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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #113 - "Proceed with Caution"

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C

Cyan

Banned
Theme - "Proceed with Caution"

Word Limit: 2000

Submission Deadline: Friday, February 8 by 11:59 PM Pacific.

Voting begins Saturday, February 9, and goes until Monday, February 11 at 11:59 PM Pacific.

Optional Secondary Objective: Spacers and Bridges
Working on a little craft refinement here, specifically our use of spacers and bridges to indicate scene changes. (Here's a quick explanation of what spacers and bridges are)

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
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Uh interesting theme and secondary object. I have no idea at the moment but I am sure it will come eventually.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Writing a short story that consists of more than one scene, without making the scenes ultra short isn't as easy than I thought. But I think I'm almost there...
 
C

Cyan

Banned
So Brandon Sanderson posted this video yesterday. Basically, he decided he was going to live-write a chapter from the book he's currently working on. It's not super-exciting, just words appearing on the page, being deleted or moved around, and so on. It's kind of interesting to see his process, but what I found most striking here was the end result.

~600 words written in a little over 20 minutes. This is not slow, but also not a breakneck fast pace; I'm pretty sure I could match that without too much difficulty, for a scene I'd thought a bit about ahead of time. And yet Sanderson is one of the most prolific authors today and I'm barely finishing a short story every other week.

You always hear the advice that you just need to sit down and write--"butt in chair, hands on keyboard"--but man, this really makes it clear.

Maybe I should be sitting my ass down and writing a bit more than once every two weeks. :p
 
D

Dragoon En Regalia

Member
I sometimes wonder if I'm lazy or if I'm genuinely struggling with writing short stories due to my workload. Knowing me, it's a bit of both, and that makes it a more difficult issue to address.

Don't hold your breath for any more of my submissions, not even this week. I'm not going to make any promises to the contrary, unlike the last time I said I was writing for a challenge and didn't submit, lol.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Mine's pretty much done, but I'm going to keep poking it intermitently and see if I can eke anything better out of it. Nothing worse than having an idea that you don't feel has been fulfilled to your vision, but you can't seem to build it up to what you want.
 
R

ReiGun

Member
I have the hardest time finishing rough drafts. The ideas are in my head, but the words are refusing to come out.

That said, I think I'm about ready to start revising this. As always, the story I wrote ended up a lot different than what I intended to write. lol
 
F

FairyD

Member
I'm struggling with this one, I can't think of a good story idea and have only notes scribbled down, but I'll try to shit out a story today or tomorrow night.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Well that was an epic fail. Can't seem to upload to dropbox. What are the odds the recent computer update screwed things up? quite high.

Guess I'll forward it to myself and put up again tomorrow. Maybe, even rethink the title too.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
I hate coming up with names. Been thinking over an hour already and can't find a name for my main character... Think I'm gonna use a place holder for now or I'm never gonna write that damn story... Even asked for help on facebook, but nothing good has come up so far.
 
J

John Dunbar

correct about everything
May Contain Lies

My greatest strength is probably my ability to believe everything I see on television. When I was about eight or nine, I saw the movie White Men Can't Jump, starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. There's a scene where Harrelson is desperately trying to dunk, and Snipes casually informs him that white men can't jump. I thought that was true for years, that it was physically impossible for a white man to dunk a basketball, and that at the end of the movie Harrelson's character became the first Caucasian to accomplish this feat. Now, I did always have some nagging doubts at the back of my head about all this, like for example how high jumpers, many of them white, could easily jump high enough to reach the basket were they so inclined, but I reasoned all that away, that there must be something different about basketball players, because they wouldn't put something in a movie that wasn't true. That would be dangerous and irresponsible. It wasn't until years later I found out the truth. A basketball match was aired during the Olympics, it being a sport that typically never makes the TV here, and two teams from countries not very good at the game were playing. Most of the players were white, and they were dunking! They were dunking all over the place! I couldn't believe what I was seeing, it was beyond comprehension. It was then I realized Wesley Snipes had lied to me, to everyone who saw that movie. I don't believe for a second he said that without knowing it was false, that he had just fallen for some trick by the writers. You can't lie on television like that. I think that's why he's in prison now.
 
T

Tangent

Member
FairyD said:
I'm struggling with this one, I can't think of a good story idea and have only notes scribbled down, but I'll try to shit out a story today or tomorrow night.
Click to expand...

Ditto. Who came up with this dumb theme? So stuck. Hopefully I crank something out soon too.
 
J

jns

Member
Man, I'm always a day late to these things. Is there a main thread I can subscribe too that gets updated each time there is a new comp? I don't check gaf every day and I would really like to take part and keep missing out!
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
jns said:
Man, I'm always a day late to these things. Is there a main thread I can subscribe too that gets updated each time there is a new comp? I don't check gaf every day and I would really like to take part and keep missing out!
Click to expand...

Just sub this one to keep track, the next one will get posted Tuesday or so.
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
Across the Universe (682 words)

Buzzzzzzzzzz.

Years of conjecture would have suggested that outer space was a quiet place. That the noiseless vacuum would carry over through rock and steel into noiseless corridors, noiseless dining halls, noiseless control rooms.

The conjecture was wrong. Even here in the depths of an uninhabited spy satellite, the buzz of a nuclear fusion power plant reverberated through the walls and floor. Through the thin, carbon dioxide-heavy air. Through the very bones of an invisible intruder who definitely was not trying to gather some valuable intelligence at the source. Beneath the noise of the omnipresent buzz, he floated through the zero-G darkness secure in the knowledge that his presence here would go undetected.

"There's nothing to be cautious about," a robotic voice announced.

The intruder froze in mid-air. With a thoughtful bent on his hidden face, he peered down the narrow maintenance tunnel, honing in on his prize: a plain control panel, barely large enough to house a basketball. His momentum carried him towards it with plodding inevitability.

"Think about that time you were humiliated, that time you were embarrassed. That time you were elated, overjoyed. That time you were dumbstruck by sadness, spiraled into depression. What do those events mean now?" the voice taunted. The intruder hovered on, motionless in motion.

"There's nothing there. All that tangible emotion, that shame, that joy, that grief, lost to more than time. It may as well have never happened. Your experiences are nothing but fragments of information, electric pulses maintained by a chemical reaction for some subset of the twenty-seven thousand days on this Earth you can hope to live. You may as well have never experienced them at all: instead simply had the memory, the 'experience', implanted spontaneously into your brain like a seed is planted in a garden."

The intruder's arm twitched -- an infinitesimally small gesture whose noise should've been swallowed by the background buzz. The voice not only perceived it: it derived meaning from it. It continued its taunt.

"You understand, you follow, do you? Perhaps not. I for one am not convinced. I still perceive you as cautious, toying with the thought that none of this is real, that we are all pawns on some supergalactic-scale game of chess. That perhaps beyond talking to a computer, you are inside one. That your world is a simulation. And this depresses you."

The panel beckoned. Twenty meters.

Nineteen meters.

"But why should it? If you are a simulation, do you not have a higher power to appeal to? So appeal to him! Or her, if you prefer your wage-slave sky god to be more gender equal. There is no shame at dropping down on your knees in the despair of your own futile and ultimately meaningless existence! If you are not living in a simulation, after all, there may be no sky god what-so-ever! And what does that leave you? Some hope of producing lasting works, of experiencing a happy life? Your happy life is best served by marijuana and opium. There's no need for lucidity to achieve happiness! And your academic works of brilliance -- could I laugh, I would -- how brilliant must these be to last through the eons! And then, after all that, after your clever ideas have endured, against all odds, through countless millennia, through a million rises and falls of civilization... after all that, your ideas must persist through the very end of the universe and time. What you are, is pointless. You are nothing. You were always nothing."

The intruder stopped, unbreathing, a gloved hand to his prize. He smiled. The voice heard him smile.

"So what is there to be cautious of? Do you see now? You may proceed without care. All is already lost."

"One supposes we'll just have to find it, then," the intruder whispered softly. The voice reached for a retort, then screamed and sputtered to extinction. Only the background buzz remained. A lone magnet hovered just inside the panel.

The intruder smiled, this time in privacy. Proceed without care? Never.

Whistling a pleasant tune, he went about his work.
 
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