Grakl said:

Very nice, Cyan. Love how all the contributions are represented.

Time to live up to the theme this time around.

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bengraven said:

My first story.

I was pretty proud of my concept and the second place choice gave me a bit of an esteem boost. I had not written a short story in five or six years and so I was glad to see I could still tell one. I was able to set up the next challenge because Timedog, the winner, bowed out because he was busy I believe. So within a week I got a pretty good idea of what you guys had been doing all along.

I really wish I had been here since the beginning, but even more so, I wish I was able to sit down and crack more stories out for you and I plan on trying harder for the next 100.

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You guys have a great little subcommunity here of like-minded writers and do a great job of treating people like they belong, so thanks everybody.

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Cyan said:

I remember that! Fun story, and I'm glad you stuck around. You'll be doing a story for this one, yeeeees?

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GSR said:

Granted, I might wind up writing a piece of crap, but it'll be my piece of crap.

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Tim the Wiz said:

It begins. I can't wait to read Al Roker entering a tavern, on a donkey. Make it happen, Irish.

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Irish said:

FUCK! I forgot I was supposed to win #99!

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ronito said:

All you Irish!

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Sober said:

While we're on the subject, how did #1 get started? Is there some ancient writing-gaf thread somewhere and someone just suggested this idea? This isn't something I've seen around the internet as a thing, even with forums with devoted writing subforums.

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bengraven said:

You guys have a great little subcommunity here of like-minded writers and do a great job of treating people like they belong, so thanks everybody.

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bengraven said:

Only thing that sucks about the list? More recent stories are already deleted (including all of mine) because we were using Tinypub.

Maybe we should make some Google doc of all our stories or something.

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bengraven said:

Only thing that sucks about the list? More recent stories are already deleted (including all of mine) because we were using Tinypub.

Maybe we should make some Google doc of all our stories or something.

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Cyan said:

Yeah, it's sort of an inevitable consequence of the way we're doing things these days.

I'd rather not do a Google doc sort of thing, since I'd prefer to leave it where people can remove their stories easily if they like. That's why I have all the links going to posts rather than direct to stories.

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Irish said:

Fuck off, you cunt. You don't belong because you're not as special as I am, so suck it!

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Cyan said:

Memory lane time! I've written a whole lot of stuff for these challenges (

Spoiler

I've submitted something for every single one thus far--yeah, that's 99 pieces o' writing, soon to be 100

). Here are a few of the more memorable challenges.

#1 - Saw the thread: "Wow, other people on GAF are interested in writing? Nifty!" I was really excited--I hadn't really written any fiction in a long time, though I'd been theoretically interested for a while. I wanted to write something right away! But where to start? I hadn't the slightest idea of how a short story worked. How was it put together? What made it move forward, where did it start, where did it end? I didn't want to have to puzzle it out, I just wanted to write something! So I did a poem.

This would be a recurring thing for me--it took a surprisingly long time before I figured out how to put together an actual story rather than just a loose sequence of events. Not that there's anything wrong with a loose sequence of events, if it's well put together. We've had some great ones on here! But it's not a story without conflict.

#14 - Got a PM from somebody during this challenge. He had edited a short story mag while at university, and said he considered the story I'd written publishable. Whoa! What? I could maybe actually publish some of this stuff? Like, people would pay me actual money for it?

In retrospect, I'm not sure the story was all that wonderful, but it sure was a boost of confidence. It got me thinking that maybe I really could do this. Maybe I could be a proper writer, and not just a hobbyist who sometimes posted stuff online. Still working on that.

#40 - I went all out for this challenge. Decided I was going to write something Borgesian. (Often, you can tell what I've been reading recently by the stuff I do in a challenge. I read The Hunger Games, and wrote a 1st person present POV. I read McCarthy, and wrote dialogue with no quotation marks. I read the Liaden books, and wrote cozy SF.) I had Borges on the brain, so I went for it, and to some extent pulled it off. It was a story within a story within a story, and, I thought, the best thing I'd ever written. I'm not sure it still isn't, though I haven't gone back and looked at it recently. The voting public apparently didn't agree, but what can you do?

#52 - Really fun secondary on this one. The idea was to imitate another GAF writer's style. I chose ZephyrFate for myself, since his style is so completely different from mine--he really lays the imagery and metaphor on thick. I mean, he doesn't use a knife, he uses a pastry bag. For me, use of imagery had been one of my biggest challenges. Had a great time writing it, and realized that hey, maybe I could actually use imagery successfully in a story. It's still a weak point for me, but it was fun to see that I could do it if I really pushed myself.

#74 - My stories vary a lot, but are often on the lighter side. This one wasn't. Child abuse, shared fear and pain, loss of a close friend. Rough going. Not everything I've written has been airy fairy lighthearted, but this one really sticks out for me in how far it went the other way. Also notable as one of the many times I have tied with Tangent for first place! Why is it I only ever tie with Tangent?

#77 - Awesome secondary here. Anonymous submissions! I had a great time with this one. Did a segmented story where for each segment, I imitated the style of a different GAF writer. Crow, Timedog, ronito, Tim, Zeph--can't remember who was which, but it was a lot of fun. We've done this secondary again since, and it was still fun. Maybe it should be a regular occurrence. Not all the time, but a sometimes thing, like cookies. Once or twice a year?

#82 - My story wasn't particularly wonderful for this one--which was disappointing, as I thought I had a great premise--but the secondary was tons of fun. Weirdtopia! I had a blast coming up with different weirdtopia examples. Good secondary objectives are difficult to come up with, but when they hit, they can really make a challenge that much more fun.


It's kind of satisfying to go back and look at older stories and see how far I've come. The improvement from 1-50 was huge, the improvement from 51-99... not so much, but it's still there. Don't get me wrong, I've definitely submitted some filler ("Urgh, time to bang something out for the damn challenge. Bah!"). But all that writing has definitely had an effect.

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Cyan said:

#77 - Awesome secondary here. Anonymous submissions! I had a great time with this one. Did a segmented story where for each segment, I imitated the style of a different GAF writer. Crow, Timedog, ronito, Tim, Zeph--can't remember who was which, but it was a lot of fun. We've done this secondary again since, and it was still fun. Maybe it should be a regular occurrence. Not all the time, but a sometimes thing, like cookies. Once or twice a year?

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Cyan said:

It's kind of satisfying to go back and look at older stories and see how far I've come. The improvement from 1-50 was huge, the improvement from 51-99... not so much, but it's still there. Don't get me wrong, I've definitely submitted some filler ("Urgh, time to bang something out for the damn challenge. Bah!"). But all that writing has definitely had an effect.

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Tim the Wiz said:

Legion, right? I can spot Timedog from a mile way - "crowbar to the brainpan, motherfucker", "orgasmic release" - and Zephyr, I think, but my own is less... distinguishable, of course.

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Couldn't say I've noticed much improvement in myself. Perhaps even some regression - I go back and admire my earlier minimalism at times. My imagery and transitions need work; I can pull off a clean, smooth manuscript, but it can feel empty when I read it back later; and first-person is a nice, easy crutch for me.

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JeTmAn81 said:

I just read your entry for #51 (guy gets cloned by instant matter transporter, the clone gets to take over his life). Nice concept! There was some stuff that didn't quite make sense to me about the world, and the dramatic beats seemed rushed (naturally for such a short piece), but I really liked the ideas at work there. Might be worthy of being expanded.

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bengraven said:

My favorite story only got like two first place votes, then after that no one voted for it - I'm still going to edit that and send it in. The idea of the abortion debate moving on in the future to cover failed clones and the protagonist being a Catholic blowhard. I tried to make it from her perspective and I wonder if I turned people off with either a) the subject matter or b) the protagonist being a right wing stereotype and either not a character someone would want to follow or maybe they thought I was actually anti-abortion and making a point. I don't know. But I still love it and it's 80's Stephen King-like ending.

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Cyan said:

Your craft has improved a lot. Seriously, go back and read your first entry, "Jane," and then your latest from the last challenge. Similar themes, but the execution is orders of magnitude better in the recent piece.

As for feeling empty... sometimes it's just like that. Sometimes your writing just isn't going to feel right. I definitely have that myself.

... So it's not regression. If anything, it's sort of like the uncanny valley in animation.

If that makes sense.

I'll also note that all this is theoretical--I haven't really noticed your pieces feeling empty or emotionless or what have you.

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HP_Wuvcraft said:

Fuck, I have the perfect thing for this from my wannabe-novel, but I don't want to give up the rights to GAF.

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ronito said:

I look back and I see my older entries and man it's almost embarassing. Interestingly enough there's only two that I'm not embarassed by and yes one of them is the donkey one. I don't think I could've done that much better outside the beginning.

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Tim the Wiz said:

Beginning? People don't read those stories for the beginning.

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lunch said:

I've read a few of the submissions before I was a member and always found these threads fun to read, so I might try to participate. Of course, it takes me ages to write a post, so I don't know how I'm going to write a story.


Do you have a link to this one? I'd like to read it.

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Irish said:

I need to learn how to write an actual story and not just a random scene. It's always been something that I've struggled with. I also think I may have just run out of ideas in general the last year or so. I've never had much creative juice and I think that it may have been drained. Well, there's that and the very real feeling that I've only ever been getting worse.

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ronito said:

That's funny. Actually thinking about it the other story I was proud about was the Masturbating Mormon Mommy story.

I guess erotica's my thang.

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