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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #195 - "Heartless"

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C

Cyan

Banned
Theme - "Heartless"

Word Limit: 2100

Submission Deadline: Friday, August 19th by 11:59 PM Pacific.

Voting begins Saturday, August 20th, and goes until Monday, August 22nd 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: Channeling favorites

Reread an old favorite (if you don't have time for a whole novel, don't worry, a couple of chapters or even scenes is fine). Think about what the author does well that made you love the book, whether it's a matter of craft, tone, mood, voice, style or language use, whatever. Make it your goal to try to channel some aspect of what you love about it in the story you write for this challenge. Feel free to let us know who/what you're channeling. :)


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
 
F

Freeza Under The Shower

Member
Well, well, well, if it isn't a prompt that was made for me.
it's not, sadly

But speaking of channelling heartlessness, I've kind of 'rediscovered' recently the pleasure of reading and seeing the greatest written villain for the big screen, Salieri, in Amadeus (1984). Such a wonderful character.
edit: American Psycho obviously works well too though. But I don't know how I feel about Phil Collins.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Amadeus is one of my all time favorite movies, despite my wife's best efforts to educate me that Tom Hulce's flailing baton work in no way resembles someone conducting an orchestra.
 
F

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
If we're talking about heartless politics, my state is run by a crazy republican governor. He had to swear in a new democratic something or other, and she drove up with her entire family. It's a three day or so trip. Within those three days, a democrat said something he did not like, so he canceled the event, BUT did not tell the about to be sweared in Dem. So she showed up to an empty building with her entire family and could not contact said governor cause he was in bed and did not want to get up.

Second favorite moment was a press conference of his where he talked about meth labs for an hour.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Mike M said:
First of nine planned scenes and already more than a third of the word count used.

Fuck me.
Click to expand...

One of these days we should do another no-word-limit challenge. Maybe we could give extra writing and reading/voting time.
 
M

mu cephei

Member
That would be fab (and possibly lethal). Coincidentally I was just now going through some old threads for feedback (I'm planning on spending nano editing stuff) and Charade made a joke about his new challenge 'who said anything about a word limit?' and I thought hell yeah.
 
R

RoyaleDuke

Banned
Synopsis:
"A Prelude to a Salamander"

Roughly inspired by Fahrenheit 451 and 1984.

The world before is gone, and there is only the town of Olathe.

Olathe, the last vestige of humanity or so the Ministry of Pain and Acceptance would have you believe.

They would tell you too, that ideas are dangerous, ideas aren't bullet proof, for how could they be if you can manifest them and remove them from Peoples heads?

What did Brain Surgeons do before they removed the dangerous ideas of the People?
Ideas are illegal outside of officially state sponsored ones, the brain surgeons are tasked with the duty of removing and executing dangerous ideas from people.

Jack Fairer is a Brain Surgeon, part of the Caduceus of The Mind, his duty is to find the Odd Ones of society and remove their dangerous ideas. Make them normal, and no longer a threat to society.

One day, he finds a strange young woman, a woman that could make him question everything.

But will it?
Click to expand...
 
F

Freeza Under The Shower

Member
RoyaleDuke said:
Synopsis:
Click to expand...

Can I point something out here that's either helpful or makes me look like a jerk?
It's this: a synopsis is a strict summary, not explaining the entire story, or the plot. It's a technical tool for both summarizing the story (not the plot, which is the how of the story events), as well as selling it. Don't worry, almost everyone in the writing thread has trouble with that too, as well as a fuckton of actually professionally published entertainment.

Typically that tends to lead to something like [ main character ] - [ action ] - [ object ] type sentences because you're trying to sell something as quickly as possible. Making good summaries is an actual skill, and a lot of academics still suck at it, despite it being their job. So don't take this too hard, please. I'm really not here to ruin your day.
I'm here to ruin Mike's day, our resident Salieri. (jk)

Anyway, your synopsis as I think it would be faster:

Code: 
Olathe is the last vestige of humanity, or so the Ministry of Pain and Acceptance would have you believe.

They believe that ideas are dangerous, illegal outside of officially state sponsored ones, but not bullet proof, for they can be made manifest and removed from people's heads.

Jack Fairer is a Brain Surgeon, part of the Caduceus of The Mind, tasked with finding Odd Ones and removing their dangerous ideas. 

One day he encounters a strange young woman who could make him question everything.

But will he?

I made the assumption that you meant that an advanced technology of some kind allows a kind of 'thought police' (See: 1984, by Orwell) to remove politically dangerous ideas from people's heads, so Olathe is basically a dystopian dictatorship.
So because an idea is considered dangerous, therefore it is removed.
And the basic plot would thereby be 'man versus state', which means you have to pay good attention to who knows what exactly (theory of mind).

You may however have meant that this world is one where ideas can literally be made manifest, and because of that, therefore the BrainSurgeons (can I remove the space?) have legitimately good reasons to remove the dangerous ones.
In this case, the basic plot would be 'man versus environment', which is probably easier to write since you can tie the ecological change (why can ideas be made manifest) to the existence of Olathe. This is basically the setup of Final Fantasy X as well.

As for what I changed and why:
1. information is only information the first time, so you should not repeat things already said. That's why the first sentence and some later ones could be removed for speed. This goes to brevity.
2. asking questions is fun, but not in a synopsis, except at the very end. So those had to be made into regular statements. This goes to clarity.
3. Improving internal logic. Because A, therefore B. Because A and B, therefore C (because State and People, therefore removal of Ideas). Incident of finding Not-B (woman in this case) is incompatible with the causal order, and that's the story's conflict. One route or the other, but only one can remain (A > B > C or Not-B > Not-C > Not-A ). This goes to cause and effect, obviously, as well as the irreversible change that a character needs to undergo for there to be a story.
edit: oh, and ( 4. due to there being logic involved, the amount of elements -A's, B's, C's, etcetera- should be kept as low as possible. Occam's Razor applies to causal structures. If an element is not needed to explain something, it tends to be best removed. A lot of good stories are small and precise. Added bonus is that you don't have to keep track of a billion different things and can just tell the story. Unless you want to go full GRRM, but that's a looot of work )

I'm willing to edit your full story before your enter it as well (just this once for now), because that's good practise for me too, and hopefully helps you.
Speaking of which: 1984, Brave New World, even ehm...Divergent, and many other dystopian stories have the structure, so if you need to find the 'beats' of that structure, you can find them in those. Have fun and good luck.
 
R

RoyaleDuke

Banned
Freeza Under The Shower said:
Can I point something out here that's either helpful or makes me look like a jerk?
It's this: a synopsis is a strict summary, not explaining the entire story, or the plot. It's a technical tool for both summarizing the story (not the plot, which is the how of the story events), as well as selling it. Don't worry, almost everyone in the writing thread has trouble with that too, as well as a fuckton of actually professionally published entertainment.

Typically that tends to lead to something like [ main character ] - [ action ] - [ object ] type sentences because you're trying to sell something as quickly as possible. Making good summaries is an actual skill, and a lot of academics still suck at it, despite it being their job. So don't take this too hard, please. I'm really not here to ruin your day.
I'm here to ruin Mike's day, our resident Salieri. (jk)

Anyway, your synopsis as I think it would be faster:

Code: 
Olathe is the last vestige of humanity, or so the Ministry of Pain and Acceptance would have you believe.

They believe that ideas are dangerous, illegal outside of officially state sponsored ones, but not bullet proof, for they can be made manifest and removed from people's heads.

Jack Fairer is a Brain Surgeon, part of the Caduceus of The Mind, tasked with finding Odd Ones and removing their dangerous ideas. 

One day he encounters a strange young woman who could make him question everything.

But will he?

I made the assumption that you meant that an advanced technology of some kind allows a kind of 'thought police' (See: 1984, by Orwell) to remove politically dangerous ideas from people's heads, so Olathe is basically a dystopian dictatorship.
So because an idea is considered dangerous, therefore it is removed.
And the basic plot would thereby be 'man versus state', which means you have to pay good attention to who knows what exactly (theory of mind).

You may however have meant that this world is one where ideas can literally be made manifest, and because of that, therefore the BrainSurgeons (can I remove the space?) have legitimately good reasons to remove the dangerous ones.
In this case, the basic plot would be 'man versus environment', which is probably easier to write since you can tie the ecological change (why can ideas be made manifest) to the existence of Olathe. This is basically the setup of Final Fantasy X as well.

As for what I changed and why:
1. information is only information the first time, so you should not repeat things already said. That's why the first sentence and some later ones could be removed for speed. This goes to brevity.
2. asking questions is fun, but not in a synopsis, except at the very end. So those had to be made into regular statements. This goes to clarity.
3. Improving internal logic. Because A, therefore B. Because A and B, therefore C (because State and People, therefore removal of Ideas). Incident of finding Not-B (woman in this case) is incompatible with the causal order, and that's the story's conflict. One route or the other, but only one can remain (A > B > C or Not-B > Not-C > Not-A ). This goes to cause and effect, obviously, as well as the irreversible change that a character needs to undergo for there to be a story.

I'm willing to edit your full story before your enter it as well (just this once for now), because that's good practise for me too, and hopefully helps you.
Speaking of which: 1984, Brave New World, even ehm...Divergent, and many other dystopian stories have the structure, so if you need to find the 'beats' of that structure, you can find them in those. Have fun and good luck.
Click to expand...

The basic premise is a combination of both of what you outlined.

In the world that I based this story in, every thought is monitored, everyone takes Happiness, a type of drug that helps maintain order in the society of the Country/City of Olathe. But still, the very moors of the mind; Mental Illness and in the case of this world, any kind of irregularity in behavior, thought, and to a larger extent feeling. the ones who break the pattern of thought, be either thinking or producing works that run against official State Sponsored messages.

In this world, the Odd Ones, are used to show the rest of the people of Olathe what happens to those who break the Laws of Thought and Creative Freedom as Dictated by the ministry. Their minds are probed with mental probes that turn their ideas, thoughts, whatever they may be into physical breathing manifestations. They are systematically killed in front of them by BrainSurgeons, before the BrainSurgeon passes judgement to either let the person live or execute them too.
 
F

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
Red said:
I have an idea for this one. Loosely inspired by short stories of J.D. Salinger.
Click to expand...

*in slack jaw voice* Isn't he that guy from Horsin Around???

tumblr_o0rfb83sqp1qzd6kwo1_400.gif
Click to expand...
 
M

mu cephei

Member
In the interests of efficiency I think I might have to pick David Foster Wallace/ Infinite Jest as my uh 'old favourite' which I am reading atm.

But I don't have even a smidgen of an idea yet so that might change. Finding it hard not to go with the obvious and write about androids. Or politicians!
 
C

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):
 
F

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
That terrible moment after you write a really strong opening and come back later and just shit up the joint for the next 1,500 words. Booooooooooooo.
 
D

dangerbyrnes

Member
ah crap, forgot about the hangout, should remember to subscribe to the thread.

i'm trying to write something more subdued, dialogue focused, i guess. feel like i try to do too much in the wordcount.

book related, started reading The Stand, something ive been meaning to read for a long time.
 
F

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
dangerbyrnes said:
ah crap, forgot about the hangout, should remember to subscribe to the thread.

i'm trying to write something more subdued, dialogue focused, i guess. feel like i try to do too much in the wordcount
Click to expand...

That's delightful cause I am gonna maybe try for something more description heavy on account of my favorite short story being "Odor of the Chrysanthemums" by D.H. Laurence. Also, on that note, what's everyone been rereading?
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
The remaining 1/3rd of my planned outline has been heavily revised from period romance piece to magic robots.
 
R

Red

Member
If he's not interested in reading the submissions, why would he need to see these threads? We already have a regular moderator and the creative writing groups tend to be small and self-policing.
 
R

RoyaleDuke

Banned
Okay so I finished it a little over the word count.

Prelude to a Salamander

So uh basically a what if scenario that explores the idea of what if there was a sort of intermediary government period in the years before everything changed into the world we see in Fahrenheit 451, which was itself a love letter to Orwell's 1984 which I also love.
So here I go full head in on all of that, I even did a bit of Bradbury's odd rhyming he did in 451. In the book the main character admits that he doesn't know what time things were normal, a time when firemen didn't burn things down, and when things started to be like the way they were seemed to never really end.

There's normal history, a terrible event, and then there is the world and reality that the main character of 451 lives in. I thought The Thing Prequel was actually pretty neat and tastefully done for what it was, so I thought why not try writing a short prequel to 451.

A tribute and homage to classic science fiction.

2500 words.
 
T

The Emperor

Member
Really wanted to submit!!! Got all the dialogue written (my writing is always dialogue heavy), needed to fill in the bits in between but have simply been unable to because of life stress! I'll see if I can get it done in the next 6 hours, or there's always next time.
 
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