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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #126 - "Reunited"

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N

Nezumi

Member
Argh, over the last two hours I tried at least twenty different openings for my story. I just can't find a single one that works in the way I want it to work.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
I banged out something short, but need to find time to revise.

I think I might sit the next challenge out, I'm writing something that's looking to break five digits on the word count and really can't find time to do that and a side thing at the same time : /
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Crap, this is the first time I've completely forgotten about the word count and just kept writing.
I might have to butcher this a bit, we want it sub3000.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
GRW810 said:
Sorry to break it to you but it's 2,500...
Click to expand...

Yeah, thought it was 3k this time around, so I'm disqualified.
I pulled a reverse-Ronito by the looks of it, but it's alright, I had a fun in the process.

With that said, I'm more than happy to still receive some critique from anyone with too much time on their hands.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Damn! This is actually the first time that I`m really not happy with how the idea I had in mind actually turned out written down. But considering that it is already past 4 o'clock in the morning here I don't see much of a chance in saving it.
I'm still gonna get up in a few hours trying to save what I can. Who needs sleep anyway?
But I swear, next time I will write my story once I have the idea. I think I really need to step away from the "One Draft" Mode.
 
V

Valerie Cherish

Member
Quote for link in the email tags. Will have something like Dropbox I can link to next time :p

Dalia's, 1201 words.



I need to work on verb tense.
 
H

hey_monkey

Banned
Made it. Not quite what I wanted and messy, but I couldn't miss my own challenge. Under 600 words.

Under the Desert Sun :: quote for easy, typical password

eta: already reading, started with Aaron's and damn, man. Damn. Damn.
 
G

GRW810

Member
The numbers of entries has started to almost double recently compared to the first few challenges I took part in. Wow. Best get reading.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
One-sentence (not really) feedback:

Atticus Forrest - The Absurd

I liked this one, and I totally see how it relates to the theme - which it does in a really subtle, but neat, manner.

kaeparnsomething - Reunited - Just a day ago tomorrow (1495)

I liked it, but I think I would have liked it to be less obvious early on. I had an idea of what was coming at the mention of "coverings", but then I might be too fond of twists.

Toddhunter - 02

I'm not entirely sure why she'd need an O2 canister in an office building, but then I guess that's just the case in this particular post-apocalyptic setting. It could have helped to drop a hint or two in the dream sequence (She drew in the air, relishing every breath, maybe.

GRW810 - Favourite Place

You pretty much nailed the secondary objective!
Bitter-sweet story, excellent prose, and all-around great piece.

ElectricBlanketFire - Attic Record Review: The Eraser

An excellent review of an album.

SquiddyCracker - Fragments

Critiquing my own thing so that I may learn from my mistakes.
I think this one could have used a little bit more planning, and a little less free-style writing. I'm not entirely sure it could have been condensed by another 500-1000 words, but one step in the right direction would have been to remove some of the superfluous bits, only bring up world building elements if they directly contribute to the narrative (and in some places, that wasn't the case). The initial half of the story was interesting, but it kinda fell apart towards the end due to bad writing and bad characterization (for that matter, the only proper character was pretty flat and boring).

Mike M - Pumpkin

Yeah.... that was one disturbing short story.
You did a bang up job on that one still.

Tangent - Whole

You would think that more than one fellah would have asked to remain unchanged, but it didn't really ruin my enjoyment of the story.

Aaron - Waiting on High Tide

Lovely story.

Valerie Cherish - Dalia's

I liked it, but I think it could have been trimmed down just a bit, streamlined.

Sober - Long Lost Brother

Firefly is cancelled :(
Liked it, it was neat.

hey_monkey - Under the Desert Sun

Could have used some more words, but then I'm not the one to talk.

Nezumi - Fade

Short and sweet.

Cyan - Nuances (Incomplete)

I liked what you had written, but I didn't quite see how it'd relate to the theme.
It's interesting to see a glimpse of how you structure your writing though.

multivac - Melody's Song

Adorable story :3

Ashes1396 - #Opus 11

I liked it, and the prose was excellent as usual.
Glad you abandoned the dashes, I've never been a fan of them.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
Holy shit. This is why I love NeoGAF, it has something for everyone. I'm an avid writer, love writing short stories, and I had no idea there were Creative Writing Challenges. Can't wait to participate in the next one
 
K

kehs

Banned
More_Badass said:
Holy shit. This is why I love NeoGAF, it has something for everyone. I'm an avid writer, love writing short stories, and I had no idea there were Creative Writing Challenges. Can't wait to participate in the next one
Click to expand...

You can still join, just convince heymonkey it's the wrong day.


squiddy: that might be because I only write about booze lately. :<
 
A

Ashes

Banned
More_Badass said:
Holy shit. This is why I love NeoGAF, it has something for everyone. I'm an avid writer, love writing short stories, and I had no idea there were Creative Writing Challenges. Can't wait to participate in the next one
Click to expand...

You missed only the opening third of this challenge. Read, comment, critique, vote - make a difference. Here's to enjoying your stay here. Just avoid my crits for a couple of weeks - when I bother to post them that is - and you'll do just fine.

a new challenger appears!.gif
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Sober said:
One draft wonder, but at least I guess it broke me out of my dry spell. Last one I did was #122! That felt like ages ago.
Click to expand...

Welcome back. It's funny you should say that, because I was thinking of taking a break. No idea whether I'll go ahead with it, because I've written a short story every fortnight for a long long time now.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
SquiddyCracker said:
Cyan - Nuances (Incomplete)

I liked what you had written, but I didn't quite see how it'd relate to the theme.
It's interesting to see a glimpse of how you structure your writing though.
Click to expand...

Seeing as I didn't even finish it, I might as well explain myself. :p

The thought I had was of a recontact story, humans from a civilized world reuniting with a "lost tribe" sorta thing. The idea was a vast empire that collapsed, leaving groups stranded on far-off planets that would have had to fend for themselves for centuries.

And then I thought it'd be fun to turn things around and have the lost tribe be savvy enough to know that any trade or commerce would inevitably lead to exploitation, since they would be wholly dependent on those who'd first contacted them for their contact with civilization at large. This savviness would come as a surprise to our explorers, and to hammer that home I'd have the tribesmen sound like total primitives at first due to a crappy translator program.

Then I decided that was too boring to even write, and to spice it up enough that I'd actually be interested, I inserted a battle, which also let me do the secondary.

Then I started writing it and lost momentum in the second day of meeting with the tribe, since I didn't really know where to go with that scene. Also the large scale slaughter of tribesmen carrying spears felt vaguely racist.

Don't know if I'll go back and finish it or not. If I do, I might pull back on the primitive stuff a bit, and do a bit more with the crew. *shrug*
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Cyan said:
Seeing as I didn't even finish it, I might as well explain myself. :p

The thought I had was of a recontact story, humans from a civilized world reuniting with a "lost tribe" sorta thing. The idea was a vast empire that collapsed, leaving groups stranded on far-off planets that would have had to fend for themselves for centuries.

And then I thought it'd be fun to turn things around and have the lost tribe be savvy enough to know that any trade or commerce would inevitably lead to exploitation, since they would be wholly dependent on those who'd first contacted them for their contact with civilization at large. This savviness would come as a surprise to our explorers, and to hammer that home I'd have the tribesmen sound like total primitives at first due to a crappy translator program.

Then I decided that was too boring to even write, and to spice it up enough that I'd actually be interested, I inserted a battle, which also let me do the secondary.

Then I started writing it and lost momentum in the second day of meeting with the tribe, since I didn't really know where to go with that scene. Also the large scale slaughter of tribesmen carrying spears felt vaguely racist.

Don't know if I'll go back and finish it or not. If I do, I might pull back on the primitive stuff a bit, and do a bit more with the crew. *shrug*
Click to expand...

Now that I like.
If it wasn't for the secondary objective, I think it would have worked excellent with a reverse chronological order; starting out with the battle like you did, and then scene by scene step back to the moment the empyrean expedition reunites with the lost tribe.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Cyan said:
Seeing as I didn't even finish it, I might as well explain myself. :p

The thought I had was of a recontact story, humans from a civilized world reuniting with a "lost tribe" sorta thing. The idea was a vast empire that collapsed, leaving groups stranded on far-off planets that would have had to fend for themselves for centuries.

And then I thought it'd be fun to turn things around and have the lost tribe be savvy enough to know that any trade or commerce would inevitably lead to exploitation, since they would be wholly dependent on those who'd first contacted them for their contact with civilization at large. This savviness would come as a surprise to our explorers, and to hammer that home I'd have the tribesmen sound like total primitives at first due to a crappy translator program.

Then I decided that was too boring to even write, and to spice it up enough that I'd actually be interested, I inserted a battle, which also let me do the secondary.

Then I started writing it and lost momentum in the second day of meeting with the tribe, since I didn't really know where to go with that scene. Also the large scale slaughter of tribesmen carrying spears felt vaguely racist.

Don't know if I'll go back and finish it or not. If I do, I might pull back on the primitive stuff a bit, and do a bit more with the crew. *shrug*
Click to expand...

Your voice is changing. At least that's how I felt reading this latest one.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
Still reading through the entrees, but I was looking at the past threads. Most are only 2, 3 pages. So I'm guessing there is only a small group of participants who take part? Which is cool, like a writers community. Have a lot of you even participating since the beginning?

And there's a Writing Workshop thread. Yup, GAF is awesome
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
More_Badass said:
Still reading through the entrees, but I was looking at the past threads. Most are only 2, 3 pages. So I'm guessing there is only a small group of participants who take part? Which is cool, like a writers community. Have a lot of you even participating since the beginning?

And there's a Writing Workshop thread. Yup, GAF is awesome
Click to expand...

Lately it's been 15+ entries per thread, anymore participation and it may get unmanageable : )

Composition seems to consist of a core group of perpetual contributors with a rotating cast of lapsed OG participants and newbies joining the fray.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Some disparity in lengths of comments this week, but some ones I just had more to talk about : )

Atticus Forrest -- The Absurd: The whole time I was wondering why the narrator would remain in Boston living in his brother’s place instead of moving back to Aspen if he found it so objectionable. Seems like that would be a far more sensible solution.

kap... keper... aw fuck it Copernicus -- Reunited - Just a day ago tomorrow: And there’s the throbbing lobe reference. I more or less recognized the woman-as-a-metaphor-for-addiction from the first paragraph, which lead to me puzzling just what exactly the substance he was addicted to was (or whether I was just wrong and it was going to be a literal woman) to the point that it almost drove me to distraction. There was an interesting mix of some vivid imagery, and some really peculiar choices “like a tiny emaciated heroin addict trying to hold back a great dane after fasting” standing out the most. It conjures a mental image, but perhaps one that’s just too specific.

toddhunter -- O2: So if every time she gets to the river its different, why would it be unusual that she would be surprised by what she found? If anything, you’d think it would be expected. Also found the notion of someone carrying around a portable safe to be more than a little unusual. Obviously it’s to protect a precious resource that’s worth killing over, but “safe” calls to mind something that is decidedly not portable, though I suppose it could be a simple lockbox or even a locked briefcase or something of that nature. Also liked the symmetry at the end with the reaching for the picture, but unable to reach it. One question though, was this a normal dream, or was she utilizing some sort of Inception-esque device? The fact that there was something referred to as a “glitch” kind of muddled the matter for me, though really I don’t think there was anything else that would have indicated otherwise so maybe that’s just on me.

GRW810 -- Favourite Place: Well constructed, even though the outcome was visible on the horizon from the get go, if only because there seems to be little point in belaboring their brief history together if there was going to be a happy ending : ). I don’t think the flashback needed to be demarcated with the labels, a simple scene break probably would have sufficed. Also, I would have arranged some of the punctuation on some of the sentences differently. I won’t be so bold as to say I would do it “more” correct since I’m the furthest thing in the world from a copy editor, but some of the placements of commas ran afoul of my spider sense as it were. That may just be the difference in the cadence I would have in reading the words than the author’s voice, though.

ElectricBlanketFire -- Attic Record Review: The Eraser: Someone had a picture of that guy as their avatar (Maybe still), and for the longest time I had no idea what it was. The closest I could guess was that it was some sort of Edward Gorey rendition of Q or something. Now I have closure in my life.

SquiddyCracker -- Fragments: The idea of an AI trying to reassemble itself is kind of shades of Neruomancer, though there’s definitely a more space opera thing going on with this than cyberpunk. I’m trying not to think about what’s involved in reintegrating a drone, the terminator, and flesh and blood human into a single... organism? Construct?

MikeM -- Pumpkin: Wait, you’re not ChainsawKitten... Not exactly crazy about this one, it was just a slapdash story built around a random thought I had about what if the afterlife was every bit as bullshit unfair as life, only it went on forever. Then it went somewhere a bit dark.

Tangent -- Whole: The pacing of God’s rote greeting and the fact that Trevor was referred to as a “customer” reminded me of chapels in Vegas and Hawaii that just crank out weddings at 15 minute intervals. I was expecting something a bit more farcical where Heaven is a tacky Vegas caricature, but the way it suddenly veered away into sentimentality jarred me. I also find the notion that he has *no negative feelings associated with his prosthetic leg whatsoever* to be a stretch, but that may be just me speaking from the fact that one of my deepest darkest fears is physical maiming.

Aaron -- Waiting on High Tide: Mechanically sound, and the world building was intriguing (I am a sucker for anything aquatic).I was a little put out by the notion that a clearly alien culture would have the institutions of top 40 radio stations and music promotion that so strongly mimic our own society. Even allowing for the implication that this a far flung future humanity that has evolved to deal with rising sea levels and climate change, the idea that such things would remain largely unchanged is challenging to accept.

Valerie Cherish -- Dalia’s: Yeeeeah, there are some verb tense changes there. Also, you have a big swath of something like six paragraphs all starting with “She [verb]ed...” I did like the notion of describing the deli being sandwiched between two other locations, but don’t milk it multiple times. The first time was clever enough : ) Had trouble discerning if some things like mannequins waving were metaphorical or depictions of mental illness. There were several things like that which left me puzzling the truth of the matter.

Sober -- Long Lost Brother: This one felt like it got chewed up in the teeth of the word count. A lot of it reads less like a story and more like someone relating the main bullet points of a story back to me.

hey_monkey -- Under the Desert Sun: Reads like a harlequin romance novel condensed into one page. I have no idea if that’s actually true since I’ve never read a harlequin romance novel, but it sounds good and pithy, right?

Nezumi -- Fade: Oooh, susurrus. Five dollar word. : ) The idea of all the possibilities of the world collapsing in upon themselves until there is only one possibility for everything at all times was a fascinating one that hooked me from the start, but you kind of rushed headlong into the near endstate where everything has achieved uniformity when I would have rather seen the world leading up until that point. The lamentation of the demise of Catherine seemed kind of disjointed though, it didn’t really seem to fit in with the premise of everything that came before it.

Cyan -- Nuances: First impression is that “Accushot” sounds like the brand of sniper rifle Acme would sell Wile E. Coyote. Heh. Would have liked to have seen it finished, though at least you were considerate enough to put the scene summaries in there to bring it home, incomplete though it was. Was that for our benefit, or is that how you usually chart these things out?

multivac -- Melody’s Song: Giant arthropods, you say? You have my interest, sir. I think if such a forest were to exist, the population of giant insects would probably be more sparse than the impression this story gave since they’d need comparatively more resources and the forest wouldn’t be able to support a population number that numbered in the millions. The foreshadowing of the spider by describing a near identical previous encounter was a bit heavy handed, and your menagerie of insects mentioned was downright mundane. When would you have ever had a better opportunity to write about an assassin bug? Still, I liked it (though I think the beetle would have mandibles, not pincers).

Ashes1396 -- Opus #11: I lol’d at the “There’s more but its dull” line. And does the narrator really want an answer to the question of who would want a 15yo male prostitute? Maybe from the perspective of a 15 year old kid that’s a valid question but surely at the age of 32 and experiencing the seedy side of the world, the author would have the benefit of realizing the answer to that question, right? I actually really liked this one, you pretty much nailed the thought process of angry teenagers spot on.

Votes:

1. Ashes 1396
2. Multivac
3. Aaron
 
T

toddhunter

Member
Thanks for the feedback Mike.

Mike M said:
toddhunter -- O2: So if every time she gets to the river its different, why would it be unusual that she would be surprised by what she found? If anything, you’d think it would be expected. Also found the notion of someone carrying around a portable safe to be more than a little unusual.
Click to expand...

Fair points, I'll try to clean that up.

Mike M said:
One question though, was this a normal dream, or was she utilizing some sort of Inception-esque device?
Click to expand...

It was a normal dream. The temporary "glitch" was trying to represent her assailants swapping over her oxygen canister to an empty one, hence forcing her to wake and enter the code for the lockbox. I guess I didn't get the balance quite right with explaining all that.

If I might impose, those issues aside last entry you commented on my work needing more copy editing. Since I respect your skills in the area could you give any tips on a difference this time? I did put more effort into that at least.

---

Some feedback in return:

Mike M:

My main issue funnily enough was the first line or so "Just wanted to let you know that I saw you today, but of course I can’t for the obvious reasons." I tripped over this line quite a few times and it stuck with me as I entered into the story proper because I'm not sure if I was reading it wrong.

From there, I really enjoyed it. It seemed to be a much darker tone with deeper characters than previous things I've read from you. I actually like this style quite a bit more.

Atticus Forrest

I thought the ending was a bit rushed, with the story going from 2 to 11 in a very short period of time. By your comments it was rushed, so I think it would be better with a longer build up.

kaepernickehs

The heroin dog did stand out a bit too much for me, but I really enjoyed your use of imagery and description of the touching (although I think you might have a "neck" thing ;))

GRW810

Nicely put together and played to the theme of the week well. I agree with Mike that the "Today" labels kind of detracted from it. I'd rather have the jump spelled out with your opening to each section, which you more or less did well anyway!

ElectricBlanketFire

I really like that album...well a couple of songs off it anyway. I didn't quite get the focus of the writing because it seemed to jump around a bit between tones. Normally I'm all for that, but it didn't work here.

Tangent

Right along the lines of what I like to read and write, but because of that I projected a little of myself on the story and wished you hadn't played it quite so straight. The problem with God as per this character is he surely would have seen and heard it all before... and in fact would have already known all about how the guy felt about his leg. Unless God is purely running admin these days, which would be an interesting turn of events.

Valerie Cherish

I found it a bit hard to follow, but appreciated the creativity. Might just need a couple more passes to smooth it out.

Sober

Enjoyed the setting and appreciated that it moved along at a good clip. The name Nolan did distract me a little, because I was then picturing a video game, which ironically it would make a decent story for.

hey_monkey

It might not help, but I originally read the character name as Martian, which actually made it a kind of quirky and fun story.
What I did like was the establishment of the setting in such a short space.

Nezumi

Reverse deja-vus is a new one to me...and I like it. it really helped carry the story for me.

Cyan

I thought it was a really good entry but th

multivac

My only comment would be that I thought the balance between action and description was a bit too heavily favoured towards the former. You created a lot of interesting ideas in a short space, but I really wanted to know a bit more about them. Still leaving people wanting more isn't such a bad thing!

Ashes1396

Not any more cheery this time, but much easier to read formatting wise. What I did find odd was that somebody would go and write in a diary straight after that initial event. I mean maybe people do that? But it made it pretty hard to relate to what was going on after because if anything I'd expect events to take the opposite track where they get together and make sure the baby is ok (or not much would come of it at all).

Votes:

1. Aaron
2. Nezumi
3. Mike M

Hm. Multivac
 
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