Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 2/23 by 11:59 PM Pacific
Voting begins Thursday, 2/24, and goes until Sunday, 2/26 at 11:59 PM Pacific.
Optional Secondary Objective: The return of the epistolary story!
An epistolary story/novel is a book written as a series of personal documents. These can be letters, telegrams, blogs, email, Twits, even shipping manifests. Examples include Carrie, World War Z, and the one that comes to mind every time and was my original inspiration: Dracula.
Let's be honest, it works well with the theme as well.
This is one of my favorite forms of novels to read: you can make each section/chapter different in its own unique way, including shifting character perspectives. For the reader, they want to keep turning the page because they don't know what form you're going to make the second chapter. It's an almost limitless concept.
This was my first secondary objective a few years ago and I loved the concept, just never got around to writing one that time. So I'm making up for it!
- 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.
Sweet! Really enjoyed doing the last epistolary story. I really will have to start early this time, though. Takes a bit more work to do epistolary well.
I have way too much on my plate right now... so I think I'm going to go for this one.
All I have to do is limit the story to 4 scenes max and I'll be golden. Went way overboard last time... perhaps a simple tale of lost love set on a cruise ship that has just cast off to the west on its maiden voyage through the icy cold Atlantic, where pirates lurk behind sentient icebergs and amelia earhart patrols the sky for alien invaders.
I might do this one, but i'm kinda over writing unrequited love stories. I think I've done like six or seven for these challenges already. I'll have to do something different.
I have way too much on my plate right now... so I think I'm going to go for this one.
All I have to do is limit the story to 4 scenes max and I'll be golden. Went way overboard last time... perhaps a simple tale of lost love set on a cruise ship that has just cast off to the west on its maiden voyage through the icy cold Atlantic, where pirates lurk behind sentient icebergs and amelia earhart patrols the sky for alien invaders.
I will automatically put you in my top 3 if your stalker story incorporates The Zone.
ZephyrFate said:
I might do this one, but i'm kinda over writing unrequited love stories. I think I've done like six or seven for these challenges already. I'll have to do something different.
no but i mean really write one kind of like romeo and juliet where the donkey comes from the wrong side of the tracks and the woman comes from prestigious nobility and they said it wasn't possible but they made it true through the power of their love for one another
but then the woman dies from getting kicked in the vagina too hard by the donkey
no but i mean really write one kind of like romeo and juliet where the donkey comes from the wrong side of the tracks and the woman comes from prestigious nobility and they said it wasn't possible but they made it true through the power of their love for one another
but then the woman dies from getting kicked in the vagina too hard by the donkey
It's Monday, and we have not a single entry to our name. And there I was expecting to read something golden delicious. Get out of bed you lazy rascals. Give me your best shot! I cans takes it sirs....
edit: And thanks irish for being the soul poster who answered the question before...
i wrote like 800 words, not sure will i finish. i also tried to do it as an epistolary story, but it didn't work and it was too difficult (and i don't like things that are difficult).
Quiet a tricky little secondary objective you've given us, Ben. It's rather difficult to get all the necessary information across while keeping it the feel that it'd have really been written that way.
Bootaaay said:
I've got a good idea half done, but finishing it is going to require dialogue...I hate writing dialogue.
Freedom is the seal of the superlative mind, said amateur grand master of chess, John Locke, out loud.
What the feck does that mean? replied his opposite number, Fred McCoughlin.
Sweat fell off Locke's crooked brow- a feat created though years of acute concentration- like a water trickle over rugged land. His jungle black hair, recently cut by his friend, the barber George Frankfurter, who had managed to make each and every strand as straight as a curly French fry- swayed in the breeze, under the bourgeois baker boy cap.
Do you understand what freedom is?
Yes.
Do you understand what seal is?
Yes.
Do you understand what a superlative mind is?
Yes.
So you can see the pieces of the puzzle, but not the picture on the puzzle box as it were.
Quiet frankly yes.
Hmm, John Locke said.
Fred McCoughlin's handshake with a glass of water, spilled some of the liquid onto the wooden table, whose job it was to hold the ashen chess board. Locke was used to his friend's trembling disorder; it was okay, as long as cheating was left off the table, and as neither had cheated one another in the last twenty years, that matter was absolved through natural terms; in fact, to him, it was like a tree you pass on your way past a certain point. It was there; you would see it if you incorporated 'observation' instead of merely 'seeing' to borrow Sherlock Holmeses wisdom as part of your perfunctory walk; but on most days, or in the case of some lives, you would not care to observe the gentle giants rooted as neighbours in our communities.
McCoughlin, offered his glasses to Locke, who wiped the lens clean of dirt and grime with the sleeve of his checked shirt. Neither took their eye off the board.
Debate makes feasible the fecundity of the intellectual spirit, Locke said.
McCoughlin nodded vigorously. That's the good stuff, mickey blue eyes. That's the good stuff.
Locke gave a hearty chuckle. Debate allows the platform for arguments to be held, without the breaking of bones. And that is the difference between the beast and the butterfly as far as-
Beast and the butterfly? The comparison there should be the cynosure, but it's-
What do you want? Man and beast? I loathe that that cliché is extant.
Well something else then; opting to be original should be secondary to correct usage so to speak.
Pedantic fool. Am I helping you, or are you helping me?
To be sane: yes, retorted McCoughlin, to be stupid: no. Look I'm grateful that you are helping me not to be the doppelgänger of a sponge. Really I am but... Hey I introduced you to your wife. You owe me infinity.
This sewed Locke's lips.
For the first time, that morning, his gaze traversed the park, the pond, the swans, the geese, the ducks, the loungers and the scroungers, the readers, and web-surfers, the amateur picknickers, and the fast food majors, the fishers, the footballers, the roller skaters, the runners, the trainers, the dog walkers, the park wardens and the police horse trainers, the children in the adventure park, and the parent tribes with prams of crying babies, and sleeping toddlers, the cricketers and their supporters, barbecuers, and salad eaters, Black, White, Asian, African, men, women, and even some Martian green children dressed fashionably in an eden, which was not a melting pot as much as a horticulture of multicultural urban civility...as it were.
Have I triggered memories of the past? McCoughlin asked. I'm sorry...
No. Not at all. I was just people watching, Locke replied. In the same instance, he saw the rough outline of a ghost from his past sit upon a park bench with her umbrella up. Very much in the present. Very much so.
It had been raining back then; Locke was returning from a fierce local derby. He was walking wounded, limping and swearing at the top of his voice; leaning on his team mate and goal keeper McCoughlin. McCoughlin laughed off the injury, and assured him that someday in the future, keepers would be allowed to dive. Rumours also had it that the league would cut down on some of the more 'deliberate fouling'. They had just crossed the sandy area which has incidentally been replaced by a fountain now when they noticed the charming Katherine Leigh, laughing in their direction, underneath the protection of an umbrella. Locke had stopped suddenly, and contorted a smiling countenance, whilst the maiden sitting in the park, with rain falling down from the heavens, returned the smile before she too turned away. McCoughlin bid her a good day, as he carried his friend down the sandy path. He stopped abruptly at the golden gates which are still painted the same way today, black upto three quarters, and the golden paint covering the top and ran back. Locke had turned an angry red colour, when McCoughlin came back with a torn page.
Why are you lining up a fine young madam like that for your self? I've heard great things about her.
McCoughlin laughed, before handing over a piece of paper. Here is your introduction to her, coward. After Church tomorrow.
After feigning reluctance, Locke accepted the note. How did you know she liked me?
McCoughlin shook his head. You may go to Imperial College, lad, but what you haven learnt yet, is that a good Christian girl doesn't sit in a park, in the rain for random folk. Do you know what we call that kind of knowledge round our parts?
...?
Common sense.
Locke laughed abruptly as the faint outline of the person in the distance melted into the crowd.
McCoughlin looked above the lens settled on the tip of his nose, at the blurry figure sat present. He coughed. Was he running out of time? He wondered. His disease was debilitating him a lot more than he let on. Were it not for the mental exercises, and the solidarity of a life long partner in crime, he knew well... he was living on death keeping his pocket watch in his pockets; he was living in the haecceity of being.
The religious lot do not belong to the intelligentsia, Locke carried on.
Good Gawd. What an awful thing to say!
Locke shrugged. I regard this place to be a phrontistery. If a deity exists, he or she, must excuse the experimental philosopher... from time to time. Oh I don't know where these ideas come from.
McCoughlin's right fore finger twitched as if to make a move, before he withdrew.
The clouds soon ate up the sky, and the day grew a rotten grey; before long the crowds dispersed, and the swans turned to the reeds to rest awhile.
A stray fair haired blonde child,with a bieber hair cut, on a mindless adventure, approached the pair. He stood watching the chess pieces a while, then looked at the ancients hovering over the chess table. He stuck out a wondering finger and gently poked one on the nose. I thought you were statues from over there.
Now what? Locke asked.
Now what what?
Now that you know that we are not statues, what're you going to do?
The boy had been leaning forward till then. He straightened up and put a hand to his chin like that of a detective from a noire drenched novel. Hmm... I shall walk away...
McCoughlin smiled from a long forgotten place deep within. He laughed instinctively and without conscious effort. To the point where he found that he could not stop.
Good day Grand person 1 and Grand person 2.
McCoughlin made his move. Nf3 Nc6.
Did you lapse? Locke said. McCoughlin had slept at the table a fair few times.
Perhaps... My concentration levels are not what they used to be. The mind wonders...
And where do the mind's ships sail to tonight?
My son's shores. I want you to look after him.
Locke puffed hot air up into his curls.
I know, when the chips are down, he's going to tell you to shove it where the sun don't shine. I know. But be intrusive... please... for my sake.
Locke sighed. It was a sigh that signalled: say no more.
It is the duty of the aged pensioner to pass on the merits of hoarded enlightenment, McCoughlin said after a period of well maintained silence.
Locke raised his arms in praise. Hey... the sleeping professor awakes!
Thank you.. Though I do feel a bit pompous.
Pompous my English arse! Don't heed the naysayers old man. Time is of the essence. Now is not the time to just say- saying is not enough, now is the time to celebrate it. People have died for this right. People we knew. You and I.
Well, I guess there is that. Though...
Ne sutor ultra crepidam?
Yes. Something like that.
Do you remember that jap fellow from 77?
You mean the Japanese pilot. Yes, I do. What about him... McCoughlin corrected.
-yeah Japanese; I, well.. old habits die hard... Back in the time during haphazard pilot training checks... well.. erm... never mind
Whilst the starry eyed blonde haired child did kart-wheels on the grass, and the first droplets of rain fell from the cloudy sky, Locke planted a large garden umbrella, white in colour to shield them from the weather.
What would the passage of life be like, if all things good were unrequited? McCoughlin said.
A question? Hmm... I have neither the time nor the leaf to answer that question...
#
A thing that young persons do not realise is how time speeds up the older you are. Even, when they are shown the factual evidence for this, they still do an about turn and refuse to acknowledge this truth. As such, one minute the clock rang in 1 in the afternoon, and then the other it was...
5:23pm June 17th 2010
Say, hey spider boy, yes you, do you have a phone? Can you call an ambulance. It may already be too late.
Yeah yeah of course. Here, you have to speak though. What happened?
I think my friend just died...
#
Earlier
How do you fight a thing like loneliness? McCoughlin asked.
John Locke looked on with tender eyes. Why the sysiphian questions?
Don't be sad...
Why should I feel a silly thing like that?
In Morocco, summer of '49, remember how we saw those people celebrating their loved one's death. I didn't understand it then.
Well the oddity of one culture doesn't surprise-
-I have this feeling in my bones, that I will die today.
A man and his snow wolf dog passed by ushering their greetings in a rushed manner.
...Don't say things like that Freddy.
We're not young any more. We've conquered life; I know how the story that life is turns out; I've lived past my ending as it were.
Still don't.
It's a free country; you will not censor my right to-
I am your friend. And I'm requesting politely that you stop talking. Or at the very least cease the romanticization of death. What an awful role model to set for the young!
McCoughlin paused momentarily. It is not for the young to die...
The heavens opened up to the bluest of blue skies. The lake was serene; the park quietly peaceful, and the wind ruffled lightly the feathers of the evergreen trees.
Friends.
Huh?
How do you fight a thing like loneliness? Family and friends.
Empathy?
...
Humour?
...
Sympathy...
...
Freddy?
...
Freddy..?
...
Freddy?
...
Fred McCoughlin suddenly jolted awake from his mini slumber. I wonder what god looks like...
What? his aged friend asked. For a second there I thought...
Then Locke laughed, as Freddy asked what they were talking about.
Oh.. nothing in particular, a wondering boy said aloof. Just what two classic gentlemen shooting the breeze in the park would say.
McCoughlin guffawed, and listened intently to the boy who went on to say:
Playing some chess. Having a sip of water, whilst walking away.
To which, he uttered his last words: Adieu, mes amis.
~The End~
Here's a different take, by someone completely different, and they pull it off to a higher quality... How to be alone.
Oh, I nearly forgot to thank irish. cheers mate...
These look like they could be fun. I haven't written for quite some time, so it might be interesting to see what I can whip up under the regulations of these challenges.
Well, Cyan might be insane, but it's true that I'm not just an imaginary friend of Cyan's. But alas, like King George VI said it, "I have a voice!" Weeeeee! I knew NeoGAF would pull through eventually. "Patience is the ability to count down before you blast off."
