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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #144 - "Entrance"

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O

Ourobolus

Banned
Theme - "Entrance"

Word Limit: 2000

Please note the new deadlines! We're experimenting with a different timeframe!
Submission Deadline: Saturday, May 31st at 08:00 AM PST

Voting begins Saturday, May 31st at 08:01 AM PST and goes until Tuesday, June 3rd at 08:00 AM PST.

Optional Secondary Objective: Nobody Dies/Is Dead

- Stop killing your characters! They didn't do anything to you, jerk. This includes implying that they died off-page or are dying at the end.
- Stop talking to dead people. Trust me, if there's a heaven or spirit world, they're off eating their fill and getting drunk on wine. They don't have time for your characters' shenanigans.
- That said, if it doesn't exist, they're in the ground somewhere. They enjoy the peace and quiet, so stop trying to resurrect them. They'll only get mad and/or eat you.
- These rules extend to things like toys "dying" by running out of power, for instance.

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

Beaniedude - Harry and the Letters
karenq0506 - The Essence of Nothing
Ourobolus - In His Own Words
show me your skeleton - Northward
Narrator - Uncontested
Mike M - Nobody Dies Today
B-Dubs - Infinity
Cyan - A Discourse on Poetry
Ashes - #Reason 44
Tangent - Listen
Iceman - Nightgown, Part I (of II)
Itsinmyveins - At the bend of the mind
Click to expand...
 
C

Carlisle

Member
Damn, I think that secondary objective would preclude every story I've submitted. Challenge accepted.

Can you shine some light on what you have in mind for Entrance? Like, would simply having a door in the story suffice, or am I missing your point?

Edit:
Or do you mean entrance as in to put one into a trance? Or is the possible many meanings your way of eliciting our own interpretations and to run wild with them ok I'll shut up now?
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
Carlisle said:
Damn, I think that secondary objective would preclude every story I've submitted. Challenge accepted.

Can you shine some light on what you have in mind for Entrance? Like, would simply having a door in the story suffice, or am I missing your point?

Edit:
Or do you mean entrance as in to put one into a trance? Or is the possible many meanings your way of eliciting our own interpretations and to run wild with them ok I'll shut up now?
Click to expand...
:)
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Ourobolus said:
Please note the new deadlines! We're experimenting with a different timeframe!
Submission Deadline: Saturday, May 31st at 08:00 AM PST

Voting begins Saturday, June 1st at 08:01 AM PST and goes until Tuesday, June 2nd] at 08:00 AM PST.
Click to expand...
I'm just going to tell myself it's midnight. :p

Optional Secondary Objective: Nobody Dies/Is Dead

- Stop killing your characters! They didn't do anything to you, jerk. This includes implying that they died off-page or are dying at the end.
- Stop talking to dead people. Trust me, if there's a heaven or spirit world, they're off eating their fill and getting drunk on wine. They don't have time for your characters' shenanigans.
- That said, if it doesn't exist, they're in the ground somewhere. They enjoy the peace and quiet, so stop trying to resurrect them. They'll only get mad and/or eat you.
Click to expand...

Well that whittles down my list of ideas:
-Heaven's Gate
-Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
-Charon is sick of people giving him their stupid coins, where the hell is he going to spend them?
-Abraham Lincoln gets killed and eaten by his suggestively-named chief of staff or whoever that was
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Uh, I like that theme. Secondary shouldn't be too hard since killing my characters isn't a habit of mine anyway.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
God damn it, now that I'm prohibited, I just want nothing but to kill some characters. Or maybe have some ghosts or something.
 
S

sqwarlock

Member
I'm formulating a plot for a new novel(la), and I think I can use this challenge to do the prologue for it. Gonna be hard not to kill though...I do like killing...
 
C

Cyan

Banned
EdibleKnife said:
The voting deadline should say Monday, June 1st right?
Click to expand...

The dates were messed up. It's effectively the same as before--Friday night writing deadline, Monday night reading/voting deadline--but with a built-in hard limit of 8 AM the next morning rather than the soft limit that sometimes seemed to go on forever. :p
 
A

ab.aeterno

Member
Got damn, that secondary is brutal. I basically have to enter this one now with a challenge like that. I can't even remember the last time I wrote a story that didn't involve death.

Maybe I'll go really crazy and write something happy. Somebody stop me, I'm taking crazy.

Mike M said:
God damn it, now that I'm prohibited, I just want nothing but to kill some characters. Or maybe have some ghosts or something.
Click to expand...
Just make it the Titus Andronicus of this challenge. If you can't kill anybody, kill everyone!
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
Excellent. I just know many people (myself included) tend to drift towards the idea of a death, whether directly or indirectly affecting the protagonist, as the impetus for the overarching conflict in a story, when in fact, there are plenty of others to choose from!

I figured this would be an exciting exercise. :)
 
T

Tangent

Member
Congrats Ourobolus!!! Well-deserved!!!! Also I like the new experimental deadlines.

Mike M said:
Pretty sure I'm the only regular Seattle area rep I know of.
Click to expand...

Valerie Cherish said:
Ahh, I'm also up here! Tangent referenced three Seattle places, so it stuck out to me.
Click to expand...

Alas, I am not currently living in Seattle, but my heart is there. Or at least my area code of my phone #. I'm pretty madly in love with the city, and lived there for 3 or 3.5 years or so -- about 6 years ago. And I try to go back at least 1x/year. (Heading up to the San Juans soon!) And yes, I picked all those Seattle places because for some reason, I strongly visualized venues in Seattle when hammering out the story. Also, in 8th grade, I made a dorky claymation video over the summer about a cube-shaped character -- and that's what I intensely visualized for the MC. I was thinking how as a writer, certain aspects of a story that I visualize aren't that important, and that I should probably let them go even if I'm attached to them. I think. On the other hand, I think specificity sometimes helps. IDK. Thoughts?

Anyway, Seattle is awesome. Clay is awesome. What else is there to life?

Cyan said:
-Clay creature gets massaged to death.
Click to expand...
Hey! It could really happen!

Ourobolus said:
Excellent. I just know many people (myself included) tend to drift towards the idea of a death, whether directly or indirectly affecting the protagonist, as the impetus for the overarching conflict in a story, when in fact, there plenty of others to choose from!

I figured this would be an exciting exercise. :)
Click to expand...

Yeah I wonder why this happens! I don't think I originally drifted towards death. But then I stubbornly (but not really, just jokingly) didn't want to be tagged as the writer of tame and "cute" stories of talking woodland creatures.
*ahem* Cyan! ;)
Also, it seems like death works well in short stories. If we were writing 1K page novels, we'd be so attached to the characters that we'd hate the authors. But we can toy with death when we just get to know a character. Also, I wonder if it's somehow harder to write a happy ending in a short story vs. a longer piece. Because maybe there is so much more plot that has to develop in a long piece and in a short story, it seems more acceptable to have quick cutoffs? IDK. Thoughts?

Uh...whoa.... I certainly wrote a lot.
 
S

sqwarlock

Member
ZeroRay said:
Can I actually do two contests in a row?

Find out in less than two weeks!
Click to expand...

I'm still waiting to finish my second one! I think it's been...I don't even know how long since I did my first one. I want to be a part of the writing clique, to get my name out there on GAF, but other things keep getting in the way.
 
Z

ZeroRay

Member
No solid ideas yet. No death is fine. Just gonna listen to my favorite pro wrestler entrance themes for inspiration.

sqwarlock said:
I'm still waiting to finish my second one! I think it's been...I don't even know how long since I did my first one. I want to be a part of the writing clique, to get my name out there on GAF, but other things keep getting in the way.
Click to expand...

Let's make a pact to get something done.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Aaron said:
Don't know if I'll enter. Still disappointed by the overall lack of critiques in the last thread.
Click to expand...

While last challenge might have been a new low (I apologize for messing up the times leaving me no time to write something) it's not that we normally have that much more people actually writing comments. And the last two challenges also had a rather low number of participants.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Really want to do a Alice in Wonderland-type story, but it is hard coming up with something that hasn't been done a thousand times already...
 
S

show me your skeleton

Member
it's certainly okay to use this as an excuse/incentive to just actually write for once, rather than sitting in your underwear playing dark souls 2 all day, right? i mean mine is pretty tenuously linked to the theme but yolo.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
show me your skeleton said:
it's certainly okay to use this as an excuse/incentive to just actually write for once, rather than sitting in your underwear playing dark souls 2 all day, right? i mean mine is pretty tenuously linked to the theme but yolo.
Click to expand...

Personaly I think that the theme is excellent for everyone who wants to join for the first time. Basically it is the entrance for you to this challenges.

Edit: finally have an idea for this. Gonna be early with my entry for a change considering the MK8 release on Friday.
 
I

Iceman

Member
Ashes said:
I'm writing a murder mystery.
Click to expand...

You just upped the ante. I'm going to call.

I really do want to see this one through. I'll have a rough done this weekend. It's already outlined. My biggest fear is that there's apparently no place for humor in this one. Stupid cemetary stories where you can't kill anyone... Yes. Somehow I can see humor in a murder story (bond/schwartzenegger/al roker one liners, or Justified style comeuppances) when I can't find any in what I'm planning.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
I was going to write about a serial killer who partakes in a mass shooting. Suppose I'll shelve that for another thread.
 
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