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inthesto posted:Okay, I'm done with this poo poo. If the Hawks actually won over the Lakers, I would have put up with this, but gently caress it. Bring it, bitch. I've been waiting for you to do this, ever since your pansy rear end backed out of my IRC glove to the face. I'm gonna take all those words you write and shove them down your throat. Eat it, drunkard. Let's brawl.
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Nov 4, 2013 05:44
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poo poo, I thought it was CST.  Well, I'll try anyways: Ballad of the Cicadas 616 words Emerson watched as the cicadas swarmed above him. He was lying on the cool grass, enjoying the little black bodies cover the trees and ground around him, simply taking in the sights and the sounds. The music of the cicadas was remarkable. They were playing their merry tune and going about their business, never mind that they were so close to death. Nothing seemed to bother them. The birds that were having a field day with the easy pickings, the frogs in a nearby pond whose tongues were going every which way, the grim reaper with the hourglass – this was their moment to shine, once every seventeen years, and they were going to play their music no matter what. Emerson wanted to tell the world this; however, his world was destroyed and forgotten. Five days earlier, he was looking forward to this swarm. He really loved bugs, especially ones that made sounds. Crickets were a personal favorite, their chirping lulling him to a content sleep every night. He had never seen cicadas, however. He was only five, and he knew from all his books that cicadas only appear once every seventeen years. Why did he like nature’s symphony so much? He really didn’t know. His mother was an entomologist and loved to show him various bugs, and he enjoyed listening to the drones of the bees and the high-pitched buzz of the mosquito. All of these sounds were remarkable to him. Then his mother had to go away. All he heard was something about “front-line duty.” She had been gone for three years. Then it happened. He did not know much about the war the United States was in, nor the politics behind it, or the destruction it had caused, but when the bomb siren went off during his music class as his teacher tried to get the class to sing along to dumb old Kumbaya, he knew something very wrong was happening. Remembering the bomb drills, he hid under his desk and, with the rest of the students, listened to the dull drone of planes flying over. The school was hit first. Emerson covered his face in terror as the classroom around him simply fell apart. The ceiling collapsed all over the desks, killing everyone but him. The rest of the building similarly turned to rubble. He didn’t even hear the full blast, just an initial boom. What had just happened? Emerson got up, and watched as the world around him turned to dust. The black bodies of the enemy planes simply flew about above him, and explosions continued to rock the very earth, though he could only feel it. He watched as building after building turned to rubble, watched as the small town he once knew turned to dust. He didn’t know why the planes were so intent on ruining his town. He didn’t get who the enemy was, really. They were something faceless and vague, much like the mysterious cicadas. He fled to the forest, lucky not to get hit by a bomb. It was his fifth day without food, and he was near death. Perhaps, by the time the cicadas all died, he would join them. And while he enjoyed seeing some friendlier shiny black bodies, he certainly couldn’t hear them. The bombs took good care of that. But he could hear them. It sounded like his mother, calling him home. Time passed. The music was dying; he couldn’t hear this, but he knew it. He had read once that the cicadas die after three days, but a whole new generation would re-emerge after seventeen years. The thought comforted him, and he went to sleep, as the last of the cicadas fell.
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Nov 4, 2013 06:07
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I wasn't paying attention either so you're okay I GUESS. Submissions closed (for real this time). Haam, Bitchtits McGee, dmboogie and Nubile Hillock are all slackers and/or cowards. Give them dirty looks on the street.
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Nov 4, 2013 06:14
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Echo Cian posted:I wasn't paying attention either so you're okay I GUESS. Hillock needs to be wearing his  jammies if he wants to show his face round here again I am thinking.
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Nov 4, 2013 10:45
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inthesto posted:Okay, I'm done with this poo poo. If the Hawks actually won over the Lakers, I would have put up with this, but gently caress it. Dang son, you called someone out on their loser star in a brawl without putting your avatar up for collateral. Shame. 
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Nov 4, 2013 19:09
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sebmojo posted:Hillock needs to be wearing his I always kind of assumed that if you failed to submit one week then you were obligated to Toxx your next entry. Is that not the case?
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Nov 4, 2013 19:12
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I got a rejection from the last prompt, but based on the fact that the place we all submitted to is more on the side of genre/fantasy type fiction? That's not my jam, hence why I'm not in on this week either, but it was still fun and I like the way my story came out a lot.
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Nov 4, 2013 19:32
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Helsing posted:I always kind of assumed that if you failed to submit one week then you were obligated to Toxx your next entry. Is that not the case? Rules make for rules lawyers as my new ultranemesis said. Lets leave it at that.
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Nov 4, 2013 19:40
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Here's the first half of my crits while we're waiting. I will do the other half when I am not sandwiched between middle management and wall-eyed customers. Roguelike - Little Drummer Girl Well, I already left some comments on the google doc. Overall, the setting felt a little tacked on, with 'Neo Beijing' and the neon signs everywhere. If scifi fiction is to be believed, at some point all major east asian metropolises are gonna be like "whelp, it's the future now, Tokyo more like NEO Tokyo." But okay so you're William Gibson-ing. I still find it hard to believe that someone who thinks what I'm guessing is contemporary (to us) rock music is devil-worshipping jabber, it's weird that she would be so confident that she could play a whole set on an hour's notice. IDK, IANADrummer so maybe this is possible, but it seems unlikely since we don't actually know anything about Mercy's musical background before her 'reeducation'. The ending could be hopeful, I guess. Maybe she'll go on to subvert the theocracy with the power of music or something. But it could also portend an unremarkable return to the status quo. For making Jair sound like a bad caricature of a 50's hipster I sentence you to listen to this: http://www.howtospeakhip.com/ Yes you have to click the Buddha's forehead to play. STONE OF MADNESS - The Bonedrum So wait was this a Conan the Barbarian fanfic? That makes me grumpy. I was reading through it going "wow Stone this is purple as gently caress" and then I saw 'Conan' and I realized I'd been HAD  But the whole like "write elaborate prose and then reveal that it was X Character all along" shtick is eh. I don't even feel like typing out a full crit now because of how unimpressed I am Fraction - The Games So, over in the Fiction Advice thread we were chatting about present tense, and even people who don't hate it all seem to agree that it should be used to give a sense of immediacy to the writing, since it's quote-unquote happening in real time. But in this case, it's very isolating and stifling. You character is more or less a walking camera; even when he's playing the song, he's just imagining other stuff that happened that he has no ability to change or interact with. And then he loses so he just sucks I guess. The conflict in this story is pretty diffuse. Like, two kids are fighting, and then all these other dudes want to win the laurel crown, and it's all just kind of happening in this empty void that I'm kind of mentally filling in with rustic white columns and Socrateses. Yeah, the narrator wants to win, cause WINNING hell yes everyone wants to Win, but that's all I know about him other than he also really likes Apollo. This story sort of hangs on the sort of overload of myth and historical tidbits; if this had been an original world with its own gods, this would be almost incomprehensible and there wouldn't be a whole lot to it. I spent like 10 minutes reading about the Pythian Games though so that was cool. Tyrannosaurus - Slave So like, I got instantly that you were talking about a guitar. But I'm not sure if it's an allegory for something about music, or abusive relationships, or what the point really is with personifying a guitar like this is 50 Strings of Grey. "She" still loves him at the end. A guitar gets fingered, neglected, pissed in, and still loves the guy. I'm not sure what to do with that, Mr. Saurus. BDSM stuff aside, this is better than last week, which was all over the place. Next time maybe you'll write a straight up story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and something that changes as a result of tension and conflict over the course of those parts. I feel like you tried to do something fancy here, and it didn't quite work because the arc is more like a straight line: There is a guitar who's basically a lady, her life is sad, she gets thrown away, the end. Chairchucker - God from the (Tin) Machine Oh man this had everything. Weaponized wheelchair jokes. The Talking Heads. On stage bloopers. David Bowie. 4th wall breaking narration. Mind blown. Close the dome, losertars for everyone but Chairchucker, go home, the rest of you. Quidnose - Etude #44 Hrm. Well this was nice, though I'm not entirely sure it fits within genre requirements. I guess you threw in faeries or whatever near the end, but I assumed that was more metaphorical since it doesn't come up at any other point. Otherwise it's pretty good, if not a little bit of a tired premise (Older guy goes through old stuff, finds something that rekindles his youthful passion, if only for a moment), but you might have benefited a lot from actually including maybe some fantasy element because writing about regretful people looking back on their younger days for whatever reason is pretty well-trodden territory PARTICULARLY here in the 'dome. Erogenous Beef - Sharp Harmony Beef you do this thing sometimes where I'm certain I'm reading a cool thing, and I can even make out all of the action in a general sense, but when I sit down to try and articulate what exactly I read, I can't. So there's like the DJ of fate at the center of the universe, who gets killed, but since fate is apparently music tracks on iPods and his were on shuffle he just pops back into existence after a certain amount of time? And this Parca person is trying to take over the club at the center of the universe by messing with time and music and stuff? It's a little bit unclear what the mechanics of the whole time/music/iPod cosmology are. This was cool, I want to like it, but it was still a liiiittle bit convoluted. inthesto - Duet There was some choppy writing in some places, and it was kind of weird that the story started out with Bach Jr. trying to honor his father but ends up being about him and his wife? Who play a show together and then are dead? This is another story where some stuff happens in a logical order but it doesn't really say anything distinct. I guess it's sad that they Bach'd themselves to death or w/e. But a melancholy series of events doesn't make a plot. quote:Emmanuel was going to write the best string quartet that his father heard from Heaven You switch from future in the past to regular past tense here. Should say something like "...that his father would ever hear..." or something. quote:With an inhale, his lips kissed the back of her hea Why is it always like, "his body part did a thing" even though in normal speech you would say "he inhaled and kissed the back of her head". It almost always sounds really awkward and passive to describe body parts taking action usually attributed to the character. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 02:49
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 Week 65 Results I gave you a simple prompt: Music, genre, don't be boring. I got people finding old pianos in vandalized buildings with nothing remotely related to any genre, an even more boring version of Revelation than Left Behind, Conan the Barbarian fanfiction, and autistic robots. For all that, there were some standouts - perhaps all the more standout when compared to mediocrity. This week's winner is Kaishai, just barely edging out Jeza for having that bit more emotional impact to her story. Both Jeza and Chairchucker deserve mentions for taking flash bounties unto themselves and coming up with stories that nailed all prompts better than several of you even handled one, and were written far better than most of the rest. The loser is Mercedes, for writing anatomical parts instead of characters and forgetting he was supposed to be writing genre fic strongly featuring music, not as an incidental detail. And also forgetting how to spell and/or proofread. Dishonorable mention goes to Tyrannosaurus, for taking an innocuous prompt about music and writing a rape metaphor for some asinine reason while also missing the genre prompt. Crits up sometime soon.
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Nov 5, 2013 03:19
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Thunderdome Week LXVI: Know When to Fold 'Em Judges: Kaishai, Jeza, and Fraction. I'm not much of a gambler, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate stories about risking disaster and defying the odds. In honor of the World Series of Poker and Kenny Rogers, your prompt is to write a story in which your main character takes part in a life-changing gamble. Though you're welcome to set your tales in a casino or an old-West saloon, keep in mind that not all high-stakes games are played with cards or dice. Genre isn't a concern, save that submitting erotica wouldn't be a gamble so much as suicide. All entries must, however, be stories, with a beginning, a middle, an end, and some sort of narrative arc. No poetry. Vegas, that means you! For those who care to take a dare, flash rules are available from the judges upon request. Sign-up deadline: Friday, November 8, 11:59 pm USA Eastern Submission deadline: Sunday, November 10, 11:59 pm USA Eastern Maximum word count: 1,200 Sittin' at the Table: dmboogie (Flash rule: The future of the protagonist's family must be at stake.) Tyrannosaurus (Flash rule: The main character is an archaeologist): "Buzzards" big business sloth crabrock (Flash rule: Someone in the story wears a top hat on a regular basis): "Storm" docbeard (Flash rule: The story has to include a game of blackjack): "Went Down To the Crossroads" Nubile Hillock: "A story about dogs." V for Vegas: "Midnight in Tangiers" sebmojo (Flash rule: One character must be a veteran of many battles, literal or metaphorical): "Mateship" Roguelike: "The Terrorist with the Tell-Tale Ticker" ThirdEmperor (Flash rule: Some of the story must take part in a version of Caesar's palace): "Render Unto Caesar" DasNasty (Flash rule: The protagonist must set something or someone on fire.) Lazy Beggar: "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" Erogenous Beef: "Missed Connections" Zack_Gochuck (Flash rules: The protagonist must be between a rock and a hard place and must have a son or father who also appears in the story.) stoutfish (Flash rule: The story must be set in a Soviet-era CIS or other gritty Eastern European country): "Dead Bear" Quidnose (Flash rule: A famous person must have a significant role in the story): "Hold 'Em" TenaCrane: "En Route Mortality" Ronnie_Long (Flash rule: The protagonist must have some kind of disability, mental or otherwise): "The White" Noumena (Flash rule: The stakes of the gamble must be the fate of a world.) Nikaer Drekin: "I Told You So" RickVoid (Flash rules: The gamble must be motivated by greed or ambition; the stakes must mean everything to one party and nothing to the other.) Sweet_Joke_Nectar (Flash rule: Precious stones need to play a key role in the plot): "LYSANDER, THE MIGHTY AXE" ElphabaGreen: "The Heart of the Matter" Fumblemouse: "The Quiet Soul" Kaishai fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 04:08
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gently caress it. BadSeaFood, you've crossed me one too many times. I find myself dealing with a little bit of an anger issue right now and you're going to catch the brunt of it. Are you going to brawl me or will you bitch out and run to your stupid police dogs. Mercedes fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 04:14
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-Insert incredibly lame excuse that no one cares about for why I didn't enter last week here- I must redeem my family name once more. In, and also taking a flash rule, if you would.
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Nov 5, 2013 04:14
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I'm in.
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Nov 5, 2013 04:15
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I'll go for it.
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Nov 5, 2013 04:21
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Oh hey, Mercedes finally angered the TD gods enough. I'm in, and I'm rolling aces (this is a gambling thing, right?). I hope somebody writes a meta-story about their entering TD as their life gamble.
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Nov 5, 2013 04:29
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dmboogie posted:I must redeem my family name once more. In, and also taking a flash rule, if you would. Certainly. Your Flash Rule: The future of your protagonist's family must be at stake.
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Nov 5, 2013 04:35
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I'm in. Hit me (with a flash rule).
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Nov 5, 2013 04:57
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Mercedes posted:gently caress it. BadSeaFood, you've crossed me one too many times. I find myself dealing with a little bit of an anger issue right now and you're going to catch the brunt of it. It's funny you should mention a music video! Mercedes vs. Bad Seafood Thunderbrawl: Let the Music Play Mercedes, you didn't have much luck with last week's music prompt; Bad Seafood, you didn't have a chance to show your mettle. Let's see whether redemption or pride is possible. I challenge each of you to pick a song with a video available online. Seafood may not choose "Alcohol Is Free," but nothing else is off limits. Write a story on the theme of regret that incorporates elements of the song, the video, or both, and make sure your entry includes a link to your source of inspiration. Maximum word count: 800 words Deadline: Wednesday, November 13, 11:59pm US Eastern
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Nov 5, 2013 05:02
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docbeard posted:I'm in. Hit me (with a flash rule). Your Flash Rule is that your story has to include a game of blackjack.
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Nov 5, 2013 05:11
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Mercedes posted:gently caress it. BadSeaFood, you've crossed me one too many times. I find myself dealing with a little bit of an anger issue right now and you're going to catch the brunt of it. Kaishai posted:It's funny you should mention a music video! 
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Nov 5, 2013 05:15
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in
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Nov 5, 2013 05:29
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Nubile Hillock posted:in with a FTFY
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Nov 5, 2013 05:36
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It's Melbourne Cup day. All in.
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Nov 5, 2013 05:38
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Sitting Here posted:FTFY Correct. And, in.
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Nov 5, 2013 06:24
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gently caress novel writing month. This Buddha's head is telling me to dig in.
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Nov 5, 2013 06:32
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Who's got two thumbs, a losertar and is taking a to get back in to the Thunderdome? This guy. Also, this guy would like a flash rule, please.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:07
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ThirdEmperor posted:Also, this guy would like a flash rule, please. Flash Rule: Some or all of your story needs to take place in Caesar's palace--meaning either the Vegas hotel or the residence of the Julio-Claudian emperors.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:29
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I wish to get burned again, and I will take a flash rule.
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Nov 5, 2013 09:21
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I'm in. First time, as you're all probably aware.
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Nov 5, 2013 12:10
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In.
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Nov 5, 2013 12:23
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Lazy Beggar posted:I'm in. First time, as you're all probably aware. Flash Rule One character is a fish out of water.
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Nov 5, 2013 13:19
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DasNasty posted:I wish to get burned again, and I will take a flash rule. Flash Rule: Your protagonist must set something or someone on fire.sebmojo posted:
The judges won't hold you to this, Lazy Beggar, but it's a good rule. There would be a bonus point or two for you in following it. And for sebmojo, a Flash Rule of his own: One of your characters must be a veteran of many battles, literal or metaphorical.
Kaishai fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 14:42
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I would like a flash rule.
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Nov 5, 2013 15:24
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Trouble getting inspiration. Hit me with a non-gambling related flash rule, if you'd be so kind.
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Nov 5, 2013 15:49
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Tyrannosaurus posted:I would like a flash rule. Flash Rule: Your main character is an archaeologist. Indiana Jones fanfic is forbidden.crabrock posted:Trouble getting inspiration. Hit me with a non-gambling related flash rule, if you'd be so kind. Flash Rule: Someone in your story wears a top hat on a regular basis.
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Nov 5, 2013 16:07
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Trends last week: - Boredom (5 entries) - Clinical autistic robot prose (3 entries) - Not knowing what 'genre' is (3, maybe 4 entries) - Or how to write a character (7 entries) - Relying on someone else's intellectual property (6 entries) I didn't expect "write interesting genre featuring music, idiots" to be such a difficult request. Roguelike - Little Drummer Girl Oh joy, a "those silly Christians and their rock-n-roll-hatin'" story. That certainly hasn't been done to death. Oh wait, it's actually about a band, just like I said I didn't want this week. Setting it in "Neo Beijing" did nothing. You didn't even try to give some flavor to the setting with giving them Chinese names; you might as well have called it Cyberpunk City. You could have brought in something interesting, indicating some sort of fanatical religious cleansing that stomped out the original culture. Even setting a story during Revelation should be interesting (unless you're Jerry Jenkins). Yet you veer sharply away from doing anything remotely exciting with the premise by turning it into Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay. As for your characters, Sitting Here described them in irc as cartoons. They were flat and their motivations aren't clear. Is Mercy supposed to be a hypocrite, slipping out of worship because it's boring and then chastising Jair for not showing up in a while for the same reason? Why punch the guy out if she's just going to take the music anyway? Why does he even want to broadcast something that's going to cause trouble if he could just do what she wants to do and change the lyrics? What's the point? You have a lot of pieces here but you stuck them together with a hammer and glue. More specific comments in your GDoc. STONE OF MADNESS - The Bonedrum Some nice descriptions, but they made up 2/3s of the entry, and the final third was too vague for my taste. Then I realized it was, inexplicably, blatant Conan the Barbarian fanfic. I expected better than that from you. Fraction - The Games I had to read this twice - mostly because the first time I hadn't slept in two days, and partly because I had to get to the end once to figure out most of the beginning. I like the voice you used here; you captured the feeling of the era well. Maybe a little too well. I could glean most of odd names and words from context the second time, but it could have done with a bit more explanation on things like what the drakaina was - but the more I look at it, the more I like that mythic feeling. With more wordcount you could flesh out the character beyond "I want to win and losing makes me sad also that guy's kind of a jerk I guess," and make things clearer. Tyrannosaurus - Slave Ah, rape metaphors. Just what I wanted to read for a music prompt. Clearly I need to flash rule goons not to be loving creeps. The idea of the metaphor at its base isn't bad, but you went too far overboard with the fingering (thanks for that, by the way, never going to be able to use that word in a musical context again) and piss. Chairchucker - God from the (Tin) Machine You fill me with such delight. This is exactly what we all needed after the last story. It's better done than the prequel, and a good parody. Why do we not have a Chairchucker award yet? Quidnose - Etude #44 Sadly you missed part of the prompt - there's nothing genre about a couple workers finding an old piano. Even if he's only imagining its potential, why does it still sound good enough to even be worth playing after so long? I only have my grandmother's piano as a basis of comparison, but if the best pianist in the world sat down at it, the other people in the room would not greet the sound that came out with "Nice." Your prose shaded to purple at times, but it was a decent vignette. Erogenous Beef - Sharp Harmony I don't know what to say about this that SH didn't already cover. I barely knew what was going on. I felt like I should, and that it was probably funny, but you were too busy being obtuse to write something coherent, and for that I'm disappointed. inthesto - Duet quote:“The great Emmanuel Fritz Bach, too busy to tend to his most beloved woman and violinist, only stops his fawning over his dead father to beg for her talents, long since buried!” I only know this was supposed to be genre because you mentioned it in IRC. You forgot to bring it into the story itself, and as a result it also missed the genre mark, which is a shame since I like the story. On a revision, make what you meant for it clearer, and emphasize the relationships and the actual performance more; everything feels very much crammed into the wordcount. Fumblemouse - 'Dimension' for Strings quote:“I think,” said Stephen, “that you will find it a more than reasonable offer for the phonic generation algorithms” Competent, aside from those typos, but I didn't much know or care what the characters were talking about at the start, and I have no clue what happened at the end. People can rewind reality at will in this world? I did like the idea of aural implants breaking down, but you lost me with the ending. Kaishai - Music to Draw By Sweet and cute, with actual characters, and probably the closest to what I wanted to see this week. When I was debating between you and Jeza, your ending still made me smile every time I reread it, and that carried the win. Mercedes - 237 It's a hospital suite. And it doesn't improve. Thanks for referring to every female prop- er, "character" in this story by one attribute. Too much spread out over a time frame, no sense of the characters other than Skeeve 1, Skeeve 2, Panicking Woman and Boobs. A lot of typos, unclear ending, you barely shoehorned in the music part of the prompt and didn't make it genre at all (no, working in a modern hospital is not science fiction). This isn't even worth trying to salvage, but next time you write perhaps consider focusing on a narrow event and getting into the characters' reactions to it, rather than skimming over a long sequence and missing every opportunity. Ronnie_Long - Do Robots Dream of LeAnn Rimes? Holy exposition dump, Batman. I'm sure those first four paragraphs could have been trimmed to a few sentences, or removed outright. The rest is very clinical - a story about autistic robots, written in the voice of the autistic robot. This could have been interesting but listing a couple song titles followed by "Then it worked and life was good" misses the mark by a mile. I'd considered flash ruling that no one was allowed to reference actual songs and artists (aside from Chairchucker's flash bounty). This seems proof that I should have. Schneider Heim - Take Me Home Adequate, but unremarkable. There was no sense of the characters, and thus no reason to care about either of them. I have no idea why Esteb started out naked, especially with his door unlocked; it might have indicated eccentricity, but nothing else followed that up. There wasn't a point in her being from a place he'd never heard of, or having a strange-looking instrument, other than spending more words describing both. Could have been a cute ending, but loses its impact when the reader has no investment in it, and it was telegraphed from the start. docbeard - The Day the Music Died The song you ripped off had more impact than this. For a story about someone committing suicide over missing music, there was no emotional resonance. Everything was very clinical: This happened, then this happened, that's too bad, oh well. As a result, I don't know why the protagonist is thinking about going the way the woman went at the end, since she didn't seem to care about the incident and neither did I. Helsing - it's a bitch convincing people to like you I'm disappointed this is over wordcount because I enjoyed it quite a bit - just the right blend of silly and serious. Funny how, between a story about Revelation and a story about literal Satanists, this one was actually interesting, had consistent characters, and far better written (at the very least, you know how to capitalize proper nouns). If this is the Satan that Roguelike's world hated, no wonder his characters were so bored. Jeza - Blood and Tequila I'm sure someone is going to show up to complain about your wordiness but who cares, you only lost because Kaishai had more of an emotional edge and closer focus on the characters. You worked in your prompt well; at first glance I didn't like the guitarist seemingly turning into a monster, but I looked the monster up and liked it a fair bit more. Still could have used a bit of lead-in so it didn't come so out of left field. I was also iffy on using random Spanish words here and there when most of the prose was English, but I eventually stopped noticing it. Maybe I just didn't like them being italicized. Overall, great piece; you and Kaishai nailed what I was going for with the prompt. DasNasty - Ballad of the Cicadas Your writing is clunky. A lot of was/were -ing, which slides to passive voice and is a good sign that your sentences need restructuring; and all the emotional impact of realizing the drive-thru forgot to give you a straw. Oh cicadas are nice isn't that sound pretty OH BY THE WAY EVERYONE IS DEEEEEEAD. Tonal dissonance can work when done well, but this had the same clinical feel I'm getting sick of this week. It just feels completely disconnected. Also not sure if it met the genre mark.
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Nov 5, 2013 17:16
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In, but I have no ideas. Give me two flash rules. 
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Nov 5, 2013 17:55
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Zack_Gochuck posted:In, but I have no ideas. Give me two flash rules. Flash Rule: Your protagonist must be caught between a (literal or metaphorical) rock and a hard place.
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Nov 5, 2013 17:58
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 04:58 |
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Zack_Gochuck posted:In, but I have no ideas. Give me two flash rules. Flash Rule #2: Your main character needs to have either a son or a father who also appears in the story.
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Nov 5, 2013 18:04
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