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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #141 - "Irretrievable"
- Thread starter Mike M
- Start date
- Status
Patience, grasshopper.
British Monsoon
Member
Speranza - 942 words
Password .
Let me know if the PDF works and all that jazz, I don't normally submit entries like this.
Password .
Let me know if the PDF works and all that jazz, I don't normally submit entries like this.
John Dunbar
correct about everything
Daring to Dream
(~1,200 words)
(~1,200 words)
Death by a Thousand Cuts (1950)
Until I get up this morning on the West Coast, or until someone beats me to the punch : P
And the nominees are:
Ourobolus -- That's Probably How He Found Out
Aaron -- That Unforgettable Inedible
lastflowers -- A Twenty Year old Ragged Teddy Bear
Mike M -- The Gap
Ward -- Sometimes Busting a Myth Should be Handled by Professionals, Other Times It's Kind of Fun
Ashes -- god folk
Tangent -- Bound
Bootaaay -- Speranza
John Dunbar -- Daring to Dream
kaepernickehs -- Irretreivable
Cyan -- Death by a Thousand Cuts
Nezumi -- Words of Silence
GRW810 -- Beyond Reach
Ourobolus -- That's Probably How He Found Out
Aaron -- That Unforgettable Inedible
lastflowers -- A Twenty Year old Ragged Teddy Bear
Mike M -- The Gap
Ward -- Sometimes Busting a Myth Should be Handled by Professionals, Other Times It's Kind of Fun
Ashes -- god folk
Tangent -- Bound
Bootaaay -- Speranza
John Dunbar -- Daring to Dream
kaepernickehs -- Irretreivable
Cyan -- Death by a Thousand Cuts
Nezumi -- Words of Silence
GRW810 -- Beyond Reach
3 points and I didn't even write this week. That's just how good I am.
Well, its no surprise that Cyan won the round of fake voting we had going on before hand. He was really put over the top by voting for himself three times. Possibly six, as we cant immediately discount that Irish is in fact an alt account of his.
Anyway, real feedback and votes start now!
Ourobolus: I didnt get it until the second reading, which just seems really embarrassing for me. I think I was probably thrown off by the mention of adopted brothers, since as far as I know of biblical trivia, I didnt know Jesus supposedly had more than one brother, or that they were adopted. The characters dialogue was very modern and colloquial for supposedly taking place in biblical times. In and of itself thats not necessarily a problem, but I guess in my mind it builds a bit of an expectation of screwball comedy? Blame it on Monty Python movies. I dont think the gag you were shooting for ultimately worked out quite as planned, because Im relatively certain that the Virgin Mary didnt stay a virgin after Jesus was born. Its not impossible that a couple would be married and never have had sex (Ive read some interesting articles about such people), but its such an abnormality that it needs far more exploration than a confession of chastity cut off in mid sentence.
Aaron: I really liked this one, the concept of an animal contemplating what humans must have been like after they departed the world is an interesting one. I was a little bit confused by a few of the descriptions from the animals perspective, i.e. inert prey with thin round shells. Is that supposed to be canned goods? And what was it that the android threw overboard, an axe? I think the only real misstep here was the description of the hounds reflection with the spikes along its spine, as that just opens up a can of worms of questions about whether they were like that because they were genetically engineered by the humans, or if they had evolved that way. If they had evolved that way, that raises questions about how long the humans have been gone, and whether canned goods would still be edible, buildings standing, etc. etc. Its an inadvertent loose thread that just begs to be picked at and unravel the whole thing.
lastflowers: The dialogue was natural-sounding and there was enough to glean to the implicit story even though much of it went unstated. There were numerous technical faults though, as you switched verb tenses repeatedly (within the same paragraph, on some occasions), and sometimes you had punctuation inside of quotations, and sometimes outside. It also felt like there were actions and transitions missing for some of the characters, for instance Mac just appearing as though from the ether in the kitchen to drink coffee without mentioning that he had come into the room. Alice was implied to be present in the first scene only because it had been previously stated that there were two married couples, but she never had a mention or name until the second scene. With that many characters in this short of a word limit, it can be tough to juggle their comings and goings without burning through your word count, but it was jarring. I feel like the disappearance of the titular stuffed bear is symbolic of something, but I dont know what it is because Im terrible at symbolism.
Mike M: Im not certain how successful this was. To me, what the MC underwent is probably one of the worst possible things I can imagine, and reminds me of some childrens book I read when I was little about a kid who dressed up as an old man for Halloween, went into a house or something, and then came out as an actual old man. It was profoundly disturbing to me. I tried to convey that in this, but I dont communicate emotion very well, so in my view its just 1500 words of world building followed by 500 words of theme as GRW810 is wont to deride : P Its really frustrating to conceive of this thing that I would consider unfathomably devastating being done in some horribly misguided sense of good, and just not get across the unfathomable devastation of it all
Ward: The interesting stuff was the experiment, which had already concluded before the story even started. The rest of it is just banter between a pair of likely idiots and a roommate who is entirely too unconcerned about the fact that one of the aforementioned idiots has just destroyed their TV. The fact that Mike even comes out and says that he was really mad until he learned about the dead LED seems off because I was getting so little anger from the dialogue, he seemed downright sedate about it. I mostly felt like I was being forced to eavesdrop on people I didnt know having a conversation I did not find terribly interesting, but I would have totally loved to have seen them drop the TV in the first place.
Ashes: Im pretty sure I liked this one? There were some things I found confusing, most notably that the first paragraph establishes the story as being a first person narration, only for the narrator to never interact with the characters of be acknowledged in any way (Indeed, the usage of I disappears almost immediately, leaving much of the story in 3rd person by default). I suppose that could be interpreted that the narrator is God or something, but then the fact that a omniscient god wouldnt know what two characters are talking about because theyre out of earshot would be a stretch. I also found Ksenias behavior in the church somewhat baffling where she randomly curls up into the fetal position on the ground for no discernable reason. That seemed a very odd response to what was going on.
Tangent: Apologies in advance, but Im about to totally over think this: How were some of the balloons younger or older when they were out of the same package? How would balloons know that sometimes children hear them? Do inflated balloons come back to the balloon factory and tell them that? How could they float away when it was explicitly stated that the mother was blowing them up with her mouth? Does she blow helium somehow? Pedantic nitpicking aside, though, I thought you nailed the secondary objective, and I really cannot overstate how much I loved the totally bleak and hopeless note it ended on. I honestly got a legitimate mwa ha ha ha villain laugh out of that.
Bootaaay: Short and sweet. My one quibble would be that in a piece this short, I didnt think it was necessary to revisit the fact that the media wouldnt stop talking about the impending launch since it had already been established to be the case only a couple paragraphs beforehand. Outside of that, I thought it was absolutely solid from every angle.
John Dunbar: Felt like I was reading an allegory for recent minimum wage threads/PoliGAF topics in the OT where conservatives try to assign some intrinsic virtuousness to working for its own sake. The end result is that it came across as kind of like one of those web comics where the author offers up a refutation to a straw man argument, even if that wasnt your original intent. Some of the stuff towards the start would have read better in active voice, but what was there wasnt grammatically wrong or anything. I dont know how I feel about this, its either a polemic over wage inequality thats harmed by its sci-fi setting, or a sci-fi story dragged down by the modern-day polemics of wage inequality.
kaepernickehs: Mostly does an excellent job of verbally encapsulating what the infatuation phase of a relationship is like, but could have benefited greatly from more proofreading. I spied multiple instances of typos/wrong words (they instead of the, cramp instead of cramped, fex instead of few.), and phrasing like I can feel myself being imprinted by you seems awkward. I imagine that this is imprinting being used in the same sense as a duckling imprinting on the first moving thing it sees as its mother, but youve kind of phrased the action inside out from the more sensical I can feel myself imprinting on you. It brings down an otherwise good effort.
Cyan: Well firstly, I didnt know there were multiple destructions of the library of Alexandria, so at the second time jump I was off to Wikipedia to look shit up about that. Learn something new every day. Unfortunately, you have invoked that most dreaded and untamable of plot devices, the fell time travel story. Why couldnt he just jump earlier to before the fires or the sacking after missing the first times? And I cant help but feel that the fortune-cookie wisdom offered by the librarian at the end is directly undermined by everything else that came before it in the story: Yes, you cant fight entropy and the decline of greatness, but Caesars arson and Theophiluss ordered sacking categorically do not fit that definition. Those were willful acts that absolutely were single focal points that he could have theoretically traveled to and prevented. Even if he could not have preserved the entire library for all perpetuity, its difficult to imagine a scenario where preventing those events would have zero effect. Nice use of humor though, and otherwise well written aside from the inherent pitfalls of writing about time travel : )
Nezumi: I really liked the notion of how statues communicate with one another, even if it did kind of come in as a fairly lengthy tangent right after the introduction of Percy that almost made me forget about him. I was also a little confused by the ice sculpture being described as being made of some kind of opaque stone, as I immediately thought oh, its an ice sculpture, but then thought wait, maybe not, Ive never seen opaque ice. Granted Ive seen ice that wasnt perfectly transparent, but never ice that didnt have at least some degree of translucency to it. It had a very mythological feel to it, but not quite since I guess it didnt explain anything like myths usually do. All around well-composed though.
GRW810: This was a nice try to inflict teh feels upon the reader, but unfortunately for you I have a cold and unfeeling heart of frozen coal and am only capable of picking nits! One problem I had with this was the repeated mentions of how his mother looked better than ever, despite suffering such a severe degradation of her cognitive abilities. That just seemed off, to me. I get that it was supposed to mean that without the memory of her spiteful relationship, she would no longer have an angry face or what have you, but Id be surprised if such a downturn werent accompanied by other health effects as well. Felt it was a bit odd that for all his sisters concern about the relationship between the narrator and their mother that the fact that the mother had gotten to this state and moved into a nursing home was a surprise to him. Right at the start, were told that Rachel only calls if its bad news, does mom has dementia necessitating being moved into an assisted care home not count as bad news? I just feel like the events propelling the story could have been shored up a wee bit better.
Votes:
1.) Aaron
2.) Nezumi
3.) Bootaaay
Anyway, real feedback and votes start now!
Ourobolus: I didnt get it until the second reading, which just seems really embarrassing for me. I think I was probably thrown off by the mention of adopted brothers, since as far as I know of biblical trivia, I didnt know Jesus supposedly had more than one brother, or that they were adopted. The characters dialogue was very modern and colloquial for supposedly taking place in biblical times. In and of itself thats not necessarily a problem, but I guess in my mind it builds a bit of an expectation of screwball comedy? Blame it on Monty Python movies. I dont think the gag you were shooting for ultimately worked out quite as planned, because Im relatively certain that the Virgin Mary didnt stay a virgin after Jesus was born. Its not impossible that a couple would be married and never have had sex (Ive read some interesting articles about such people), but its such an abnormality that it needs far more exploration than a confession of chastity cut off in mid sentence.
Aaron: I really liked this one, the concept of an animal contemplating what humans must have been like after they departed the world is an interesting one. I was a little bit confused by a few of the descriptions from the animals perspective, i.e. inert prey with thin round shells. Is that supposed to be canned goods? And what was it that the android threw overboard, an axe? I think the only real misstep here was the description of the hounds reflection with the spikes along its spine, as that just opens up a can of worms of questions about whether they were like that because they were genetically engineered by the humans, or if they had evolved that way. If they had evolved that way, that raises questions about how long the humans have been gone, and whether canned goods would still be edible, buildings standing, etc. etc. Its an inadvertent loose thread that just begs to be picked at and unravel the whole thing.
lastflowers: The dialogue was natural-sounding and there was enough to glean to the implicit story even though much of it went unstated. There were numerous technical faults though, as you switched verb tenses repeatedly (within the same paragraph, on some occasions), and sometimes you had punctuation inside of quotations, and sometimes outside. It also felt like there were actions and transitions missing for some of the characters, for instance Mac just appearing as though from the ether in the kitchen to drink coffee without mentioning that he had come into the room. Alice was implied to be present in the first scene only because it had been previously stated that there were two married couples, but she never had a mention or name until the second scene. With that many characters in this short of a word limit, it can be tough to juggle their comings and goings without burning through your word count, but it was jarring. I feel like the disappearance of the titular stuffed bear is symbolic of something, but I dont know what it is because Im terrible at symbolism.
Mike M: Im not certain how successful this was. To me, what the MC underwent is probably one of the worst possible things I can imagine, and reminds me of some childrens book I read when I was little about a kid who dressed up as an old man for Halloween, went into a house or something, and then came out as an actual old man. It was profoundly disturbing to me. I tried to convey that in this, but I dont communicate emotion very well, so in my view its just 1500 words of world building followed by 500 words of theme as GRW810 is wont to deride : P Its really frustrating to conceive of this thing that I would consider unfathomably devastating being done in some horribly misguided sense of good, and just not get across the unfathomable devastation of it all
Ward: The interesting stuff was the experiment, which had already concluded before the story even started. The rest of it is just banter between a pair of likely idiots and a roommate who is entirely too unconcerned about the fact that one of the aforementioned idiots has just destroyed their TV. The fact that Mike even comes out and says that he was really mad until he learned about the dead LED seems off because I was getting so little anger from the dialogue, he seemed downright sedate about it. I mostly felt like I was being forced to eavesdrop on people I didnt know having a conversation I did not find terribly interesting, but I would have totally loved to have seen them drop the TV in the first place.
Ashes: Im pretty sure I liked this one? There were some things I found confusing, most notably that the first paragraph establishes the story as being a first person narration, only for the narrator to never interact with the characters of be acknowledged in any way (Indeed, the usage of I disappears almost immediately, leaving much of the story in 3rd person by default). I suppose that could be interpreted that the narrator is God or something, but then the fact that a omniscient god wouldnt know what two characters are talking about because theyre out of earshot would be a stretch. I also found Ksenias behavior in the church somewhat baffling where she randomly curls up into the fetal position on the ground for no discernable reason. That seemed a very odd response to what was going on.
Tangent: Apologies in advance, but Im about to totally over think this: How were some of the balloons younger or older when they were out of the same package? How would balloons know that sometimes children hear them? Do inflated balloons come back to the balloon factory and tell them that? How could they float away when it was explicitly stated that the mother was blowing them up with her mouth? Does she blow helium somehow? Pedantic nitpicking aside, though, I thought you nailed the secondary objective, and I really cannot overstate how much I loved the totally bleak and hopeless note it ended on. I honestly got a legitimate mwa ha ha ha villain laugh out of that.
Bootaaay: Short and sweet. My one quibble would be that in a piece this short, I didnt think it was necessary to revisit the fact that the media wouldnt stop talking about the impending launch since it had already been established to be the case only a couple paragraphs beforehand. Outside of that, I thought it was absolutely solid from every angle.
John Dunbar: Felt like I was reading an allegory for recent minimum wage threads/PoliGAF topics in the OT where conservatives try to assign some intrinsic virtuousness to working for its own sake. The end result is that it came across as kind of like one of those web comics where the author offers up a refutation to a straw man argument, even if that wasnt your original intent. Some of the stuff towards the start would have read better in active voice, but what was there wasnt grammatically wrong or anything. I dont know how I feel about this, its either a polemic over wage inequality thats harmed by its sci-fi setting, or a sci-fi story dragged down by the modern-day polemics of wage inequality.
kaepernickehs: Mostly does an excellent job of verbally encapsulating what the infatuation phase of a relationship is like, but could have benefited greatly from more proofreading. I spied multiple instances of typos/wrong words (they instead of the, cramp instead of cramped, fex instead of few.), and phrasing like I can feel myself being imprinted by you seems awkward. I imagine that this is imprinting being used in the same sense as a duckling imprinting on the first moving thing it sees as its mother, but youve kind of phrased the action inside out from the more sensical I can feel myself imprinting on you. It brings down an otherwise good effort.
Cyan: Well firstly, I didnt know there were multiple destructions of the library of Alexandria, so at the second time jump I was off to Wikipedia to look shit up about that. Learn something new every day. Unfortunately, you have invoked that most dreaded and untamable of plot devices, the fell time travel story. Why couldnt he just jump earlier to before the fires or the sacking after missing the first times? And I cant help but feel that the fortune-cookie wisdom offered by the librarian at the end is directly undermined by everything else that came before it in the story: Yes, you cant fight entropy and the decline of greatness, but Caesars arson and Theophiluss ordered sacking categorically do not fit that definition. Those were willful acts that absolutely were single focal points that he could have theoretically traveled to and prevented. Even if he could not have preserved the entire library for all perpetuity, its difficult to imagine a scenario where preventing those events would have zero effect. Nice use of humor though, and otherwise well written aside from the inherent pitfalls of writing about time travel : )
Nezumi: I really liked the notion of how statues communicate with one another, even if it did kind of come in as a fairly lengthy tangent right after the introduction of Percy that almost made me forget about him. I was also a little confused by the ice sculpture being described as being made of some kind of opaque stone, as I immediately thought oh, its an ice sculpture, but then thought wait, maybe not, Ive never seen opaque ice. Granted Ive seen ice that wasnt perfectly transparent, but never ice that didnt have at least some degree of translucency to it. It had a very mythological feel to it, but not quite since I guess it didnt explain anything like myths usually do. All around well-composed though.
GRW810: This was a nice try to inflict teh feels upon the reader, but unfortunately for you I have a cold and unfeeling heart of frozen coal and am only capable of picking nits! One problem I had with this was the repeated mentions of how his mother looked better than ever, despite suffering such a severe degradation of her cognitive abilities. That just seemed off, to me. I get that it was supposed to mean that without the memory of her spiteful relationship, she would no longer have an angry face or what have you, but Id be surprised if such a downturn werent accompanied by other health effects as well. Felt it was a bit odd that for all his sisters concern about the relationship between the narrator and their mother that the fact that the mother had gotten to this state and moved into a nursing home was a surprise to him. Right at the start, were told that Rachel only calls if its bad news, does mom has dementia necessitating being moved into an assisted care home not count as bad news? I just feel like the events propelling the story could have been shored up a wee bit better.
Votes:
1.) Aaron
2.) Nezumi
3.) Bootaaay
British Monsoon
Member
Some meagre comments;
Ourobolus - fun concept and I like the title. The familiar, modern tone helped cover the conceit of the story, but I felt the reveal (or Jesus's realisation) came across as somewhat abrubt.
Aaron - really liked the premise of this one and the ending was excellent, but if I had one nitpick it'd be that I found the jump into the paragraph with the hound's 'new companion' to be a bit jarring.
lastflowers - I thought the ending was a bit lacking in impact, but loved the tone of the piece. It's well written, you do a good job with the dialogue and the characters, but it feels more like a snapshot of a moment than a story with a beginning, middle and end.
Mike M - I perhaps would have spent more time playing up the unique aspect of Marcus' punishment beforehand. You mention the scars at the beginning, but there's nothing hinting toward their origin until much later. Incidentally, there's nothing overtly futuristic until he gets on the bus, which threw me for a loop for a second. That being said, I thought this was a really good entry, well written and with a strong character at the centre. I found myself sympathising with Marcus well before the extent of his punishment had been revealed and, as for your worries about being unable to communicate the "unfathomable devastation" of the situation, I wouldn't worry in that regard.
Ward - other than Jeff, I found the dialogue to be lacking in personality. Mark and Roger felt fairly interchangable. Also, I thought it was weird that Mark wasn't more irate, or at all irate about the whole thing and there didn't seem to be much explanation for it, other than Jeff's easy going nature. The conversation flowed smoothly enough and was well written, but I don't think it's enough to carry the fairly thin story.
Ashes - I was disappointed that you abandonned the narative tone early on and didn't return to it, but this was a good read, although I think it went a bit over my head.
Tangent - this was a fun read and I loved the bitter-sweet ending, but perhaps would have liked to have seen the story told from Maya's perspective.
John Dunbar - well written and I liked the ending. The whole thing put me in mind of Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, but yours had a more sinister tone with the whole not wanting to inspire dreams of a better life among the populace.
kaepernickehs - I enjoyed reading this and thought the last line was pretty great. Not much more to add, but the whole thing flowed very well.
Cyan - this was a really intriguing concept, although the ending didn't do much for me. Also, I think I would have liked to see some of the future from which Agent Brooks originated.
Nezumi - love, love the concept and the detailing of the statue's language and you wrap it all up well. However, I think there needed to be a reason why the ice statue couldn't speak - it seemed to me that you could have achieved Percy's same sense of loss with a statue he only got to know for a few fleeting moments, rather than one that inexplicably couldn't communicate (presumably because of its transient nature?).
GRW810 - this one seriously struck a chord and I felt the ending was really very touching, but the opening few paragraphs didn't sit well with me, for some reason. That being said, it was the only part of the story that hinted towards the main characters life or why he'd be estranged from his mother.
Votes;
1. Aaron
2. Nezumi
3. GRW810
HM; lastflowers, Mike M, John Dunbar
Ourobolus - fun concept and I like the title. The familiar, modern tone helped cover the conceit of the story, but I felt the reveal (or Jesus's realisation) came across as somewhat abrubt.
Aaron - really liked the premise of this one and the ending was excellent, but if I had one nitpick it'd be that I found the jump into the paragraph with the hound's 'new companion' to be a bit jarring.
lastflowers - I thought the ending was a bit lacking in impact, but loved the tone of the piece. It's well written, you do a good job with the dialogue and the characters, but it feels more like a snapshot of a moment than a story with a beginning, middle and end.
Mike M - I perhaps would have spent more time playing up the unique aspect of Marcus' punishment beforehand. You mention the scars at the beginning, but there's nothing hinting toward their origin until much later. Incidentally, there's nothing overtly futuristic until he gets on the bus, which threw me for a loop for a second. That being said, I thought this was a really good entry, well written and with a strong character at the centre. I found myself sympathising with Marcus well before the extent of his punishment had been revealed and, as for your worries about being unable to communicate the "unfathomable devastation" of the situation, I wouldn't worry in that regard.
Ward - other than Jeff, I found the dialogue to be lacking in personality. Mark and Roger felt fairly interchangable. Also, I thought it was weird that Mark wasn't more irate, or at all irate about the whole thing and there didn't seem to be much explanation for it, other than Jeff's easy going nature. The conversation flowed smoothly enough and was well written, but I don't think it's enough to carry the fairly thin story.
Ashes - I was disappointed that you abandonned the narative tone early on and didn't return to it, but this was a good read, although I think it went a bit over my head.
Tangent - this was a fun read and I loved the bitter-sweet ending, but perhaps would have liked to have seen the story told from Maya's perspective.
John Dunbar - well written and I liked the ending. The whole thing put me in mind of Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, but yours had a more sinister tone with the whole not wanting to inspire dreams of a better life among the populace.
kaepernickehs - I enjoyed reading this and thought the last line was pretty great. Not much more to add, but the whole thing flowed very well.
Cyan - this was a really intriguing concept, although the ending didn't do much for me. Also, I think I would have liked to see some of the future from which Agent Brooks originated.
Nezumi - love, love the concept and the detailing of the statue's language and you wrap it all up well. However, I think there needed to be a reason why the ice statue couldn't speak - it seemed to me that you could have achieved Percy's same sense of loss with a statue he only got to know for a few fleeting moments, rather than one that inexplicably couldn't communicate (presumably because of its transient nature?).
GRW810 - this one seriously struck a chord and I felt the ending was really very touching, but the opening few paragraphs didn't sit well with me, for some reason. That being said, it was the only part of the story that hinted towards the main characters life or why he'd be estranged from his mother.
Votes;
1. Aaron
2. Nezumi
3. GRW810
HM; lastflowers, Mike M, John Dunbar
I originally omitted this, but a fellow GAFer mentioned he had brothers, so I had to go look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_of_Jesus
It's debated whether it means brothers of Jesus or "brothers" of Jesus though. I figured I'd bite the bullet and mention something. Oh well.
EDIT: AFAIK, they weren't adopted - that was just me rewriting history.
Were you there?
Regardless, mixing historical settings and modern language is hardly something new in literature.
I think you're reading far too much into what is basically a silly story (though admittedly not a very good one).
That's nothing, did you read what I said about poor Tangent's story? Heh heh.I think you're reading far too much into what is basically a silly story (though admittedly not a very good one).
Oh shit! Total vocabulary mix up on my part here. I guess when I wrote the story I somehow thought that it meant the absolute opposite from what it actually does... no idea why I thought that though.
Votes:
1- Nezumi
2- Cyan
3- kaepernickehs
Comments:
Ourobolus - This feels like half a story, and I'm not even sure which half. It's a good scene with an interesting twist, but it just doesn't stand on its own.
lastflowers - It's well written and pleasant, but there isn't any hook, conflict, or tension. So it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression. I'm not saying it needed to be all blood and guts, but there could have at least been one unpleasant word between these friends. Some spark.
Mike M - You have a developed character and a solid premise, but you wrote them as two almost entirely separate things, with the premise coming out as an exposition dump at the end. What this story could have used was a sense of movement. Have the character doing something other than standing looking in a mirror, or standing talking to a computer. An activity that you could build everything else around. Something that you could have fitting these details into naturally.
Ward - Reading about them trying this would have been more interesting than discussing it after the fact, since I already know how it went. The dialogue is nice and snappy, but it would have been better with some action to go along with it. Would have helped make who is speaking less confusing.
Ashes - You set a mood and premise, bring in characters, tease at mystery. I like it, though I think the discussion with the soldier drags. He's simply not an interesting character, and nothing he has to say is interesting. I blame him for the relatively weak ending.
Tangent - This is a cute concept the baloon personalities are all written well. My only real problem with it is it feels like it should have been shorter and more to the point. There's just a little too much set up, and a little too much conversation before Maya comes in.
Bootaaay - You have pathos and a fractured relationship to express your characters through, but instead of having it in the moment, you dance around it, so I never feel like I get to know either one of them. The girl is distant, and the guy comes off a bit cliche as a sad sack. Actually having the conversation between them would have brought out the details that would have made them interesting.
John Dunbar - It's a conversation that needs a story to latch onto. It's well done. It brings out the characters and makes salient points, but even with the view out the window it's abstract. There aren't any stakes. I wanted something to change, even in a small way, to give it a little more purpose.
kaepernickehs - It's a good emotional piece with a voice of its own. It's lacking in the little details though. It would have helped to have hints of visuals, and the conclusion feels a little forced. I'm not sure why the main character feels that way even if I've been in his head the whole time.
Cyan - Neat story. Well done with a good bit of humor. Though I think for the ending, Brooks should have said, "Sure you can." Whipped out his cellphone, and took a picture of the nearest scroll. In a time when data can no longer be accessed, we'll have bigger problems than a few crumbling scrolls.
Nezumi - I would shear away all the explanation at the top. This is essentially magical realism, and the thing those stories normally don't go into is the mechanics because they don't really matter. Then the new statue moves in, your story expresses everything the reader needs bueatifully. The build up and the reveal is excellent. You invest the reader into Percy, and understand what's really happening without it having to be explained.
GRW810 - Pinning him on the name seems strange. It feels too much like a movie / tv show thing that never happens in real life, and I'm honestly terrible with names. Actual players I've known make a special point to remember names. Detailed characters with a good twist, but the main character's change of heart comes way too fast for someone so deep in the other direction.
1- Nezumi
2- Cyan
3- kaepernickehs
Comments:
Ourobolus - This feels like half a story, and I'm not even sure which half. It's a good scene with an interesting twist, but it just doesn't stand on its own.
lastflowers - It's well written and pleasant, but there isn't any hook, conflict, or tension. So it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression. I'm not saying it needed to be all blood and guts, but there could have at least been one unpleasant word between these friends. Some spark.
Mike M - You have a developed character and a solid premise, but you wrote them as two almost entirely separate things, with the premise coming out as an exposition dump at the end. What this story could have used was a sense of movement. Have the character doing something other than standing looking in a mirror, or standing talking to a computer. An activity that you could build everything else around. Something that you could have fitting these details into naturally.
Ward - Reading about them trying this would have been more interesting than discussing it after the fact, since I already know how it went. The dialogue is nice and snappy, but it would have been better with some action to go along with it. Would have helped make who is speaking less confusing.
Ashes - You set a mood and premise, bring in characters, tease at mystery. I like it, though I think the discussion with the soldier drags. He's simply not an interesting character, and nothing he has to say is interesting. I blame him for the relatively weak ending.
Tangent - This is a cute concept the baloon personalities are all written well. My only real problem with it is it feels like it should have been shorter and more to the point. There's just a little too much set up, and a little too much conversation before Maya comes in.
Bootaaay - You have pathos and a fractured relationship to express your characters through, but instead of having it in the moment, you dance around it, so I never feel like I get to know either one of them. The girl is distant, and the guy comes off a bit cliche as a sad sack. Actually having the conversation between them would have brought out the details that would have made them interesting.
John Dunbar - It's a conversation that needs a story to latch onto. It's well done. It brings out the characters and makes salient points, but even with the view out the window it's abstract. There aren't any stakes. I wanted something to change, even in a small way, to give it a little more purpose.
kaepernickehs - It's a good emotional piece with a voice of its own. It's lacking in the little details though. It would have helped to have hints of visuals, and the conclusion feels a little forced. I'm not sure why the main character feels that way even if I've been in his head the whole time.
Cyan - Neat story. Well done with a good bit of humor. Though I think for the ending, Brooks should have said, "Sure you can." Whipped out his cellphone, and took a picture of the nearest scroll. In a time when data can no longer be accessed, we'll have bigger problems than a few crumbling scrolls.
Nezumi - I would shear away all the explanation at the top. This is essentially magical realism, and the thing those stories normally don't go into is the mechanics because they don't really matter. Then the new statue moves in, your story expresses everything the reader needs bueatifully. The build up and the reveal is excellent. You invest the reader into Percy, and understand what's really happening without it having to be explained.
GRW810 - Pinning him on the name seems strange. It feels too much like a movie / tv show thing that never happens in real life, and I'm honestly terrible with names. Actual players I've known make a special point to remember names. Detailed characters with a good twist, but the main character's change of heart comes way too fast for someone so deep in the other direction.
I don't know if anyone is interested, nor do I know a ton about the Gotham Writer's Workshop, but they've got a contest open for people to submit a short story of ten words or less. Winner gets a free 10-week workshop.
http://www.writingclasses.com/ContestPages/10W.php
http://www.writingclasses.com/ContestPages/10W.php
I don't think I'm capable of this...
Here's what I submitted:
Sink cabinet, open. Glass, empty. He waited to join her.
No idea if it's any good, but hey, why not.
I'd read that.
It's "Lebensabschnittspartner" and it and "Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften" need to be capitalized. Other than that it is grammatically correct even though it technically might sound strange because it would make more sense for the "Lebensabschnittparter" to work for a "Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaft", singular. In which case you would have needed to state that by writing "für eine Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaft". But I guess that it might technically be possible to work for more than one "Rechtschutzversicherungsgesellschaft" in which case your sentence would be correct.
Fixed the mistakes in my post, to make it more clear...
And it isn't that different from English anyway, where the indefinite article is also omitted in the plural. It's in the singular when things get messy because the article varies depending on gender and grammatical cause.
lastflowers
Banned
Ourobolus:
What a shocking revelation to get as a kid.
Aaron:
The story just never grabbed me. I enjoyed the premise, but I never felt compelled to finish the piece.
MikeM:
'Apparently his debt to society carried compound interest.' Fantastic line. The paragraph about technology felt a bit clunky. I like the premise, just felt a bit forced. Maybe some reordering of sentences within the paragraph would help. 'The world never stayed in one place long enough for Marcus to catch up to it.' I like it. The following sentences might detract from the power of this one line.
Ward:
It was pleasant to see how the story played out, but it certainly felt as if Mark wasn't mad at all.
Ashes:
I wasn't too enthused with the latter third of text. The premise was interesting, but the extended conversation with the soldier felt forced.
Tangent:
I really liked the opening paragraph. It introduced the 'protagonists' quite nicely.
Bootaaay:
I don't quite like the ordering of 'saw picture of woman and then explain the relationship' --> 'saw her on tv randomly'. It just felt kind of weird to me. Perhaps think whether his devotion/thoughts would be more impactful if you point out that he has a picture of her in his wallet after he saw her on tv.
John Dunbar:
'I see you have been reading again'. Nice.
kaepernickehs:
'I take notice of little things and I took notice of that.' Nice. I enjoyed how the tone bordered on that precipice of obsession and love. How passion can be both haunting and beautiful
Cyan:
The continued trope of the talk with the time-engineers felt awkward the second and third time through. If this was drawn out longer, it might not feel that way, but all three missions felt very formulaic. I enjoyed the punch-line, as I wasn't sure exactly where it was going.
Nezumi:
Oh man. My heart nearly melted when I realized the other statue was an ice sculpture.
GRW810:
I never felt any emotional payoff at the hospital, which is unfortunate since the piece revolves around that. Alzheimers is a hell of a horrible disease, though.
Rankings:
1 Nezumi
2 Kaepernickehs
3 MikeM
What a shocking revelation to get as a kid.
Aaron:
The story just never grabbed me. I enjoyed the premise, but I never felt compelled to finish the piece.
MikeM:
'Apparently his debt to society carried compound interest.' Fantastic line. The paragraph about technology felt a bit clunky. I like the premise, just felt a bit forced. Maybe some reordering of sentences within the paragraph would help. 'The world never stayed in one place long enough for Marcus to catch up to it.' I like it. The following sentences might detract from the power of this one line.
Ward:
It was pleasant to see how the story played out, but it certainly felt as if Mark wasn't mad at all.
Ashes:
I wasn't too enthused with the latter third of text. The premise was interesting, but the extended conversation with the soldier felt forced.
Tangent:
I really liked the opening paragraph. It introduced the 'protagonists' quite nicely.
Bootaaay:
I don't quite like the ordering of 'saw picture of woman and then explain the relationship' --> 'saw her on tv randomly'. It just felt kind of weird to me. Perhaps think whether his devotion/thoughts would be more impactful if you point out that he has a picture of her in his wallet after he saw her on tv.
John Dunbar:
'I see you have been reading again'. Nice.
kaepernickehs:
'I take notice of little things and I took notice of that.' Nice. I enjoyed how the tone bordered on that precipice of obsession and love. How passion can be both haunting and beautiful
Cyan:
The continued trope of the talk with the time-engineers felt awkward the second and third time through. If this was drawn out longer, it might not feel that way, but all three missions felt very formulaic. I enjoyed the punch-line, as I wasn't sure exactly where it was going.
Nezumi:
Oh man. My heart nearly melted when I realized the other statue was an ice sculpture.
GRW810:
I never felt any emotional payoff at the hospital, which is unfortunate since the piece revolves around that. Alzheimers is a hell of a horrible disease, though.
Rankings:
1 Nezumi
2 Kaepernickehs
3 MikeM
Votes:
1. Mike M - "The Gap"
2. Bootaaay - "Speranza"
3. kaepernickehs - "Irretreivable"
Edit:
Nailed it for me. Though I'd suggest letting us know much earlier that we're reading a scifi story. That was the only jarring thing. I had to completely reevaluate the setting when he got off the bus. I suggest showing us really early (first paragraph or sentence if you can) that it's scifi and not just an old man looking in his medicine cabinet in the present day.
1. Mike M - "The Gap"
2. Bootaaay - "Speranza"
3. kaepernickehs - "Irretreivable"
Edit:
Nailed it for me. Though I'd suggest letting us know much earlier that we're reading a scifi story. That was the only jarring thing. I had to completely reevaluate the setting when he got off the bus. I suggest showing us really early (first paragraph or sentence if you can) that it's scifi and not just an old man looking in his medicine cabinet in the present day.
Imagine what he felt when he was told he was a GOD!
And cyan has 6 points putting him in the third place behindert aaronGRW810 got 4 points though.
I'm thinking about what topic to choose for the next thread, might be a couple of hours though.
I was gonna say. Did you count all my votes for myself from the first page or something?
Congrats Nez!
New Thread is up!
- Status