Return Styles: Pseud0ch, Terminal, Valhalla, NES, Geocities, Blue Moon.

Pages: 1-

Harsh criticism please :]

Name: anon 2006-09-14 1:20

It might be a little strange to read considering intendations are taken out when I copied it. Please, be as harsh as you can or I'll never learn. But make sure you actually tell me ways to help it. Most specifically looking for gramatical and spelling errors at this point (word isn't trustworthy.)
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                   untitled (so far)

The sky was glowing orange that day. I remember everything. The scent of your hair, the soft touch of your skin. Everything made sense to me now, like I was awakened from some long and lonely dream. We were young, so young. Almost to the point of being delusional. Ignis fatuus, if you will. But it was something we had together, and it was something beautiful, if short. To me, it felt like centuries when you held me. Your arms wrapped tight around my form, pulling me in to your warm body. We were one person, during times such as these. We were not two separate people, but rather, one being bound together by something so amazing and so intricately calculated that it seemed impossible for anything short of death to tear us apart. Beautiful moments such as these were short and fleeting, and in my eyes, we did not nearly have enough of them.
Your eyes were your most fascinating characteristic. Dark, shadowy, mysterious. But only to one who did not look at you the way I did. To me, your eyes were wonderful and fascinating, and a careful inspection could reveal every single thought in your mind. Nobody else could look at your eyes the way I did. Nobody else ever did. It was just another beautiful thing that we shared together. And again, the feelings I felt when I stared deep into your eyes were amazing and beautiful, only matched by the feeling of when you stared back. It truly was something incredible.
You once whispered into my ear, “If a blind man finds a four-leaf clover, is he still lucky?” And until this moment, I never realized what it was you meant. But I kept those words in my mind ever since, repeating them over and over when I felt like it wasn’t worth it anymore. It was these words that kept me sane through the times where anyone else would have lost all control. You are my savior, in more ways than one.

“It isn’t working.” He sighed, and crumpled the sheet of paper, carelessly tossing it into the trash bin behind him. The ball of paper collided with the countless others, and caused a chain reaction that resulted in a papery mess on his floor. Groaning, he swiveled his chair around and glanced at the disaster. “How…cliché.” He mumbled, eyeing the trash with an inward sigh. Finally, he diverted his attention to the now thin stack of paper that was at the peak of its short-lived life only moments before. After only an hour worth of failures, the stack was now well below three-fourths of its original splendor. A truly remarkable accomplishment, and surely deserving of some sort of accolade. Snickering sarcastically to himself, he twisted around and checked the clock, nearly slipping out of his chair and breaking his neck. The bold red digital clock clearly stated it was just half past two in the morning. A quick stretch and a stifled yawn, and he was already bent over his typewriter, staring blankly at the fresh white sheet of paper that seemed to mock him with imperceptible vehemence. Glaring back, he began pounding the keys with an astonishing new sense of vigor that surprised even him, and surely surprised that sarcastic sheet of paper. “I’ll. Show. You.” He emphasized each syllable through gritted teeth, determined to write something incredible and romantically enticing that it melted the hearts of people across the planet. Unfortunately, only minutes after this clearly amazing impetus of literary brilliance, he crumpled yet another poor sheet of paper that winded up resting amongst its peers in the trash bin.
Evan ran his fingers through his wiry brown hair and blinked his eyes a few times, trying to force out the sleep that was creeping over him and grabbing hold. It had been awhile since he had last stayed up so late, but the lack of a steady flow of monetary commencement was starting to affect him in a very negative fashion. Also, the lack of a day job contributed greatly to the pit he was currently stuck in. ‘You’ll never make it as a writer!’ His mother preached to him nearly every day before her death. Maybe she was right. But, that never stopped him from trying.
His dark eyes glanced around the cramped, hot room he was stuck in. When he moved into his small apartment, he found this little hole that apparently was once a small bedroom, most likely for a child or something along those lines. It clicked almost instantaneously that this was to be his workroom, and so it was here that he had moved his desk and typewriter and various ‘tools of the trade’ into.
The apartment he selected was more reminiscent of a very nice shit hole of a shack that came equipped with a working toilet. However, it was affordable based on the income he was receiving writing in a sappy love magazine for teenage girls. All he had to do was come up with a few pages of total bullshit that was full of drama and suspense every week, and he was paid accordingly. However, when the soap came to an end, so did his cash flow. (Really, he ran out of ideas and was forced to end it with a rather depressing ending.)
Evan never could understand why he enjoyed writing drama and romance. It wasn’t your typical love triangle crap that you pick off the street corner. No, his had a more… old fashioned feel to it, like a beautiful and stunning pairing between two forlorn lovers destined to never be happy. It was compelling in the sense that it left you wondering, ‘Why?’ as you set down the book and (hopefully, as this is what Evan always aimed for) contemplated your boring and monotonous, in comparison, of course, love life.
Hours were wasted, staring at the snow-white blank piece of paper, fingers poised and waiting like cats assuming the pouncing position. He didn’t want to waste any sudden spark of imagination that flickered into his mind. But nothing came. Three o’clock. Four o’clock. Five o’clock. As the clock went from five fifty nine to six o’clock, an obnoxiously loud buzzing emanated, not subtly as Evan had hoped, from the small little piece of plastic. His fingers slipped, and resulted in the most original thing that came out of his typewriter the entire night; ‘klfasjw’
 “Mother fucking god damn sunuva…” Evan’s words were slurred with fatigue, and he barely had the energy to stand up and flick the alarm off. The buzzing on the alarm ceased, but the seemingly incessant buzzing in his ears continued, almost as a ghastly reminder that he’ll never be happy as long as he’s alive. There would always be something to fucking piss him off.
Groaning, he opened his medicine cabinet and pulled the cap off of various bottles. A few pills later, Evan sunk onto his bumpy mattress and drifted off to dream about amazing things in different worlds.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-14 1:25

fail.

faggot.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-14 1:29

Yeah, thanks :]

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-15 3:21

>>1

Are you insane?  I mean, I'm not even going to attempt to read that (I'll just assume it's crap), but I wonder what brainstorm led you to believe this was a good place to receive a critique.  Just look at the other posts on this board, and remind yourself that this is 4-chan.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-15 7:05

I read some of it, and frankly I think you're trying too hard. Novice writers write like that, as if their fanciful prose proves something.

Cutting out as much of the verbiage as possible would be an immediate improvement. Brevity is the soul of wit, and all that.

Unless you're trying to be the next Joyce, but your writing is too comprehensible for that.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-15 7:11

The sky was glowing orange that day. I remember everything
gay

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-15 9:23

>>5

If you ARE trying to be the next Joyce... just kill yourself. We don't need another chapter-long stream-of-consciousness punctuation-less sentence culminating in a less-than-accurate depiction of the female orgasm.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-16 14:16

Keep it going. So far your advice (one of you, at least) has helped. I'm probably going to rewrite this, but not try so hard to sound impressive. I think that was the biggest thing wrong with it.

If anybody else has more advice, I'd be grateful to hear it. :]

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-17 1:15

>>8

You might consider paying some attention to tone. What your character Evan wrote, and what you yourself wrote OF him, sounds exactly the same. Perhaps attempting to put some distance between yourself and your characters would help. While I know you wrote what you attribute to Evan having written, it's hardly credible when it's all in the same voice. I hope you can understand what I'm getting at.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-17 9:25

>>Ignis fatuus, if you will.

Stopped reading here.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-18 17:37

>>10
LoL

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-19 1:09

Thanks. This really is helping. I won't repost a revision, of course, but it feels like it's starting to get better already. I really do appreciate it. If anybody else has more to add, I'd be glad to read what you think.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-19 5:13

the writing isn't bad but the beginning is bit cliché. thousands of narratives have started that way. i can even imagine the cheesy voice narrating it.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-19 5:19

>>12
No repost? Boring.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-19 15:53

I won't repost because I figured it wouldn't really matter? I guess I could if you want o_o

And yeah, the beginning was supposed to be cliche, but maybe it went a little overboard. I was going for that 'cliche, but just enough to be mildly interesting' or something. I can't explain it well, maybe you know what I mean.

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-20 17:43

dont use second person

and the line that goes "like i was awakened from some long and lonely dream" doesnt make alot of sense

change it to "like i had awakened" or "like i was awake" depending on which tense you want to use

i'm sure that theres lots of errors like that in this work but i didnt read much else to be honest

Name: Anonymous 2006-09-22 22:37

By the way, the reason why I came to 4chan for a review is because I honestly wanted the toughest criticism I could take, and I knew that 4chan would be the perfect place to go.


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