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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #99 - "History"

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Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Theme - "History"

Word Limit: 2,500

Submission Deadline: Friday, June 15 by 11:59 PM Pacific.

Voting begins Saturday, June 17, and goes until Monday, June 18 at 11:59 PM Pacific.

Optional Secondary Objective: Animals

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

Entries:
Valerie Cherish - Jesus in Swag (1853 Words)
Cyan - Surfaces (~2500)
Jedeye Sniv - Tiger Hill (2489 words)
Tim the Wiz - Between the Lines
AngelKimne - A New History (~1000 words)
HP_Wuvcraft - Gods and Shit
Tangent - This Song of Mine
Sober - Final Lecture (1690 words)
Ashes1396 - Ephermeral Hearts
Mike Works - The Interior (1130 words)
 
L

Lone_Prodigy

Member
I've flaked out of the last couple challenges, but I'm going to submit something, even if it's my customary "write it in the last couple hours" entry.

Hold me to this.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Bombadil said:
Cool topic. How do I submit. Do I just post the story as a regular post here?
Click to expand...

You got options. c/ping into a post here is just fine. Bold the title and include a word count in parens.

You can also use Tinypaste or Tidypub for offsite hosting, if you're concerned about Evilore owning your shit. Or what most people are doing these days is printing to a passworded PDF and then hosting on Dropbox. This allows you to keep first publishing rights in case you ever want to sell your story.
 
B

Bombadil

Banned
Cyan said:
You got options. c/ping into a post here is just fine. Bold the title and include a word count in parens.

You can also use Tinypaste or Tidypub for offsite hosting, if you're concerned about Evilore owning your shit. Or what most people are doing these days is printing to a passworded PDF and then hosting on Dropbox. This allows you to keep first publishing rights in case you ever want to sell your story.
Click to expand...

Okay. Thanks.
 
E

Esiquio

Member
Congrats Jedeye, and interesting pick this time around, it feels pretty open-end. I'm in the mood to right some sci-fi; we'll see if I can make that subject work in this topic.

Let's hope we get double-digit submissions! Always a pleasure to read more of what you folks have to offer.
 
J

Jables

Member
Holy smokes I've been gone from GAF for a long time but I'm thrilled to see that the Creative Writing threads are still going! Maybe I'll try and find some time to come up with something for this once since it's been so long. Best of luck everyone!
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Do it man! Hows everyone else coming along, these threads sure are quiet at the start eh? We need to get bumpy more often I reckon, get the newbies in here.

Even though I set the challenge this week I had no idea of what to write for it! I spent yesterday researching and coming up with my story and I'm really proud of my idea and can't wait to start writing it. There's something incredibly satisfying about thinking of a tight story and knowing that you can pull it off. Ladies and gentlemen, I've got the bug :)

So how is everyone else?
 
B

British Monsoon

Member
Not doing too bad, although I haven't put a word to paper yet - your secondary objective, combined with the theme, immediately put me in mind of Brian Jacques 'Redwall' series of novels, which I absolutely adored as a child, so I'm thinking I might try my hand at a story with anthropomorphic animals.

Jedeye Sniv[/quote said:
There's something incredibly satisfying about thinking of a tight story and knowing that you can pull it off. Ladies and gentlemen, I've got the bug :)
Click to expand...

It's almost always the other way round for me; I come up with a tight story, but then slowly realise I'm not good enough to pull it off, forcing me to compromise my original idea :(
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Bootaaay said:
Not doing too bad, although I haven't put a word to paper yet - your secondary objective, combined with the theme, immediately put me in mind of Brian Jacques 'Redwall' series of novels, which I absolutely adored as a child, so I'm thinking I might try my hand at a story with anthropomorphic animals.

It's almost always the other way round for me; I come up with a tight story, but then slowly realise I'm not good enough to pull it off, forcing me to compromise my original idea :(
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's how I usually am too. Short fiction is tricky because the story needs to be concise, so big sprawling stories where everything needs contect are hard to pull off. Usually when I think short fiction I think slice-of-life realism, so I'm making it my challenge to try different genres in these threads. This one will be a fable.
 
E

Esiquio

Member
I've actually been spending my time editing my previous story for a second draft, as I found working with something I've already written gives me good ideas. Really looking forward to seeing what you guys have cooking up.
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Yeah sorry chaps! History is damn hard to think of something for. I'm working on mine now, but the writing style is really really hard to nail down.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Jedeye Sniv said:
Yeah sorry chaps! History is damn hard to think of something for. I'm working on mine now, but the writing style is really really hard to nail down.
Click to expand...

It's a bit of a dry topic. Also, I decided to accept Mike's challenge from last time, so I'm x-ing out all my spec-fic ideas before they hit the page. That definitely adds to the difficulty for me.

Still, the brainstorming was reasonably fruitful and I think I've got a decent idea.
 
T

Tim the Wiz

Banned
Animals

uoDPE.gif
 
V

Valerie Cherish

Member
Jedeye Sniv said:
So how is everyone else?
Click to expand...

I've got two different drafts I've written up. It's just a matter of figuring out which one I like more/want to polish more. One relates to the secondary objective; the other relates to a personal secondary objective which is "write at least half the word limit."

So conflicted!
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
I think this is maybe the hardest I've worked on a story. Usually I bash it out in a couple of hours, give a bit of a flow-edit and bob's your uncle. This one has been much more challenging, I've done outlines, research, drafts, getting people to proof read it (got some outside cultural assistance from Indian folks on Facebook).

I hope it's good after all this...!

Valerie Cherish said:
I've got two different drafts I've written up. It's just a matter of figuring out which one I like more/want to polish more. One relates to the secondary objective; the other relates to a personal secondary objective which is "write at least half the word limit."

So conflicted!
Click to expand...

I like your personal objective :p I always have a hard time stuffing my story into the word limit (wrote 3000 for my first draft here). Stretching would be a lot more of a challenge for me.

Good luck!
 
M

Mike Works

Member
I'm having difficulty writing this one because my protagonist is really, really coming off as such a complete asshole, which isn't my entire intention. I want him to do assholish things, but with an understandable motivation. I think I was in a funky mood today though, because I wrote two paragraphs and then stopped and said, "What a dick..."
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Never have the pages of history been so empty...

I for one think it's a wonderful subject. Remember, there is no reason to go nuclear with the theme. It's perfectly fine to be as subtle as a whisper.
 
S

Sober

Member
Ashes1396 said:
Never have the pages of history been so empty...

I for one think it's a wonderful subject. Remember, there is no reason to go nuclear with the theme. It's perfectly fine to be as subtle as a whisper.
Click to expand...
Subtlety of a brick of C4 is my preference!

I think I hammered out something decent while doing the chores today so I'm gonna write some of it down and pound it out after work tomorrow. I hope.
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Ashes1396 said:
Never have the pages of history been so empty...

I for one think it's a wonderful subject. Remember, there is no reason to go nuclear with the theme. It's perfectly fine to be as subtle as a whisper.
Click to expand...

Haha, I think I went beyond nuclear for mine then :p so much research! I finished my 'final' draft last night, just waiting for a couple of Indian friends to read it, make sure I'm not totally off base with my historical context.
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
btw, how do you guys make your PDFs for passwording? I was gonna use tidypub again until I just noticed that C+Ping my text into the box removes the formatting, and my story made liberal use of italics...
 
E

Esiquio

Member
I was able to formulate a decent idea, but I have had a ton of stuff going on at home and work, leaving me stressed and with no time to flesh out a story. I haven't even started, ugh. Really, really disappointed, since I did so much research into my last story and had many many more hours to work on it even though I had less days than I did this time.

Hopefully I'll be able to knock something out, but it will be short and not on the edge of the word limit like my last story!
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Lone_Prodigy said:
June 16th is Saturday. June 15th is Friday.
Click to expand...

I don't know what you mean, the date has always been June 15th and we have always been at war with Eastasia...

Esiquio said:
I was able to formulate a decent idea, but I have had a ton of stuff going on at home and work, leaving me stressed and with no time to flesh out a story. I haven't even started, ugh. Really, really disappointed, since I did so much research into my last story and had many many more hours to work on it even though I had less days than I did this time.

Hopefully I'll be able to knock something out, but it will be short and not on the edge of the word limit like my last story!
Click to expand...

Ah man, sorry to hear that. Do you have notes that you could flesh out and dump? Could be an interesting new prose style, the bullet-pointed story.
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Right, I'm posting this now before I fuck with it any more, I must have done like 6 edit passes on this thing.

Tiger Hill (2489 words)

This is my first time doing the whole password/dropbox thing, so if you have any trouble getting into it let me know.
 
B

British Monsoon

Member
Just tried it out Jedeye, it works fine :)

Still yet to put a word to page - I'm struggling. I've got the premise, the setting, the tone, the characters and a half dozen other ideas, but the story itself is lacking. Hoping to get it done in the next few hours though, otherwise I'm going to have to pull an all-nighter to get it written.
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

Banned
Do it man! It would be kinda sucky if I just won again by default :p

I fear that I have joined these threads too late, and now all the GAFWriters are burned out and bored by it all :p (can't blame some of you, a hundred challenges is a shitload of writing). I've properly got the bug now, i just want to write and write.
 
A

AzureSkies

Member
I was writing a story but honestly thought that I'd be better of waiting for the next creative writing challenge as I hit writers block pretty hard in where I was actually going to take this story.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Cisce said:
I was writing a story but honestly thought that I'd be better of waiting for the next creative writing challenge as I hit writers block pretty hard in where I was actually going to take this story.
Click to expand...
That's... not what this post used to say. Buck up and break on through to the other side!

If you don't like the direction, change the direction. And don't worry too much about whether GAF'll like it. ;)
 
A

angelkimne

Member
A New History (~1000 words)


I started thinking about this at 12AM British Summer Time. It is now 4:00AM British Summer Time. I have no idea if any of this makes sense except to me. But if not, I suppose you can take solace in the fact that it clocks in at well under half the word limit. I think, either way, it has taught me that planning is a necessity when you're making an argument (of sorts), building a world, and telling a tiny story, all at the same time.

I am quite sure I've come up with the most compelling, depressing world of my non-existent writing career. So that's good.

It's a strange structure, but I think it works quite well in a way. If the first section is 'ambiguous' enough, a re-read provides lots of new insight. It's a real shame I waited this late.

Edit: Ah, turned it into a PDF. The immersion factor!
 
T

Tangent

Member
This is such a cool topic. It's so easy to get side-tracked with research for it. Aaaah good ol' procrastination. Procrastination and I go way back.
 
H

HP_Wuvcraft

Banned
Gods and Shit

So, one day, Cthulhu was all “I’m bored”.
God looked at Cthulhu oddly, as if to say “no shit?”, and then patted Coyote on the head. Cthulhu was always shitting on the planets he made. He always got bored. This was a thing. It was also no new thing. I mean, shit.
“You really need to just make a planet and then be done with it,” God said, her long blond hair flowing in the universe “because, I mean, shit, this is getting kind of ridiculous”.
“Yeah, but my thing is to be a tangible God that can be awoken at any moment. It’s no different from – “
“Oh, fuck off. That’s a cop out and you know it,” the Odin Eating Wolf said, looking up from the Odin Hand he was gnawing on “none of the other Gods – including God, motherfucker – actually goddamn come down and fuck shit up. It’s called religion, you giant tentacled dickbag.”
Coyote chuckled. Goddamn sounded just like God.
“Yeah, but I mean, I really think that the fact that I exist in reality makes me unique. I mean, their reality. The people’s reality. I mean, you know what I mean. I’m not real until I step into the fabric of their realm. I want that to be my thing”. Cthulhu finished, and sat down next to God, put his hand on Coyote’s head. God instantly shot her hand away from his.
“What about Moses?”
“What *about* Moses?”
“You helped Moses.”
“… you know how this works. Jesus Christ. You know that I’m not actually going to – there’s no Second Coming. Since the beginning of the big bang – since this universe’s history, you’ve gone through twenty billion planets. Do you understand that? You are a monster.”
“I am, actually.”
God got up. She walked towards a nebula, one that she had been working on for a few millennia. She moved a gas cluster. Coyote, unhappy with this new development, got up and started walking over to the one he liked to be petted by.
The Odin Eating Wolf was down to nothing but Odinbone.
“What if – and this is just conjecture – but what if I made a planet comprised entirely of bum piss?” the Wolf asked to no one in particular.
“Who would worship you?” Coyote meekly asked with the temerity of a six year old.
“I’ll make piss people.”
“This thread is history” God said as she deleted a stray comet, both referring to the Comet’s tail and to the current topic “if you can’t play nice, you’ll lose your Godhood.”
Everyone shut up instantly. Getting on Its bad side was bad news bears. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Who did that, and they got their Godhood stripped away instantly. You need to play by Its rules, or you don’t get to play at all.
Cthulhu furrowed his green forehead. He wondered if this was how a human teenager felt about their parents once they grew into their brains.
He knew what he had to do, and he didn’t want to do it.
That was how, in the secret histories of secret histories, Cthulhu became known as L. Ron Hubbard.
Click to expand...

Also, my vote goes to Valerie Cherish.
 
M

Mike Works

Member
Might get something posted, but it wouldn't be for a few hours. I live in Hawaii and it's not midnight there, I mean here for many hours. Don't discriminate against the Hawaiians. Us Hawaiians.
 
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