eyes and have faith; believe you can fly), cityscape and foothills streaming from right and left and receding into hazy tides of cool violet-white rolling in over the wastes that, down below this Vault, below the cracked, caucasian stare of Jesus, had seemed so pertinent.' difficult to follow, for instance. Might want to think about breaking some of those up. Paragraphs are also a must.
You create and sustain a mood well, and there are some interesting word choices there. Like i said to Kex, i'd watch the repetition; 'welkin' is an unusual word, and stands out if used twice in succession (disregard if the word has a particular significance in your setting).
Keep in mind that i am in no way qualified to critique postmodern lit, but that's my two cents.
i think your language is making too much of an effort to be ornate - the best use of words like 'welkin' and 'wind-borne' and 'paroxysm' and 'fiery genesis' is when they leap out at you out of nowhere, youre using so many of them that it kind of ends up diminishing the impact of all of them - you can have a small passage with lots of them, or you can have one out of somewhere, but they have to be sandwiched in with relatively ordinary words, really... here i feel it becomes 'too much'. certainly if all your 30,000 words are like this it would become a slog to read - and thats not a good thing! and you know you dont need to use these ornate big complicated words to create beautiful writing. possibly my favourite part of all of that was:
"Her body is too much weight to climb the air."
that is lovely and poetic, really, and doesnt have any of those big fancy words. its simply expressing something in a unique way and its pleasing. it is not a slog to read.
i feel that conceptually youre trying to grasp at some interesting things, but i feel that (possibly because of the writing style) it comes across as muddled... maybe try reading some JG Ballard? hes very good at incorporating fancy flowery descriptions & things into his work, and the way he ties psychology into his work - it becomes almost a psychological or sociological analysis at times - is really fantastic and might give you a bit of direction with this. (thats another thing i was looking for and didnt find: direction. it was sort of rambly.) because apparently the context is "nightmares of cannibalism" and i was just not getting that. at all. none of this, to me, was suggesting that. Pynchon has his kinda rambly sections but even those use ornament more sparingly than this and you can tell what it is about, at least in a direct sense... if you hadnt told me at the beginning i would have imagined it certainly as some kind of dream (so there is a dreamlike quality to it...) but wouldnt have thought of cannibalism at all.
this is a sort of rambly "concept vomit" or that is how is reads anyway... refine it because i certainly dont think that there is nothing of value here but i wouldnt read a book that was all like this. it would be, as you say, indulgent.
sorry this has been kinda rambly too but hey you get a rambly critique for a rambly work. thats just my thoughts. if i think of anything else about it i will add another post
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
hehe i have had these 3 lines or so of poetry knocking around in my head and no idea what to do with them and ive finally got a frame for them now
still needs improvement but i am just glad to have finally fit them into something, i havent been writing much poetry lately because all poetry devolved into 'trying to make these lines work' and now i can write some new stuff finally
it ended up being a kind of tale of 50s american military experiments (giving LSD to soldiers etc...) + general nuclear holocaust threat bundled up in the centre of a colonial slave ship story in which they encounter a "plastic bag island" sailing across the atlantic... yea its kind of disconnected in places and some parts need expansion but the connections will come with time and revisions.... :>
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I am working on Ouyunkhodun.
I have no real idea why, especially since I don't actually know how to properly format a script.
or really
you know
write
Again, I will continue to blame Kexruct for this occurrence.