"The promise
To do it all again tomorrow
Passes around and satisfies us
The way only chocolate when you’re
Craving something sweet can."
"We were secret agents
And fairies in a wood"
okay i love these, love this so much in general. it does a great job capturing that kind of nostalgic look at the transition into schooling, which is great 10/10
the sudden use of punctuation at the end kinda tripped me up, but–and i dont know if this was intentional or not–it almost kind of fits. like the beginning part is about kids, its that pre-scholastic learning environment, and then as you start to get into the second part it's got the punctuation kids would be learning soon. which is actually super cool.
oh wow you're so right about the typos thats embarrassing
The punctuation was kind of intentional. I wanted the beginning part to flow without a lot of interruption, and then I wanted the rest of it to have certain "stopping points". I like your explanation a lot more tho lol
@LittleRiver
hey, so fair warning that this bit of feedback is obnoxiously long. I've tried to stay brief, but the chapter is 18 pages so. you know. it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the writing at all - in fact I really really love it and am super invested in what's going on!! there's just a lot of text which gives me a lot of specific details to obsess over haha
I'm very much here for the writing style!! it's reflective and very descriptive, which fits both the sombre tone and Hitch's overall vibe! It definitely adds a lot to both the characterisation and the worldbuilding which, again, is super cool to me.
one thing that comes with using a lot of very specific words is that you sometimes don't use them quite properly? it's a totally normal consequence, especially when it's because of homonyms, but I figured I'd point em out:
"dire" means urgent and I'm not sure that's what you're trying to say here? when you say "urbanity" you're either talking about the politeness of cities or the 'citiness' ("urban" just means "related to towns or cities) of cities and I'm not sure either applies. I think it's "utopia" instead of "eutopia". "alighting" means descending from somewhere and settling, not setting something on fire. It's either "tomorrow" or "the morrow" but not just "morrow". ravishly isn't a word that I know of, and "ravish" is about kidnapping, rape, or filling with intense delight, none of which I think apply here. "stagnant" is usually used for pools of water that have no current? or it has a rather severe negative connotation of laziness, which I'm also not sure you mean to imply here. and this may just be my lack of English skills, but "strike of guilt" doesn't sound quite right to me? idk
beyond those lil hiccups, something I also noticed about the style is that it's easy to be repetitive or say things more elaborately than necessary. For example, you use the word "eye" or "eyes" 29 times in the text; or "the name of it" instead of "its name"; or "disgruntled… twisted into a dissatisfied grimace" where we essentially have three different ways to know that he's not happy (disgruntled, dissatisfied, and the twisting grimace). Not that there's anything wrong with elaboration or repetition! I think it's just a matter of estimating where it's most effective and necessary. In excess, it can sometimes have the consequence that you have a lot of relatively long sentences follow each other, which can overwhelm the reader and hamper the flow.
I ran this through the fancy document analysis feature and found that your average sentence is about 12 words long. You've got two major chunks in the chapter where the vast majority of sentences are 12 words or longer, with similar structures, which might benefit from a bit more varied structure peppered throughout. Those bits are from Although now to flattened heart and Without another word to couldn't help but love and hate. Sentence structure can be a great way of regulating the flow of information - making sure causes follow effects, or putting emphasis on important points by putting them in key spaces. And this is just a lil thing but I noticed that sometimes you forget to have a main verb in a sentence? I had examples but I lost them lmao. just keep an eye out for that I guess.
I technically have a few more notes, but this is already long enough, so I'll cap it for now. sorry if this comes across as particularly harsh or anything - again, it's only because there's so much to talk about here and I have a lot to say about many things. I really love the overall chapter, I think the worldbuilding is sprinkled in excellently and leaves a lot of mystery open! thank you so much for letting me read it!! (and let me know if this volume of feedback is overbearing haha)
@Moxie ahhh that's so?? sweet?? wistful?? nostalgic?? I'm absolutely here for the way it kind of builds up on itself - with the punctuation like crocs pointed out, but also with longer phrases and words towards the end compared to more simple language earlier.
favourite line: we were secret agents/ and fairies in a wood
I did notice a small tense thing? "the coolness of the classroom/ Made goosebumps appear" that's in past tense even though it seems like the rest of the section is in present? idk it's not necessarily wrong, just slightly ambiguous.
and I wonder if there's something slightly awkward about ending on the verb in the last line? I see the appeal, since it kind of returns the focus to the chocolate instead of the craving, but it sounds a bit odd to my ears idk.
either way, this was lovely and I really enjoyed it!! thank you so much for sharing!!
(Thanks so much @ninja_violinist! The feedback really helps. And, it’s alright to be harsh. I know there are … more than a few dramatic ways for my writing to improve. :)
i'm alive, i swear. just caught up in a bunch of different writing responsibilities lmao. also has anyone here read cemetery boys yet? i missed the preorder but got it super early, and finally read it, and am frankly kind of in love
The righteous wear their hearts on their sleeves,
Self-made martyrs with poems and speeches on hand,
Rousing crowds with a battle cry.
Their words are louder than actions,
When that’s all the world expects from them.
Young kids carry the weight of the world with them,
Too-tall pens like swords in their hands,
Call for action with their words.
They’re soldiers in a war too old for them,
Mouths carrying baby teeth calling injustice.
At what point do you recognize the buildings of an army
In your children?
At what point does your inaction become reaction?
Why are kids fighting a war you started,
Picking up the messy pieces of
Fought against change?
We, the righteous,
Children taking a stand for their own promised land,
Doing everything they can to fix it.
The future we’re living for is bleak,
But the fire in our eyes burns too bright to let it die.
(Thanks so much @ninja_violinist! The feedback really helps. And, it’s alright to be harsh. I know there are … more than a few dramatic ways for my writing to improve. :)
ah phew I'm glad! the thing is just. I usually like to point out ways in which your writing is dramatically good already (and it is!!), I just didn't take the time with this one yesterday. I feel like pointing out what works is just as important as what doesn't when giving out feedback, so it frustrates me when I don't do that enough haha
so just know that your sense of atmosphere is genuinely top tier, the language choices really do work well most of the time, and the imagery and dialogue and hints of backstory add up to this really cool "fantasy but something's very unsettled" vibe. So much of what you're doing is already excellent and you should absolutely be proud of that
(Alright, so happy to hear that! I’m so glad it came off as “fantasy but something’s very unsettled,” because that’s really what I was going for. I’m normally a comedy writer, so hearing that I sort of locked in the atmosphere is extremely helpful. Thanks so much for all your advice :D)
okay so long story short the poetry board decided to do a little exercise and we were supposed to pick a poem different from our normal writing. and then write something inspired by it. and uh moxie's honestly seemed the most fun to try and write like, and i loved the concept of switching from kid memories to adult memories, though i definitely got off track and did something way different. anyway, i hope it was okay for me to write something inspired by your work, mox! here y'all go
The taste of
Adventure lingers with me
And my fingers still
Play the melodies of
Children’s songs
I learned to sing
Before grade school.
I learned to speak
Too early and haven’t stopped
Since then
And I don’t think
I ever really got the
Concept of run on sentences down
Because everything I say seems
Too much.
They tell you it gets better with age,
And still I find myself
Drowning in a love for words.
At what age did they mean?
Maybe I missed the mark
And maybe I’m still grasping
For it and still,
I add another comma,
And I feel a little pretentious.
Or maybe I just
Have too much to say.
SAGE YOU'RE GONNA MAKE ME EMOTIONAL
I mean my poem was for my class and already based off of a different poem, so its totally fine. This is like poetry telephone
It's really cool to see something from you that's so different from your normal style.
I really like this. I was gonna choose my favorite line but I kept finding a different favorite line. So I'm just gonna share a few.
"The taste of
Adventure lingers with me"
I like this. I like how you gave something that doesn't have a taste a taste.
"I learned to speak
Too early and haven’t stopped
Since then"
I like the flow of these lines and where you chose to break them.
"And still I find myself
Drowning in a love for words."
Beautiful.
"Maybe I missed the mark
And maybe I’m still grasping
For it and still,
I add another comma,"
I don't know why but I love these lines so much
"Or maybe I just
Have too much to say."
Super good ending.
gdfdf you're emotional? you've got me on the verge of crying dfjhdfh
i'm so glad you like it though, it was so fun to step out of my comfort style and try something new, and now i want to write a million things in different styles. like, kate(our board leader) found this thing called graph poetry and it looks so cool
ychchch looks like we're back to "ninja can't do time managament" days where I pop in a week late with no good explanation
sorry guys
@crocs-to-a-knife-fight
first one:
ok so I really love this?? it's got this kind of aggressive, increasingly personal "we're out here fighting to fix your mess and how dare you leave it to us" vibe which I feel a lot of people can relate to these days. and you use just the right kind of language to get that across (especially how it starts out with "they" and ends up using "we" and "you", that's The Good Stuff). I noticed that each phrase tends to be relatively short, and linebreaks often coincide with punctuation, so the parts where you do have enjambment ("in your children" and "fought against change") stand out even more in contrast.
favourite line: so many of them? but "The future we're living for is bleak/ But the fire in our eyes burns too bright to let it die" really slaps
I only noticed a few small things that feel odd to me? and that doesn't have to be a bad thing, sometimes oddness is deliberate and effective, but I just figured I'd point them out:
"too-tall pens" - I wouldn't usually connect that adjective with "pen"?
"mouths carrying baby teeth calling injustice" - "carrying" feels like quite a deliberate action for something as passive as having baby teeth, if that makes sense?
"the buildings of an army" - this is just me but I had to read that twice to realise we didn't mean buildings as in house. maybe "buddings of an army" would avoid that confusion?
"Picking up the messy pieces of/ Fought against change" - at first I thought there was a line in between that I was missing here? but I guess "fought against" is a description of the kind of change that we're picking up the pieces of (if I'm getting that right?) so that could be worded more clearly to avoid confusion, but it's not a major thing
second one:
!!!! I really love it!! playing with enjambment makes me so happy to see and it's super clever to connect it with the content of run-on sentences! the last line is honestly genius and I love it so much.
if I were being picky I'd wonder about how the first 7 lines seem a bit disconnected from the rest of the poem? but honestly they're a very nice set up for the tone of what's to come. so idk. make of that what you will - mainly I just don't have much to say in the way of critique haha
Moxie really said it all, I think! super well done!!
(and graph poetry sounds so cool? google's being a bit of a jerk with this one so I'd love to hear more about it if you end up doing it!)
for the pen line, it was actually supposed to connect with the likening to swords. like, imagery wise, children with swords way too big for them? kinda commenting on the fact that they're way too young to have to do this. any ideas for how to get that across better?
also fdhdfh yeah i know it's disconnected. i'm the worst at staying on track, and i'll have an idea but then have a new one mid way and decide they're going together now
i don't think i ever could lmao, it seems super confusing. but i messaged one of the girls who's also on the board, to see if she wrote the poet's name down so i can share!
ahh I see what you mean!! that does make a lot of sense!
my empty head can only think of "oversized" but that's pretty basic? or perhaps you could go the roundabout way and pick out a negative description that applies to both swords and pens to kinda connect that a) pen is like sword and b) kid should not be holding either. if that makes sense?
(so this is a bad example, but something like "sharpened pens like swords in their hands"? or something like "hefty" or "clunky"? idk it sounded cooler in my head haha)
and yeah, I'd love to get the name if she can find it! thank you so much!
music: "Rounds" by The Oh Hellos (I promised myself I wouldn't keep putting their stuff here. but. here we are eh)
image: "Abandoned in the Mojave" by (??? ok so I found it here and it was very unclear if that's the photographer or?? so yeah idk sorry for the ambiguity)
word prompt:
it's from Samuel Rogers' Italy, a Poem which is an entire book
Death, when we meet the spectre in our walks,
As we did yesterday and shall to-morrow
Soon grows familiar—like most other things,
Seen, not observed; but in a foreign clime,
Changing his shape to something new and strange….
Knocks at the heart. His form and fashion here
To me, I do confess, reflect a gloom,
A sadness round; yet one I would not lose;
Being in unison with all things else
In this, this land of shadows, where we live
More in past time than present, where the ground,
League beyond league, like one great cemetery,
Is covered o'er with mouldering monuments;
And let the living wander where they will,
They cannot leave the footsteps of the dead.
ahh I see what you mean!! that does make a lot of sense!
my empty head can only think of "oversized" but that's pretty basic? or perhaps you could go the roundabout way and pick out a negative description that applies to both swords and pens to kinda connect that a) pen is like sword and b) kid should not be holding either. if that makes sense?
(so this is a bad example, but something like "sharpened pens like swords in their hands"? or something like "hefty" or "clunky"? idk it sounded cooler in my head haha)
and yeah, I'd love to get the name if she can find it! thank you so much!
her name is franny choi, and you can find a list of poems from her published book here. though, you can't read any of them there, so i haven't been able to find the graph one specifically
!!!!! whoa I love her other stuff too though!!! she has a few ones up on the poetry foundation site and I'm really liking what I see. Thanks so much for sharing!!
Did I just rewrite an old Thing I did for the club? Yes. Did I recycle some of the old stuff because I liked it? Also yes. Did a steal my own quality speech from a random and completely unrelated roleplay? Triple yes.
i'll just drop this here with no context but hey i just wrote this on the spot
And she'd said she wasn't deserving of love. For she tried so hard to make everyone around her happy, and yet still, she had failed once more. And in her wake, she left behind the last remaining threads of her mental health.
"Don't cry," she told herself. "Don't be weak. You're so close, I promise. Just don't let the tears out."
And yet, though she tried so hard to keep the tears from overflowing, she was powerless. "Cry," she was told. "Let your feelings out. It'll be good for you."
So cry she did. She cried for hours on end, even as she still tried to be productive. She cried through her homework– and if I may go on a small rant here,
It's not fair how school teaches us that above all, no matter what happened, schoolwork is most important and should always be top priority. She was suffering, and had to tell herself that she'd fail the class to even get started on it.
But I digress– and she cried her way through a short, but very much needed self-care routine.
And when she was done, "Thank you," she said. "Thank you to my friends who helped me o see reason when I could not."
…… once again, so sorry for the month-long, apparently, yikes delay!! I've been, as the youth say, straight-up not having a good time recently and haven't been able to think about writing on any other level than vague essays about Shakespearean tragicomedy
so thank you for your patience!! I definitely read and enjoyed the stuff you've been posting as it came!!!
@motivational-penguin
hey, I remember reading the previous version of this!! that's so cool!! you can definitely see that you've come along in your writing since then! it feels a lot more focused and structured than before, I think, and the character dynamics have gotten even more intense and feel-y than before (I know you abdicated responsibility for all feels but I've elected to ignore that because this is painful. that speech???? I???? how am I supposed to function???)
just noticed a few small things this time, nothing very major. I vaguely remember having this conversation last time so feel free to ignore this haha, but there were some points where it briefly switched into present tense for part of the sentence but then had a past tense verb in there as well? "he has always loved the stars", "remembering who he's supposed to be", "when he's already lost so much". one effect I think this could have is drawing attention to the tenses and the contrast, kind of separating the concept of Alexis and his character out from the rest of the scene, if that makes any sense at all. so it's not necessarily wrong, but it does call attention to itself so I'd recommend making sure it's doing what you want it to.
on page 5, I'm not sure that "piled" is the right word for what tears do to chests?
very small things, nothing really big that I can think of. so. thanks so much for sharing!! sorry this took so long ooof
@izzy-might-be-back
ooof that one hits like a punch to the gut (especially the rant about school, yikes, very very true). Really glad the ending was hopeful though!!
I'm not sure how much stylistic feedback you're looking for since it seems to be something quite personal? I think? but in case you wanted some, I noticed that you start quite a few sentences with "And", which is totally fine, but something to be keeping an eye out for in longer texts. but yeah. small thing, not a problem here as far as I can tell.
thanks so much for sharing!!
@motivational-penguin
hey, I remember reading the previous version of this!! that's so cool!! you can definitely see that you've come along in your writing since then! it feels a lot more focused and structured than before, I think, and the character dynamics have gotten even more intense and feel-y than before (I know you abdicated responsibility for all feels but I've elected to ignore that because this is painful. that speech???? I???? how am I supposed to function???)
just noticed a few small things this time, nothing very major. I vaguely remember having this conversation last time so feel free to ignore this haha, but there were some points where it briefly switched into present tense for part of the sentence but then had a past tense verb in there as well? "he has always loved the stars", "remembering who he's supposed to be", "when he's already lost so much". one effect I think this could have is drawing attention to the tenses and the contrast, kind of separating the concept of Alexis and his character out from the rest of the scene, if that makes any sense at all. so it's not necessarily wrong, but it does call attention to itself so I'd recommend making sure it's doing what you want it to.
on page 5, I'm not sure that "piled" is the right word for what tears do to chests?
very small things, nothing really big that I can think of. so. thanks so much for sharing!! sorry this took so long ooof
i said i take no responsibility
goddammit, i hate tenses. i always seem to struggle with those. but thank you!! and it's perfectly fine dude, life is life
blegh, something i threw up on the spot
like always
i put no thought into character backgrounds whatsoever bc it was on the spot
kinda edited it
not really
just some last minute additions in the third paragraph
~
And she lay there, her back to the ground, staring at the empty abyss that was the night sky. “I hope I did justice,” her robotic voice whispered. “I hope I was able to bring some good to the world, while I was still able to.”
Her body was completely still, in an attempt to conserve what little energy she had left. It wasn’t like movement would be easy at this point anyways, for her joints were a mess and her legs might as well not been there. Her left eye was just barely attached, the vision fuzzy, and there were wires spilling out everywhere.
The sentient android, model ATK-582, laid in the open battlefield, vulnerable, weak, and harmless. Other bodies lay strewn haphazardly across the ground, all of the same model as her. She was dying and she knew it. “I hope the newer models do better,” she whispered. “Be stronger than I was, if you so should have to face battle like I did. Preferably, you’ll be able to live life like any other human. Never have to see battle or war in your lifespan. Good luck, young ones.”
And with that, she took her last ‘breath’ as her system began to shut down. It was an ‘automatic decision made to conserve battery’ but she knew that even then, it wouldn’t be long before her battery ran out and she was gone forever.
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