FlowersisBritish
fleurs n'est pas britannique
Do these things happen often? I love writing stuff and I didn't think Gaf had a writing community. Really sad I missed a chance to participate, but alas. Next time.
Each of these goes for two weeks, then another one drops. Sub to this thread or something and watch for updates on when the next one comes up.Do these things happen often? I love writing stuff and I didn't think Gaf had a writing community. Really sad I missed a chance to participate, but alas. Next time.
I have no idea how to password protect my pdf so quote for link
Every two weeks. Stick around in this thread, a link to the next one will be posted Tuesday-ishDo these things happen often? I love writing stuff and I didn't think Gaf had a writing community. Really sad I missed a chance to participate, but alas. Next time.
Missed the previous challenges due to the intense labor of shopping for a new car. All the researching, the youtube video watching, and the test driving... lord preserve me from driving the same route half a dozen times in one day with vehicles I dare not scratch. Even making the deal wasn't as bad as that.
What's the password?
What!? I thought there was still time. Like at least some hours I just won the fight against my brain and started writing....
Good thing you're not German. Or we'd have wise guys cracking out jokes about punctuality.
Well, since I thought that we have the same grace period as in the last few challenges I thought I would be on time for at least two and a half hours more...
That being said I'm doing my best to finish faster than that.
It's funny how these challenges work. For me it's easier to work with a general theme to connect to rather than starting from scratch. Honestly though, in regards to these challenges, my biggest goal is to force myself to write and deliver at all rather than deliver something astounding. I tend to start sort of inspired and then, somewhere around the second and third act I question everything and I start to flounder just to fucking finish the damn thing in the last minute
It's funny how these challenges work. For me it's easier to work with a general theme to connect to rather than starting from scratch. Honestly though, in regards to these challenges, my biggest goal is to force myself to write and deliver at all rather than deliver something astounding. I tend to start sort of inspired and then, somewhere around the second and third act I question everything and I start to flounder just to fucking finish the damn thing in the last minute
"The Greenhouse Flowerbeds" by itsinmyveins. I have a hard time understanding Jake's motivation. He's angry about the robbers bringing violence into his "place of peace" and his response is to murder the only one that survived?
1. Mike M - Multiversal Marty
3. Metaphoreus - The Red Token
4. Charade - Rekindle
I have no real critique of the above. They're well told and engaging. My biggest issue would really that I don't know how Charades and Mike Ms stories connect to the theme..? I might be missing something in them and I'm not sure how rigid the themes are to be interpreted, but I thought these were the best stories so they get my vote anyhow.
1st, 3rd, 4th place?
My story's relation (or lack thereof) to the theme is something I address in my post-mortem comments on it. The short version is that the final story evolved so far from the original concept that there's not much pertaining to the theme left unless you reeeeeeally want to stretch some interpretations. It's probably the most wide of the mark I've ever been.
It's up to the individual. I personally will never detract points for it, but particularly good interpretations get a bonus in my consideration.Whooops!
The same goes for the 3d place as well. It wasn't until I googled the last word in the 2nd story that I saw how it connected to the theme either, heh. But I don't know how strict you guys are about these things so I didn't take it into account.
The same goes for the 3d place as well. It wasn't until I googled the last word in the 2nd story that I saw how it connected to the theme either, heh. But I don't know how strict you guys are about these things so I didn't take it into account.
The thing about Marty is that there was never much character there to begin with : PI didn't get an idea of his character though. I would probably have a better idea if I read the first story, but I didn't, and still feel some of his character should have shone through more, especially in contrast to all the other great characters you had there.
The thing about Marty is that there was never much character there to begin with : P
I have no real critique of the above. They're well told and engaging. My biggest issue would really that I don't know how Charades and Mike Ms stories connect to the theme..? I might be missing something in them and I'm not sure how rigid the themes are to be interpreted, but I thought these were the best stories so they get my vote anyhow.
Of what I've read so far, I think.Metaphoreus did it better in terms of deceiving the reader (if I'm interpreting the story correctly. I think I placed every character except Andy)
Andy's a BS character. It's short for Andrew, which is time- and place-appropriate, and that's why I chose it.
EDIT: Also, now you mention that idiom, that's totally what I was doing. Totally. Everyone should just ignore this post.
The only real quibble I might have with this one is that I wonder if the preface of the text of the laws/regulation/what have you was period accurate or not. I'm no historian or legal scholar either, but that kind of firmly entrenched the notion that the following story took place in the Modern era in my head.
chris.trejo: So if this jungle is on an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, inaccessible due to it's towering cliffs, and shows no signs of humans having ever been there (presumably aside from the garden, naturally), that all begs the question: How did he ever find it in the first place? I want to say that I found this to be a little on the schmaltzy side, but you did kind of hit me in the gut with it since losing my wife at an early age like my dad did is one of my biggest irrational fears. I don't think the flashback was at all necessary. James's motivation is already well established, and the details of the accident that killed Josie aren't relevant to the rest of the story that plays out. I would also point out that stating that a jungle island has no signs of life is to ignore the fact that the trees that compose the jungle are in fact alive : P There were a few technical errors, mostly toward the end with dialogue where commas were outside quotation marks, both characters speaking in the same paragraph, new paragraphs not being indented. Also, "purist" is not the same thing as "purest" : )
EDIT: Here are my thoughts on the other submissions. I'll keep these brief since I'm going off of memory (I left my handwritten notes at my office). Please note that I'm mostly highlighting the reasons I didn't vote for these, so don't get discouraged if what I say is mostly negative.
"Eternal Garden" by chris.trejo. I liked this story, but it was difficult to follow the timeline at some points. One minute it's ten 'til midnight, the next it's almost sunset. It was unclear when the events in that paragraph occurred. I also found it odd that the walled garden was not a sign that humans had set foot on the island.
Didn't see your edit earlier, the timeline doesn't really jump around so I'm not sure how you got confused, the only time I mention another time period is when I describe the accident. Maybe I wasn't as clear as I thought I'll read it again to see if maybe I made a mistake. As far as the island not being touched by humans, I mentioned that as a way to show how it was all supernatural and not part of our world but I guess I wasn't clear since Mike mentioned something similar, I'll keep that in mind, I really appreciate the feedback
Eternal Garden said:The minute hand on his watch had only moved one tick closer to twelve, the wait was becoming unbearably. The moon was shining yet everything looked dim. There was almost complete darkness outside. He was standing on top of a small hill by a big leafy tree that covered most of the sky from where he stood; the garden was down the hill in front of him with the moon located almost directly above it. He could see the faint outlines of the trees and bushes that surrounded what appeared to be a giant courtyard in the middle. There weren't any graves inside or markings outside, at least none that he could see. He didn’t see an entrance when he first got there; when James arrived it was close to sunset. He needed to get to the garden before midnight. The garden was located on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There were no signs that any humans had ever set foot there and as far as he could tell there were no signs of any other life either. The entire island was quite but for the sounds of the ocean waves hitting against the rocks. The cliffs were hundreds of feet high and there was no natural harbor for boats to arrive in. James abandoned his boat and swam toward the cliffs, almost killing himself in the process. He had no escape route or plan to return home. Nobody knew he was there, finding Josie was his only purpose. Most of the island was untouched jungle, with the garden almost exactly in the middle and not a single sound could be heard once you got there. He only heard his heartbeat, even the wind was extra quiet that night. The walls to the garden must have been at least eight feet tall if not taller. He thought he could jump them in a single bounce if he saw her on the other side.
Here's the paragraph I'm talking about. The bolded sentences are what threw me off:
There's not a clear transition from nine 'til midnight ("[h]e didn't see an entrance" to the garden) to sunset ("James abandoned his boat") and then back again ("[h]e thought he could jump" the eight-foot walls around the garden). It's all the more confusing because of that first bolded sentence. If I'm reading it right, "when he first got there" is referring to his arrival at the garden itself, but "when he arrived" refers to his arrival at the island. Yet the reader is going to try to read those phrases as referring to the exact same time, especially since they appear in the same sentence. When I read that "[h]e needed to get to the garden before midnight," I wondered how that could be a challenge, seeing as he was just at the top of a hill above the garden and with nine minutes to spare. But that sentence really seems to belong to the time at which he arrived at the island, not the time at which he arrived at the garden. Ideally, that middle section of the above paragraph should have been its own paragraph; but, failing that, there should have been clear transitional phrases to mark when you shifted between sunset and midnight.
Oh, and re-reading this reminded me of another thing: you shouldn't use the word "you" in the narration unless the reader is a character in the story (or the story is intended for a character). For instance, you write that "not a single sound could be heard once you got there." But I didn't get there. There are about four other instances where I butt into the story unannounced. Probably the best way to rewrite those would be to replace "you" with a character in the story. So: "James couldn't hear a single sound once he got there." Or later, "the music . . . had become so loud and so fast that James couldn't keep track of it anymore." Another option is to remove anyone at all from the description, as in, "Over the horizon, the sky became lighter." Or later, "It was bright enough that the entire island was illuminated" (or, for instance, "that every pebble and blade of grass was clearly visible"). The bottom line is that the reader should not be referred to unless he or she exists in the world of the story.
Oh you're totally right and I remember why that paragraph is like that, originally it was much shorter and didn't include the details about the island and his first arrival there. I added it in there and forgot to format and edit it so it made sense.
That's a good point about not adding you, I always try to avoid using "you" "I" "me" and I must have missed that. I'll keep that it mind going forward thanks!
Keep in mind that it won't always be improper for the narrator to refer to the reader or to himself, even when neither the narrator or reader are characters in the story. The first chapter of Don Quixote is a good example of this, as the narrator refers to both himself ("In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind") and to the reader ("You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman . . . gave himself up to reading books"). So whether you'll use those terms will depend on the narrative style you adopt in any given story.
itsinmyveins: The description of weeds trying to grow above grass as "reaching for higher ground" struck me as a bit odd because weeds literally do seek out ground, but they won't find it above the grass : P To be brutally honest (and I'm not coming from a place of spite with this. I only ever want to give useful advice, and I recognize that not everyone has a pathological hatred of their writing and seek the catharsis of having it torn down and their flaws exposed like I do.), this one needed some more work to the point that it almost drove me to distraction. Missing commas and hyphens. "Carrier" instead of "career." Describing a greenhouse as that it consisted of a greenhouse. The greenhouse itself being built a mile from the house in the woods in and of itself is baffling, both in that is not a trivial distance to walk, and that I would have difficulty believing that Jake's father's property line extended at least a mile into the woods. Jake's questioning of the moral character of the two men was rendered entirely moot because he turned out to be more vile than either of them. They had killed at least one person in a bank robbing attempt. Jake killed a helpless man who was dying for daring to desecrate his greenhouse with violence. And presumably he kept the money, because turning it in to the police would lead to the discovery that he killed one of the bank robbers and buried both of them. Maybe if the one guy had died despite Jake's efforts to save him regardless of Jake's opinion on the matter, it would have had an emotional impact besides isolating his from the reader. Kinda left a bad taste in my mouth.
Weeds do grow high unless I'm confusing the term, which isn't entirely unlikely!
And walking a mile doesn't take more than maybe 15 minutes, does it? To me, such distances aren't that odd if you're talking about rural areas, but I've always lived in the city so I really don't know
D'oh! My bad for somehow overlooking that detail : (That being said, Jake wasn't really meant to be seen as a good man. They guy is really a bit fucked in the head considering what he did. I did, however, write that he buried the money along with them.
votes:
1- Metaphoreus
2- Ashes
3- Charade
chris.trejo - There's too much backstory. There's no reason why you couldn't tell this as a flashback, or even just narrate events in order leading up to the death and search for the garden. I need a little investment in the characters for their reunion to have a real impact.