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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #122 - "Age"

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Not open for further replies.
M

Mike Works

Member
Theme - "Age"

Word Limit: 3000

Submission Deadline: Friday, 14.06.2013 by 11:59 PM Pacific.

(closed)

Voting begins Saturday, 15.06.2013, and goes until Monday, 17.06.2013 at 11:59 PM Pacific.

t1371542100z4.png


Optional Secondary Objective: Goals
Choose from one of three MANDATORY (okay not mandatory, but seriously try to do one of these) secondary objectives:

1. Give your protagonist a stated outer goal and an (understated) inner goal. Have him/her fail at attaining their (original) outer goal, yet succeed in attaining their inner goal.
2. The opposite: have your protagonist successfully attain their outer goal, yet fail at achieving their inner goal.
3. Write a story with at least two main characters that each have their own stated outer goals. Because of their interactions, one of them attains their outer goal and one does not. And their inner goals? Up to you.

If you're not quite sure about what these options entail or how to separate outer and inner goals, we can talk about it in the coming days. These are all vital aspects of short stories and characters, and really thinking about and working with them will vastly improve your fiction.


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

The entries:

John Dunbar -- Father of Lies; Daughter of Invention
Cyan -- The Tally Book
Mike M -- Tritogeneia
Tangent -- New Beginnings
GRW810 -- The Superheroic Chronicles of Ethan Barnes
Sober -- When You're Gone
Ashes1396 -- firenza
Mike Works -- Antoine
 
G

GRW810

Member
Good objectives. Getting my thinking cap on straight away for this, no last-minute scrambling to beat the deadline.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
So if put really simple outer goals would be something like getting a good job etc. and an inner goal is something like being happy? Just asking because this is honestly the first time I heard the distinction :(

GRW810 said:
Good objectives. Getting my thinking cap on straight away for this, no last-minute scrambling to beat the deadline.
Click to expand...

That's what I tell myself every time...
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
I don't wait until the last minute at all and consistently get beat, I don't think it's as much of a factor as some might think : )
 
G

GRW810

Member
Mike M said:
I don't wait until the last minute at all and consistently get beat, I don't think it's as much of a factor as some might think : )
Click to expand...
But your stories always read as really well-polished and structured, rather than thrown-together messes.
 
M

multivac

Member
Congrats Mike Works!

I'm not sure if I'll be able to participate this time :( I've got 7 straight 12 hour work days coming up, leaving only Thursday and Friday, and I don't plan or write quickly...
 
N

Nezumi

Member
I've got the image of an old bottle of wine stuck in my head... How the hell do I make a story out of this? Its outer goal is to become the oldest wine ever but on the inside it wants nothing more than being drunk?
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Nezumi said:
I've got the image of an old bottle of wine stuck in my head... How the hell do I make a story out of this? Its outer goal is to become the oldest wine ever but on the inside it wants nothing more than being drunk?
Click to expand...

There was an old Kurt Vonnegut short story that made the Best American Non-Required Reading anthology a year or two ago. It was about a guy who saw tiny little aliens and their ship was a knife. He wound up stabbing his wife who was leaving him as a result of trying to stop them from taking off or something. Go read it, I think you may be able to use a twist on how that story was told to tell yours.
 
L

Li Kao

Member
Hmm, why not ? I was talking some weeks ago in the writing thread about how I never realized my dream of writing and how I don't know if I have it in me anymore. The evident answer was write, write and write. But, maybe ridiculously, I have a hard time writing for the sake of writing, or honing my skills on random projects I you prefer. I have some ideas/plots/feelings that I have growing in me and want to take on but fear I have not the talent yet, and at the same time don't really feel like writing some random stuff in order to take on these more precious works. Guess writing for a contest with some set objectives could be the perfect middle ground.

So about the theme, I hated it. Nothing I could think about was really interesting me and the secondary objectives were just confusing me. And then I had this idea. Still not really interested. And then some bricks were added to the thing by my wandering mind and... it still pretty left me cold. And then bam, in a matter of seconds everything felt into place, everything was right were it should and the whole thing became interesting. Gotta love this feeling when a bunch of random ideas is transformed into something far more than the sum of it.

But I still have my doubts. First at a cosmetic level, the text will be fantasy, and I pretty much flee from this setting these days. Not that I historically hate it, far from it, but it is so present in our culture that I have this 'been there, done that' feeling when working on it. It would require a certain amount of personal customization to interest me and a 3000 words contest is not the place for that.
And at a more important level, I'm still not sure about my level of success in treating the secondary objectives, I fear I have took the easy way out. Let's see.
Age - check. Present in a number of way throughout the text.
Main protag - outer goal ok I think, inner more fleshed out at the moment.
Secondary protag - outer not clear at all and inner evident.
But the thing is that the text action consists of the main protag reminiscing. I fear that it could be missing the point, or at least like I said, taking the easy way around the difficulty of the secondary objective.

Then comes a difficulty I add myself to the task. Being a non-english speaker, I would have some remorse in writing my first text in years in a language that is not totally mine. So my best bet will be to write in french and then translate the text. As I have not a lot of stylistic ambitions it should not be too hard a thing to do and nothing will be lost in translation, but still, I must like making my life harder than it should ^^

Well, now to see if I can write this little fucker. Will I have the courage ? Will it interest me enough ? Guess we will find out soon.
 
B

British Monsoon

Member
Li Kao said:
I have some ideas/plots/feelings that I have growing in me and want to take on but fear I have not the talent yet, and at the same time don't really feel like writing some random stuff in order to take on these more precious works.
Click to expand...

I can relate to that, as I've had ideas that I've constantly kept on the back burner and never got around to writing, mostly because I didn't feel I was up to the task or because I felt the idea demanded more preparation/planning/research than I'd already put in. At some point though, you just have to write it - the end result may be not so great, or the idea may have changed from your original plans through the course of being written, but the beautiful thing is that you can always go back and re-edit or re-write, days, months, years down the line. I personally enjoy reading over my old short stories, as I notice a lot on which I could now improve, or am reminded of that which I originally intended to write, compelling me to now do so.

Li Kao said:
First at a cosmetic level, the text will be fantasy, and I pretty much flee from this setting these days. Not that I historically hate it, far from it, but it is so present in our culture that I have this 'been there, done that' feeling when working on it. It would require a certain amount of personal customization to interest me and a 3000 words contest is not the place for that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, writing fantasy in short stories can be fairly difficult - I personally love world building, so I often get carried away with including little details that, really, aren't all that pertinent to the story I'm trying to tell. I find it's better to concentrate on imagery and the overall tone than to get lost in the description and detail.

Li Kao said:
Well, now to see if I can write this little fucker. Will I have the courage ? Will it interest me enough ? Guess we will find out soon.
Click to expand...

Good luck :)
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
Li Kao said:
I have some ideas/plots/feelings that I have growing in me and want to take on but fear I have not the talent yet, and at the same time don't really feel like writing some random stuff in order to take on these more precious works.
Click to expand...
I can relate to this -- but my answer was simpler:

I taught myself to write fiction. Because if I didn't, my idea would never and could never take on a physical form. Basically, out of respect for the idea, I had to learn.

Now, I didn't have to surmount the language barrier, so your hurdle's higher than mine. But I think the notion is still relevant. I remember it as a sort of desperation. Am I just going to let this idea go to waste?
 
K

KnightSlyder

Banned
I would really love to enter this. I have no problems making a passworded pdf, but the dropbox option appeared to require a download and running software.

Can I pm the pdf (or text if preferred) to somebody? Unedited it is about 1500 words and should end up under 2000. If I just decide to post the text in this thread is that a bad thing? I don't want to lose rights to any creative work even though I have no intention of publishing.

It would be fun to hear the winning stories (previous and future) read by the winners. They wouldn't have to if they didn't want.
 
T

tirminyl

Member
KnightSlyder said:
I would really love to enter this. I have no problems making a passworded pdf, but the dropbox option appeared to require a download and running software.

Can I pm the pdf (or text if preferred) to somebody? Unedited it is about 1500 words and should end up under 2000. If I just decide to post the text in this thread is that a bad thing? I don't want to lose rights to any creative work even though I have no intention of publishing.

It would be fun to hear the winning stories (previous and future) read by the winners. They wouldn't have to if they didn't want.
Click to expand...

You don't need to download dropbox to upload something into a public folder and share the link. (beaten)

You could use google drive, or really any other hosting service.

View the OP for a link to the rules about posting and story rights, etc.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
KnightSlyder said:
I would really love to enter this. I have no problems making a passworded pdf, but the dropbox option appeared to require a download and running software.

Can I pm the pdf (or text if preferred) to somebody? Unedited it is about 1500 words and should end up under 2000. If I just decide to post the text in this thread is that a bad thing? I don't want to lose rights to any creative work even though I have no intention of publishing.

It would be fun to hear the winning stories (previous and future) read by the winners. They wouldn't have to if they didn't want.
Click to expand...

I thiiiiiiiiink you may be able to just sign up for an account and use their web interface, but I may be mistaken. You could always use Google Docs too. But yeah, if you're at all interested in retaining the rights, best not to just post it on the board.
 
G

GRW810

Member
Haven't got anything for this yet but the objectives are too good not to come up with something. Getting my creative cap on this morning.
 
K

KnightSlyder

Banned
Thanks for the answers guys.

I did read the faq, even before posting. It is how I found out about dropbox and the passworded pdf option. I don't think this will work for my situation.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Li Kao said:
Then comes a difficulty I add myself to the task. Being a non-english speaker, I would have some remorse in writing my first text in years in a language that is not totally mine. So my best bet will be to write in french and then translate the text. As I have not a lot of stylistic ambitions it should not be too hard a thing to do and nothing will be lost in translation, but still, I must like making my life harder than it should ^^

Well, now to see if I can write this little fucker. Will I have the courage ? Will it interest me enough ? Guess we will find out soon.
Click to expand...

I really don't know about the bolded part. English is not my native language as well but not only does the thought of first writing my story in german and than translate it back to english sounds like a massive pain in the ass, I also think it would damage my story. At least that's my personal opinion.
 
G

GRW810

Member
I promised some feedback for challenge #121 but only just got round to writing it up. Shall I post them here so it doesn't go forgotten in the last thread, or post them in the last thread to keep that one relevant and not derail this one?

If I don't get a reply by the time I've typed it all up I'll edit the feedback into this post, but I can easily remove it and post it elsewhere at a later time if necessary.


First, a comment about my story, almost an apology really. Not a falsely-modest apology, but I genuinely feel rather bad that my rushed and terrible effort came second. I had something of an idea, but I commited to obeying the randomness of each Wikipedia page. After the initial Slovenia trip it just became boring and stupid, and I only persisted because I needed to get back into creative writing. I did what I could with it and relied on the theme of randomness, but even then it could have been delivered so much better. Thank you for my votes but there were so many better stories in there. This time around I'm making more of an effort to plan and draft my story so that I don't build a reputation for throwing something together at the last minute.

Aaron - I haven't read many 'choose your adventure' type stories, apart from a few Goosebumps books when I was young. I've certainly never written one, but I know for a fact I'd find it far more difficult than you seemed to. Despite branching routes you managed to keep the plot cohesive. I could tell how you achieved it - by keeping the wording of the story flexible to whatever option the dice dictated - but that in itself is an art. While the plot itself wasn't brilliant, the theme allowed that to be the case. This was a story focused on fun and structure, and you delivered both.

Chainsawkitten - This really drew me in. I loved the writing style, and I love how you didn't delve into the specifics. It was clear what was happening so I didn't need it laid out for me, and it was that restraint that I enjoyed.

multivac - I think this narrowly missed out on being in my top three, and believe me I deliberated over that decision for a while before posting my votes. While it was rough in places, with some clunky dialogue and arguably some awkward moments, the plot was gripping and I really bought into the main character. Very good submission.

Mike M - I thought this was very clever. What I like about your writing since I started participating is that it's clear you have a vision of your story and you deliver it with confidence. I really feel like you construct a world and real characters and I believe it; there's no sense that you're making it up as you go, that I'm just reading words that someone has written. This missed out on a vote from me just because the three I picked entertained me more on the day, but that's no reflection of this contribution.

Mike Works - Wow, you have what I'd consider 'proper writer' talent. Your use of words, the structure, everything was just so good. The wraparound scenario really worked. I think this is the first time you've submitted something since I started participating in the challenges and now I look forward to reading more from you.

Elf in a Stone - A good effort that had a clear idea in mind and delivered it unwaveringly. I just felt the elf talk was a bit laboured and I didn't feel the old woman was sincere. It also lacked a significant pay-off but the story certainly delivered randomness.

WriterGK - A very short story, and while there was a theme, there wasn't much of a story. As a soccer fan I did feel the sense of joy (though my Red Bulls don't offer me much of that!) but the formatting and punctuation were all over the place. There needs to be a space between full stops and a new sentence, double exclamation marks look unprofessional and 'French' needs to be capitalised.

Tangent - I like your writing. Like Mike M, when you tell a story I feel comfortable in that world. I enjoyed the plot but I didn't feel like it was structured very well and felt like the end came out of the blue.

Ashes - I've criticised a few stories here for a lack of focus, but hypocritically when I felt that from this story it didn't affect me. There was something about the style and the pacing that kept me interested and while I felt like it dragged in parts, there was a depth to it that gripped me.

Nezumi - Wow, this had X-Files and Twilight Zone written all over it, intentionally or not, and as a HUGE fan of both shows I couldn't not vote for this. The premise was wonderfully mysterious and I felt the intrigue and fear of the characters.

Cyan - I feel really bad, because I keep reading wonderful stuff from you but it keeps missing out on my top three for one reason or another. In terms of quality of writing it was easily one of the very best, but what may be ignorance from me in terms of the historical and cultural situation kept me back from really enjoying the story as well as admiring it. You're another writer that has great cohesion and delivers stories with clarity and confidence from beginning to end.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
GRW810 said:
I promised some feedback for challenge #121 but only just got round to writing it up. Shall I post them here so it doesn't go forgotten in the last thread, or post them in the last thread to keep that one relevant and not derail this one?

If I don't get a reply by the time I've typed it all up I'll edit the feedback into this post, but I can easily remove it and post it elsewhere at a later time if necessary.
Click to expand...

I'd say post it here, I don't know about other people but I delete my subscribtions to the older threads.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Usually I'm knee deep in revision phase by now, but I've only got 1000 words of a first draft out.

Idunno, I may actually not make it across the finish line on this one. Been one hell of a couple of weeks...
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Yeah I'll skip this one (and probably the next one or two) as well. Thanks to too much procrastinating I have to study like mad now. In fact I think I should probably request a ban until next month...
 
G

GRW810

Member
That's a shame Nezumi, but good luck with the studying. What are you studying?

For the first time I've planned my store before writing it, spent last night outlining plot, characters, setting, etc. Going to get stuck into the story tonight.

Hope everyone else is getting on ok.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
GRW810 said:
That's a shame Nezumi, but good luck with the studying. What are you studying?

For the first time I've planned my store before writing it, spent last night outlining plot, characters, setting, etc. Going to get stuck into the story tonight.

Hope everyone else is getting on ok.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
I'm taking the jlpt (japanese language proficiency test ) in juli.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Alright, finished a draft at long last. Not going to have my customary week to sit on it and fiddle with it though, so it's going to be unpolished at best...
 
T

Tangent

Member
Thanks for the crit, GRW810! Awesome of you to type those up from the previous story challenge. I'll keep your crit in mind and work on structure!

Speaking of structure, I noticed that the link Ashes posted, http://www.storypros.com/Article_1108.html, discussed stories/screenplays in acts. Do you guys try to organize your stories around acts? Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I don't really think of stories in acts. Maybe I should.

Good luck on your test, Nezumi!

Hmm... now what to write.... argh.
 
G

GRW810

Member
I've been working on an idea, outlined it, drafted the first thousand words, but I've just had another completely different idea. I'm now sitting here for an evening shift of writing trying to decide what to do?

Also, all seems quiet in this challenge. No submissions yet, little discussion; has E3 and life in general got in the way this week?

EDIT: And just as I post this, Tangent appears!
 
S

Sober

Member
Yeah E3 seems to have sucked away all of my attention this week, even stuff I should've gotten done beforehand. This included. I have some ideas but still trying to find a way to get them together. I'll definitely be trying to figure something out during my late shift until I get home, hopefully something comes to mind but it's all still nebulous for me right now :(
 
C

Chainsawkitten

Member
I'll have lots of time this week, I said. I won't have to stress, I said. I won't have to finish it all up the last hour, I said.

I'm such a jerk.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
E3 nothing, I just haven't had the time. Been incredibly busy trying to farm Pure Bladestone with work and shit. I think I'll manage to complete one revision pass, but it'll be close. Right now it's all "You thought I was verbose? YOU HAVE SEEN NOTHING!" so it kind of needs it badly.

Also going to be out of town all weekend, so commentary from me might be sparse as well.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Soooo not allowed. :p

I dunno, I tend to think that moving things back just sets a bad precedent. We're already fairly loose on the exact timing of the deadline. Peeps just need to get their shit together! (I know, I know... I struggle with that too)
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Oh, I'm turning something in, come hell or high water. It just might not be any good.

Seems like half the entries regularly sneak across the finish line after the close of entries before anyone wakes up Saturday morning anyway.
 
G

GRW810

Member
Cyan said:
Soooo not allowed. :p

I dunno, I tend to think that moving things back just sets a bad precedent. We're already fairly loose on the exact timing of the deadline. Peeps just need to get their shit together! (I know, I know... I struggle with that too)
Click to expand...
Yeah I'd rather miss a deadline that have it extended. Do it once and it will become the norm. Then word counts will go by the wayside, followed by all out anarchy. This isn't a deadly serious competition but it does pride itself on routine.

I'm sure there will be at least half a dozen or so entries. There's plenty of time. Not for me (GMT is working against me, it's already 11:30pm, I'm only halfway into mine and my daughter will give me a 6:00am wake-up call) but for those on the other side of the pond you've got all evening!

I'll get my submission in if it kills me.
 
M

Mike Works

Member
Cyan said:
Soooo not allowed. :p

I dunno, I tend to think that moving things back just sets a bad precedent. We're already fairly loose on the exact timing of the deadline. Peeps just need to get their shit together! (I know, I know... I struggle with that too)
Click to expand...
I concur. I just thought it'd be depressing if there were literally no stories. Stupid E3.
 
G

GRW810

Member
I think I'm going to have to call it a night. It's 1am here and I need some sleep.

Please don't close the challenge too quickly tomorrow, I'm very close to finishing and will have my story submitted not soo late after the deadline.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Tritogeneia (2,560 words, usual password)

This needs a lot more work, but I just didn't have the time this week, and I just got off the road after a three hour drive so I'm in no shape to do it now.
 
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