i skimmed quickly but didnt see any sex or rape. is this supposed to be hardprose?
iono i used the word aesthetic at one point
- Winston R.R. Hefner
ken and impper are white?!
deadken posted:A single ray of sunlight hung slicing through the room from the gap in the curtains, setting dust motes ablaze on its way and ending in a broad glowing line across a pale cheek.
mo' a dis
Ah, there it was! A glance, brief but telling, at his stuffed, bulging crotch! Her sordid thoughts were exposed, and by extension the potentially sordid thoughts of the world of women, the world he was aiming for.
less a dis
i didn't read the piece yet but that second paragraph wasnt bad at all
crustpunk_trotsky posted:why do all white men in extended adolescence write all of their characters with the same voice. or do they actually assume the whole world talks like them
this is dumb as hell lol
the setup is really convoluted. also your iraq stuff sounds exactly like a character i wrote, it creeped me out, stop it.
your narrator is so amazingly passive. especially the passive tics. maybe you did that on purpose. idk.
the stuff by the professor is really good, easily the best part of the story.
your molly character does sound a little bit like yourself, but then she sounds like most of the women i know anyway. i'm not sure if that's a criticism or an observation. or i mean, i'm responding to what crust punk dipshit said about other characters sounding alike to the narrator.
the story feels rushed and compacted, but not tight at all. it jumps around, its pacing is strange. i don't know. i had little patience for your longer paragraphs. i think you read too much of my shit because early on you were really abusing semicolons and there are very few writers who do that a lot. Lol
overall i feel like it was poorly executed, somehow. so it's like a bad good story, if that makes sense. i dont know if it's ever worth reworking something but i feel like it needs to be longer, even if you don't change any of the story's movement. the writing is accomplished. i can tell it's easy for you to write dialogue but you possibly risk overdoing it - i think someone said you had too much dialogue.
again the passive narrator. everything seems to happen to him. coming across the bum, coming across molly, blah blah, so on so on, getting kicked out. something about that passivity bugs me . . . it's too easy to do, i think that's what it is
Impper posted:again the passive narrator. everything seems to happen to him. coming across the bum, coming across molly, blah blah, so on so on, getting kicked out. something about that passivity bugs me . . . it's too easy to do, i think that's what it is
thats a good point
"You should keep playing with the reader, slapping us around and tripping us up. That stuff’s essential. Never give a reader an even break." -dolan
write like Franzen
Impper posted:ken i just read your story. it gave me chills at the end; it was really good. i have some random scatterbrained notes:
the setup is really convoluted. also your iraq stuff sounds exactly like a character i wrote, it creeped me out, stop it.
your narrator is so amazingly passive. especially the passive tics. maybe you did that on purpose. idk.
the stuff by the professor is really good, easily the best part of the story.
your molly character does sound a little bit like yourself, but then she sounds like most of the women i know anyway. i'm not sure if that's a criticism or an observation. or i mean, i'm responding to what crust punk dipshit said about other characters sounding alike to the narrator.
the story feels rushed and compacted, but not tight at all. it jumps around, its pacing is strange. i don't know. i had little patience for your longer paragraphs. i think you read too much of my shit because early on you were really abusing semicolons and there are very few writers who do that a lot. Lol
overall i feel like it was poorly executed, somehow. so it's like a bad good story, if that makes sense. i dont know if it's ever worth reworking something but i feel like it needs to be longer, even if you don't change any of the story's movement. the writing is accomplished. i can tell it's easy for you to write dialogue but you possibly risk overdoing it - i think someone said you had too much dialogue.
again the passive narrator. everything seems to happen to him. coming across the bum, coming across molly, blah blah, so on so on, getting kicked out. something about that passivity bugs me . . . it's too easy to do, i think that's what it is
which character lol? yeah the passivity of the narrator is entirely deliberate, he's a kind of self-criticism, and molly's a vehicle for that self-criticism lol, which is why i find it kinda funny that you think she sounds most like me.... yeah you're absolutely right w/r/t the pacing, i realised about 1/3 of the way through that i had a 5000 word limit for a story that should be like 10,000 words if i was going to do it properly. maybe i'll expand it, iono, i kinda want to do more w/ the professor subplot, have my dude seek out his relatives and shit, more stuff with the narrator burrowing around under los angeles..... when i'm not writing massive run-on sentences (which i tried really hard not to do in this one) i think i do tend to abuse the fuck out of semicolons, sorry but iono if its John Christy Mimesis.... and dialogue is the thing i tend to struggle with most and this was an attempt to conquer that so i'm glad to see it kinda worked!! thanku 4 ur critique ~~
tpaine posted:shit massive run-on sentences
you got the best ones
deadken posted:Impper posted:ken i just read your story. it gave me chills at the end; it was really good. i have some random scatterbrained notes:
the setup is really convoluted. also your iraq stuff sounds exactly like a character i wrote, it creeped me out, stop it.
your narrator is so amazingly passive. especially the passive tics. maybe you did that on purpose. idk.
the stuff by the professor is really good, easily the best part of the story.
your molly character does sound a little bit like yourself, but then she sounds like most of the women i know anyway. i'm not sure if that's a criticism or an observation. or i mean, i'm responding to what crust punk dipshit said about other characters sounding alike to the narrator.
the story feels rushed and compacted, but not tight at all. it jumps around, its pacing is strange. i don't know. i had little patience for your longer paragraphs. i think you read too much of my shit because early on you were really abusing semicolons and there are very few writers who do that a lot. Lol
overall i feel like it was poorly executed, somehow. so it's like a bad good story, if that makes sense. i dont know if it's ever worth reworking something but i feel like it needs to be longer, even if you don't change any of the story's movement. the writing is accomplished. i can tell it's easy for you to write dialogue but you possibly risk overdoing it - i think someone said you had too much dialogue.
again the passive narrator. everything seems to happen to him. coming across the bum, coming across molly, blah blah, so on so on, getting kicked out. something about that passivity bugs me . . . it's too easy to do, i think that's what it iswhich character lol? yeah the passivity of the narrator is entirely deliberate, he's a kind of self-criticism, and molly's a vehicle for that self-criticism lol, which is why i find it kinda funny that you think she sounds most like me.... yeah you're absolutely right w/r/t the pacing, i realised about 1/3 of the way through that i had a 5000 word limit for a story that should be like 10,000 words if i was going to do it properly. maybe i'll expand it, iono, i kinda want to do more w/ the professor subplot, have my dude seek out his relatives and shit, more stuff with the narrator burrowing around under los angeles..... when i'm not writing massive run-on sentences (which i tried really hard not to do in this one) i think i do tend to abuse the fuck out of semicolons, sorry but iono if its John Christy Mimesis.... and dialogue is the thing i tend to struggle with most and this was an attempt to conquer that so i'm glad to see it kinda worked!! thanku 4 ur critique ~~
i wasnt sure but then i realized it's basically the narrator of my first book. anyway yea short stories are difficult because like, nobody reads them, so it's hard to tell what is and isn't worth Effort
The em dash (—), m dash, m-rule, or "mutton", often demarcates a break of thought or some similar interpolation stronger than the interpolation demarcated by parentheses, such as the following from Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine:
At that age I once stabbed my best friend, Fred, with a pair of pinking shears in the base of the neck, enraged because he had been given the comprehensive sixty-four-crayon Crayola box—including the gold and silver crayons—and would not let me look closely at the box to see how Crayola had stabilized the built-in crayon sharpener under the tiers of crayons.
From Chris:
Most of you know this is an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice into a Star Trek novel Prime Perceptions which is the story of the meeting of Spock’s parents, Sarek (Darcy) and Amanda (Elizabeth Bennet).
Amanda has grown up and Sarek has recently crashed on a planet in a system with electrical dampening.
Sarek and others have been working on methods to get a probe out of the system and have discovered a way to temporarily create electricity.
Amanda’s sister has run off with a supposed Vulcan, ‘V’Kham’. Amanda knows V’Kham is really a terrorist Romulan and they all fear her sister may be killed. In Chapter 47, I add a description of the beginning of Sarek searching out V’Kham to fight him. I’d like input as to whether the pacing and voice of these inserts works well enough with the simple translation of the rest of the story.
Some have commented that made me feel like they thought I was writing a good period piece but it's supposed to sound like Star Trek and not like Jane Austen so I'd like to know if it sounds sufficiently unlike Jane Austen.
Thanks,
Chris