forum Virtual Creative Writing Club, anyone?
Started by @ninja_violinist
tune

people_alt 130 followers

@ElderGod-Icefire

@Icefire This is really cool! Very strong characterisation, strong emotion, and I love the word choice ("silk and gossamer").
Favourite line: "I am/ Broken glass and swords/ Iron and winter"
(imagery is on point)
I'm not 100% sure about how effective the linebreak placement is sometimes - I'm not always sure what it's meant to be emphasising (for example "You made me/ This way"). And please take this with a bucket of salt grains, but the ending felt a tiny bit anticlimactic - a lot of the imagery throughout was subtle and open-ended, so the monster comparison feels a bit heavy-handed if that makes sense. Just a thought though - it definitely works well the way it is!

That's fair. The monster thing is meant to sound a bit heavy handed i guess. It's meant to show sort of how the character's mind has broken. Same with the linebreaks. The poem is sort of meant to be showing how his mind fell apart over time.

@ElderGod-Icefire

So this is loosely based on the image prompt, I'm not sure i like how it turned out but here we go.

The tree of life was tall and strong. The branches curled up into the sky. At the base, though, a sprout grew up. Small and little and just a baby, it was cared for by a black haired boy with skin the color of milk and eyes the color of death. This little tree began to leech the strength from the bigger tree; began to steal from the tree of life under the guidance of the black haired boy with milk white skin.

And this tree was called Thanatos. This tree's leaves grew up jagged. They grew up broad. Soon the tree of life began to suffer. It began to lose to Thanatos. While neither was ever fully ahead of the other, Thanatos never gave ground. Soon the little sprout was no longer little. It's leaves were numbered at far more than the tree of life's, and its roots dug deep in the earth. The little boy, too, grew bigger, reigning over Thanatos and all that was in it, and the boy's name was Hades.

Thanatos could never fully choke out the tree of life, but it would never again be smaller. For the dead will always outnumber the living.

@croccin-champagne

Gotta say, sharing my poetry with y'all is the best thing ever. You're all super sweet and nice about corrections and advice, and it's made me entirely more willing to open myself up to feedback and sharing with people I know irl

@ElderGod-Icefire

I was reading Les Misérables, and watched the musical the day before, and had the urge to write this. It's inspired by the scene where the revolutionaries are being killed. So. I'm not sure how much I like it lol

Bullets come up through the floor,
I don't think we can last much more.
Blood has stained all over the walls
Gunshots echo down the halls.
We are the last that remain,
Final gasps of a dying dream.

It started back when
I had pints of good beer
Among those friends who showed no fear,
They cried 'Vive la revolution!'
'Down with the king!'
'twas then that the alarm bells failed to ring.

They planned and they plotted
With their own plans becoming besotted,
Enraptured by dreams too far off
Even for those made of the sternest stuff.
I say they, but ah, mon Amie!
I was one of them, you see.

I aided and abetted
Through every hardship we weathered
Until that day when the streets ran red
With all of our spilt blood.
For how could our little group dare
To try and aid in the people's despair?

"Stand down! lay down your weapons!' they told
But alas, how could we?
To this venture we had given our very souls.
So we bled out into the gutters
Amid foul smoke and cursing mutters.

And so the kings men, they
Brought low the barricade,
Climbed over it shooting.
Nothing we could do but reload and keep going.
They pressed us back and back and back,
Wounded cried for help, mercy, pity, but alack!
For those poor souls, the army had none.

Which brings me here
With smoke and blood near,
Shaking, waiting, nearly my turn to go,
Out onto the ground, let my blood flow.

But I am scared of what comes next
Will I be cursed or will I be blessed?
Heaven or Hell, what awaits me?
Lord, give unto me thy mercy.

@saor_illust school

Nope, that's perfect, in my opinion! (And is this written from any particular perspective of any of the characters? The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Enjolras)

@croccin-champagne

  1. Hella fuckin fantastic Ice, dude, honestly. I love the 'final gasps of a dying dream' line so much you have no idea

  2. So I know I posted literally just two days ago but. I also. Can't get something out of my head. So excuse the shitty tired writing that's jumbled together and spit on the page, but

For as long as I can remember, my mind has been loud
Seventeen train tracks, with all the trains just narrowly missing each other
Loud and chaotic as they pass
And sometimes they crash
For as long as I can remember, my mind has never been quiet
Noisy and terrifying
A storm of thoughts and feelings and none of them finished
Quiet is not something I’ve known

Until I met a boy
A boy who stilled my thoughts even when talking about the most inane things
Snakes on a Plane and the watch-ability of Green Lantern
He managed to take the rush hour traffic in my head and turn it into
A semi-straight and quiet back road
I’ve never known quiet, but this boy showed it to me

Maybe it was his eyes
The colors so much like a sea during a storm, blue-ish grey in simpler terms
But enough to calm my own storm
While I was busy trying to place what exactly it was they reminded me of
Or maybe it was his smile
Crooked-ish teeth and the way his eyes lit up
Talking about good and bad movies and the family friendly Deadpool

Whatever it was, I found myself quiet, metaphorically and mentally
My thoughts not running as wild as they normally do
Calm, something I’ve seen maybe a total of twice, even when asleep
So I’m thanking the boy on my bus
The one who makes me laugh and makes my mind quiet
The one who’s now stuck entirely in my head

@Simon-Says

This is so beautiful
I can tell you were tired when you wrote this ( "quiet metaphorically and mentally" is a bit of a weird line😂) but it's really beautiful and makes me happy omg it's so wholesome

@croccin-champagne

Gfsgsfsd yeah I got like less than five hours of sleep last night and it’s kinda late, so thingsll be wack for sure lmao. But I just. Suddenly had a lot of feelings? And with my nerves about asking the boy mentioned above to hoco I needed to do something

@ninja_violinist

all right I have a bit of spare time now to post the prompts, but I'm not sure I can manage the feedback today
Sorry about that!!

but anyway:

Image: "The View" by Pascal Campion

Song, brought to you by @UnseelieKing : "They're only Human" from the Death Note Musical, by Frank Wildhorn and Jack Murphy

Word prompt: from "Heart and Mind" by Edith Sitwell

Said the Sun to the Moon – ‘When you are but a lonely white crone,
And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,
Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.’

and a bonus technical writing challenge if you're interested: try rewriting one of your pieces in a different tense, from a different character's perspective, or in a different narrative voice (so if you wrote the original in first person, try writing this in third person or something along those lines). If anyone wants feedback on this one, please put the original and the rewritten version in a document and link it here so we don't get intense long bits of clutter

happy writing y'all! Again, sorry about the lack of feedback I swear it's on the way

@StarkSpangledMayflower_Mad_Elder

Panting, she climbed up the stairs, trying to find a place to hide before it got to her. She could hear its Laughter behind her as she scrambled to get to higher ground. Sweat dripping into her eyes, heart pounding, and heavy breaths. "Fly little bird, but where will you go?" she heard it say. Whimpering, she dropped to her knees and shuffled under the bed, keeping an eye on the door.

Passing through the door, she saw it look in and under things until its feet stopped just inches away from her face. She heard it laugh, a sound similar to that of a growl and a rumble. "I see you little bird, won't you come and play?" it asked. she screamed as it grabbed her waist and very easily threw her onto her bed. "Come now, that was very rude, little bird." it smiled, pointed teeth gleaming in the evening light. Bringing up its hand, it quickly clawed her—

Robin jerked awake, pencil and a couple scraps of paper sticking to her face as she opened her eyes. With shaking hands she peeled away the paper and looked at what she had drawn now. A creature with blood red eyes, thick, trunk like feet, long clawed hands, and sharp, pointed teeth stared back at her. "What have I done?" she gasped, looking for the pencil she used to draw the creature. The page shimmered before her eyes and disappeared. She ran down the stairs to find the shadow of a monster in the kitchen. Gasping, she turned around and ran back up the stairs which, like before seemed to be never ending. finally getting away, she ran into her room and hid under her bed. "Come out little bird!" she heard it growl. Robin whimpered and its feet stopped right by the bed. A clawed hand grabbed her and threw her on the waist and slashed her—

Robin fell out of her chair and looked at the drawing to see a creature with red eyes staring at her. "what have I done?"

@croccin-champagne

I had like five recent things written to choose from, and by that I mean I started and didn't finish them. Maybe this wasn't the best one I could have come up with, but when the creativity strikes, you really gotta role with it. And. It was the only one finished.

My yellow brick road is an old gravel road down a mountainside
Somewhere where green is the first and last color you see
And where the sky is such a pale blue
It appears as breakable as glass
Like you could throw a stone and shatter it into a million pieces
And scatter them among the peaks

My yellow brick road is a yellow dotted highway
Traveling without much of a destination beyond ‘away’
Somewhere ‘bigger’ and somewhere I’ve dreamt up and called home
Old rock and bad pop, an accompanying soundtrack along a roadtrip
Called life
Hopping from roadside station to roadside station with a map still folded in the glove box

I see my yellow brick road, the cobblestone path leading from my front gate
To my front porch and door
To home and, admittedly, my bed
Home to the place that used to be my only safe haven
And now functions sort of like a battery pack, a charging cord for a human

While my yellow brick road might not be made of bricks, or even yellow at all
It’s a road nonetheless to something
Something and somewhere where I find bits of myself, or will
It’s a dirt road leading to a rented guest farmhouse
Or a dark street lit with Christmas lights or strung with Halloween purple and orange and black
A yellow brick road not any of those things but my road, my path

There’s no fairy tale or magical adventure waiting for me at the end of the road
No shoes or flying monkeys
The only thing at the end of that road is me
Is myself
Somewhere along the winding road that makes up the journey of a life
I’ll find me
At the end or the middle or somewhere inbetween, my yellow brick road hopefully won’t let me down

@ninja_violinist

all right, feedback for last week is here! (and I'm already loving this week's posts!! you guys are fabulous and talented)
Sorry again that it was late. Turns out I just severely overestimated the amount of time it would take to finish

@crocssant-has-a-date Those were several really cool ones!!
- First one:
Favourite line: "Born with stardust in my lungs"
I noticed that halfway through, you switched from "I am born" to "I was born" and then back again - is this deliberate?
- Second one:
So pure. So wholesome. I had a goofy grin on my face reading this
Favourite line: "a storm of thoughts and feelings and none of them finished"
There are a few oddly-constructed phrases ("semi-straight", "metaphorically and mentally", and at one point it sounded like you were saying your mind "has never been quiet, noisy and terrifying") but honestly they add to the charm of the poem since they give the impression of a slightly chaotic narrator
idk this one's really cute I loved it

@Icefire
- For the prose piece: I really loved this concept!! It's so cool that you got that from the image!
All I have to say is that it feels a bit rushed, but that makes sense for a writing exercise.
(oh, and this was probably just a typo but it would be "its leaves" instead of "it's leaves" in the second paragraph. "It's" stands for "it is")
- For the poem: Really strong imagery here!!
Favourite line: "final gasps of a dying dream"
I did notice that the rhythm was a bit choppy at parts, and sometimes it felt like you were rearranging sentences to push a rhyme, but that happens in a lot of poetry so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
but yeah, it was really fun to read!

@croccin-champagne

That switch was deliberate! It was to change things up a bit, if it seems weird I could change it tvh

And ahafaa yeah, I am slightly chaotic. That was the point, is that my mind has never really been quiet but istg this kid makes it quiet. Bonus: his eyes look pale green in the sun!!

@ElderGod-Icefire

  • For the prose piece: I really loved this concept!! It's so cool that you got that from the image!
    All I have to say is that it feels a bit rushed, but that makes sense for a writing exercise.
    (oh, and this was probably just a typo but it would be "its leaves" instead of "it's leaves" in the second paragraph. "It's" stands for "it is")
  • For the poem: Really strong imagery here!!
    Favourite line: "final gasps of a dying dream"
    I did notice that the rhythm was a bit choppy at parts, and sometimes it felt like you were rearranging sentences to push a rhyme, but that happens in a lot of poetry so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
    but yeah, it was really fun to read!

Thank you! Yeah it was a bit rushed, oops. Typo was autocorrect.
Thank you again! That seems to be a lot of people's favorite line…including mine lol. Yeah that choppiness is what i was worried about, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. I did rearrange things for the rhymes, glad it's not too terrible 😅.