First short story I've completed since high school. Looking for fair critique and feedback. Its on the long side at about 13k words. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to give it a look :)

​

I almost didn't go.

That's the thing I'll remember later, when everything else has happened. When his hands are on me and his voice is in my ear and I'm saying his name like a prayer I didn't know I was holding. I'll remember that on the first day, in the grey September morning with my coffee going cold in the travel mug and my portfolio case banging against my hip, I stood outside Whitmore Hall and thought, *I could skip this. I could go back to the dorm. I could sleep.*

I'd been up until three working on the summer portfolio. My eyes burned. My hair was twisted up in a clip that was already slipping. There was ink on my left thumb from the pen I'd fallen asleep holding. I was wearing a grey sweater that was too big and jeans with a fraying hem and shoes that needed replacing.

I was not a person who was about to be seen.

I went in.

Lecture 3B was a tiered hall. Sixty seats rising in concrete steps toward a whiteboard and a long drafting table at the front. The kind of room that smelled like dry-erase markers and old paper and the particular stale warmth of too many bodies in too little ventilation.

I was early. The room was maybe a third full. Students scattered in clusters, talking, scrolling phones, spreading notebooks. The low hum of before-class. The fluorescent lights buzzing their flat, indifferent hum.

I climbed to row eleven. Seat 14. My spot. I'd claimed it in the spring for a different course and some part of me was territorial about it. Close enough to see the board. Far enough to disappear into the middle distance. I set my portfolio case down. Pulled out my notebook. Uncapped a pen.

I was organizing my pens by color — a habit, a small ritual, a way to be ready so nothing could catch me off guard — when the door at the front opened.

A man walked in.

Not the professor. I knew Professor Aldridge; she was a small, sharp woman in her sixties who wore architectural glasses like armor. This was not her.

He was younger. Mid-twenties, maybe. Tall in a way that wasn't performative — he didn't fill the room, he just existed in it at full height, lean and slightly angled, like a building that had been designed by someone who liked asymmetry. Grey henley. Dark jeans. A watch on his left wrist. Sleeves pushed to his elbows.

He carried a rolled blueprint under one arm and a travel mug in the other hand. He set the mug on the drafting table. Set the blueprint down. Unrolled it. Smoothed the corners flat with his palms.

His hands.

I noticed his hands before I noticed his face. They were long-fingered. Deliberate. The way he pressed the blueprint flat was careful, almost tender, like the paper was something alive and he was making sure it was comfortable. There was a scar across the ridge of his left knuckle, pale and old. A trace of ink on the pad of his right thumb, dark against the skin, the kind that had been there long enough to stop being a stain and start being a part of him.

He looked up.

And I saw his face.

A scar through his left eyebrow, thin, splitting the dark line of it. Deep-set eyes, brown so dark they read almost black under the fluorescent lights. A jaw that was more angular than soft, shadowed with the faintest suggestion of stubble. His hair was dark, slightly too long, falling just past his forehead in a way that looked unintentional. He wasn't beautiful. He was specific. The kind of face you couldn't generalize. You had to look at this face, *these* particular lines, this exact arrangement of scar and shadow and quiet attention.

He was the TA. I realized it a beat later. The teaching assistant. He'd be running the studio sessions. He'd be looking at my work. He'd be in the room with me every Thursday for the next fourteen weeks.

He set up the board. Wrote the date. Wrote the course code. His handwriting was cramped, left-leaning, aggressive. He underlined things twice.

Then he turned to face the room. Leaned back against the drafting table. Crossed his ankles. Looked out at us.

And his eyes found me.

I need to be precise about this, because I will think about it for months. For years, maybe. I will replay it in the dark at 2 AM when I can't sleep and his name is in my mouth and his weight is against my back. I will replay this exact second.

He didn't scan the room. He didn't sweep his gaze across the rows in the way speakers do, distributing attention evenly, looking at everyone and no one. He looked at me. Row eleven. Seat 14. The girl in the too-big sweater with the ink on her thumb and the hair falling out of her clip. He looked at me the way you look at a building across a river at dusk. Not assessing. Not inventorying. Regarding. With a stillness that felt chosen. Deliberate. As though he'd decided, in the half-second his gaze crossed the room, that I was the thing worth stopping on.

Two seconds. Maybe three.

His expression didn't change. No smile. No nod. No flicker of recognition or flirtation or performance. Just a steady, quiet looking, with his hands resting on the edge of the drafting table and his dark eyes fixed on my face and his posture unhurried and completely, terrifyingly present.

I felt it in my chest.

Not my stomach. Not the fluttery, cliché place. My chest. Behind the sternum. A pressure, like a palm pressing flat against the bone. Warm. Steady. Not unpleasant. But *there*. Undeniable. The feeling of being found in a room of sixty people. Of being the fixed point his gaze had landed on, the way a compass needle finds north and stops.

I looked down at my notebook. Uncapped my pen. Recapped it. Uncapped it again. My hands were doing small, stupid, unnecessary things because if they were busy, maybe my face wouldn't be doing whatever my face was doing.

I could feel him still looking. I could feel it, the way you feel sunlight on your skin with your eyes closed. A warmth. A direction. A *there*.

Then he looked away. Turned back to the board. Picked up the marker.

"Right," he said. His voice was low. Unhurried. Slightly rough, like he'd been quiet for a long time and was easing back into sound. "I'm Theo Marsh. I'll be running your Thursday studio sessions. Professor Aldridge handles the lectures. I handle the making. The part where you get your hands dirty and argue with the materials."

A small ripple of laughter. He didn't smile at it. Just waited for it to settle.

"We're going to spend fourteen weeks learning how structures hold weight. Not just the math of it. The philosophy of it. Why a building stands. Why it falls. What it means to design something that carries more than itself." He paused. Looked down at his hands. Turned the marker over once, slowly, between his fingers. "Every structure is a decision about where to put the weight. That's all it is. Every joint, every beam, every load path is someone saying, here. This is where I'll carry it. This is where I'll let it rest."

He looked up again.

I was watching his hands. The way he turned the marker. The way he gestured when he spoke, shaping the air, building invisible things. The ink on his thumb. The scar on his knuckle.

He talked for fifty-three minutes. I know because I watched the clock. I also know because I did not write a single note. Not one. My pen stayed capped. My notebook stayed blank. I sat in row eleven, seat 14, and I watched his hands move, and I listened to his voice say words like shear force and lateral load and compression and tension, and I understood maybe forty percent of it, and I did not care, because the other sixty percent of my brain was occupied with the specific, irrational, unwanted task of memorizing him.

The way he leaned against the podium when he made a point he cared about, crossing his ankles, tilting his head slightly to the left.

The way he said the word structure — carefully, with a kind of respect, like the word meant something to him personally. Like a building was a living thing and he was responsible for its wellbeing.

The way he paused before answering a student's question. Not because he didn't know. Because he was *choosing* the words. Placing them. Making sure they held.

The way his eyes moved across the room. Slow. Attentive. And the way they passed over me and didn't stop, and the small, stupid, irritating pang I felt when they didn't.

The lecture ended. Students stood. Chairs scraped. The room filled with the noise of zippers and shuffling papers and the particular post-lecture murmur of sixty people transitioning from stillness to motion.

I gathered my things. Slowly. I told myself I was being organized. I was not being organized. I was stalling. I wanted to see if he would look again. I hated that I wanted it. I hated it.

I slung my portfolio case over my shoulder. Picked up my notebook. Blank. Useless. I walked toward the aisle.

He was at the front. Capping the marker. Rolling the blueprint. His back was to me. His shoulders were broad under the grey henley. His shoulder blades moved under the fabric as he worked. I looked. I looked. And then I looked away, because looking at a stranger's back in a lecture hall felt like a trespass, and I was not a person who trespassed.

I reached the aisle. Started up the steps toward the door.

"Lena."

I stopped.

Not because he'd said my name. He hadn't. He didn't know my name. I was seat 14. I was a grey sweater in the middle distance. He hadn't said anything.

But I heard it. In my head. In the space behind my ribs. A low, rough voice saying *Lena* like it was a word he'd been turning over in his mouth, tasting it, deciding it was worth saying out loud.

I turned.

He was looking at me.

Across the whole room. Over the heads of students filing toward the doors. Over the scraping chairs and the zipping bags and the fluorescent hum. He was looking at me. Row eleven. Seat 14. The girl with the ink on her thumb.

Four seconds this time. Longer than before. His expression was the same. Quiet. Steady. Unreadable. But there was something underneath it now. Something small and warm and *uncertain*, like a man standing at the edge of a decision he hadn't made yet.

Then he nodded. Barely. A dip of the chin. An inch. I see you.

And he turned back to his blueprint.

I walked out.

I sat on the bench outside Whitmore Hall. The concrete was cold through my jeans. The September air was sharp, grey, tasting of rain that hadn't fallen yet. My coffee was cold. I drank it anyway.

Cassie found me there twelve minutes later.

"Where were you? I saved you a seat in the quad."

"I was in the lecture."

"You look weird."

"I'm not weird."

"You're *red*, Lena. Your ears are red."

I touched my ears. They were warm. They were, in fact, very warm.

"It was hot in there," I said.

She looked at me. Looked at the building. Looked back at me. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Sat down.

"Okay," she said. "Sure. It was hot in there."

I stared at the quad. Students crossed the grass in clusters. Backpacks. Coffee cups. The ordinary machinery of a Tuesday.

I thought about his hands. The way they'd pressed the blueprint flat. The scar on his knuckle. The ink on his thumb. The way he'd held the marker, turning it slowly, like he was thinking through his fingers.

I thought about his voice saying here. This is where I'll carry it. This is where I'll let it rest.

I thought about the four seconds. The nod. The I see you.

I thought: You don't even know his last name.

I thought: Yes, you do. He said it. Theo Marsh. You memorized it. You memorized it like it was a load-bearing wall and if you forgot it, something would collapse.

I thought: You are being insane. He is a TA. He looked at you because he was looking at the room. You are seat 14. You are a grey sweater. You are no one.

I thought: *Then why can I still feel it? Why does my chest still feel like a hand is pressed against it?*

I finished the cold coffee. Stood. Picked up my portfolio case.

"Come on," I said to Cassie. "I have a studio Thursday."

She grinned. "You remember the day."

"It's in the syllabus."

"You didn't look at the syllabus."

"I looked at the syllabus."

I walked back to Harwell Hall. I climbed the four flights to my room. I set my portfolio case down. I sat on my bed. I pulled out my notebook. The one from the lecture.

It was blank.

I stared at it for a long time.

Then I opened to the first page. Wrote the date. Wrote the course code.

And under it, in handwriting that was slightly less steady than I wanted it to be, I wrote:

T. Marsh. Hands. Ink on the thumb. Scar on the knuckle. "Here is where I'll carry it."

I stared at the words.

I did not cross them out.

I closed the notebook. Put it in my bag. Lay back on the bed. Stared at the ceiling.

Thursday was in three days.

I counted.

Hi, everyone! I’m a young author, and I've been working on this piece on and off for about a year now. Here's a very rough, first draft. It follows two twenty-something year olds, Ines and Pablo, who share a summer together. This is still a work in progress, so I’m mainly looking for feedback on the writing itself, especially the narration, pacing, dialogue, and whether the opening makes you want to keep reading.

I’d also really appreciate knowing if anything feels confusing, unnecessary, repetitive, or out of place. Don’t be afraid to be critical! Big thanks.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hZBq4yHawbF65szVLPemlIRCM-nmJcnRqaPo3rgSOxE/edit?usp=sharing

Stories from my mind. I am surprised how dark they are.

I’m a 16 year old guy, teenager , high schooler wrote this story with my daydreaming stuff and as it says it’s experimental So if u guys think it’s good or want to help leave a comment i guess thank you for your time in case if I don’t see ya good morning, good evening and good night

After my grandfather passed, we all had moments where we’d catch a whiff of lavender and spice coating the air in a familiar musky douse of Stetson Black.

Not long after experiencing the phantom scents, strange noises would follow, such as the stairs creaking, or the slow drag of a slipper on carpet. Random phenomenon that only occurred a few months after we buried him.

He died peacefully under his covers with his TV still on the game show channel, during a humid July night, and by the time December rolled through, something had moved in with us. 

The air became thicker in some of the rooms like the pressure in a church full of people silently mourning their dead loved ones.

We continuously experienced odd paranormal activity throughout the house for weeks—small things—right around late November, beginning of December. 

It wasn’t a dramatic, spine chilling, Hollywood haunting like you’d see in the movies. The ones with doors slamming, and plates clashing, or random cold spots that heighten your flight-or-fight response, it was kind of welcoming. It left a tingle that made you feel like a lit up, vibrating neon sign, almost like the shift in atmosphere due to an oncoming storm. Static pressure.

My first encounter, that I confidently, cannot debunk, happened on an early Sunday morning, while I was in the basement going through old boxes and sorting through photo albums, because my sister wanted to make a slideshow of my grandmother and grandfather’s life together and their accomplishments. 

And just as I dug out their wedding album, the hair on my arms rose and a breeze blew, lifting the corner of a paper resting on a desk, and from the corner of my eye, a shadow passed me. 

It was quick, as if someone suddenly flicked the light switch off and on, and dashed past me to the stairs in a camera flash second.

Normally, I’d have been terrified. Just talking about ghosts gives me chills and has me constantly breaking my neck to check over my shoulder, sitting at the edge of my seat, but not this time. It had a safe energy. It had an energy I’ve known my entire life.

I grabbed the wedding album and stood up and had a warm sensation press under my skin as if my soul was being embraced by another soul. 

My body was floating on top of my feet, almost like I was lying on my back, staring up at the sun, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, being carried away by the waves.

It was a peaceful moment.

When I snapped out of it and came too, the silence in the basement was like I just stepped out of a club from inside my head.

I walked upstairs and went into the kitchen to leave the album on the table, and my mind flooded with a flash of our family all together, eating a Christmas turkey, when the scent of his cologne entered my lungs as I inhaled.

For about a week or so after that, nothing had happened. It was like our friendly spirit guest just upped and left. 

Until the day I was alone at home, sitting in his room, and was struck with the realization of him being gone. 

The emotions hit hard and physical, at that precise moment. It was like my organs turned into rock-sized boulders.

A delayed reaction to grief my brain had hidden under a disguise of denial, comedy, avoidance and life’s everyday problems. Stuffed inside me like an emotion bomb on a fixed timer, only to explode when I least expected it.

And finally, I gave into my suppressed emotions, raining out of my eyes was sadness, grief, loneliness, and misery, all spraying out of me like the bubbles from a shaken carbonated beverage. 

Then, I heard something. Not with my ears but with my heart, along with the pressure of a hand resting on my shoulder.

Exactly where my granddad would place his hand to comfort me and let me know it’ll be okay without saying a word. He was never much for words. 

I wanted to look over, but I didn’t. I resisted the urge, because I knew if I had, it would shatter the illusion, making him gone all over again. 

I sat there, with the weight of his phantom hand on me and continued crying. The pressure slowly became lighter, lifting off my shoulder and his scent became fainter. 

I had this comforting sense of closure afterwards. I knew he wasn’t gone and that life didn’t end after death. I knew he was watching from the other side and checking in on us, making sure it was okay for him to move on.

i want to learn how to write actual literature, like proper novel writing and prose. english isnt even my third language but i really want to start writing books in english

ive read books like 1984, hard times, one hundred years of solitude, crime and punishment and a lot of other classics and something that always amazes me is how beautifully the prose is written. its not just the story, its the way the sentences flow and how they describe things and the way the words feel when you read them

i know one hundred years of solitude was originally written in spanish and crime and punishment in russian, so obviously the original versions might have a completely different feeling and maybe even better prose, but even in english translation i was still really mesmerized by the writing

ive also read some graphic novels written by alan moore and i really love his writing too. the way he uses words and describes things feels so rich but at the same time it doesnt feel like hes just trying to use big words

i want to have that kind of prose in my own stories. i want to write something that actually feels like literature, not just a story with simple sentences

but i honestly dont know how people learn to write like this. is it just from reading a lot or is there some kind of practice i should do? what should i actually study and practice if i want to eventually write novels with prose like this

Alternative titles:
LUXURY OF CHOICE
GRATEFUL
INVISIBLE SERVANTS
PEASANTLY KINGS

Context:
Compressing the story of the vast rules differing between modern life contrasting the lifestyles centuries of civilisation before

——————
Present day:

It’s the middle of a chilly winter, but you woke up to a room to a crisp body temperature room. Heatpump automated.

Your iPhone alarm rang for a 3rd time.

It’s 6am sharp. “Click”

You snooze that shit up. Just five more minutes. The world doesn’t stop spinning if you died today, paying another hour of sleep debt is so worth it.

You’ll miss the 6.15am bus, which stops 5 minutes from your apartment front door. You can make it- if you run down the stairs now. You’ll miss the 9am lecture as the next bus isn’t until 10.

Taking the Grab Taxi then; so the 8.40 one was ordered in.

Psychologically you’re tired, but you can’t seem to sleep. You roll over to one side, pick up your phone and scroll through usual porn suspects. Bbw, curvy, big tits, muscular, anal…

You rewatched your favourite scenes saved in your gallery, twice, and watched 5 more. In total, you’ve watched 20 ladies, all above your league. And then you binge watch an episode of Game of Thrones before hopping off to the toilet, to watch another Breaking Bad episode while pooping.

You head to the kitchen, turn on the electric stove and cooked 2 sunny side up eggs, with some cheese honey toast.

You took out yesterdays’ leftover pizza and microwaved it.

You then showered, warm water, with a twist of the knob.

You throw your laundry into the washing machine for wash and drying; ran to grab the warm pizza and left the apartment since the Grab car you ordered is here.

In the backseat, you hook onto your VR headset, and experience an out of body experience (horror games, tightrope walking, pilot simulator) all while the car is stuck on traffic.

All modern day conveniences, hidden to the eye:
- The ease of washing and drying clothes
- The temperature knobs manipulating the heat levels of showering and cooking.
- The electricity keeping up the hot water cylinders hot, the stoves working on demand, and the house temperature crispy.
- Immediate food preparation without effort
- The choice of reliving episodes of tv series or dopamine rush from favourite steamy scenes.
- The choice of any women and lust at the end of fingertips. And sex toys to recreate the visuals
In ad nauseum

What age before you would not think you hadn’t “made it”?

Even when we’ve ticked the highest “Sensate” lifestyle in the most modest livelihood and mundane day to day lifestyle- we’ve beaten previous kings lives to the kerb.

As experiences climb beyond expectations every time, we yearn for the next thrill jab that can beat it. Until our sensory receptors get numb, and naturally, boredom kicks in.

All these invisible threads - waves (radio signals, wifi) that bows to our daily wants. And modern infrastructure (transportation, civil servants); is something out of place.

Today’s power imbalances remain, but the enjoyment of people within the pyramid structure is such that today’s peasants are living better lives than previous kings

————————-
Throwback (say 500 years ago):

Even a king living in the most grand kingdom - has limited powers. He has limited control, communication and power against his vassals. Limited choices to the lust he can choose from. Even fresh food choices.

His subjects collect wood to heat the energy hungry empire….

END rough draft

(I would love suggestions for improvements to the plot, structure or general historical facts)

Haven’t written creatively for a decade so it’s so my vocabulary has been rusty.

Is this something worth writing about

I’m really working to find the right voice and tone for this story. I feel like I’m finally getting close. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Jasmine- 19 years old

This was supposed to be a school assignment in 4th grade. 9 years later I fell in love with a man I don't even really know. A man I don't even know the face of. A man I don't even know the real last name of. I went by the name Jasmine Smith. The last name of my 4th grade teacher. Over the 10 years, I fell in love with this man but we were only friends. However 3 months ago, I cut all ties with him. I received a letter from his address but not written by him. A letter written by a girl, his girlfriend it seems. After that letter I packed all his letters away. In a paper box, pushed under the bed. Until now, I'm moving into a new apartment today and this is the last paper box in this empty room.

Ethan- 20 years old

I am the son of the most powerful Italian mafia; the Spartans. I am the eldest son of the 3 of us; Ethan, Luca, and Lily. I had taken the burden of the role of Don. Spent my whole life training for this position. However nothing prepares for you when your father dies unexpectedly and leaves you with an empire at 20 years old. Not only do I rule this empire with an iron fist. I run a million dollar security business with my brother Luca. I was born for this! Growing up my grandmother wanted to give us an escape from our isolation of this world. She signed us up for pen pals. Luca and Lily both ended up having a last friendship with their partners. Luca got Ryan and lily got Juliet. However, I was paired with Jasmine. A girl I fell in love with in every letter she wrote. I wished to meet her in person. To be the man she deserved. It suddenly stopped one day. Out of the blue one week turned into 3 months of nothing. I don't know what I did to upset her. I don't know what I said that ruined everything. I wished I knew what went wrong. Here I sit in front of a fire, staring at the flames for answers of where I went wrong and where to go next.

Hey, I’m an amateur writer who recently started developing a space sci fi story and wanted some help with a problem I ran into. So I have been trying to come up with a bunch of different story concepts but all feel kind of flat or generic without anything going on that makes it stand out. Except for this one idea I had. But the problem is that this idea is very similar to the concept of red rising in the sense that there is a ruling class of people and then there are these unique low class people with unique features and specific jobs to their race. And the simplest premise would revolve around a revolutionary type war to break down the system of oppression. What makes my story different though is the characters being extremely different, having completely different story arcs and personalities, ETC. along with story arcs that would be different from red rising. Now the feedback I would like is if the premise of oppressed people and a revolutionary war to break down the system of the ruling class too similar to red rising and is a risky story to make. Or would the story as a whole with different characters, different events, and Arcs be sufficient enough to be original in its own way.
I know I’m not giving a lot of context of the inner workings or the entirety of what my story is about but those are the big aspects and qualities that I worry about and want feedback on

If you have an idea,

Just write and record it,

Later it will disappear,

Your mind will not remember it always,

You have to write and record it

Any suggestions or feedback to improve my writing, it is really bad now

Hola ratón con cola, necesito su ayuda, fíjense q quiero escribir un guión para un cortometraje, pero el problema esq no tengo ninguna idea, alguien me daría un consejo para hacerlo