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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #146 - "Rite of Passage"
- Thread starter Charade
- Start date
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Himynameischris
Member
I missed this one 
I fell behind with my class reading assignment but I'll contribute for the next one.
I fell behind with my class reading assignment but I'll contribute for the next one.With only eight entries, everyone gets an extra helping of unsolicited critique! Cmon, I know Im not the only one who made notes
Right?
Right guys?
Guys?
ThLunarian: For two years Ive e-known you, and I still cant not write your name as The Lunarian every time. I even delete it and make the same mistake again. Fucking infuriating. Heh heh. Nearly from the start, your second sentence kind of threw me out of the proper headspace for this one. Identifying that there are others before establishing that there is anything for them to be other from and the color of the sand changing for unspecified reasons (Im assuming its just that the sun rose.) wasnt exactly confusing, per se, but it left ambiguity as to whether or not my interpretation of what was going on was the correct one. From there I got hung up on various other random details (Plastic sheet of what? Paper? Plastic? Tarp? Literal plastic bed sheet?) that I was mostly able to intuit what you were going for, but again could never be 100% completely certain. I got kind of a Lost meets Hunger Games vibe right from the get go, and then the thing in the woods turns out to be what seems like a mutant or monster polar bear? Its a small thing, but even changing the color of the monster would go a long way towards putting some distance between your story and whatever hints of Lost lurk in its DNA. The concept of What if modern day Hawaii was cut off from the rest of the world is a damned good one, one Ive thought about exploring myself (though in my imagination, it probably degrades into a tropical Mad Max scenario). Lots of depth that you can explore in that one about how the lack of metal or fuel would affect things. Really liked the detail that the idol turned out to be a piece of fruit in the end too, definitely wouldnt mind seeing the whole thing when youre done with it.
show me your skeleton: Honestly, you can ditch the entire semi-colon laden first paragraph and not really lose anything since the entirety of the rest of the story is told as a flashback. If anything, establishing from the start that his hunting name is Red-of-Throat diminishes the impact of how he ends up receiving it at the end. So is this in the same world as the last entry you submitted was? I gathered early on that the protagonist (and the other tribes/peoples mentioned) werent human, though Im not entiiiirely certain what the main character was supposed to be. At first all the talk about sows and [suffix]hough made me think of pigs. But then you had a part where the main character had a silver and white coat of hair, which I took to be that he had fur, not that he was wearing a coat. So Im thinking maybe a polar bear? I had to really rack my brain to remember that female bears are called sows (I seriously though the hough stuff was just trying to be a fancy way of saying hog and couldnt get past it), and Im Creative Writing ChallengeGAFs self-appointed animal guy : P If I had trouble with it, I wouldnt be surprised if other people were not perhaps a little lost by it. Just like last time, really excellent use of language (though I would perhaps quibble on the placement or absence of commas) and imagery. I particularly liked the pairing of greywhite and whitegrey and the notion of the affects of adrenaline being akin to a poison in the way it betrays the body.
Charade: I was kind of lost for a while in this one. The shadowy antagonists were initially described in such a way that I took them to be less corporeal than all the subsequent actions and interactions with them, which led me scratching my head as to how I was supposed to be picturing them in my head. Thankfully things are eventually made clear, and the line about humans have six went a remarkable distance in establishing the unreliability of the narrator and recalibrating my perception of everything that had occurred prior to that point. I wasnt expecting this to be a tie-in piece to the winning entry last week, but it seems only fair since I also wrote something relating to a previous entry of mine. Got to say though I think I liked Dax better when he was an idiot brimming over with violent machismo rather than a ruthless and effective bounty hunting badass. Granted, the latter is why he is so brimming over, and I would have liked to have seen just an inkling of the idiocy on display in his job application, but that seems like it would be a drastic mismatch of tonality with the rest of the story. There wasnt anything awful or particularly bad about this one, but it was about as generic and run of the mill as sci-fi stories get, the fact that you bring back a character that were already familiar with outside of generic and run of the mill sci-fi is really the saving grace.
Mike M: I changed the title back and forth between The Terrible Secret of Peppa Pig and The Terrible Secrets of Peppa Pig with each revision, and I still dont know which I like better : / This is actually a sequel to a previous story entry I submitted during my lamentable purple prose phase, which is referenced when Jacob scolds Peter for running out of the lab screaming into the night, in case youre wondering what thats in reference to. I didnt set out to write a sequel, but it seemed a natural outgrowth. I dont particularly enjoy reading slice of life type stories (and apparently I dont particularly enjoy writing them either) and this one really lives or dies by what you feel about the dialogue, as theres almost no action or descriptive language. I personally thought it peaked with the insane ramblings about a preschoolers cartoon (and even then I didnt like it that much until I saw the episode about the fire station. That really gave me something to latch on to and build out around), but then it kept on going without a lot of humor to keep it aloft. It got a fairly good response at my writing group the other night, though, so make of it what you will. Everything about Peppa Pig are completely autobiographical observations. Whats the term for a character speaking as the author? Its not quite self-insertion, I think
Sober: Prom is an excellent choice for this challenge, I would think. There was a line in the beginning that threw me for a minute where Andy asks Oscar how he got his necktie done, because it comes immediately after the narration calls out Andy noticing the bag with the liquor in it. The subject having thus been changed, I didnt realize we were going back to talking about the necktie again. Actually, upon reflection, you probably could have done away with the entire first scene, it doesnt seem to do much other than to be how Andy gets the whiskey, which is adequately addressed when Andy explains where he got it to Sally. Andys actions had me cringing (not the writing, mind you), his whole scheme to get drunk and have sex with a girl on what is essentially their first date is just cringey. But I cant exactly fault you for that, because thats how teenagers are, as I recall. Not me, but I did plenty of other stupid and ill-conceived shit as a kid myself in other ways. I think you started to lose me about the point where they got in the altercation with the homeless drunk. Everything had been kinda light-hearted (viewed through the lens of teenagers ascribing disproportionate importance to the events of their lives being granted), but then it got a bit dark and somehow didnt have any lasting impact. They knock this guy the fuck out, put him on the bench, and then they go back to the hotel and Sally decides to put out on the first date after all. I guess poor decision making is a unisex problem.
karenq0506: More cohesive than the entry about the girl who was going deaf a few weeks back, but there are still some rough edges on this that could have benefited from a revision pass or two. Youve got typos like 100 a hundred pounds, schools soccer team, and describing the blandness of oatmeal as being like chewing granite doesnt work very well for what youre attempting to use it for. If she were eating something hard, like stale bread perhaps? Actually, Im having a great deal of difficulties in coming up with a simile to describe blandness of food that isnt in and of itself a reference to oatmeal. That stuff is pretty damned bland until you doctor it up quite a bit with additional ingredients. I genuinely did not see the end of this from the outset, and the ramifications of what the Curians did seems like some pretty heavy stuff. My understanding is that they decided that most of humanity was irredeemable and declared their intentions for war with the express purpose of driving humans to perform a draft so they could monitor it and decide which humans were worth saving? But their criteria for selection of what humans are worth saving would consist of how indifferent they were to the destruction of their planet and the vast majority of their species, so the survivors would all be interesting people.
Cyan: I really hate the way you use words that I forgot I knew. Just makes my own regularly-used vocabulary seem insufficient, and then when I do stretch my verbal muscle, I come across as overwrought and bloviating. So jealous. But then you use terms like miles of prestige which seems like a very odd way to quantify prestige unless her family would literally be granted miles of land in recognition of her success, so I feel a little better. Anyway, I mostly liked this one, but felt that despite coming within half a dozen words of the limit, it was still a bit of a featherweight story. Youve got so much stuff thats crammed into those 1994 words, but you really only paint the barest sketch of the world in which it takes place and then only a slightly more detailed heist thats over almost as quickly as it began. I love heist stories, and if the one heist story that I wrote (of which I am not at all proud, but still think I came up with a pretty damn good sneaky scheme for it) taught me anything, its that they are damned hard to conceptualize. So kudos for coming up with something that could be conveyed succinctly, but I really wish that this had been a meatier piece, no one watches Oceans 1X movies to just watch a smash and grab and a mad dash for the door. The anti-moral at the end was great though, I loved that.
Ashes: Now I really want some chicken curry Im going to assume that their leaving the stove on unattended except for a passed-out junkie in the bedroom down the hall while they retired to the other flat to watch some television did not result in the building burning down, or it would have been mentioned in the story itself. Heh heh. As always, you excel in nailing the dialogue between two people who know each other and provide a kind of a fly-on-the-wall observation of what actual conversations actually sound like in real life when theyre not there to move a plot along. Makes my own attempt at something similar this week seem pretty weaksauce in comparison, but thats what I get for trying to do something character-driven when my usual what-passes-for-my-forte is event-driven stories. Lots of ambient details that impart information despite a sparseness of words. Speaking of words, are tis and whilst used more frequently across the pond than they are in the US, or is it just a quirk of this particular narrators speech?
Votes:
1.) Cyan
2.) show me your skeleton
3.)TheLunarianFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
ThLunarian.
Right guys?
Guys?
ThLunarian: For two years Ive e-known you, and I still cant not write your name as The Lunarian every time. I even delete it and make the same mistake again. Fucking infuriating. Heh heh. Nearly from the start, your second sentence kind of threw me out of the proper headspace for this one. Identifying that there are others before establishing that there is anything for them to be other from and the color of the sand changing for unspecified reasons (Im assuming its just that the sun rose.) wasnt exactly confusing, per se, but it left ambiguity as to whether or not my interpretation of what was going on was the correct one. From there I got hung up on various other random details (Plastic sheet of what? Paper? Plastic? Tarp? Literal plastic bed sheet?) that I was mostly able to intuit what you were going for, but again could never be 100% completely certain. I got kind of a Lost meets Hunger Games vibe right from the get go, and then the thing in the woods turns out to be what seems like a mutant or monster polar bear? Its a small thing, but even changing the color of the monster would go a long way towards putting some distance between your story and whatever hints of Lost lurk in its DNA. The concept of What if modern day Hawaii was cut off from the rest of the world is a damned good one, one Ive thought about exploring myself (though in my imagination, it probably degrades into a tropical Mad Max scenario). Lots of depth that you can explore in that one about how the lack of metal or fuel would affect things. Really liked the detail that the idol turned out to be a piece of fruit in the end too, definitely wouldnt mind seeing the whole thing when youre done with it.
show me your skeleton: Honestly, you can ditch the entire semi-colon laden first paragraph and not really lose anything since the entirety of the rest of the story is told as a flashback. If anything, establishing from the start that his hunting name is Red-of-Throat diminishes the impact of how he ends up receiving it at the end. So is this in the same world as the last entry you submitted was? I gathered early on that the protagonist (and the other tribes/peoples mentioned) werent human, though Im not entiiiirely certain what the main character was supposed to be. At first all the talk about sows and [suffix]hough made me think of pigs. But then you had a part where the main character had a silver and white coat of hair, which I took to be that he had fur, not that he was wearing a coat. So Im thinking maybe a polar bear? I had to really rack my brain to remember that female bears are called sows (I seriously though the hough stuff was just trying to be a fancy way of saying hog and couldnt get past it), and Im Creative Writing ChallengeGAFs self-appointed animal guy : P If I had trouble with it, I wouldnt be surprised if other people were not perhaps a little lost by it. Just like last time, really excellent use of language (though I would perhaps quibble on the placement or absence of commas) and imagery. I particularly liked the pairing of greywhite and whitegrey and the notion of the affects of adrenaline being akin to a poison in the way it betrays the body.
Charade: I was kind of lost for a while in this one. The shadowy antagonists were initially described in such a way that I took them to be less corporeal than all the subsequent actions and interactions with them, which led me scratching my head as to how I was supposed to be picturing them in my head. Thankfully things are eventually made clear, and the line about humans have six went a remarkable distance in establishing the unreliability of the narrator and recalibrating my perception of everything that had occurred prior to that point. I wasnt expecting this to be a tie-in piece to the winning entry last week, but it seems only fair since I also wrote something relating to a previous entry of mine. Got to say though I think I liked Dax better when he was an idiot brimming over with violent machismo rather than a ruthless and effective bounty hunting badass. Granted, the latter is why he is so brimming over, and I would have liked to have seen just an inkling of the idiocy on display in his job application, but that seems like it would be a drastic mismatch of tonality with the rest of the story. There wasnt anything awful or particularly bad about this one, but it was about as generic and run of the mill as sci-fi stories get, the fact that you bring back a character that were already familiar with outside of generic and run of the mill sci-fi is really the saving grace.
Mike M: I changed the title back and forth between The Terrible Secret of Peppa Pig and The Terrible Secrets of Peppa Pig with each revision, and I still dont know which I like better : / This is actually a sequel to a previous story entry I submitted during my lamentable purple prose phase, which is referenced when Jacob scolds Peter for running out of the lab screaming into the night, in case youre wondering what thats in reference to. I didnt set out to write a sequel, but it seemed a natural outgrowth. I dont particularly enjoy reading slice of life type stories (and apparently I dont particularly enjoy writing them either) and this one really lives or dies by what you feel about the dialogue, as theres almost no action or descriptive language. I personally thought it peaked with the insane ramblings about a preschoolers cartoon (and even then I didnt like it that much until I saw the episode about the fire station. That really gave me something to latch on to and build out around), but then it kept on going without a lot of humor to keep it aloft. It got a fairly good response at my writing group the other night, though, so make of it what you will. Everything about Peppa Pig are completely autobiographical observations. Whats the term for a character speaking as the author? Its not quite self-insertion, I think
Sober: Prom is an excellent choice for this challenge, I would think. There was a line in the beginning that threw me for a minute where Andy asks Oscar how he got his necktie done, because it comes immediately after the narration calls out Andy noticing the bag with the liquor in it. The subject having thus been changed, I didnt realize we were going back to talking about the necktie again. Actually, upon reflection, you probably could have done away with the entire first scene, it doesnt seem to do much other than to be how Andy gets the whiskey, which is adequately addressed when Andy explains where he got it to Sally. Andys actions had me cringing (not the writing, mind you), his whole scheme to get drunk and have sex with a girl on what is essentially their first date is just cringey. But I cant exactly fault you for that, because thats how teenagers are, as I recall. Not me, but I did plenty of other stupid and ill-conceived shit as a kid myself in other ways. I think you started to lose me about the point where they got in the altercation with the homeless drunk. Everything had been kinda light-hearted (viewed through the lens of teenagers ascribing disproportionate importance to the events of their lives being granted), but then it got a bit dark and somehow didnt have any lasting impact. They knock this guy the fuck out, put him on the bench, and then they go back to the hotel and Sally decides to put out on the first date after all. I guess poor decision making is a unisex problem.
karenq0506: More cohesive than the entry about the girl who was going deaf a few weeks back, but there are still some rough edges on this that could have benefited from a revision pass or two. Youve got typos like 100 a hundred pounds, schools soccer team, and describing the blandness of oatmeal as being like chewing granite doesnt work very well for what youre attempting to use it for. If she were eating something hard, like stale bread perhaps? Actually, Im having a great deal of difficulties in coming up with a simile to describe blandness of food that isnt in and of itself a reference to oatmeal. That stuff is pretty damned bland until you doctor it up quite a bit with additional ingredients. I genuinely did not see the end of this from the outset, and the ramifications of what the Curians did seems like some pretty heavy stuff. My understanding is that they decided that most of humanity was irredeemable and declared their intentions for war with the express purpose of driving humans to perform a draft so they could monitor it and decide which humans were worth saving? But their criteria for selection of what humans are worth saving would consist of how indifferent they were to the destruction of their planet and the vast majority of their species, so the survivors would all be interesting people.
Cyan: I really hate the way you use words that I forgot I knew. Just makes my own regularly-used vocabulary seem insufficient, and then when I do stretch my verbal muscle, I come across as overwrought and bloviating. So jealous. But then you use terms like miles of prestige which seems like a very odd way to quantify prestige unless her family would literally be granted miles of land in recognition of her success, so I feel a little better. Anyway, I mostly liked this one, but felt that despite coming within half a dozen words of the limit, it was still a bit of a featherweight story. Youve got so much stuff thats crammed into those 1994 words, but you really only paint the barest sketch of the world in which it takes place and then only a slightly more detailed heist thats over almost as quickly as it began. I love heist stories, and if the one heist story that I wrote (of which I am not at all proud, but still think I came up with a pretty damn good sneaky scheme for it) taught me anything, its that they are damned hard to conceptualize. So kudos for coming up with something that could be conveyed succinctly, but I really wish that this had been a meatier piece, no one watches Oceans 1X movies to just watch a smash and grab and a mad dash for the door. The anti-moral at the end was great though, I loved that.
Ashes: Now I really want some chicken curry Im going to assume that their leaving the stove on unattended except for a passed-out junkie in the bedroom down the hall while they retired to the other flat to watch some television did not result in the building burning down, or it would have been mentioned in the story itself. Heh heh. As always, you excel in nailing the dialogue between two people who know each other and provide a kind of a fly-on-the-wall observation of what actual conversations actually sound like in real life when theyre not there to move a plot along. Makes my own attempt at something similar this week seem pretty weaksauce in comparison, but thats what I get for trying to do something character-driven when my usual what-passes-for-my-forte is event-driven stories. Lots of ambient details that impart information despite a sparseness of words. Speaking of words, are tis and whilst used more frequently across the pond than they are in the US, or is it just a quirk of this particular narrators speech?
Votes:
1.) Cyan
2.) show me your skeleton
3.)
Hi Mike M.-
Yea, I saw all my errors Saturday morning. :/ I really need to get started early to allow myself time to edit. I almost didnt write the story but I got inspired the last moment. Now to try and explain my story I didnt really put much thought into my characters last meal. The point I was trying to make was that an elaborate meal didnt make her priority list. She was mostly concerned with survival and as bad as the oatmeal was, Stephanie ate it all. You are right about the Curians monitoring the draft. They were behind the final decision on who lives/who dies. The fact that Stephanie and those saved felt indifferent to the destruction of their world, was due to a higher understanding (perhaps influenced by the telepathic devices implanted) that humanity was flawed and destructive.
show me your skeleton
Member
really enjoy your critiques so thank you for doing these again.
i never thought to remove the paragraph. an older, wiser main character only really works if you spend more time with him, either before or after the flashback and we never return to him so yeah, i think it could have been dropped.
it's in the same world, yep. i think most of my entries will be, haha, as i'm basically using these as excuses to actually write something and improve my craft. also i'm utterly terrified of having to make something interesting out of the real world. as you can see, i'm much better at confusing people with fantasy animals!
in terms of the creature, he's pig. the boughough are related to the boughuss that i mention in passing in the last story, only bigger, stronger and hairier. imagine a wooly boar or something. i like that i inadvertently conjured up the image of polar bears though, including the coincidence that i used the correct term for a female bear, haha. might have to rethink this species!
if i remove the first paragraph that would have freed up some space to describe the species in a bit more physical detail. to be honest i never thought the visualisation of what they looked like to be a big issue, if it matched what i saw then great but if not, ah well. but perhaps a less-than-clear image confuses and gets in the way of the rest of the writing?
i am a devil for commas. i overuse, underuse and generally abuse them left, right and centre. something i need to work on.
anyway, thanks again for the input. time to tweak and enbiggen!
ThLunarian
Member
This screen name has a nearly 20 year legacy. I created it when America Online only allowed 10 character usernames, and I wanted to be TheLunarian because I had recently played Final Fantasy 4 and really liked FuSoYa for some reason. E seemed like the logical character to sacrifice while retaining the same pronunciation (mostly).
So, TheLunarian isn't exactly wrong
Thanks for the critique. I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed writing this story. If the only things you thought to point out were how the details were organized (plus the polar bear thing) then I guess it really does have potential.
So, TheLunarian isn't exactly wrong
Thanks for the critique. I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed writing this story. If the only things you thought to point out were how the details were organized (plus the polar bear thing) then I guess it really does have potential.
Please note that you don't need to respond to my comments.
ThaLunrian - "The Red Idol" - I have to agree with Cole. I have no idea what it all meant. The beginning was promising, with clear and easy introductions to the cast, the world, the goal. And it seems like we're going to get a fun scifi adventure story, but then everything takes a turn for the weird and all those promises are left unfulfilled. That's not to say that taking a turn for the weird is always wrong, but it doesn't work for me here, because it feels incoherently weird rather than coherently weird. If that makes sense.
show me your skeleton - "Red Throat" - I'd prefer less infodumping early in the story. If it's important to the story, sprinkle it around a little. If it's just for flavoring... still sprinkle it around a little. Hard to stay interested in the story when it jumps headlong into infodump so early. Which is unfortunate because the material itself is potentially quite interesting!
I also think the decision to structure the story as a flashback hurts it. We don't gain much if anything from the backwards-looking view, and the in-the-moment stuff from the past is the strongest material in the story. I'd like to see that strength the whole way through.
Charade - "The Trial" - I like the central idea. It's clear early on the direction the story is going, but it's still interesting to get there, since the protagonist has such a strong voice. I think my main problem here stems from the multiple layers of confusion in the story. We are introduced to a story world that has scifi stuff and strange alien hybrids. Then we get the protagonist's insanity piled atop that. We do understand that the protagonist isn't in his right mind (the finger counting thing works really well for that, great job), but because we don't know the details of how the world works prior to that insanity, it's a little tricky to figure out exactly what's real and what's in his mind. The sort of Stockholm Syndrome at the end is a nice touch.
ThaLunrian - "The Red Idol" - I have to agree with Cole. I have no idea what it all meant. The beginning was promising, with clear and easy introductions to the cast, the world, the goal. And it seems like we're going to get a fun scifi adventure story, but then everything takes a turn for the weird and all those promises are left unfulfilled. That's not to say that taking a turn for the weird is always wrong, but it doesn't work for me here, because it feels incoherently weird rather than coherently weird. If that makes sense.
show me your skeleton - "Red Throat" - I'd prefer less infodumping early in the story. If it's important to the story, sprinkle it around a little. If it's just for flavoring... still sprinkle it around a little.
Hard to stay interested in the story when it jumps headlong into infodump so early. Which is unfortunate because the material itself is potentially quite interesting!I also think the decision to structure the story as a flashback hurts it. We don't gain much if anything from the backwards-looking view, and the in-the-moment stuff from the past is the strongest material in the story. I'd like to see that strength the whole way through.
Charade - "The Trial" - I like the central idea. It's clear early on the direction the story is going, but it's still interesting to get there, since the protagonist has such a strong voice. I think my main problem here stems from the multiple layers of confusion in the story. We are introduced to a story world that has scifi stuff and strange alien hybrids. Then we get the protagonist's insanity piled atop that. We do understand that the protagonist isn't in his right mind (the finger counting thing works really well for that, great job), but because we don't know the details of how the world works prior to that insanity, it's a little tricky to figure out exactly what's real and what's in his mind. The sort of Stockholm Syndrome at the end is a nice touch.
And you wrote 2 stories... I don't know how you do it, man.
I should have something up later tonight,
though about 75% shorter and less insightful.
The secret is to be a neglectful husband and father.And you wrote 2 stories... I don't know how you do it, man.
Well I'm neither so that's not helpful advice at all!
I do feel like I'm writing too slow though...Maybe I'll try freewriting for the next challenge.
Be an unproductive employee?Well I'm neither so that's not helpful advice at all!
Seriously though, I just type fast. When I don't have to actually devote thought processes to craft, I can crank it out in a hurry. It's just not very polished, but I'm not entering my feedback as my entry : P
Well I start working at the end of this month so I'll have to keep that in mind.
Anyways, here's my feedback/impressions:
ThLunarian -This one left me with a lot of questions. Some I liked being unanswered, since they added a flair of mystery (the Great Awakening, the powers). Others I wanted a little more (the bear, the fruit/pineapple), though I know you said it wasnt a self-contained story. Speaking of the fruit, was there anything special about it (besides being rare)? Or did that old lady just really want to make that pie
show me your skeleton- The world-building and the imagery was fantastic. Maybe almost too much detail, though I know this is part of a much larger world. I saw your reply to Mike before I read it, but I feel like I also wouldve been confused over what type of animal he was.
Charade Prequel to my last entry, from one of the kills I had put in his resume under the experience section. I had actually called the whole alien-going-insane-when-they-come-of-age a rite of passage in that entry, so when I was looking for ideas I thought why not?
Had a tough time with the secondary until I realized some cannibalism would fit. Err, well not technically cannibalism, but you know what I mean! Mike M- Great, natural-sounding dialogue. Each topic flowed into the next quite nicely. I could really visualize the entire scene, them at the bar, the rest of the patrons watching the game. And the last line connecting back to the Peppa Pig show was a nice touch.
Sober- A second entry featuring alcohol!
I think my favorite part of this was when they were sitting in the pizza shop reminiscing. I would have liked to see more of that, though I can see why you probably threw in the homeless guy to spice it up. karenq0506- This was a neat idea. The implications of the Curians' actions were certainly interesting, I feel like its something that could be fleshed out more. As said, it was a bit rough around the edges, but I feel like submitting something is better than nothing, if that makes sense.
Cyan I really enjoyed reading this one. The heist with the multiple books was clever. I also liked how the story was fairly self-contained while still leaving the door open for a continuation (whether you do that or not). Unanswered things that make you think, like the purpose of the academy, her family, highborn. Good stuff.
Ashes I think this made the best use of the secondary. Out of all the entries, this also felt the most real. Real somber and detached.
Votes:
1. Cyan
2. Mike M
3. Ashes
ThLunarian - The ending was a little odd. I'm wondering if you have more to this story than what you have there, especially if it ties into where the story was leading from the beginning. It seems to make a really weird turn when Cole returns with the idol and it's all about a pie more than anything else.
show me your skeleton - Not sure the first paragraph is really necessary, as the entire story follows him becoming a hunter anyway. Otherwise, that's a lot of world building and I liked it, so I hope you have more planned for it. I do think the one huge block of text could be cut down or better incorportated into the story. In fact, most of it is there, and it would probably help, for example, to save the totem's description/purpose for when needed in that moment, if that makes any sense.
Charade - The reveal at the end I found actually make the details in the start much more interesting when you realize what has happened and has been told to us. The skips were a little disoreintaing at first but I assume that was intentional.
Mike M - I liked the setting and the conversation, but perhaps I would've liked to see them maybe breaking out their phone to watch the clip in the middle of a sports bar, rather than simply have it all of it describe as a way to segue into what Jacob wants to get off his chest.
karenq0506 - the idea, setting, premise was interesting but it would help to go back for a few passes. I think Mike got most of them, but the one that kinda bothered me is that you should probably break up the first big paragraph at the start, if someone hasn't pointed that out already, as it is pretty cumbersome and doesn't really flow all that well together.
Cyan - Very fun, liked it a lot. Don't really have much else to say other than it was a fun, light heist-ish story. No real context for the what and why but enjoyable all the same.
Ashes - Something very raw about this one, in a good way. Definitely like the way it's paced. I don't know about anyone else but it seemed really bittersweet by the end of it for me.
Votes
1. Ashes
2. Cyan
3. Charade
show me your skeleton - Not sure the first paragraph is really necessary, as the entire story follows him becoming a hunter anyway. Otherwise, that's a lot of world building and I liked it, so I hope you have more planned for it. I do think the one huge block of text could be cut down or better incorportated into the story. In fact, most of it is there, and it would probably help, for example, to save the totem's description/purpose for when needed in that moment, if that makes any sense.
Charade - The reveal at the end I found actually make the details in the start much more interesting when you realize what has happened and has been told to us. The skips were a little disoreintaing at first but I assume that was intentional.
Mike M - I liked the setting and the conversation, but perhaps I would've liked to see them maybe breaking out their phone to watch the clip in the middle of a sports bar, rather than simply have it all of it describe as a way to segue into what Jacob wants to get off his chest.
karenq0506 - the idea, setting, premise was interesting but it would help to go back for a few passes. I think Mike got most of them, but the one that kinda bothered me is that you should probably break up the first big paragraph at the start, if someone hasn't pointed that out already, as it is pretty cumbersome and doesn't really flow all that well together.
Cyan - Very fun, liked it a lot. Don't really have much else to say other than it was a fun, light heist-ish story. No real context for the what and why but enjoyable all the same.
Ashes - Something very raw about this one, in a good way. Definitely like the way it's paced. I don't know about anyone else but it seemed really bittersweet by the end of it for me.
Votes
1. Ashes
2. Cyan
3. Charade
Mike M - "The Terrible Secret of Peppa Pig" - oh man, my niece loves Peppa Pig. Or loved maybe, I think she's moved on to the chick from Frozen now. I never realized it was so fucked up. (Side note: have we met these characters before? The lab reference reminded me of one of your old stories...) As always, your sense of humor and your character banter do a lot of heavy lifting here. You ever read Scalzi's scifi? He's got loads of humor and banter, which in some cases covers over for weak plotting, but when everything comes together, his stuff is great. I kind of feel the same way about your stories. They're always fun and entertaining--and this one certainly is that--but sometimes the actual content of the story is thin--and this one is that, too. It was fun, but there's not a lot of heft. I guess that's not inherently bad. I'd just like to see more from you. When I compare you with Scalzi, it's also in that if everything comes together for you in a novel or story, you're definitely going to be published.
Sober - "A First Time For Everything" - ah, prom. I was lost a bit at first, as the thing with the tie made me think the character was much older, then we've got liquor stolen from a dad's liquor cabinet, then it finally all comes together. I prefer to get the picture quicker. The conversation in the pizza place is good, all the emotions of uncertain teenagers batting around. The dude bothering them about their liquor kind of broke up the two-person show a bit. It spices things up and gets your characters where you want them, but I can't help feeling it might've been more interesting to see them get there without the outside interference. I dunno. Maybe it's fine as is.
karenq0506 - "The Last Supper" - you know, I spent most of the story thinking that I'd tell you that you didn't need all the information about their opponents, that this kind of story works just fine with a faceless enemy. And then it turned out to be a different kind of story. Nicely done. I'm a little weirded out by the MC's emotionlessness. (It seems like the Curians were impressed by it, but that doesn't really jibe with the apparent reasoning for their attack on Earth to begin with.) Her father is maimed then presumably killed. Her mom disappears. Her brother actually shoots her. And finally the Earth blows up. And she seems untouched by any of it. Numbness, perhaps. But I feel like we ought to see something there. Really, it feels as though the MC and the aliens aren't distinguishing between persistence/survival and simple emotionlessness.
Ashes - "untidy minds" - got a bit confused about the protagonist's age, and the neighbor woman's. At first it felt like she was much older and he was a child, but then she talks about getting married some day and so on? And then they're clearly into each other. I dunno, never quite got a full grasp on it. Great characterization and dialogue as always. Edit: and now I went back to the beginning of the story where it says "she was fifteen and I was fourteen" in the very first paragraph. Jeez, maybe I'm just tired.
Votes:
1. Ashes - "untidy minds"
2. Mike M - "The Terrible Secret of Peppa Pig"
3. TheLunarin - "The Red Idol"
Sober - "A First Time For Everything" - ah, prom. I was lost a bit at first, as the thing with the tie made me think the character was much older, then we've got liquor stolen from a dad's liquor cabinet, then it finally all comes together. I prefer to get the picture quicker. The conversation in the pizza place is good, all the emotions of uncertain teenagers batting around. The dude bothering them about their liquor kind of broke up the two-person show a bit. It spices things up and gets your characters where you want them, but I can't help feeling it might've been more interesting to see them get there without the outside interference. I dunno. Maybe it's fine as is.
karenq0506 - "The Last Supper" - you know, I spent most of the story thinking that I'd tell you that you didn't need all the information about their opponents, that this kind of story works just fine with a faceless enemy. And then it turned out to be a different kind of story. Nicely done. I'm a little weirded out by the MC's emotionlessness. (It seems like the Curians were impressed by it, but that doesn't really jibe with the apparent reasoning for their attack on Earth to begin with.) Her father is maimed then presumably killed. Her mom disappears. Her brother actually shoots her. And finally the Earth blows up. And she seems untouched by any of it. Numbness, perhaps. But I feel like we ought to see something there. Really, it feels as though the MC and the aliens aren't distinguishing between persistence/survival and simple emotionlessness.
Ashes - "untidy minds" - got a bit confused about the protagonist's age, and the neighbor woman's. At first it felt like she was much older and he was a child, but then she talks about getting married some day and so on? And then they're clearly into each other. I dunno, never quite got a full grasp on it. Great characterization and dialogue as always. Edit: and now I went back to the beginning of the story where it says "she was fifteen and I was fourteen" in the very first paragraph. Jeez, maybe I'm just tired.
Votes:
1. Ashes - "untidy minds"
2. Mike M - "The Terrible Secret of Peppa Pig"
3. TheLunarin - "The Red Idol"
show me your skeleton
Member
1. cyan
2. mike m
3. thlunarian
will critique later!
2. mike m
3. thlunarian
will critique later!
Yeah, these are the same guys from Tritogeneia. Maybe one day I'll revisit that one and edit it with any eye for binning the pretensousness, as in the end I still like the themes and metaphors in that one, and theming and metaphors aren't something I do well very often.
And it should be noted that Peppa Pig is the most benign show in the world, I have to go deliberately out of my way to put this kind of spin on it (though it is weird that Ms. Rabbit owns every business. They actually call attention to it a couple times by introducing her identical twin sister Mrs. Rabbit, and I'm told one episode she gets an award from the queen for being the hardest working person in the world or something). It's actually marginally clever from time to time, I liked that Mr. Bull is an aficionado of fine china tea sets, and there's an episode where Daddy Pig keeps trying to legitimately explain how reflections work only to give up and say it's magic.
Never read Scalzi, anywhere I ought to start?
Looks like Cyan walks away with a win at 13 points (3 first place votes), followed by me at 9 points (no first place votes), with Ashes only two points behind at 7 and two first place votes.
Anyone can feel free to verify, as I apparently have an established track record of no counting good.
Anyone can feel free to verify, as I apparently have an established track record of no counting good.
show me your skeleton
Member
congratulations to the top three! really liked your piece cyan, obviously, a lot i could learn from it regarding the right amount of world building and avoiding the dreaded infodump.
ThLunarian
Member
Yeah the ending of my piece was rushed significantly because of the word count. In theory I could have tried paring it down, but I felt like the beginning was very well put together and I didn't want to risk sacrificing that. I'd rather go back to it and elaborate further on the ending without worrying about word counts.
What was going to happen with the fruit is that it's magical, and was going to give Cole a direct line to the island (kind of like John Locke had in LOST, for those who watched it). Also, the reason he was able to talk to the bear is because his gift is the ability to communicate with animals (undiscovered until this encounter).
This whole story is meant as a world-building thing and an introduction to the character for something much bigger that I have in mind. Thanks to everyone who gave me votes and congrats to Cyan.
What was going to happen with the fruit is that it's magical, and was going to give Cole a direct line to the island (kind of like John Locke had in LOST, for those who watched it). Also, the reason he was able to talk to the bear is because his gift is the ability to communicate with animals (undiscovered until this encounter).
This whole story is meant as a world-building thing and an introduction to the character for something much bigger that I have in mind. Thanks to everyone who gave me votes and congrats to Cyan.
Oh, cool! Thanks for the votes dudes. I will get a new thread up shortly. Already know what I want to do for this one.
Mike, I suggest reading Old Man's War as a starting point. It's not amazing, it's sort of a Heinleinian military thing with a lot of humor, but it's representative of Scalzi's style. You might also try Fuzzy Nation, which is really fun but actually kind of overdid it on the humor for me, and Redshirts, which is utterly insane but also kind of brilliant. I've heard his latest, Lock In, is supposed to be excellent as well, though I haven't read it yet.
Mike, I suggest reading Old Man's War as a starting point. It's not amazing, it's sort of a Heinleinian military thing with a lot of humor, but it's representative of Scalzi's style. You might also try Fuzzy Nation, which is really fun but actually kind of overdid it on the humor for me, and Redshirts, which is utterly insane but also kind of brilliant. I've heard his latest, Lock In, is supposed to be excellent as well, though I haven't read it yet.
Oh, cool! Thanks for the votes dudes. I will get a new thread up shortly. Already know what I want to do for this one.
Mike, I suggest reading Old Man's War as a starting point. It's not amazing, it's sort of a Heinleinian military thing with a lot of humor, but it's representative of Scalzi's style. You might also try Fuzzy Nation, which is really fun but actually kind of overdid it on the humor for me, and Redshirts, which is utterly insane but also kind of brilliant. I've heard his latest, Lock In, is supposed to be excellent as well, though I haven't read it yet.
Heeey, I've heard of most of those. Will definitely check it out.
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