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QuoProQuid posted:Self-Fulfilling Prophecy sebmojo fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 04:37
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I'm in
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Feb 13, 2014 05:52
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God Over Djinn posted:Thunderdome LXXX: "Why don't you ask your huge cock?" I'm in!
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Feb 13, 2014 05:59
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Ugh. Misspost. Was trying to post a redo of my modern magic story in the fiction farm.
elfdude fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 06:34
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In with a tale so incredible, it could only be true. And about me. And possibly one other person. No, make that two. At least two other people.
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Feb 13, 2014 07:21
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Okay, I think I need a flash rule, since the more I think about it, the more the story I wanted to tell becomes an Amusing Anecdote. Also I apparently work better under constraints, or something.
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Feb 13, 2014 07:26
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curlingiron posted:Okay, I think I need a flash rule, since the more I think about it, the more the story I wanted to tell becomes an Amusing Anecdote. Also I apparently work better under constraints, or something. I'm not a judge but screw you guys I'm flash rulin' anyway.
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Feb 13, 2014 07:34
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sebmojo posted:martello to the courtesy judgephone I'm judgin' em today, promise 
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Feb 13, 2014 12:44
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I gotta drop. Plane leaves earlier than I thought it did, and the bank chose a hell of a time to wrongly suspend my debit card. As much as I love writing, I've got a real world crisis to deal with. I'll try to tidy up/post the draft I've been working on if tomorrow turns out less insane than expected, but I wouldn't count on it.
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Feb 13, 2014 15:35
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curlingiron posted:Okay, I think I need a flash rule, since the more I think about it, the more the story I wanted to tell becomes an Amusing Anecdote. Also I apparently work better under constraints, or something.  Your story takes place at/around a dinner table.
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Feb 13, 2014 17:42
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Sitting Here posted:
Friday Review 1431 Words By No Longer Flaky (Writer of such hits as “Grug’s Harvest” and “Life’s a Rat Race”) I was the only one who had their review on Friday, and it was scheduled bright and early in the morning. Everyone else had their reviews on Monday. The start of the new month. That didn’t bode well for my review prospects. I knew I had an off year, but I didn’t think I’d underperformed that terribly. I got in about thirty minute or so early. I’d been having trouble sleeping the last few days. By the time five am rolled around and I was on my third hour of sportscenter I decided I might as well head in to work. I sat down at my desk at around six. I was an hour early. I was staring at my monitor trying to figure out what to do at work this early when my keyboard started its tap-tap-tapping its way around the desk. Its keys flying off as if thrown in ecstasy. I tried to roll backwards in my chair to give the board more space to move, but I found that the wheels in my chair wouldn’t budge. I looked down to inspect the locking mechanism and found my chair completely lacking in any locking mechanism whatsoever. At this discovery, my chair unfroze and I rolled backwards, banging into the desk behind me. The keyboard jumped back into place in front of my monitor at the loud smack of the chair’s collision. “Holy poo poo,” I said. I touched the keyboard and found nothing out of the normal. I decided some coffee would calm my nerves. In the break room, the coffee pot was full, so I poured myself a cup. The coffee was a black goop that slowly dripped into my mug. Obviously someone had left the pot sitting overnight. I attempted to pour my mug out into the sink but the coffee didn’t budge. It was a gummy tar solid in its resolve to remain in the conglomerated safety of my mug. I violently shook the mug then rapped it in the sink, hoping to knock chunks of coffee out. Nothing worked. “God drat it!” I yelled. I slammed the mug down, coffee slopped onto the counter. Maybe warm water would loosen up the coffee, I thought. I turned on the hot water. Just then something dark streaked across the peripheral of my vision. I jerked my head around, surprised by the movement. Nothing was there. Did a mouse just run under the vending machine? I crouched down on my hands and knees to get a good look under the vending machine. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, just some cobwebs and trash. The fluorescent bulbs flashed on. “What are you doing down there, Jim?” A voice asked. I started and turned around quickly. Tyler, my boss, was staring down at me. “I thought I saw something.” “What was it?” “Nothing, I guess.” I stood up. Tyler frowned, looked me up and down and said “Rough night?” “Not too bad. Just need some coffee in me.” It was bad though. If I didn’t get some sleep I was fit to lose my mind. I felt like I was an animated corpse, like a necromancer somewhere was forcing my body to dance on a string. “You look like you could use a bit more than coffee. Your yearly review’s today, remember?” Tyler turned off the water, examined my mug and put it back into the cabinet. “I’ll brew some new coffee, we’ll have your review when the new pot is ready.” I left the break-room and bee-lined to the bathroom to clean up. I studied myself in the mirror and saw myself as Tyler must have. Sweat beaded on my head forehead, large puffy pink bags were under my eyes. A few strands of hair stood up in the back of my head like a chickens feathers. I had forgotten to shower before I came in! Dammit, real professional Jim. Real professional, I thought. Then laughed at my reflection in the mirror. I wet my hand to smooth my hair down when my nose started to elongate. It stretched and grew. The soft skin transforming to a hard mass, and as it elongated it started to expand and converge with my mouth. I reached up to touch it and found my arm was covered in white feathers. My arm was a wing? I screamed in surprise, but what came out instead was a loud “Brawk!” I strutted back from the mirror, almost tripping over my feet. My suit bulged at the waist and chest. My white feathers poking through my chest in random places. My pants pooled around my three-clawed feet. I don’t know where my shoes went. Near my foot my phone started to ring. I pecked downward towards it, my head bobbing with each peck. Ring rinnnnnng. Peck. Ring rinnnnnng. Peck. Ring rinnnnnng. At the end of the third rinnnnnng my feet slipped on the tile floor mid-peck. I lost my balance and smashed my head into the sink. I rubbed my head with normal hands and sat up. The door to the bathroom jerked open and Tyler’s head popped in. “What happened? I’ve been looking all over for you for the last fifteen minutes,” Tyler said. “I dropped my phone,” I mumbled still rubbing my head. I looked down at my phone and the screen was blank, no call notifications. “Come on, let’s get this review over with,” Tyler said. I followed him to his office. I felt a strange sense of finality as I walked behind him, like this was the last time I’d be having a review in this office. Strangely, it didn’t bother me too much. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the smack to my head or the lack of sleep but I felt disconnected from all of it. Like I was watching myself from outside my own body. I laughed to myself as I saw myself start to alternate long strides with my left leg and short strides with my right. He opened the door to his office quickly and ushered me in motioning to one of the metal chairs facing his desk. He took a seat at the desk and arched his fingers together like he was attempting to create a finger version of the Eiffel tower. He gazed at his creation for what seemed like longer than it actually was then said “As you’ve probably heard, our company is doing some downsizing.” He talked to the Eiffel tower more than he did me. “You know how the economy is, my hands are tied in this manner.” To me, his hands didn’t look tied at all, they looked like a tower from Ireland. Or was it France? He continued “I’ve had to make some hard decisions, and unfortunately, the company is going to have to let you go.” I was expecting this. The words seemed to remove a weight from me, or add a weight. I’m not sure which. All I know is after I heard them I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life. Like they sapped the energy from my body, as if I were a monstrous steam powered machine that had just had the coal stolen out of its furnace. “Ok,” I said. The rest of the meeting was a blur. I didn’t care what he had to say so much as I wanted to take a long rest. He finished his speech to the Eiffel tower, so we both stood up. “Take care,” he said extending a hand out to me. Somewhere miniature imaginary Parisians lost their world renowned tower. I shook it and said “You too.” I cleaned out my cubicle and left the office. I walked to my car quickly. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, incredibly bright for the early morning. My car was warm, the seat more comfortable than any I’d ever experienced. Suddenly, with a jolt, the aluminum metal siding fell away, revealing a wooden chariot. In my hands, the steering wheel was replaced by leather reigns. The engine disappeared and in a haze of smoke a fiery stallion took its place. It snorted loudly. I whipped the reins and I was off and away. We took off into the air, leaving the city and office buildings behind. I climbed through the atmosphere and then I was in space. Speeding through the solar system, a trail of warmth and fire left in my wake. I stared into the horizon. Into the void of the new, of the unknown, of the infinite.
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Feb 13, 2014 18:03
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I'm in.
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Feb 13, 2014 21:47
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God Over Djinn versus No Longer Flaky DREAMBRAWL Intellectual Property (1497 words) The dream sat on Hal’s desk, glittering insolently. Four hours of meticulous copyright searches, cross-referencing every iota of content against GoogleSoft’s intellectual property database, and even SIGMUND was doing a good facsimile of frustration: there was absolutely nothing, as far as Hal could tell, that he could place a claim on. He tossed his Glasses onto his desk. “What, you lose your streak?” said his cubemate. “Don’t even ask,” said Hal. He’d been half a day from beating his record. Two hundred and eighty-six dreams in a row had returned a chime of automatic success from Siggy’s dream-drive. Hal had the happy message memorized: GoogleSoft property automatically identified (p>0.9999). Refer for manual claim arbitration. Then pneumatics whooshed them off to the interns, who pinged their counterparts at Sony-Mars, requesting 82% of profits from this dream, 54% from that. But now this intransigent dream blinked softly, reflecting off of Hal’s latest Employee of the Week award. Not only did it defy SIGMUND’s auto-characterization, Hal’s manual searches had yielded zero GoogleSoft content. Not a single McDonalds, no Pixar characters, no scenes from any Spielberg movies, no Beatles soundtrack, nothing inspired by SexTube or Super Mario Brothers. Two possible conclusions, both dire: maybe Hal had stumbled upon the very first dream composed entirely of Sony-Mars-inspired content, no GoogleSoft whatsoever. Or, Hal had made his first mistake in eighteen years at the IP office. Either, he realized with dread, would require a trip to middle management. Sweat trickled from under Hal’s shirtsleeves as Rachida reconfirmed SIGMUND’s calculations. Over her shoulder, he could just make out the error messages: No match, no match, no match. He composed a look of empathetic corporate horror. But when Rachida turned to him, she was grinning ferally. “Do you realize what we’re looking at here, Hal?” she said. “Think: who would only dream about Sony-Mars stuff?” Hal strained for ideas. His brain felt whitewashed, the satisfying back-and-forth patter with cheerful SIGMUND winking away in the sunlight. “Somebody who lives in the Sony-Mars compound?” he offered. “Dream a little bigger, Hal. Even they go out to see a movie once in a while. No,” said Rachida, voice lowering, “what we’re looking at here is something more important. This is obviously a Sony-Mars experiment, and they were sloppy enough to let it end up in our dreamcatchers. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.” Suddenly, Hal no longer felt like a worm on a rainy sidewalk. “Hal, I’m putting you in charge of this. You’ve always done good, clean work. Figure out exactly what Sony-Mars content is in there. And get a lead on the dreamer, too. Put together a report, and we’ll take it upstairs tomorrow morning.” The prospect of doing a good job made Hal shiver with delight. There was just enough space on his cubicle wall for another award. He might even win them the inter-departmental pizza-party contest. His cubemate cursed him amicably when she heard the news. She hoped the dream turned out extra-porny, she told him. “That’s statistically unlikely,” he said. “Since the SexTube merger, I’ve hardly seen more than -” “Stop pontificating,” she said. “Go work on your special project, you big man.” Three hours later, Hal’s eyes focused and defocused as Siggy thrummed out yet another row of unsatisfying results: No match identified for Sony-Mars property (p<0.025). Sony-Mars liked to obfuscate their feature-sets: hunting down their property in a dream was like doing Hal’s day job blindfolded and backwards. He sighed, and requested a full automated analysis. 475 minutes remaining, read the projector. Then the timer twitched slightly and ticked over: 478 minutes remaining. Hal gazed glazedly at the report’s header: Complete Analysis of Dream #A46C0, Dreamer identity: ___________. Well, he could start with that. Identities of dreamers were nominally anonymous, at least until the dream was ported and packaged for sale, but in practice they were forfeit: anybody who’d discussed last night’s dream on GoogleSoft Plus had already been cross-referenced, name, voice-print, and all. Siggy Gibbs-sampled furiously, causing a soothing vibrating sensation in Hal’s temples. As the day-shift interns paraded out of the building like so many ducklings, Hal found himself dozing off. Siggy’s chipper pinging startled him awake, blinking. Hal’s name and corporate identity signifier flashed on the screen: Harold Jonathan “Hal” Mullins-Kilpatrick, 0xB668AD4. For ten seconds doze-addled Hal failed, open-jawed, to internalize. “What?” he said to the dark and empty cubicle bank. “It wasn’t my dream, Siggy, don’t play weird pranks.” He thumped himself on the side of the head, wondering what being hacked by Sony-Mars felt like. He had SIGMUND rerun the dreamer-identification algorithms. Twice. Then anger set in. Hal Googled the main line for Sony-Mars’s corporate office, tapped in the number, erased it, tapped it in again, and hung up as soon as the line buzzclicked into action. It couldn’t have been him. He hadn’t even had a dream since college. If he could just find one fingerprint of GoogleSoft or Sony-Mars -- then something dinged. Siggy was offering results he’d been background-processing. “Okay, let’s see what they managed to get into my head,” said Hal, feeling bile slide up his esophagus. No whole or partial Sony-Mars corporate property detected (p < 0.0008). Recommending exclusive proprietary claim. Hal had a sudden vision: reaching into his ear with a dental pick, yanking out the offensive dream, and presenting it to Rachida, who’d reward him with a private parking space. Viewing someone else’s dream prior to porting meant risking a nasty neuronal-incompatibility fever. But if the dream was actually his own, he realized, what risk was there? Hal grabbed an immersion helmet, overrode, for the first time, Siggy’s complaints about signature approval, and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, he was shivering on a wild moor. Gorse and heather grabbed at his pants-cuffs. Grouse chattered in the distance. I’ve never seen anything like this, Hal thought, although it does look a bit like a Peter Jackson flick - and he stretched out a shaking hand, and touched the horizon. In all directions he was bounded at arm’s-length: the distant trees, the horizon, the sky, as if they were projected to a screen three feet from his face. Hal whimpered. He poked a patch of sky with one finger, and then leaned on it, and pushed - and broke through with a crunch, collapsing to his knees on a moor very much like the one he’d left, but sunnier, and with more room to breathe. He was holding, he realized, a bundle of planks. He felt their weight in his arms, rough and warm. And when he looked at his feet they were bare, and he was standing, sinking into soft ground, in the center of a tamped-dirt square. And Hal heaved the planks to the ground, and began to build. Lats and deltoids unfurled from years of aggressive ergonomicity. The fog burned away and Hal began to sweat. He looked at his chest, and his PlastiFiber dress shirt was gone. He looked at his hands and they were gloveless and calloused. The planks stayed nailless in place, held by faith. Hal clambered upwards, staying astride the swaying tower that rose from his hands. It towered as he built beneath him upwards and dizzyingly upwards, until the brown grassblades became a carpet became a solid wave of color a thousand feet below, until the sun became a mirror, a billion radiant LED pinpoints. And Hal reached out a hand and created. He painted the sky in a salmon-and-tangerine sunset unlike anything he had seen in a film, and he spattered the ground with villages like nothing from a Sony-Mars commercial, with wells filled with icewater he’d never tasted in a GoogleSoft franchisee restaurant, and he constructed laughing children he had never seen in sitcoms, and he gave them homes and made them love and hate and fight and weep and sing. And oh, that singing. Oh, those songs that Hal had never heard before. He stood atop his tower and stretched out his arms and conducted a chorus of a thousand improvisations. And he woke up gasping on the manicured carpet (proprietary nylon-polypropylene blend) next to his Aeron desk chair (longstanding GoogleSoft subsidiary). He clutched the immersion helmet to his chest like a child, not knowing when it had fallen off. He lay under the half-strength nighttime fluorescents, listening to the burble of night-shift interns downstairs. “Siggy?” he said. Ready for prompt, responded SIGMUND, who suddenly sounded very much like a computer going through machine-learning routines. Somewhere, a cursor blinked. “Nevermind,” said Hal. “Log out.” Hal walked out into a glorious Tuesday-morning sunrise, clutching his Employee of the Week placard under an armpit. He dropped it into a trash compactor under the industrial dream-catchers, where it made a satisfying glass-crunch. Maybe, he thought, he’d buy a notebook. Could you still buy notebooks these days, or was that just something he’d seen in movies? Regardless, Hal thought, he’d like to write down that dream.
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Feb 13, 2014 22:20
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Aaaghh I guess I'll be in for this one. A flash rule would be welcome, too!
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Feb 13, 2014 23:11
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Nikaer Drekin posted:Aaaghh I guess I'll be in for this one. A flash rule would be welcome, too! Flash rule: Your story centers on something that hasn't happened yet.
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Feb 13, 2014 23:21
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I have something I'd like to write about, but my writing-fu is rusty and I need an extra restriction. Someone flash me, please.
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Feb 14, 2014 01:41
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Mister Morn posted:I have something I'd like to write about, but my writing-fu is rusty and I need an extra restriction. Someone flash me, please. High altitude.
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Feb 14, 2014 01:53
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In. With a
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Feb 14, 2014 02:03
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Martello posted:Write up to 2000 words of cyberpunk/technoir/space-based near-future sci-fi. Any of those three, interpreted how you want. Writing about violent criminals and street mercenaries (my ouvre, in other words) may get you bonus points but ain't necessary at all. If you write a cyberpunk oppressed housewife story that gets the cyberpunk part across in a way that makes sense, I'll probably like it even more. Yeah this is late I guess but since you guys were like TWO WEEKS late I'm not exactly shedding any tears of guilt. Sitting Here posted:
So this is kind of post-apocalyptic with a little bit of cyberpunk/whatever thrown in. That's fine, I wasn't trying to get you two to adhere to some Gibsonian ideal of 80s cyberpunk. Let's talk specifics. Setting In general, the people in the domes are kind of generic white American. Maybe you're trying to say something with this, but if so I didn't figure it out. To me it just smacks of lazy naming. You had Vijo-Ryu Goggles, why couldn't the protag be named Malena or Liang or Monifa? Little Junie Shipping sounds like something from Little House on the Prairie. Maybe that's what you were going for, but it just doesn't sound right. I get that the people in the Park are supposed to be backwards so it makes a certain amount of sense, but if this is far future America you'd think the pot would be a little more melted at this point. The Cloud. So I know why you picked that term, but c'mon. Nobody's gonna start calling the internet the Cloud. It'll be the internet until the sun burns out. Language doesn't change the way it used to. Sure, slang comes and goes, but American English has become very stable due to the immortality of the printed (or coded) word. You're making a common near-future sci-fi blunder where you try to get cute and futurey with your tech when you should just stick to the established lingo for things that already exist. The Goggles are all good, though. We're getting there. The domes. I like this. The epidemic storyline has been done a million times, but who the gently caress cares? It works when you do it well, which you did. You leave the workings of the domes just enough of a mystery for me to want to know more. Who's keeping them running? Do the domes produce anything for the outside world? Are the cityfolk using them for insidious social experiments? The idea isn't perfect, though. I find it difficult to believe that "no one wanted to leave unless everyone left." Rachel wouldn't be the first adventurous kid to want to get out of there. It’s not a huge negative, but since the plot rides on the idea you could come up with a stronger reason why. It might make more sense if the domers thought the crisis was still ongoing. The paranoia keeps em in. Rachel’s saving dollars? Like, paper money? Do you think New Reno would use that poo poo still? Maybe, but likely not. Overall, you capture a nice near-future feel. Not too much tech to get boring, and enough that it’s more than just a veneer. There are some holes but nothing game-breaking. Characters Rachel is an okay character, I guess. She’s a little bland for a short piece. This could work in a novel or longer short – you have the space to develop her character. In something this short it would pay to make her more decisive, or aggressive, or in some way more externally interesting. She’s not bad, just a little weak. Delta seems like this whack-a-do social worker type, which fits her role. She, too, could use some juicing up. Again, with a short piece, it’s always good to make your characters more outstanding in some way. Give her a verbal tic, something to set her dialogue apart from Rachel’s. Your characters do their jobs. They aren’t spectacular, but they get it done. Plot The plot’s nice but there’s not enough conflict. The bit in the beginning with the lovers trying to find a place to bang – yawn. You can do better than that. What would even happen if they found Delta? Who would they tell? She makes her entry of the dome public anyway. What does it matter? Something like a couple of trigger-happy guards would be better. Something dangerous that creates tension. We know Rachel is gonna leave. You need to make us wonder. Give her better reasons to stay. Make her argue with Delta. Put some emotion into it. Right now there aren’t any stakes. We don’t know anything about Mom and her Goggles. What’s Rachel leaving behind? Make us feel her struggle. The plot, like the characters, is workaday. It serves us the burger and fries, with a smile but not much else. Echo Cian posted:Brawl vs Sitting Here Setting This is much more sci-fi. That’s not necessarily a good or bad thing here, because what matters is whether it works. Let’s see. The tech is mostly spot-on. You give just enough without going into nuts and bolts. I can buy almost all of it. Except the Circuit. So, this is a thing that can break down a human body – and presumably pretty much any other matter – into “data.” What do you mean by “data?” This is worse than transporters in Star Trek and every other fictech that converts matter to energy. This is a world where all these animals are extinct and the environment is hosed, and apparently unfixable. But, people can turn into data. Nope. So what’s up with the elves? Is this Shadowrun? Or is it ELF, like Electronic Life Form or something? If so, and if only elves can use the Circuit, you can ignore my prior complaint. I was hoping that was the case when I read it, but even on a second read-through I see you didn’t say anything like “the fast travel system for us elves” or whatever. If they’re just regular elves, why? What does it do for the story? It comes out of nowhere and you spend words saying “elf” and describing the differences between them and humans when you could just call them robots or whatever. One way or another, you can’t just leave elves in a cyberpunk world hanging. They have to make sense. Moving on. Bunraku box sounds cool but doesn’t bunraku mean “puppet?” Unless I missed something I’m not seeing anything puppety about these things. The concept is cool but the name makes no sense to me. A lot of the other stuff is great – augmented reality displays, unobtrusive augmentations, etc. I can really “see” it. Characters The protag is unnamed. The protag has no name. She has no name. Why? Nameless protagonist is an old and tired trope that never really did anything for anybody. Send that old horse to the glue factory. Give your lady a name. She’s fine otherwise. She’s this gritty black marketeer, tough and resourceful. She jumps off the page. I just wish she had an effing name. The side characters are good. Each one has a defining characteristic. Tegal has his dumb mood tattoo, Mr. Allen is a slimy gently caress, Gaddy is a back-stabbing conniving bitch. Like I said for T-Dog above, characters in short stories need to be a little exaggerated. You did that here. Plot Betrayal is one of the most common plot devices in the book. For a reason. It works. And it works here, too. I didn’t necessarily see it coming, though a short piece like this isn’t really long enough to even get you wondering. But you pull me right through the story. It was an easy read, and I was satisfied at the end. Good stuff. Oh, and I really like “the cat caught with the canapé.” Made me smile. Judgement Echo wins this one. Your story is competent overall and gives me the sci-fi punch I wanted. I just wish I knew why there are elves and how matter converts to data. Sitting Here, I didn’t hate your story by any means. I think you need more time and space for this one. If you ever end up expanding it, share it on Drive so I can see where you go with it.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:28
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Did I say I was in? I don't think I actually posted that I was in.
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Feb 14, 2014 06:07
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Jonked posted:Did I say I was in? I don't think I actually posted that I was in. What are you talking about dude, you totally did. Jonked posted:Totally in. Also flash rule for myself "Has to be set in Estonia" and "Can't include pronouns".
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Feb 14, 2014 06:28
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It's been a long time since I did one of these so count me in.
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Feb 14, 2014 08:07
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Guess who's back with a brand new lap(top). I'm in. Not written words for quuuuuuite a while. And I'm busy for all the days left to submit. However, PAIN IS TEMPORARY, GLORY ETERNAL
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Feb 14, 2014 14:10
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Jeza posted:Guess who's back with a brand new lap(top). 
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Feb 14, 2014 19:25
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In
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Feb 14, 2014 21:26
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Mercenzahn Facepunchbrawl + Thunderdome 80 (Imagine the roman numerals yourself, lazy fucker)RULES, SO MANY RULES posted:Write the story of a character (or characters, if you're feeling stupid/ambitious) struggling with a Temptation. I expect a full character arc, and will be giving you the space to do so. Whether the character is destroyed or redeemed is up to you. Structurally, the story must be split into at least two distinct scenes. You may add more scenes if necessary, up to wordcount. Shooting for publication Mercedes fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 14, 2014 21:35
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In. This should be interesting.
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Feb 14, 2014 23:53
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My crit skills need some work, so I chose a victim to practice on.El Diabolico posted:Drain pipe (wc: 1175) (Element: Lead) This reads more like the beginning of a much longer story than a story in itself. It isn't a finished work. There's some major pacing issues because of that. The lead-up to the story (everything that happens before she falls through the hole) is almost as long as the action scenes themselves. There's not enough space for all of the hum-drum, ordinary details of her plumbing job. I liked the backstory on the wrench. I'd have liked it more if she'd hit the monster over the head with it and went home triumphantly under the word limit. So much attention and care was given to the wrench, and then she just runs away from it without a backward glance when the cave-woman tells her to. Your writing needs some tightening up. Major things: don't tell us what isn't happening, tell us what is. Don't tell us what your protagonist is trying to do, show what happens. You don't need to tell us every sound is heard by the viewpoint character, and every sight seen by them. If you describe the sight or sound, we will assume it's the viewpoint character seeing and hearing them.
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Feb 15, 2014 02:33
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I'm in.
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Feb 15, 2014 02:55
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In.
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Feb 15, 2014 03:20
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I've been too busy to enter the Dome lately, but I miss torturing myself ITT so I guess I'm judge #3, congratulations to you all for making my life an endless misery.
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Feb 15, 2014 04:44
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In for the t-dome. Shred me gently.
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Feb 15, 2014 06:25
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A couple more critsLead out in cuffs posted:Welp, here goes. My Thunderdome debut (element is osmium): Seldom Posts posted:Ultima Thule
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Feb 15, 2014 06:27
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With half an hour to go, we're looking at a new Thunderdome record for entries (currently at 50, not counting Muffin). Get yo name in now, and don't flake out.
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Feb 15, 2014 06:30
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Will Benny the Snake win us over with the heartwarming tale of 'what I was thinking when I called in hungover to work'? Will his faithful supporters from E/N put their money where their mouths are? Will a Toxx clause be enough to make Leper Colon stop talking and write a god drat story? Will Baudolino put a comma inside some quotation marks? Find out next time, on As the Dome Turns. Signups are closed. Good luck, combatants. You'll need it. See you Sunday at 10pm, the Lord's own time zone (PST). God Over Djinn fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 07:00
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God Over Djinn posted:Will a Toxx clause be enough to make Leper Colon stop talking quote:and write a god drat story?
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Feb 15, 2014 07:01
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Be still, my heart
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Feb 15, 2014 07:09
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I've been meaning to sign up, but it completely slipped my mind. Can I still get in or am I poo poo out of luck?
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Feb 15, 2014 07:10
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You're in.
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Feb 15, 2014 07:16
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 01:23 |
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I'm going to be out of town for the weekend, so I guess I'll just have to miss out on a final editing pass. Dads Roll Out, 770 words, flashrules: something gets destroyed, DEFINITELY can't be depressing, gotta include transformers My dad can beat up your dad. It’s not opinion, and I’m not belittling your father; he’s quite possibly the biggest badass to pump blood. This isn’t a story of one-upsmanship, or a brag about a fight. It’s just that my dad was a truck. Mark is my mother’s husband. He came into my life when I was 10 and taught me how to change the oil in a ’72 Toyota Corona. Mark was a large-scale pot dealer, selling to a huge portion of the ghetto I grew up in. Mark made sure that I grew up understanding that all sorts of people, from all walks of life, can always have a common middle ground. Whether they’re a local councilman or Ian, the 40 year old neighbor who still lives with his mother, they’ll all need to get their drugs somewhere. Weed’s a great equalizer. Mark filled a shoebox with $100 bills and, to prove to my mother he could go straight, used his shoebox of savings to partner with an old friend and open a powdercoating business. I’ve still never told him, but since about my sixteenth birthday, I’ve considered him to be my father. Only since about sixteen though; while Mark’s a great guy, it took years for him to transition from “mum’s boyfriend” to “dad.” My biological father, Peter, balances the scales Mark’s stability weighs down. He’s not a monster, he didn’t irreparably destroy my childhood. I even have strong memories of Peter and my mother together that were beautiful. We spent, for example, a university party together when I was all of seven years old, where I wound up falling into and splashing around in the Brisbane river. Peter threw his beer on the ground and dove in to rescue me while my mother laughed; he easily cleared the shallow sandbank I stood on, and wound up swimming in brown, polluted city water while my mother and I ate pig that had been roasted under the ground in banana leaves over hot rocks. Peter ruined everything by cheating on my mother with an abusive redhead named Sharon. He ran away with her, meaning that most of my weekends for the next eight or nine years would be spent around two bourbon-drunk adults screaming at each other about who was the bigger life mistake and whose children were more awful. By nine, I’d stopped thinking of Peter as my father and more as an emotionally unstable man who had a large library I could – and for the sake of my own sanity, would – lose myself in roughly every second weekend. I’d miss my dad during those weekends with my father; he preferred to use the TV on Saturday mornings watching foreign news with a crippling hangover. I built an emotional attatchment to my middle dad around nine years old. I’d known him for a while, and I took more life lessons from him than either of my other dads. Lessons about respect, and responsibility. Lessons about being honest with yourself. Sometimes his lessons would turn out impractical in real life – I stood up to a bully for a stranger and was threatened at knifepoint in the middle of eighth grade computer studies as a reward – but to me, they were gospel. For a significant period of my life, all my friends would have a mum and dad in the same house. They’d come home from school with me in tow, where I would be paraded past their parents, insults shooting from mother to father, parent to child. I was generally ignored; the caustic atmosphere both parents and any children created was a great hiding place for an undersized ginger twig. They’d always mumble an apology once their bedroom door was locked, before pulling out a pile of toys – or, in later years, porn we found in nearby parks – from under their beds. More times than not, they’d find a way to mention how glad they were that their parents weren’t like mine, that they’d managed to stick together. I’d play with pieces of a broken facsimile of my dad and nod. For some reason, they all owned Optimus Prime figures. I’d make uncomfortable excuses about my household, waiting until it was time to explain why their homework answers were wrong. Eventually they’d let me leave. I’d get home and breathe relief that I was back, hugging my mum and wondering why I didn’t miss the family bond my friends would brag about. My dad may only have bonded with me through TV for 20 minutes every Saturday morning, but he’s still the best dad I ever met.
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Feb 15, 2014 08:55
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