Theme - "Choices"

Like always, interpret the main theme however you so wish!

Word Limit: 2000

Submission Deadline: Friday, December 12th by 11:59 PM Pacific.

Voting begins Saturday, December 13th and goes until Monday, December 15th at 11:59 PM Pacific.

Grace Periods: Each of the above deadlines will be followed by a 6-hour grace period. Submissions made after the end of the grace period will be ineligible, and votes cast after the end of the grace period will not be counted. Remember that these are grace periods, not extensions of the deadline--you should still submit your work or cast your vote by the deadline set above.

Optional Secondary Objective: POV fun!

So first, envision your story. Imagine it how you would normally write it: the characters, the plot, etc. Now, switch around the POVs. Write it from another perspective, be that the villains, the sidekicks, the nobodies... Or maybe just mess with your main character; change their origin, gender, traits, or quirks from what you initially thought or would be inclined to write. Another thing you could possibly try is take a story you previously wrote and write it from a different perspective/character, so that it’s an entirely new story. So I know this sounds like a lot of disparate ideas, but basically just do something different with your POV(s), either character-wise or even form-wise (third person instead of first person, vice versa, or maybe even [gasp!] second person).

Super-Secret Extremely Optional Secondary Objective:
Submission Guidelines:

- One entry per poster.
- All submissions must be written during the time of the challenge.
- Using the topic as the title of your piece is discouraged.
- Keep to the word count!

Voting Guidelines:

- Three votes per voter. Please denote in your voting your 1st (3 pts), 2nd (2 pts), and 3rd (1 pt) place votes.
- Please read all submissions before voting.
- You must vote in order to be eligible to win the challenge.
- When voting ends, the winner gets a collective pat on the back, and starts the new challenge.

NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge FAQ
Previous Challenge Threads and Themes

Ooh, got an idea for this already ...

I used to do creative writing in school, my teachers always said I was good at it. May be time to work out those muscles again. Assuming I can fix my terrible grammar, that is.

Delusional Reality said:

I used to do creative writing in school, my teachers always said I was good at it. May be time to work out those muscles again. Assuming I can fix my terrible grammar, that is.

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pshh, who needs grammar

Mike M said:

Ooh, got an idea for this already ...

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I await your first draft.

Wooo hooo! Good bye novel hello short stories.

This word limit is more my flavor

Osorio said:

This word limit is more my flavor

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Fuck yo 50k

Aye. Switching around the POV is a good and sometimes frustrating exercise. It can be very gratifying.

This sounds so much fun! Loving the secondary options! Super creative way to get us writing out of our comfort zones. December is busy with holiday parties all around, but I'll do my best to join in.

A shift in perspective, eh? Interesting theme.

Hm. Think I'll do this one from the POV of an innocent bystander.

good lord that secondary

Wrote something that's kiiiiinda a heist, but not really. Lots if heist tropes, at least.

I tweaked the rules for the super-secret secondary a bit, just in case someone manages to write a heist story in/under 2000 words (and they also deserve a medal). Though do note that it's still extremely optional

Somehow I feel like this will backfire or I'm forgetting something, but I'll take all the blame if the reading this challenge turns out crazy!

Sober said:

good lord that secondary

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I'm sorry!

Mike M said:

Wrote something that's kiiiiinda a heist, but not really. Lots if heist tropes, at least.

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That sounds fine to me. I'm always open to interpretations And at the very least it may make the reading more manageable. Also less samey, which is always a good thing

Ourobolus said:

Hm. Think I'll do this one from the POV of an innocent bystander.

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That just gave me a really stupid idea. Know what I'm writing. If only I could get Stephen Fry to voice it like in my head.

This is a corker of a challenge. I've been really looking forward to them starting up again.
I have an idea for this, but I'm worried it's a bit predictable.

Glad to have this back. Working on something in the late hours each night. I doubt it will be a good read, but I'm just really happy to have a place to get feedback now.

Okay, I posted this in the Poetry section of GAF without realizing this existed!
So this has nothing to do with a challenge, I don't claim to be anything of a writer, or all that creative, especially in this department, but I just got inspired by something and decided to write a tiny little thing so uhm, here~


The lady in my room

she’s been here for a while now. We don’t speak, but we’re aware the other exists. She’s the only one of her kind that can stand being around me. Though it’s not my favorite color, she used to wear the color red so beautifully well. Over the short time that I’ve known her, her beautiful red has faded to a sickly orange. I fear our time together wont last much longer…

Her petite frail frame caries so much pressure on her back, yet she still keeps going aimlessly. I wish I could talk to her and figure out what I can do to restore her to her former glory, to give her purpose once more. But I cannot.

I watch her articulate limbs move as I write this, her life serving as inspiration as I spout romantics about her dull existence. One that closely resembles my own.

She gets me like nobody else. She’s the only one of her kind, the others have long since left her behind, she moves about searching for others, some kind of companionship. But I know she never will. How can I tell her that, she doesn’t understand my words.

We both dislike this colder weather. For small things like us, it’s a great pain on us all over. More so her than I. The cold is fatal for her. She will be dead within the course of one week, I’m sure of it.

Her short life will be documented here in this writing. The only woman who could ever promise me til death do us part, this sweet little ladybug.

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Writing meetup on google hangouts tomorrow, as usual! Just noting.

Cyan said:

Writing meetup on google hangouts tomorrow, as usual! Just noting.

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So sad seeing Cyan feeling blue like this.

Oh well. We'll get over it.

Life is a little down right now...hopefully I can write something, but I honestly havent written a word in quite some time.

Also, seems like a long time ago, but somebody* asked me about how I formatted my stories when I sent them out, and I said there are some great formatting guides online.. I didn't mean to brush you off.
Don't really have time to do proper in depth deep sea dive type drafts, but I'll format my entry this week as if I were sending it to a publisher. I don't really send out short stories, mostly novels and poems, but I don't think it's all that different.




*by email. I presume you're a neogaffer.

Cyan said:

Writing meetup on google hangouts tomorrow, as usual! Just noting.

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Not gonna be able to make it. I'm not home and my mother believes that all kind of webcams/headsets are evil devices through which the villainous hackers steal our identities. So she'll not let me use her computer.

Nezumi said:

Not gonna be able to make it. I'm not home and my mother believes that all kind of webcams/headsets are evil devices through which the villainous hackers steal our identities. So she'll not let me use her computer.

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I have a similar reason but instead of a mother its work.

I'm at the in-laws house for early Christmas where they watch standard definition television programming stretched out to 16:9 on their HDTV. I am in my own personal hell.

But I may be able to attend this week. Maybe. I'd be limited to the chat window, though, since I don't have a microphone here (and I'd be really obnoxious carrying on a conversation with people on the internet in the middle of the living room.)

EDIT: Oh God, now everyone's watching sportsball.

Mike M said:

I'm at the in-laws house for early Christmas where they watch standard definition television programming stretched out to 16:9 on their HDTV. I am in my own personal hell.

But I may be able to attend this week. Maybe. I'd be limited to the chat window, though, since I don't have a microphone here (and I'd be really obnoxious carrying on a conversation with people on the internet in the middle of the living room.)

EDIT: Oh God, now everyone's watching sportsball.

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Sounds like you're at my place

Ok, here's the hangout link:

Sounds like we might not get a lot of participants this time, but that's ok.

Thanks for another hangout Cyan!

Also, I think we decided that "heisty/heistesque" stories are acceptable... kinda

I didn't think I was going to do this one because I've been so busy, but I just felt inspired. I will post it tomorrow!

I really need to come up with an idea fast...

Nezumi said:

I really need to come up with an idea fast...

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A squad of malcontent ducks conspire to steal the bread of a lonely old man sitting on a bench beside their lake.

Nezumi said:

I really need to come up with an idea fast...

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Same. :/

Cyan said:

Same. :/

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A blind man, a deaf, and a mute work together to break into the office safe of the unscrupulous car mechanic who cheated them.

Mike M said:

A squad of malcontent ducks conspire to steal the bread of a lonely old man sitting on a bench beside their lake.

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I actually like this. If nothing else presents itself in the next 10 hours, old men everywhere should watch their breads carefully.

500.

Just when I figuered out different motivations for the malcontent ducks I get blessed with an additional shift. No writing for me this week :/

"Sustained Silent Reading" (936 words)

Good to see everyone again! It feels so weird to write short stories again. See? Look at my word choice, repeating "again."

"Amateur" (278 words)

Usual password.

Didn't really have any idea for a good story this time, thus its short length.

Moral Support about 1850 words or so.

Usual password. Hope everyone enjoys

Straight and Narrow (1,889 words)

I would suggest not reading too closely into it or else the premise falls apart.

Charade said:

Also, I think we decided that "heisty/heistesque" stories are acceptable... kinda

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Holding you to that!

Nothing Personal
2,787 words, the usual password.

Starting to do these things in manuscript format from here on out rather than go through the hassle of trying to format them after the fact.

I sat on an idea for two weeks. One frantic writing session later...

Legion

~2100 words. It's missing the end of the story, but I'm stretching it as it is.
It was confusing to write. It will probably be more confusing to read. Inconsistencies are abundant. Enjoy

Grand

It's not until the foreman is calling for the final vote on the indictment that the penny drops: nobody's coming into the courtroom to tell me what to do. I've been treating this case like anything else, like I treat my job or my relationships or my life, I guess. I do the bare minimum that I think I can get away with, then I wait for someone else to tell me otherwise ("What, you think you can just sit in the break room all day? Get back to work!"). It's not that I'm lazy, it's just why do stuff you don't have to? If you wait around long enough, someone will either make you do it or do it for you. A grownup. Someone who has their shit together.

I thought that might be the foreman, a small hispanic man named Joe, but he's barely talked to me since that first day when I cracked a joke about what exactly made our jury grand, and he pointed out that it was just called that because it was larger than a normal jury, and then I got mad at him for ruining the joke, and then he started ignoring me. He's kind of an uptight ass, all self-important just because he's the leader of this menagerie.

I thought the judge might tell us what to do. I mean, he's a judge, right? A pillar of the community and all that shit. Instead we saw him like one time at the beginning of all this crap when he swore us in and then he's been off smoking dope or whatever judges do in their spare time.

The district attorney really did try to tell us what to do, only it was all sort of vague and he didn't *directly* tell us how to vote, just sort of the outline of what we were supposed to do, and the differences between probable cause and reasonable doubt.

Look, I'm not an idiot. I saw all that stuff all over the news earlier this year, I know this shit is real. But I'm sitting here and the foreman is asking for everyone's votes in that dumb accent of his, and it's just hitting me now that for once I need to figure this out myself, only I'm not ready. I don't want this kind of responsibility over someone elses life. I don't even want responsibility over my own life.

I hope nobody else is feeling like that. I hope everyone else has their shit together and knows what it's all about, and has a lot of good judgment they can bring to bear on this thing.

Because I sure as hell don't.

Or is everyone else faking it too? What if all those other folks, everyone else in this courtroom, is just as much of a fuckup as I am, only they hide it better? What if they're all just pretending, and we're taking a man's life in our hands and none of us have a clue?

God. I don't know if that would be comforting because I'm not the only one, or terrifying because, well, you know.

Still nobody's coming through that courtroom door, and Joe is looking at me like he means it.

I heard one time that the court system was designed to account for the fact that most people are dumb. I sure hope that's true.

But I still wish somebody would just come out here and tell me what to do.

Mike M said:

Holding you to that!

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Well now that you mention it...
Admit, 1754 words, usual password

Damn it, people, I'm on mobile! But someone's gotta do it!

Ashes
karenq0506
Tangent
Zweizer
FlowersisBritish
Croll
Mike M
exfixate
Cyan
Charade

Here are my responses. Spoilers for the other stories btw.

500- Ashes
Good intro, but the politics got confusing, and having a third person also made it hard to follow as well. The twist was also good in idea, but it could have been helped by foreshadowing. You have to explain everything in that last paragraph, and it really bogs down what could have been a good ending. Maybe Spurse it with little things throughout; "I put out my cigarette." "God I can't stand her voice." Something subtle and easy to miss.

I Am What I Am- Karen
Really neat concept. I liked it. Would have been better to not start off with Emily though. Starting with her as the first thing messes with the focus of the story, making it needlessly confusing in the beginning.

Sustained Silent Reading- Tangent
I loved the general writing. The spelling test was well done, and Daniel's description is great. There's just a lot of good writing in general here. Knitpick though, kids would not answer like that. They'd all either be for shelters, or atleast they'd be a little more divided. Unless they're awful devil children though. I do really like the peer pressure thing going on though, just can't believe it happen like that with that question.

Amateur- Zweizer
The reveal gave me a decent laugh.

Straight and Narrow- Croll
You're right, does fall apart when you think about it. Which is a real shame. This is pretty interesting if you can get it to stay together. I like the friend/rival dynamic going on with in. Just wish it made more sense.

Nothing Personal- Mike M
Starts off really good. Brutus has a lot of personality which carry over well into his narrations. That said, he has so much personality, all the cliches in the later half are a plague to the story. "Knives make too much a mess, like to get close and personal, If i wanted to hurt you you'd be dead." They kill it. Also i don't really like the twist. Comes too out of left field for me. There was no lead up, and no real way to know it. It also doesn't really add anything to the story.

Legion- Exfixate
In general the content of dialogue was good. But this is a more personal thing, where I find every character having snark to get old. Also I don't really like that plot dump of Suzie's backstory halfway through.

Grand- Cyan
This is short, but really good, and coveys the singular emotion of confusion I would expect to see in a jury.

Admit- Charade
Dialogue is good, and I really like your use of the line "What's life without regrets." Really helps make your ending good.

My votes
1. Sustained Silent Reading- Tangent
2. Grand- Cyan
3. I Am What i Am- Karenq0506

Ashes “500” – Interesting insight to a story told in the killer’s voice. However, his voice was only apparent in the last paragraph; that I could tell.

Tangent “Sustained Silent Reading” – You always seem to capture the child’s voice. Aruna should have raised her hand on the choice she felt was right, but couldn’t bare to be an outcast by siding with the class outcast. Peer pressure can be a great influence on the weaker.

Zweizer “Amateur” – Not sure who the narrator was. Was is the cockroach? Short but sweet. You got the choice theme down. I think many can relate to getting too comfortable with the jobs they have and not following their true dreams. But in our generation I feel like jobs don’t come so easily. I know regular company downsizing has become the norm in the company I work for.

FlowersisBritish “Moral Support” – A few typos. I like the use of name for the protagonist, Chance. Not sure if there is a term for the use of it as it relates to the theme of the story as well. I found it funny your description of the bank tellers pretending to look busy to avoid the customer line. I was a bank teller about 12 years ago, and yes I found my co-tellers to do the same. So annoying! Lol POV was great! Not sure if you intended an underlying metaphor with the gun being the more civilized educated party in the story. Like many gun enthusiasts would say, guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

Croll “Straight and Narrow” – I was confused with the end. I get that George got Brian in the end, but how did he know he was going to be at the bar in the first place? That whole scene leaves me with a lot of questions.

Mike M. “Nothing Personal” – I remember reading your related stories, which I enjoyed. But I have to agree with FlowersisBritish. There was maybe too much background and the ending came out of left field.

Exfixate “Legion” – I’m halfway through reading it and I still don’t understand what’s going on. To be fair, you did warn us that we’d likely be confused. What is the White and what are the body taxes your characters are talking about? I feel like there are a lot of creative ideas going on here, but not enough time to execute them clearly. I would be interested in reading more otherwise.

Cyan “Grand” – Short but pretty awesome. I like how you captured the fear set in on your character realizing he had to make a serious decision that he was not ready to make.

Charade “Admit” – I am just recently getting into sci-fi reading, so I really enjoyed Admit. One note, your use of betrayed I think is the wrong choice of word. Maybe you meant to write portrayed?

My Votes:
1. FlowersisBritish “Moral Support”
2. Charade “Admit”
3. Cyan “Grand”
HM: Tangent “Sustained Silent Reading”
HM: Zweizer “Amateur”

1) Moral Support (FlowersisBritish)
2) Sustained Silent Reading (Tangent)
3) Grand (Cyan)

Lots of great implementations of the secondary objective this time week. Also lots of short entries.

Ashes: The password’s not “gaf”? What sorcery is this? I kept wondering who in the scene was going to be the killer, and was subsequently caught unawares by the twist that this was actually a first person narration where the narrator was remaining silent until the very end. A serial killer who’s ritual involves killing people that have some sort of relation to serial killing in general is an interesting take, and the history lesson of various serial killers in history was an interesting one that sent me to Wikipedia to verify the claim that Harold Shipman had killed 250 people. What really kind of wrecked everything for me was the claim that the killer had managed to kill 500 people while averaging 3 or 4 people a day. That’s like 500 people in less than six months, and I had a great deal of difficulty believing that could ever occur for a multitude of reasons. Not saying that it couldn’t work, but it would require a great deal of explanation for how they were able to accomplish such a thing.

karenq0506: Kind of torn on this one. I liked the notion of the personification of an earthquake describing how it goes about its business, but I was a little befuddled how the earthquake could know anything about the contents of Emily’s dream or how she has an emergency kit in the cat bed and such. I also didn’t think it was appropriate that they would know who Pinhead was, but I had a difficult time justifying not liking that that while at the same time I liked the talk of dancing. Seems if the earthquake can know what a waltz is, why can’t they know who Pinhead is, you know? The core concept is a good one, but maybe needed some more refining to limit the scope of the earthquake’s knowledge of events.

Tangent: Reading this one immediately after Karen’s created the false impression that they were somehow related : P. This one kind of just… meandered around all over the place, and I’m not sure what the point of it was. The first part with the spelling test seemed to be some sort of set up for a morality lesson of telling the truth and not cheating, which seemed to have no relation to the second part of the story where we learn that sportsball fans have little sportsball fan children who are all unempathetic little monsters. Including the protagonist. Idunno, just felt like we were getting set up for a variety of moral lessons, but nothing ever came of it.

Zweizer: Cockroaches only live for a year, I have difficulty envisioning how they could consider anyone to be a youth when they were around before the cockroach was by a considerable margin : P Also, how is a newspaper going to run the headline that a robber was scared off by a cockroach? Did the robber go and turn himself in and say he called it off on account of being scared of a cockroach?

FlowersisBritish: The whole time I thought Chance was suffering from multiple personalities and Gunter and the rest of the crew were going to be voices in his head. But that turned out not to be the case, which calls Chase’s actions into question. If you make a plan to rob a bank with a crew, and your crew doesn’t show up, why on earth would you proceed with the plan? Also, not sure how the double cross was supposed to work since the betrayers had no way of knowing whether or not Chase would go through without their participation (and again, the reasonable thing would have been to not proceed with the robbery.). Funny concept, but the plot points could have used a little more refinement to smooth over questions. Loved the fact that the gun was named Gunter.

Croll: I think I may have read too closely and it fell apart, because it looks like the DA met his hoodlum childhood friend on a chance occurrence, and yet also executed a complicated scheme that involved letting him take care of some problems for him while simultaneously setting his friend up?

Mike M: I tried to strike a balance where there were clues that Brutus was not a human without giving it away completely. Honestly I was afraid that stuff like climbing the outside of the hotel, slinking through small spaces unimpeded, needing to climb up to the counter to use the sink, and expressly discounting that he has any peers after mentioning how people online treat him as they do any other human was—if anything—laying it on too thick. But going from feedback so far, it appears that people thought the reveal came out of nowhere, I maybe erred too much on the side of caution? The clichés I could work out of the thing, but the other criticisms being leveled are more deeply engrained and may not be salvageable to put this out into a story that stands on its own feet. I tried to make it as independent of the previous stories as possible, but the risk of that is that as soon as Agent Lee shows up and starts talking about Consensus, we go way off the rails from a story about an unconventional assassin into my head canon for a weirdo sci-fi universe that no one else knows about.

exfixate: I really liked the premise, even though it seemed more than a little indebted to The Surrogates. The pacing was a little out of whack, as you spent a considerable amount of time in the first portion before switching to past tense, and then the jumps back and forth started coming at regular intervals after that and leveled out. The sister’s unfortunate fate seemed a needless complication to the story, however. It expanded the scope of the story well beyond what was necessary, and left the majority of the story that would need to be told to resolve it well beyond the reach of the actual story itself. There’s a bunch of reasons someone could think to rob their employer, but funding a mission to solve the murder of a sibling with nothing to go on but a mysterious name and address crumpled in the hand of the victim is perhaps one of the more outlandish ones to pick. But the whole body tax/imprinting on a robot/a whole heist crew operating in a single shared unit was good stuff as far as I’m concerned.

Cyan: I liked that the narrator had a bit of depth to his idiocy, if that made any sense. Seems like the temptation would be to make a character seemingly defined by his apathy toward everything in life not actually care too deeply about the results of the grand jury, but I appreciated the fact that he realized that it was actually an important decision and that he wouldn’t be allowed to just not do it until someone else came along to either do it for him or tell him how to do it. Short, but not exactly sweet given the recent headlines grand jury findings have been getting in the news : /

Charade: The sci-fi angle did nothing for me on this one. If anything, it only served to muddy the waters and add confusion about what was happening. You could have set this in practically any historical period and had the McGuffin be almost anything of worth, and it would have been an easier read for it. I’m not saying you could have just done a C&P job (obviously you’d have to rework stuff about how the Elemental Fire feels and all), but there wasn’t anything that necessitated aliens in my reading.

Votes:
1. exfixate
2. Cyan
3. Ashes