@
Professor Frost
here's your desired harsh critique:
That first little run run thang was cool, coupled with the "wolves" in the title it made the piece instantly feel like a nursery rhyme/fairytale. The Brothers Grimm type, tho, not the rockabye baby shit. The Brothers Grimm had some dope story concepts and storytelling ability, so cool way to create a general atmosphere around the piece straight up. I would count this more as a "Forward" than the actual first stanza/part of a piece tho. It's that little flavour authors add to the page BEFORE the first page of the first chapter, know what I mean?
Yesssss. That little flavor/flavour. I know exactly what you mean.
So the piece really starts with the line "For if we should stand..." - bad way to start a piece. A sentence starting with "For" always has a preceding sentence/s that are integral to the point it is conveying. Same as when people start their shit with "And blah blah blah" - it can feel good to write like that because it feels like you're already halfway through a speech and you already have your audience's full attention, but it is BAD ENGLISH. Don't do it. It's cheap, and it cheapens your piece.
I see what you mean on the "For" part. Thank you for the advice.
The rhyming structure of the first stanza is all out of whack; it reads like you've tried to make shit rhyme without bothering with the structure of it. Rhymes willy-nilly. First line rhymes with halfway thru the second line, second and third lines rhyme, along with halfway thru the fourth, but the fourth line doesn't rhyme with shit, and then the last four lines rhyme?? What is this nonsense, man? You've obviously put effort into making things rhyme here and there, but without any structure to it there's really no point. Too easy, too amateurish.
Structured rhyme schemes? I know what you mean. Thing is, I get bored with it honestly.
For if we should
stand against
oppression's chute,
hand in hand?
Like a marching
band, the
instruments of death will shoot
Suits will eschew our
'cock eyed views' with
Popeye brutes
Stop our shoes, from walking forth and
adopt our rules
Let's drink ourselves from debt, this holy water is the
sacred procession
The
way of the leverage could stop forces of a
satanist's possession
We've
waited for credit to pay off the
weight of the question
Wolves: "
You paying or debit? Serve us or
pray for a blessing"
Line 1: A B A
Line 2: A B
Line 3: B C C
Line 4: Slanted C...Slanted C
Line 5: ...D
Line 6: D...D
Line 7: D...D
Line 8: D...D
There's a bit of structure in thereeee lol hahaha
Third stanza - again no syllable structure. I won't rave on about it, but you know my thoughts on that already. Biggest problem with this stanza is you say your own name. Don't do that, man. If you use it as a metaphor or whatever like "My name is Reformation", that's interesting and cool and says something about the character in the piece. But don't snap the audience out of the piece to remind them who the author is. It's needless and interrupts the flow of reading.
I respect your thoughts on saying my own name. I thought about it and I put it in there..not sure why to be honest lol. Just went wild with it.
Fourth stanza - this is a great example of why I don't like OM. You don't know if you're trying to write a song, a story, or a poem, and it comes off as a bad mish-mash of the three very different writing styles. You've got the first four lines from a rap song, the next three are written more poetically, and then you've got "The tower's bell --.... *RINGS*.../"Oh shit!" - which is a writing style that really only fits prose narrative. You see what I mean? OM doesn't know what it wants to be, there's no unified writing style and it tends to just clash all the shit you like from all different sources. Sometimes it can work I guess, but in my opinion 99% of the time it doesn't. One writing style per piece, for the sake of cohesion and continuity.
That's quite true. OM hosts a collection of literature styling in a single piece. It can be chaotic to some.
Fifth red stanza - I liked this, despite the syllable count. Taken out of context of the rest of the piece it felt very rounded and well written. In context it skips straight from a stanza of "their"s and "them"s to a "we", which can be confusing. Try not to skip thru too many character perspectives in one piece, it makes it harder to follow.
They = Wolves
We = Sheep
I gotcha on the perspectives tip SPzy.
Sixth stanza - This feels like we're back to rhyming for rhyming's sake. Same deal as the first stanza, it's song-writing style, where you just fit whatever rolls off the tongue sounding cool together. A hard contrast to the fifth stanza, where your use of language was focused on imagery and the portrayal of a concept rather than rhyming.
Damn you SP, why didn't you acknowledge my alliteration lines? *Screams at you* lol
But, yes I change up styles every 'stanza' for the most part.
Red line - not a stanza, just a break between sections. I see you've capitalised 'Velvet Sheep' - if you do this, make sure you do it everywhere in the text. You shouldn't be capitalising some times and not other times when referring to the same object/person/group. If it's 'sheep' in the text it should be 'sheep' everywhere in the text. For example, in a book the first paragraph has "The patrol officer ate lunch" while another paragraph has "Across the road she could see the Patrol Officer" - you gotta choose one way of writing it and stick with it.
I feel you on this bro.
Seventh stanza - As stanzas 1 and 6, the focus is on rhyming. You still manage to convey your ideas and get your story thru, which is good.
Thank you.
Eighth stanza/outro thang - "Without unity, all else will crumble" - since unity is not an actual identifiable object itself, what exactly does "all else" refer to? All else requires an exception; it is not the same as "all things". It is ALL ELSE OTHER THAN X. 'Without unity, all things will crumble' is a correct sentence. But all else is not. "Life is like baking a cookie: without unity's egg, all else will crumble" is a correct sentence because it gives the exception; the all else and the egg. All else requires an extra object. Unity alone cannot be that object, but you can use an object to represent it; unity's egg. I dunno if that cleared that up or made it more confusing lol.
All else is universal. Without unity of correct building structures to balance out the pressure/stress the building hosts in the corners(especially) all else will crumble. Without unity in a neighborhood to keep peace, all else -- you see what I meant? It's a universal phrase, could be applicable to anywhere. If you wanted to take it there.
Alright, let's recap. What you've got here is a piece with A) an interesting story concept, and B) great use of language. You write extremely well, often using uncommon words, and expertly weave them together to make unique statements and convey interesting ideas within the overall frame of your story. Unfortunately, without a solid structure or cohesive, continuous and singular writing style throughout, the piece as a whole suffers linguistically. You've got all the right materials to build a bitchin house, but you gotta get the framework right first or the whole thing's worth shit in the end.
A good read that, with refinement, could have been a semi-professional piece worth publication. Take this feed for what you will.
Originally Posted by English
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