• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #206 "Overheard"

Status
Not open for further replies.

Tangent

Member
Theme - "Overheard"

Word Limit: 1900

Submission Deadline: Friday 24th February by 11:59 PM Pacific.

Voting Deadline: Monday 27th February at 11:59 PM Pacific.

Optional Secondary Objective: Resistant to Change
You can take "resistant to change" to mean whatever it means to you. To add to your brainstorm, I wonder what it'd be like to have a protagonist who perhaps doesn't grow, learn, or change. Or even who doesn't have a realization. Or maybe a protagonist that's focusing on the "wrong" thing. If there were such a resistant or aloof protagonist, would we still root for them? You don't have to consider any of this mumbo-jumbo. That's why it's optional!



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!
- Follow this rules when posting your entry for easy collection of entries:


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.

Important side note: A lot of our regulars like to write out short critiques/comments for the stories, but you can always opt out by simply adding a note like "I'd prefer no critiques" in the post where you submit your story. We're an understanding group and respect that not everyone wants comments on their work. Above all, we just want to read your story.

NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge FAQ
Previous Challenge Threads and Themes[/QUOTE]
 

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
Woot new challenge! And i agree Tangent! It would have been super fun making up a challenge together! Maybe even some sort of collaboration... Either way, this looks like a fun challenge.

Here in the creative writing threads, we are fans of something called "foreshadowing."
 

mu cephei

Member
Congrats on the win! Great story, I love how you make me see things in a slightly different way.

And I like this challenge (I have an idea...)

...

And I'm backing out of my resolution to submit well on time :p I will if I can but late night last minute seems to work a bit better for me, last week was an eye opener.
 

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
Oh shit! It's been a week and I still have no idea! If only there was some sort of biweekly google hangout this Sunday at maybe 5pm est where I could talk to other writers and either get an idea or have a positive work environment to do some writing for like two hours or something....


Btw I'm not able to attend the hangout at Sunday 5pm est this week :p
 
After sitting last one out because I had a game of Mafia to play I wanted to try my luck again this time. But honestly I don't see when... Sucks to be busy.
 

Cyan

Banned
Oh shit! It's been a week and I still have no idea! If only there was some sort of biweekly google hangout this Sunday at maybe 5pm est where I could talk to other writers and either get an idea or have a positive work environment to do some writing for like two hours or something....


Btw I'm not able to attend the hangout at Sunday 5pm est this week :p

You are such a punk.
 

Nezumi

Member
Oh shit! It's been a week and I still have no idea! If only there was some sort of biweekly google hangout this Sunday at maybe 5pm est where I could talk to other writers and either get an idea or have a positive work environment to do some writing for like two hours or something....


Btw I'm not able to attend the hangout at Sunday 5pm est this week :p

I don't have anything concrete as well. Lucky for me I actually can attent the hangout at 11pm CET.
 

Cyan

Banned
Writing hangout in about half an hour. Standard quick recap: it's on Google Hangouts, and the format is ten minutes of chat, then thirty minutes of writing with mics muted, repeated until we've gone for two hours. Webcams aren't required, though several of us will have them. Mics are recommended but also not required, as you can use the text chat.

The hangout link is (quote to see):
 

Ashes

Banned
Writing hangout in about half an hour. No skype or google hangout required. Heck no conversation required either. Just arses on chair writing.
#whatdoesspontaneousmean?
 

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
About a day left and I still don't have anything for the challenge. Ha ha ha oh dear... I might have to resort to a poetry Should have gone to Ashes hangout, that probably would have helped...
 

Lightningboalt

Neo Member
Decided not to jinx myself by proclaiming I'd submit an #entry far in advance, only to find out that I wouldn't have the time.

Carpets - 1249 Words.

A bot on an IRC channel I run spewed out a random phrase (two guesses as to what it was) and I just kind of rolled with it, creating whatever this story is.
 

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
SO I'm way too busy and stressed for a proper entry this time. Lets see what I can bullshit in an hour. #entry

..............................................................

“How to fall in love, eh?” Min leaned back and tapped the back of his pen off his lower lip. His dark hair dangled over boney shoulders, washed in the dimness of his room. The sun fell out of the window in a thick stream over Min’s desk. The rest of the room was covered in a dim color. Min always said he hated artificial light and loathed being in a room with only one window.
I peeked up, trying to see his homework, to make out some recognizable letter or symbol so that I might become a little smarter like my brother. Min noticed me and pulled the pen away from his lip and pressed it on the center of my forehead. He pushed me down until I was standing flat on my feet, no longer on my tiptoes.
“Who is it you want to love?” Min’s eyes were the color of sand. I had never seen sand, whether from a dessert or a beach, but I always assumed it was the same color. How many different colors of sand could there be?
“Her name is Mindy.” I said, self-conscious of my high-pitched eight-year-old voice in comparison to Min’s deep saxophone like voice.
“Mindy? That’s not a pretty name,” Min said, leaning back in his chair. He smiled, laughing at his own joke.
“It really isn’t,” I admitted. I saw Min’s smile slide off as he mulled over his next words.
“That’s rude Cho. You shouldn’t say a girl isn’t pretty.”
“But she isn’t!”
“That’s not the point.” Min sighed and rubbed the pen between his eyebrows. “Alright. Why do you want to fall in love with this girl if you don’t think she’s pretty?”
“Because she told me today she loved me.” I had a flashback. We were sitting on the playground. I could hear the sound of the chains straining on the swing set as some older kids pushed back and forth. I was talking about how I wish the swing set was open when she just blurted the words out in my ear. I had looked at her, wide-eyed, and she had looked down at the empty space between where we sat. Staring, I remember becoming mesmerized at how red her cheeks became. She tried to blurt something out but garbled up the words and ran to a corner of the playground for the rest of recess.
“I see. I see.” Min took a side-glance at his homework, then turned the page over before leaning forward, his eyes almost leveled to mine. “What she look like?”
“Well, she has red hair. And I don’t remember what color her eyes were.”
We sat in a brief silence, long enough that I could hear the sound of mom clanking somewhere downstairs in her study.
“What? That’s it?”
“Is there supposed to be more?” The whole thing left me flabbergasted.
“Yeah, lots more. Like for me, there is this girl, Cindy, and she is gorgeous. Her hair is always curly, but like in a good curly. She obviously wakes up every morning to make sure it's perfect or something, because normally I don’t like girls with curly hair, but hers? I just can’t stop thinking about it. And she’s smart. I don’t think guys ever talk enough about smart girls, but it. Is. Hot! Smartest girl in my anthro-class. If I were ballsy, I’d ask her to help me study.” Min’s hips fidgeted left and right. He used to have a spiny chair but I accidently broke it while playing on it, so he was borrowing Mom's gray folding chair, one of his own pillows on the bottom of the seat. “And she smells good. I know, it’s a little creepy, but sometimes I’m lucky and there is an open seat behind her and I can smell her shampoo. It smells good, like berries. Tropical berries.”
Min nodded at his own words and suddenly snapped back to attention like he was just in some dream. “What were we talking—Oh right. That. That’s the kind of description you should give when you love someone.”
I nodded, secretly feeling like I missed the point. “But, I don’t love her. That’s the problem, remember?”
“Right, right. Well, why do you want to love her?”
“Because she loves me.”
“Is that really a good reason to love someone?” he smiled again, a certain smugness dripping from him as if he had just delivered some important moral.
“But I’m lonely!” I said, and I saw Min open his mouth with another wise retort when I continued, “And it works for Dad! He was able to fall in love with Mom even if he doesn’t all the time.”
Min stopped, his mouth closed as he mulled his words again. He sits up straight, eyes away from me and picks back up his pen. He clicks it twice, looking deep into it like a metronome, then spins it off a finger-joint once. It rested back in his hand and he clicked it twice again.
“Cho, They’re not… I don’t think you should base a relationship off Mom and Dad.”
“But it works. They’re still together.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And Mark says I’m lucky all the time because they’re together.”
“Mark said that?” Min clicked his pen then brought the point to his lower lip without really thinking. “I never liked that kid.” He brought the pen away and drew a line that cut his lower lip in half.
“But it's true,” I said slowly, not actually sure if it was true.
“Do you really think that?” Min said.
I can’t think of anything to say, so I don’t speak at all. Min looked over me and nodded as if the silence was the right answer all along.
“Okay, here’s what you do.” He put the pen down and came back to my level. His eyes were surprisingly serious, and when I meet them, part of me wanted to look away at the blue line cutting his tan lips but I can’t. “Tell her you’re sorry.”
“But why?” I heard my own incredulous voice and was kind of amazed at how petty I sounded. I wasn’t sure why. Still, I doubled down on that initial feeling. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“You’re breaking her heart, dumb-dumb. Doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, she’ll be hurt and you should apologize for hurting her.”
“But… I won’t if I say I love her. Right?”
“Do you want to love her forever though?”
I bit my lower lip while staring into his eyes. Forever seemed like a very long time. “I don’t know.”
“See, that’s how you know you’re not in love. You can’t describe her right. And you can’t commit to her for long. Without those, you won’t be in love for long, even if you somehow manage to fake it. So tomorrow, you’ve got to say, ‘I don’t love you, I’m sorry.’ Okay?”
I took a deep breath. I don’t know why. I didn’t really think this should be that stressful, but it is. And the thought of doing that, of seeing her again, maybe even making her cry, was horrifying. I keep staring in Min’s eyes and there was something so knowing in his gaze like he knew the location of all the water in every desert that I decided to trust him.
I nodded.
“Good. Now buzz off, I’ve still got some homework to finish.” Min pushed my forehead again with the back of his pen. It clicked.
 

Cyan

Banned
#entry

Transcript and recording of a meeting between the President and his Chief Strategist

Chief Strategist: Ok Mr. President, sure, no problem. That works. But now, here's the thing. The altar roll-out is looking like it might be a bit of a--well, you know. Disaster.

President: What?

CS: Bit of a disaster. Just a bit! It's just that there's been some unrest and protests and the Deep Ones took the opportunity to move in and...

President: [crosstalk] The Deep Ones, yes, they're a very important part of our strategy.

CS: [coughs] Mr. President the Deep Ones aren't exactly going to be on our side in all this, we definitely don't want them in there mucking things up.

President: That's what I said. So this fake news CNN has been putting out, fake numbers about the Deep Ones...

CS: [crosstalk] We should probably, uh. Sorry Mr. President, go ahead.

President: They're paying the protestors.

CS: Sorry sir, who is paying them?

President: The Arkhams. That whole family. They're paying the protestors to make us look bad.

CS: Do you mean the University?

President: The Arkhams family. They're huge. Very bad!

CS: Right, well anyway. The altar roll-out. I think maybe we should hold a press conference.

President: I can do that.

CS: No! I mean, we need to delegate, you have important things to do.

President: Oh ok. Maybe I should tweet about it.

CS: No! We, um, we can also have someone else do that.

President: This roll-out is going to be really great. Everyone is talking about it and talking about how great it's going to be. I've seen some of the altars and I think you're going to be really impressed. Fantastic stuff is happening with the altars and the Deep Ones.

CS: Um, thanks for the vote of confidence Mr. President. But look, about the altars, we've still got a lot of the base upset about their churches being replaced and about, you know, the Great Old Ones possibly returning and all.

President: I built a church once, actually I built ten churches. It was fifty stories high, the church I built, the biggest one ever built a lot of people are saying, very very classy, very big league. You know who never built a church?

CS: Your opponent? Or the last president?

President: That's right. They were both total lightweights. Total losers. How did you know that?

CS: Um, you hired me Mr. President, and you only hire the best. Listen, the altars, I'm thinking maybe we need to increase the number of human sacrifices before the protests get too serious.

President: The altars are going to be magnificent. You'll be really pleased. It'll be spectacular. The churches will pay for it, too. That's the best part. It won't cost us a dime.

CS: Also we should probably try to cut down on the investigations of all this stuff because...

President: [crosstalk] I think you're really going to love it.

CS: Right, yes. Anyway, because of the nature of the altars and, um, the timing of trying to get the summoning correct, it's all very delicate you know, we should really cut down. We can't have anyone poking their noses in. We've already got Deep Ones up the...

President: [crosstalk] Of course the Deep Ones are very important, very big name, a lot of people are talking about them. They really did a lot of important work.

CS: Yes, um. Yes. But the, um. There's also the problem of Shub-[redacted]-ath. Of the, um, you know the thousand...

President: [crosstalk] I'd like to grab her by the thousand [unintelligible]. You can get away with it, too, when you're the president.

CS: Ok. I think he's, no, never mind. Ok, you know what? Let's just skip over all the briefing stuff. It's boring anyway. I just need you to approve this executive order to deport anyone to Mexico who refuses to... oh. Ok, sure, we can shake ha--what the hell? Why did you do that? Never mind. Just please sign.

President: We are going to be winning again. Winning so much.

CS: Yes, that's perfect. That's great. Thanks Mr. President. I'll just be, um. I'll just be leaving, you probably have another appointment.

President: It's going to be tremendous. Just terrific. The Deep Ones, a lot of people are talking about them. We can build a University in Arkham. You'll all be very impressed. CNN, fake news. Out of control. Zero accountability. Phony. Bunch of morons. We have become so, so, politically correct, it's why we can't roll out the altars. It's killing us. We need to go back to winning again. We need toughness. We need to go back to... are you there? Where's my phone?

[brief silence]

President: Hello? Anyone? Where's my phone? You're all fired.

[brief silence]

President: [muttering] The churches will pay for it. It's going to be tremendous.

[brief silence]

President: [muttering] I think you're going to be really impressed.
 

Nezumi

Member
Don't wait for me. For the last six hours I have thrown 3000 words worth of ideas into various word documents, but somehow not a single one really managed to become anything more. Guess I better stop before I grow even more frustrated.
 

Cyan

Banned
I edited your original link. Looks like there was an extra http in there that was throwing things off.
 

Carlisle

Member
Yay a story! Boo, last minute scramble...AGAIN! But at least it's not a poem! Next week I'll be more timely and deliberate. But man did it feel good to write a story again.

#entry
After fifteen years of this, she no longer felt the eyes. She could never see them, even before, under the white lights that illuminated her and blackened the world beyond, but she had always felt them before tonight. They whispered criticisms and doubts and pecked away at her resolve. But they did not whisper directly to her, they whispered to one another, there beyond the lights, and she could only sit and pretend not to hear. It had always distracted her from the art, the feeling that too much of her was under too-close observation. How she had done her hair, the shoes she wore, her dress. The way she painted her face and her nails, her lips. They're only here to listen to the music, they would tell her, instructor after instructor, year after year, performance after performance. And she wouldn't have minded that had she believed it. But she could feel the eyes. Millions of them, their hungry gaze burrowing into her, their sickly wet murmuring eating away at her. Not seeing her technique, nor observing her interpretations of the music, only seeing and evaluating her.

This was the reason she moved to the cello from the violin when she was a young girl. It was when she was told she had to start using products to make her beautiful for each performance. She had never thought about how she looked before that day and the idea terrified her. She no longer wanted to go on stage or be displayed to the public, but neither did she want to leave the music. So she decided instead to leave the violin because it was much easier to hide behind a cello. She hadn't considered how much more difficult it was to carry an instrument as tall as she was, however. But to her it was much more than an instrument. It was a shield, and she would put up with a small hinderance bear it.

The cello never fit quite as well as her first love, but nonetheless she took to it with ease and rose quickly above her peers. She left her high school string ensemble to join the local orchestra, and before long she was giving solo performances. She refused at first, but the pressure to take every opportunity was as great as the pressure to be beautiful. Between the late nights of practice and the early morning rehearsals, she put hours into perfecting her face and her body. She obsessed over her poise and posture, her desk littered with hundreds of lipsticks and blushes and mascaras, her floor a sea of colorful tissues. She would have become enraged at the thought of how time she put into this if she could afford the time to become enraged. She tried not to think about how her brother wasn't expected to be beautiful as he played his piano, or her cousin with his trombone.

But tonight she felt the eyes no longer. Yesterday she spent the full day practicing, and last night she slept deeply and soundly for the entire night. And today was filled with more music. None of the hours available went to beauty or obsession or the looming dread of the eyes chewing through her hair and her clothes and her skin. She wouldn't let it defeat her anymore, she wouldn't let it take her away from the music that she loved so much. She walked onto the stage this evening in her sandals and her jeans and her favorite sweater. Her dark hair was tied back in a pony tail and there was nothing on her face but the confident smile of an eight-year-old girl that she'd finally recovered after fifteen long years of hiding. Now, as she sits in the center of the stage on the single wooden chair, under those hot lights, she feels no eyes and hears no eyes, and raises a violin to her chin to play.
 

Ashes

Banned
Mike M - sweet. Her first "published" story?
weemadarthur - educational. But is it true?
Lightningboalt - zeitgeist. Very believable.
FlowersisBritish - reminds me of Aunt Agony.
Tangent - what's FML mean? "F*ck my life"?
Cyan - satire or real life. You decide!
mu cephei - hard to read; solid effort nonetheless.
Carlisle - drifted off in the end; but excellent for most of it


1. Carlisle
2. weemadarthur
3. mu cephei
HM. Tangent.
 

mu cephei

Member
Votes

1. Ashes..........
2. lightningboalt
3. Tangent........

quote for the password in the unlikely event Flowers was too cryptic :p
 

Alucard

Banned
You guys still doing this every month? I've been taking writing more seriously since the start of the year and would love to participate in these as craft exercises. :)
 
Mike M - Floppy Ears Screamed
If this is written by your daughter, I'd guess her to be around 7ish? I wrote some stories at that age, and had much worse segues. She seems to actually notice when she introduces things and forgot to explain them. Nice. Or if you were going for that but don't have a kid, well done.

Lightningboalt - carpets
I enjoy the fact you got a coherent story out of this prompt. I certainly didn't. A couple of grammar issues. Use of the word "procure" instead of "produce". But it's plausible and topical. You sent me off to look up Barthes. Easy and quick to read the language.

FlowersisBritish - Faking Love
The story is interesting in itself. I like your use of language and the gentle way of bringing in the setting.

Tangent - fml
The voice of a child is well done. He seems slightly younger than school age, or his parents treat him younger.

Cyan - Transcript and recording of a meeting between the President and his Chief Strategist
I had some trouble with your entry, because I think it went entirely over my head. I haven't been following every stupid thing Trump says, so I can feel there's a joke there, and I'm just not getting it. Without the background it doesn't seem to be its own entity?

Ashes - the wayfarer
I was a little surprised to find the first thing an amnesiac does is to insult a random stranger's parenting technique. I think it killed a lot of potential sympathy in me as a reader. Good thoughts about the nature of self. The simplicity of the statements about the place setting adds to that feel. Some unusual grammatical choices, like Not A nor B, rather than Neither A Nor B, make me wonder if english is a 2nd language for you? Not that they're wrong, just unusual.

mu cephei - Island
The place setting and world building is very good. I didn't quite feel the reason behind her choice at the end. Maybe that's deliberate? As written it seems to offer the reader a choice of their own reasoning, rather than building a character. The language is very deliberate and evocative, but not simple to read. Each sentence takes time to digest.

Carlisle - The Beauty in the Eyes
Very truthful. The title adds to the understanding and is brought into the body of text.

1. Lightningboalt
2. Mu cephei
3. Carlisle
 

Mike M

Nick N
  • Mike M: I “overheard” this one by recording her surreptitiously and typing it up later on a MacBook. Some of my earliest memories of writing are that of sitting in my dad’s lap at the same age of 5 and dictating while he typed it up on his Macintosh 128k. Time is a flat circle. Incidentally, that alligator and ginormous mouse get a lot of play in the stories she tells.
  • weemadarthur: It wasn’t clear to me that the stones were even speaking to each other until Pyrite came around and addressed anyone in a way that didn’t make it sound like soliloquy. While every story was different, it seemed like a lot of them had very similar emotional beats and language that made it seem very samey.
  • Lightningboalt: It took me a bit to wise up to where this one was going, which is unfortunate because I was finding the anatomy of a Twitter meme to be pretty vapid. Structurally the delivery was a little off for me: The first scene from Charlotte's perspective seemed extraneous; nothing important there couldn’t have been incorporated into Miranda’s perspective, and Craig being so wildly enthused about frankly a pretty lame and stupid slogan was hard to buy. But the payoff was good enough to elevate the whole thing for me in the end..
  • FlowersisBritish: Not sure if having characters named Min, Mindy, and Cindy is supposed to be a joke or not. Doesn’t seem like it is, but it’s a weird choice of names if it’s not.
  • Tangent: Oh god, you used “LEGOs” as the plural of Lego. Lego fans will be howling for your blood and storming your home with torches and pitchforks to drag you screaming into the streets. Good luck arguing the merits of descriptive grammar versus prescriptive grammar with those nutcases.
    The plural of Lego is totally Legos, fuck what anyone else says.
    It did seem strange that no one thought to talk to Gabe about moving, though. I would have expected that they would at least show him the house or something at some point.
  • Cyan: Oh god, can we just wake Cthulhu and put this whole farce of a timeline to an end?
  • Ashes: I think I’m a little confused by some of the details in this one. The English came looking for him after his crash, and the man he met agreed to take him to them the next morning, but didn’t for some reason? If the British knew enough about him that they should send someone looking to retrieve him after his plane crashed, it seems odd that he would have trouble re-entering the country, but I’ve never had to contend with such problems and will plead ignorance to the matter.
  • mu cephei: Obviously the creature in the cell beneath the fortress is somehow integral to the survival of the inhabitants of the island, but I’m left wondering what the creature is supposed to be and what they use it for (apparently they do something with the blood?). I’m usually fairly well-versed in mythological creatures, so if this is something that already has a folklore behind it, I’m completely stumped. If it’s something original, I could have used more to go on.
  • Carlisle: It seems like almost all of this was spent laying out and defining what the conflict was, only to jump to the self-actualization resolution without actually working through the conflict we just had described to us. Also, I had the impression that she had actually been playing the cello longer than the violin at this point, and certainly hadn’t had time to practice with the latter. Going on stage with an instrument you haven’t played in a decade and a half seems to stray from self-empowerment to potentially being a self-destructive act of torpedoing her career.

Votes:
1. Ashes
2. mu cephei
3. Lightningboalt
 

Tangent

Member
Tangent - what's FML mean? "F*ck my life"?
You hit the nail on the head!

Votes:
1. Carpets by Lightningboalt
2. The Beauty in the Eyes by Carlisle
3. Transcript... by Cyan <--- haha!
hm Island by mu cephei

I really meant to save enough time to write out feedback but still didn't.... time management for next time!
 

Lightningboalt

Neo Member
Apologies for just making a list here, didn't have time to go in-depth.

1. Mu Cephei
2. Ashes
3. Tangent

Further apologies for ruining everything by creating a three way tie for first... thus ruining my own first place lead in the process. Though that's probably a good thing because it's not as if I could post a topic if I won, I don't post on gaf enough OOPS
 

Ashes

Banned
My count is different Nez:

Votes

mu cephei - 13 (2)
A. Miksch - 12.9999999 (3)
lightningboalt - 11 (2)
Carlisle - 6 (1)
weemadarthur - 2
Tangent - 2
Cyan - 1
FlowersisBritish - 1

Congrats mu cephei
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom