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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #60 - "Brevity"

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T

Timedog

good credit (by proxy)
Theme - "Brevity"

Word Limit: 500

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 9/22 by 11:59 PM Pacific

Voting begins Thursday, 09/23 , and goes until SUNDAY, 9/26 at 11:59 PM Pacific.


Optional Secondary Objective:

Make your entry a complete piece. 3 acts, complete plot structure, I don't fucking know, just make it feel finished. How much can you say in 1 page in Microsoft Word?

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.

Writing Challenge FAQ

AGAIN, VOTING ENDS SUNDAY NIGHT, CAPTAIN.
 
I

Irish

Member
This is going to be bitchin'. 500 words is the only way I can actually tell a 3-act story. I get lost otherwise.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
He did it. He said he would. And he went and really did it. Have you seen a maverick the likes of him? Well have you! :p

More on topic, poetry would be too easy for this, so I'm going to avoid that. Secondary obj. is going to be too much of a stretch, though I will try it for a bit of fun. I used write microfiction pieces a page long. Though five hundred words allow only 5 100 word paragraphs.
Hmm... This needs thinking about.
Or maybe I'll just write by starting somewhere, hoping to end somewhere different and make it feel like a journey of some kind.
 
D

Devil Theory

Member
This is my first submission, and most likely my only. I wrote this on a somewhat personal level - and decided to submit it regardless of how it would be received. It's not a story in the traditional sense, the whole of it came out rather quickly, from personal issues in my life, but felt it could be applied to this theme regardless, hopefully I'm not wrong and embarrassing myself. I don't know much about the technical aspects of writing; so I've no reference on form or anything similar.

A Personal Belonging
498

I rarely know how to begin these. Something elegant, simple, or an honest expression. In this intrusion, I’ll attempt to aline things in a realistic way that depicts my acquisitions within realization.

I submit to you, first, the idea that I had been deceived. Inadvertently so, but nevertheless, misled. Knowing this fact at this particular point in time, there would be little to do about it, even if I had discovered it early in youth. I believe the traditional family structure had done this to me. Sentencing me to the belief that I required, irrevocably, an alien, omniscient, however extraneous, 'being' assigned to, and attributed for, my mental stability. I quite emphatically believe this is unhealthy and damaging to a progression towards grasping reality and objectiveness. I was a victim of this, however in a more forgiving course. Through the depth of my childhood, I was consistently aware and seen demonstrated the two extremes of humanity. Unfaltering love, and earnest effort, as contrasted with unstable support, traitorous intents, and mutilating speech.

Despite this surrounding, I was given a reason and excuse to why this behavior was in relation to an existential deity. Events and years would become unto us disaster after disaster, filled to the brim with plagues and sadness, and through it all, repressed anger and hatred for a being that ignored the innocence of human suffering, for an excuse that I had little reason to support. It had been an internal battleground, one half being dedicated to a conceptual lack of understanding, with which would be answered in said time; we are, after all, ugly and imperfect. The other half, divided within itself, would seek refuge in the hope and solace that the imperfection so professed as weaknesses and attributed to lack of understanding and patience, would, in the end, set free my tired waiting that has gone far back into the generations before my own. Please, become accepting of the fact that it is not apostasy for the sake of it; it’s with which any opposite would ultimately render me painfully incapacitated and shackled to an unwavering system built on failures.

You would perhaps describe this transformation being built on deceit, or lack of knowledge. It is not so. Neither, should I add, is such fatalism often associated with this sort of inner contortion. It is, however, a basic and calming realization that within schemes larger than you or I, we must progress, drastically. In such a way, that extropianism becomes more than just a philosophy through with certain groups lobby change, but becomes the criterion for the future of humanity. In the better faces of our future offspring, this attuned goal is an achievement much more benign than any patronizing tone set by archaic, sentimental tradition begrudging change.

It is through this manner that I have set the pace for my life, and despite opposition and betrayel, can wish the same optimistic existence to you, as I acquired, through the brevity of this letter.
 
I

Irish

Member
Cyan said:
Noooooooo, damn you!
Click to expand...

I have to win this son of a bitch. I absolutely have to. I can't allow this Sunday voting deadline to continue. I'm an attention whore who needs to see what people thought of the stuff I spewed out. I can't wait an extra day for that crap. :p
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Cyan said:
Noooooooo, damn you!



Cool topic.
Click to expand...

It was in capslock and I thought yeah he means business. But then he boldly bolded it and I thought: woh! But he's now gone and put in it in red ink! And I'm like damn.... yo!
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Timedog said:
:lol
Click to expand...

:D

Huh! jokes on you my friend. Whilst having a shower, a fully formed story suddenly played itself to me. Three acts. check. Brevity check. 500 words. Well... okay you got me there. Won't know till it's done and dusted.
I don't know where the story came from, but it's a pretty simple one, often told, but the main thing is I have it! :p
ps. The sunday deadline thing is how I like it in the poetry thread, so cheers for that. Hopefully, people carry on that trend.
 
I

Irish

Member
It makes sense that I have about a million ideas now. I think I'm finally over that idea drought. :D

I wouldn't have expected anything else from a Timedog created topic though.
 
C

crowphoenix

Banned
Oh, this one's going to be a blast. Three acts as spartan as I can make it? Hell yeah.

And critiqueing's gonna be a damn breezy. Why you might even be able to get them done before football starts on Saturday, Cyan.
 
R

ronito

Member
I came to the riverbed as the daylight waned and found it more than an meeting place of land and water. The tent city of the homeless crawled towards the shoreline of the river where the boats of the rich would speed past leaving tendrils of drunken laughter behind. On the shore, dressed in thread bare clothes and shoes that didn't fit, the children of the poor played together with squeals of delighted laughter. A quick boat skimmed past and the children stopped momentarily to wave at the passing boat as if they were not the children of the poor but rather princes and princesses of the shore.

The children watched the boat as it went around a bend and disappeared. Then, as if to each lay claim to a boat they would never ride in, each child began to boast.

"My Dad just got a new dog!" One boy chimed.
"Mine got a new coat!" A girl said.
"Mine a wheelchair!"
"Mine a big knife!"

A dog to starve beside him. A coat that will not keep out illness. A wheelchair to carry him through poverty. A knife that will not cut through hunger.

One boy who had nothing to boast of pulled up the collar of his shirt around his head, controted his face and arms and pretended to be a monster. The other children screamed and laughed as they ran away from the monster boy dramatically dragging his leg behind him as if it were dead weight.

I turned to leave. The setting sun turned the river into an amalgem of molten silver, gold and platinum. A strong gust of wind swooped in scattering dust and dirt over the tents and the laughing children.
 
R

ronito

Member
I didn't keep to the secondary objective. But this one struck me like lightning and I had to write it.

Also since the main objective might be too subtle
The brevity is the children playing and laughter. The dust that comes in at the end is symbolic that their time of poverty will be coming soon. It's also symbolized by the boy playing a monster whom everyone runs away from right after they were boasting of their meager possessions.

You know me, I've never met a symbol I didn't like.
 
A

Alfarif

This picture? uhh I can explain really!
Wow... I might actually be able to do something this time around. Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? I pretty much just subscribe, read the stories, don't vote, mash out a 200 word piece of shit, don't submit it, then rinse repeat when the new topic goes up. :lol
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Alfarif said:
Wow... I might actually be able to do something this time around. Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? I pretty much just subscribe, read the stories, don't vote, mash out a 200 word piece of shit, don't submit it, then rinse repeat when the new topic goes up. :lol
Click to expand...
I've bolded the only part you need to change. :D
 
R

ronito

Member
Alfarif said:
Wow... I might actually be able to do something this time around. Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? I pretty much just subscribe, read the stories, don't vote, mash out a 200 word piece of shit, don't submit it, then rinse repeat when the new topic goes up. :lol
Click to expand...
It doesn't save you from criticism.

CatEater:This post lacked any kind of dramatic movement. Sure it matters to you, but why does it matter to the reader? Ultimately it feels like you rushed the ending and spent too much time building up unimportant stuff.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
I actually went back to the other thread and checked whether you had put that in your critiques. :p And yes you had.
no, not really

@alfarif for the story in the last thread: Your story was definitely lacking something. A story yes, but... well, namely words.
 
A

Aaron

Member
Between the Toes
word count: 500

The giants will be coming soon.

Our village rests in a long but narrow valley, or at least it did. The elders have finished tearing down our tallest buildings and clearing away all of our hunts. Now they herd both the animals and their children into the caves, keeping them sheltered deep underground. Ten years ago, I was shivering under torchlight, listening to the distant boom gradually growing near. The cave shook. The people screamed. With stomach twisted in fear, I endured as the rumble slowly receded.

Now I am a man, and wait at the summit of the highest hills for the return of these ancient travelers. 'Build elsewhere' outsiders have told us, but the slopes of these hills are too jagged and steep, while the floor of the valley is the only fertile land for as far as our eyes can reach. The villagers believe it worth bowing our heads and shutting our eyes once every ten years.

Why should we? Weeks of effort to clear away and rebuild. The land is torn by their passage, the crops scattered, and any beast that dares to stand before them will not survive.

So I have trained for years to master the six impossible challenges. I have scaled the forbidden peak, wrestled the wild mountain cats, eaten nothing but fire for three days, ran to the next distant village and back again without stopping, mastered the art of the unblockable relentless cut, and forged a sword that can slice boulders in half with a single blow.

The rumbling is starting. I surge forward like the restless sea, leaping across the hilltops with sword in hand. Nothing can impede me. I can already see the summits of their heads. Bald and shining they are, like bare mountain tops. Their long robes are dirty, sending out great waves of dust in their wake. They have solemn faces, looking only to the horizon. They care not where they step with feet each as long as our village had been.

I hadn't expected them to be quite that large.

My heart stops. My courage falters, but I can only think of those children huddled fearful in the dark. Not one more needs to suffer. I grip my sword tightly, preparing to leap as a fly to these giants, but a hand on my shoulder impedes me.

"Let them pass."

My own grandfather, but he isn't looking to me. He peers down to the valley where our village once rested, where the few things left behind are smashed by the careless feet of giants. Yet those same monstrous toes churn the dry earth with damp mud and dust full of seeds and soil falling from their shifting robes. Their sweat drips down to form pools of water in this arid land.

Terrible and careless they may be, these giants are the source of life in this valley. I can only throw away my sword, and watch on defeated as they stride off into the horizon.
 
C

crowphoenix

Banned
Alfarif: There's not a single wasted word in your piece. No fluff to distract the reader, but there' no hook. There's nothing for the for the reader to latch on to, nothing to propel them forward.
 
Y

Yeef

Member
crowphoenix said:
Alfarif: There's not a single wasted word in your piece. No fluff to distract the reader, but there' no hook. There's nothing for the for the reader to latch on to, nothing to propel them forward.
Click to expand...
:lol
 
R

ronito

Member
This is really refreshing, with the shortened word count. A lot of people have already posted. Mayhap we want to shorten the deadline?
 
H

Hasan

Banned
Devil Theory said:
This is my first submission, and most likely my only. I wrote this on a somewhat personal level - and decided to submit it regardless of how it would be received. It's not a story in the traditional sense, the whole of it came out rather quickly, from personal issues in my life, but felt it could be applied to this theme regardless, hopefully I'm not wrong and embarrassing myself. I don't know much about the technical aspects of writing; so I've no reference on form or anything similar.

A Personal Belonging
498

I rarely know how to begin these. Something elegant, simple, or an honest expression. In this intrusion, I’ll attempt to aline things in a realistic way that depicts my acquisitions within realization.

I submit to you, first, the idea that I had been deceived. Inadvertently so, but nevertheless, misled. Knowing this fact at this particular point in time, there would be little to do about it, even if I had discovered it early in youth. I believe the traditional family structure had done this to me. Sentencing me to the belief that I required, irrevocably, an alien, omniscient, however extraneous, 'being' assigned to, and attributed for, my mental stability. I quite emphatically believe this is unhealthy and damaging to a progression towards grasping reality and objectiveness. I was a victim of this, however in a more forgiving course. Through the depth of my childhood, I was consistently aware and seen demonstrated the two extremes of humanity. Unfaltering love, and earnest effort, as contrasted with unstable support, traitorous intents, and mutilating speech.

Despite this surrounding, I was given a reason and excuse to why this behavior was in relation to an existential deity. Events and years would become unto us disaster after disaster, filled to the brim with plagues and sadness, and through it all, repressed anger and hatred for a being that ignored the innocence of human suffering, for an excuse that I had little reason to support. It had been an internal battleground, one half being dedicated to a conceptual lack of understanding, with which would be answered in said time; we are, after all, ugly and imperfect. The other half, divided within itself, would seek refuge in the hope and solace that the imperfection so professed as weaknesses and attributed to lack of understanding and patience, would, in the end, set free my tired waiting that has gone far back into the generations before my own. Please, become accepting of the fact that it is not apostasy for the sake of it; it’s with which any opposite would ultimately render me painfully incapacitated and shackled to an unwavering system built on failures.

You would perhaps describe this transformation being built on deceit, or lack of knowledge. It is not so. Neither, should I add, is such fatalism often associated with this sort of inner contortion. It is, however, a basic and calming realization that within schemes larger than you or I, we must progress, drastically. In such a way, that extropianism becomes more than just a philosophy through with certain groups lobby change, but becomes the criterion for the future of humanity. In the better faces of our future offspring, this attuned goal is an achievement much more benign than any patronizing tone set by archaic, sentimental tradition begrudging change.

It is through this manner that I have set the pace for my life, and despite opposition and betrayel, can wish the same optimistic existence to you, as I acquired, through the brevity of this letter.
Click to expand...
For some reason, the prose reminds me of Kafka, but you are too literal. Some magical realism maybe.
 
T

Tim the Wiz

Banned
Memories

That night we met. I searched. Surely, it had to be there. A hidden flaw, a lurking prejudice, an inescapable vice. But I could not find it. All I could see was passion I desired, imagination I craved, intelligence I admired.

Or the first time I saw you wake. I could not hide my adoration. For the face which contained a smile of pure ecstasy, as if coming alive in this world of ours was a joy to behold - even if it isn't, it became so when your lips broadened and your teeth showed. I knew it then. I could watch you do that every day to infinity. Eternity was too short.

Do you remember that old sycamore by the library? Where we would compare Dostoevsky and Twain, Twilight and Rand? The best and the worst. Do you remember how our tongues used to entwine and our hands nestle; your back arching, our breaths fastening; skin glistening under the autumn sun? Your eyes were shut in pleasure, but I could not stop looking, watching. I was forever doubtful. Do you remember?

I'm sorry I have to leave you now. Remember me, Jane.
 
I

Iceman

Member
ronito said:
This is really refreshing, with the shortened word count. A lot of people have already posted. Mayhap we want to shorten the deadline?
Click to expand...

I finally just got an idea this morning.. but I usually end up going with my fourth or fifth.. so I won't be happy (and writing) until those ideas are rolling in...

I'm going to start writing this first idea.. it's only 500 words right? Then I'll decide if I'll use it.
 
T

Tim the Wiz

Banned
ronito said:
The last sentence Timo.

Is it a command, or is Jane the name of the speaker?
Click to expand...

A command. The whole thing is first-person voice, or intended as such, at least.

Otherwise, the poets don't lie. Falling in love really is frightening. Please tell me it's never as intense as the first time. It seems to be effecting every thought I have - as well as any attempt at writing, it seems. The silver lining is that life is somewhat more tolerable, even though I'm now writing sickly-sweet, over-serious stuff which would have made my eyes glaze over with boredom in the past. </livejournal>

ronito said:
This is really refreshing, with the shortened word count. A lot of people have already posted. Mayhap we want to shorten the deadline?
Click to expand...

I'll back this. Only because mine is already submitted, though. :lol
 
Y

Yeef

Member
There was a story I had in mind that worked for both of the last two challenges. It'll be hard to get it to work here, but I like a challenge.

Also:

You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude, so that's what you call me. Or maybe His Dudeness, or Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
 
A

Alfarif

This picture? uhh I can explain really!
:lol I love you guys. I will begin mashing tomorrow... I might even do what Cyan said and submit the stupid thing.
 
I

Irish

Member
Alfarif said:
Wow... I might actually be able to do something this time around. Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? I pretty much just subscribe, read the stories, don't vote, mash out a 200 word piece of shit, don't submit it, then rinse repeat when the new topic goes up. :lol
Click to expand...

See, I knew there was something that I was doing wrong. I've actually been submitting the damned things.
 
H

Hyams

Member
Girl-Age.


Goddamn, but she is hot. Look at her. Fucking look at her, bro. Look at those cock-sucking lips. Look at those perky titties. I bet she shaves her pussy. What the fuck you waiting for, bro? Man the fuck up and get over there.

You lick your lips. Your heart is pounding, and you’re telling yourself to move, willing your legs to move, but you feel weak, your legs feel weak, and useless, and shaky, and won’t move.

You sigh. You’re so pathetic.

Lights dance over the tightly pack crowd. Everyone is writhing in time to the music. Strangers’ sweaty bodies are pushed up against yours. You don’t know anyone here. Whatever club you go to, you never know anyone there. You never talk to any girls, either.

You sigh. You’re so pathetic.

But … you now realise … that girl is coming to you. She’s actually coming to you.

“Hi,” she says.

You open your mouth, but no words come out.

“My name’s Candice.”

“That’s a pretty name,” you breathe. You’re shaking.

“I think you’re cute. I’d like to get to know you better.”

Two minutes later, the two of you are in the disabled toilets. Candice is grinning at you as she loosens your belt and yanks down your jeans. Then she hitches her skirt up and you see she’s wearing no panties.

Shaven, bro. I told you. I fucking told you. Stick your cock in the bitch, you fucking stud.

You’re slamming your hips against her as fast as you can. You don’t feel a thing. “Am I in?”

“Oh yeah. Keep going. Harder.” Her heavy breathing turns into little moans.

But you’re penis is feeling - oh God. No. Not already.

It feels more like urinating then cumming.

Oh shit, bro. Harsh luck.

You carry on pounding her for a few seconds, pretending not to have noticed. But already your penis is wilting. Your chest and throat filling with a choking sense of shame, you say, “I think I just - I think I just came.”

Candice’s eyes narrow. “Seriously?”

“Sorry.” You don’t know what else to say. You pull out of her.

“Oh well,” Candice says, and sighs prettily. “I guess that’ll have to do.” She grabs your penis with one hand, and pulls a knife from the handbag at her side.

Then something horrible happens.

Holy shit, bro. Holy shit. What the fuck?

You’re lying on the ground. Blood is spurting everywhere. You’re grasping at the ruin that is your crotch. Candice drops your penis into her bag.

You whimper a while. The world is going fuzzy. Candice is washing her hands. “It was lovely meeting you.” She smiles, and turns, and leaves. The toilet door bangs shut behind her.

Pain is lancing through you, but - but, it’s fading. The world is spinning, spinning. You feel sick. This can’t be happening, it can’t.

“Oh God,” you say.

You’re dying.

You’re dying.

Shit, bro. I wasn’t expecting that.

But, bitches right? Haha. Bitches.

Haha.


500 words.
 
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