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In me and flash me please. I deserve it.
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Nov 12, 2014 05:15
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First two crits done. Man, that took a lot longer than I thought it would. Sledge and JABC, wouldn't mind a quick look at my own (you don't need to be as detailed)Your Sledgehammer posted:En Garde J.A.B.C. posted:A New Spring This is a story where the whole is less than the parts. You do have a few good moments here, but ultimately there are too many key details missing to bring the piece together. A firs time reader isn't going to be able to connect, because she doesn't know what is at stake for the characters, or how they really feel when it seems they have accomplished their mission. Also, grammar note: way too many sentences that follow this pattern: I went to the store, vegetables lining the walls all around. The present-participle, "vegetables lining," doesn't fit the start of the sentence, "I went." They should be written like this: I went to the store. Vegetables lined the walls all around. I'm drinking wine and might be using present-participle incorrectly, so if you don't understand, ask.
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Nov 12, 2014 05:51
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ceaselessfuture posted:Interference This was a really disappointing read, because at ties it showed real promise, but nothing happened. You have an interesting situation: The star-pupil breaks down out of nowhere and needs help. Then she is fine. Bryce takes the blame and Amy just lets him? Why does he do it? I don't know what else to say other than that it felt like you wrote this in one go without thinking of the characters at all, finished it, and never looked at it again. Do you understand your characters' motivations? Because I sure as hell don't.
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Nov 12, 2014 06:07
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blue squares posted:This was a really disappointing read, because at ties it showed real promise, but nothing happened. You have an interesting situation: The star-pupil breaks down out of nowhere and needs help. Then she is fine. Bryce takes the blame and Amy just lets him? Why does he do it? I don't know what else to say other than that it felt like you wrote this in one go without thinking of the characters at all, finished it, and never looked at it again. Do you understand your characters' motivations? Because I sure as hell don't. Thanks a ton for this. You nailed it in one, I did it all Sunday afternoon, not by choice. Thanks a lot for your work, and with this and the other replies I've gotten, I already feel like next week will be better!
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Nov 12, 2014 06:20
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Prompt updated with songs. ALSOchthonic bell posted:Is it cool to ask for clarification on a prompt, by the way? Sure but why not do it in #thunderdome or #kyrena or wherever the hell we all hang out these days.
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Nov 12, 2014 06:41
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A stranger arrives. In.
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Nov 12, 2014 06:47
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blue squares posted:That'd be awesome thank you! Bennycrit for blue squares Mr. Electroworth's Shovel Summer Earth / 1,200 words Just minutes before I whacked my billionaire boss in the head with his own treasured gold shovel, I was thinking about my shoes. I’d scuffed them earlier in the day and I couldn’t get over it. They cost me $400. I never used to spend money like that on shoes or even give the whole affair more than two seconds thought. It’s strange how much you can change when you get some cash in your pocket. I like how you start with our protagonist fixating on one really insignificant detail which shows that he's in shock. “The real problem is the trees,” he said, waving an arm across the vista. I’d driven him to an overlook of a pristine valley where he planned to build the next great addition to the Electroworth Group Resort Properties. His bald spot shone in the sun. If I held a pair of mirrors just right I could catch my own starting to form in the same spot. I squinted in the bright day “The trees,” he said again. “Tough to uproot, and you get so many of those nuts climbing all over them and refusing to come down. They think they can stand in the way of progress. They never learn, my boy. They’re like a weed. You think you’ve crushed them and they pop back up.” I rested the shovel on my shoulder. “Rip up the roots?” “You’ll never be sure you’ve gotten them all. No. You pave over them with concrete. Now get me some water, would you?” I spun to comply, and the golden shovel spun with me. The thin edge took Mr. Electroworth in the temple and he dropped faster than my stomach. I’d just killed one of the richest men in the world. This doesn't need to be a separate paragraph. Both our lives ended in that split second. Mine was just going to take a while to catch up. I stood staring at his lifeless body and the murder weapon still in my hands. Neither does this. No one was around. I moved before I even considered it and seized both of his arms and began to drag him away from the clearing where I’d parked. One of his cuff links popped off into the bushes, and I wasted five precious minutes retrieving the evidence. Paragraph? No body, no conviction, right? That’s what I learned from TV. I didn’t have time to be ashamed. As I pulled the body along, I remembered my first days at the office. ______________________________ Welcome back banners were strewn about and everyone wore at least three different party hats. Mr. Electroworth was returning that morning from a month in Sub-Saharan Africa, scouting potential sites and hunting elephants for the cost of only $17,000 per head (double for the little ones of my PhD in 18th century Scandinavian Literature ). I’d gotten an internship there after the receipt and my subsequent failure to find 21st century American employment. Many of my friends had found positions at environmental firms. At first, working for Electroworth felt like a betrayal of some essential part of myself. I’d grown up despising such companies. When I saw the plans for a new resort at Yosemite, right at the top of Half Dome complete with elevator to the bottom, I told one of my old friends. He pointed out several reasons why the project could never get past the regulatory agencies. Relieved, I brought this to the attention of my superiors. A week later, the appropriate parties had been paid off and the project was greenlit. That hadn’t been my intention at all. But I was rewarded with a $5,000 check, and I smiled and said thank you. The money felt good. Pretty soon, my environmental friends caught on and quit hanging out with me. By then, though, I had new friends. Richer friends. I helped establish a resort at the bottom of the Grand Canyon that reached high over the rim and could be seen from anywhere in the park. A part of me still felt it was wrong. But that part got smaller and smaller. Now I’m not sure it exists any more. Now I’d call my old friends “tree-fuckers.” This exposition is really awkward. It's just this big info-dump that's dropped right in the middle. There are more natural ways of disseminating your protagonist's backstory than just putting it in the middle like this. ______________________________ I managed to get Mr. Electroworth’s body out of sight and didn’t have time then to register the irony of using his own prized shovel to kill and bury him. The earth was rich and moved easily under the shovel blade. I couldn’t stand to see his pale face, looking accusingly at me. So I started tossing the dirt at him, and that’s what finally woke him up. He sputtered, spit out dirt, and jerked upright, dirt cascading off him like an old jack-in-the-box from the back of the attic suddenly springing to life. “What in the hell’s going on here?” he asked. I froze. I’d been so sure he was dead, and now I couldn’t remember why. He looked from the half-finished hole to me. “Did you...?” I couldn’t decide whether to apologize, lie, run, or hit him again. Mr. Electroworth clambered to his feet, surprisingly spry for a man his age, and plunged his hand into his pocket. I thought at first he was going to shoot me, but instead produced a more dangerous weapon: a cell phone, no doubt to call the police. I opened my mouth to protest and he stuck up a finger. I was so surprised that I clamped my lips back together. “Gregory,” he snapped into the phone. “You’re fired. I want you out before I’m back.” The phone vanished into his pocket again. He turned to me and said: “Quick on your feet. Important. Self-preservation is man’s most powerful instinct. It’s what made me the man I am. I need more of that around me. You’re replacing that limp idiot. He was always weak. Now get in the car and drive me to a drat hospital, you son of a bitch.” I followed him toward the car, stepping into the hole along the way and nearly knocking myself out with the shovel. As the shock wore off, I smiled. I could really be one of them. I had what it takes. I saw mountains in my future. Not snowy-peaked ones; those would have to go, make way for industry. No, I saw mountains of money, all mine, and the earth waiting to be subdued. You have a good premise of a person who betrays his convictions and ideals for the sake of material gain. The problem is that instead of letting the exposition flow naturally, you instead lump it right in the middle. It's a huge roadblock and it breaks the flow. I would've had your character recalling his past actions while digging the ditch or something. Maybe after every shovel full of dirt, he recalls a moment. Maybe even have him talking to himself or shouting how he's compromised his ethics. Keep that in mind for next time.
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Nov 12, 2014 07:49
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Hey a lot of free crits going around. Can I get one for my most recent entry?.
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Nov 12, 2014 07:56
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Benny the Snake posted:Hey a lot of free crits going around. Can I get one for my most recent entry?. Sure, here you go. Benny the Snake posted:My First Beer There was some examples of telling rather than showing, but overall this is an average story that doesn’t do anything spectacular, but doesn’t make me want to gouge out my eyes. It was a cute, personal story with a few problems, but not enough to make it hate it. You also sometimes use details that aren't really necessary for your reader to know. Try to cut these downs, and leave only the important stuff that your reader has to know, because it could get a little bloated and your reader could get bored about hearing how your Charmelon is going to evolve.
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Nov 12, 2014 08:50
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is located up in the San Bernardino National Forest. The lake is so high up above sea level that, while we weren't above the clouds, we were above the overcast that morning. The forest itself is comprised of almost nothing but pine trees to the point where the scent of fresh pine was overwhelming. It was towards the end of April and the lake was noticeably swollen from the rain. There was constant chattering going on, and it was coming from these dark-blue birds with feathers sticking up from their heads that made them look like they were wearing mohawks This is a very passive line, just say that the birds were chattering. The combination of their chattering and my Gameboy withdrawal strained what little patience I had to its breaking point. While this has some nice imagery, it feels a lot like a Wikipedia article, and something your narrator wouldn’t really know. If you showed what the narrator was feeling and seeing rather then telling us how the forest was, it would be a lot stronger.
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In, going to use this to pressure myself into writing more. May I please have a musical prompt.
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Nov 12, 2014 12:56
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Thanks Benny!
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Nov 12, 2014 14:24
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Chairchucker posted:Sure but why not do it in #thunderdome or #kyrena or wherever the hell we all hang out these days. Gotcha.
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Nov 12, 2014 19:29
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starr - It's now been a couple of days since I read the story. Here's what I remember: The premise felt strongly of traditional folklore. Strong enough that I assumed it was based on Celtic mythology. And that's a good thing in my books. Folklore persists for a reason; it speaks to the human condition and has been polished through generations of retelling such that it resonates strongly with receptive audiences. In this case, I felt like the kernel of insight was around how death is inevitable and it should be accepted gracefully, and the conflict of the story came about because the protagonist rejected it. Now I'm going to reread it uninterrupted and give my broad impressions. There are more technical and stylistic hiccups than I recall. A lot of why this story speaks to me is that there's an obvious way to relate with what the characters are going through: everyone has to cope with death. I think some of the humanity I felt between the characters also came from this; the dialogue felt a little forced, as did the series of events. I'm going to spend some time looking up the folklore before I do the detailed crit. Hmm, a few minutes with Google didn't pull anything up. Is this based on anything? If not, then consider it a high compliment that you've created (as opposed to captured) the feel of cultural tradition. starr posted:Two halves of a Whole Final thoughts: I think the concept is very strong. There were a handful of things (punctuation, style) that could've been fixed with proofreading, and a few things (word choices, different assumptions/expectations) that additional eyes ought to help with. The ambiguous ending (when will she die? How will she feel about it?) does you a disservice, since you've set up a good opportunity to allow the reader (who likely shares fears about death) to experience some hope and grace themselves (when Deidre does realize that accepting death can be beautiful and peaceful). Or you could go in the other direction (although I wouldn't like it as much) and explicitly show her experience to be in opposition to the lies she'd been fed in childhood.
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Nov 12, 2014 19:41
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Thanks so much for the detailed crit! I plan on going back and making it a full short story so it was very useful  I didn't draw on any specific folktale when I made it, just had the image in my head and went with it. Thanks again for taking the time to crit my story.
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Nov 12, 2014 19:48
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blue squares posted:Detailed, awesome crit of my work Many thanks for this, it was great and helped me identify areas that I really need to work on I'll be returning the favor quite soon, mostly likely sometime this evening.
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Nov 12, 2014 20:31
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Djeser posted:
Now with Ironic Twist, since you asked for one. In terms of description, I think you hit the mark pretty well. There were a lot of good, interesting images in there (the sun eating the dress and spitting it back up, soda-jerk rainclouds) and it felt satisfyingly vivid. It's a bit hectic, and by that I mean there's a lot of different kinds of images going on, but given that you were writing about Holi, it makes sense that it'd be a bit crazed and fantastic. "Alien life forms...survivors of distant planets" was a little strange to me, kind of on-the-nose like you were trying to describe the picture itself and not what the character would have seen--though maybe she would see that. Just my impression. There were a few small parts of the description that didn't work as well--Technicolor powder just felt like, well, yes, it's colorful powder, correct. "As pure as snow that never fell to earth" too--not that these are bad descriptions or that they worked against what you were going for, they're just somewhat more typical descriptions, so the image doesn't strike me as sharply. If you did any [adjective] [adjective] [noun] it was well-placed enough that I didn't even notice, so good on you for avoiding that. Plot-wise I understood most of it, even if it seemed a little odd that she's so vehemently against couples (though understandably so) but I don't really get why she was getting arrested at the end. Because she wasn't legitimately in the race, I guess, but I kind of had to read back to see that. There's some real emotion in there, though, so that's good, and it was descriptive week anyway so your plot wouldn't have needed to make sense. If it had gotten in on time, this probably wouldn't have HMed (the HMs were basically the leftover win candidates) but you would have been just below that rank, in my opinion.
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Nov 12, 2014 21:46
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It warms the cockles to see all these crits flying around, so I'll toss my hat into the ring, too. First three people to claim 'em get a line-by-line. Doesn't matter what week, as long as it's in the archives I'm willing to take a look at it.
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Nov 12, 2014 22:08
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:It warms the cockles to see all these crits flying around, so I'll toss my hat into the ring, too. First three people to claim 'em get a line-by-line. Doesn't matter what week, as long as it's in the archives I'm willing to take a look at it. I'd love a line-by-line on my story from Thunderdome Week CXV, please. I'd also like to offer somebody a line-by-line crit. Who is interested?
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Nov 12, 2014 23:25
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I’d take a crit of this: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3598931&userid=158999#post433362475 or this: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3598931&userid=158999#post437452767 from anyone who’s interested.
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Nov 12, 2014 23:46
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Stand aside you plebs. I'm totes mcgotes in.
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Nov 13, 2014 00:38
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Anathema Device posted:http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3598931&userid=158999#post437452767 Spring, Earth 835 Words “Get a hobby,” the lawyer said. “Volunteer or something.” nice opening line I stared at her and saw only the walls and floor and ceiling, the tightly closed window. I paced. pacing seems rude when talking with a lawyer, wouldnt you be sitting Outside a chill rain washed away the last of the snowbanks. i like this opening paragraph The thought was terrifying. The thought was thrilling.that's a bit of an overreaction? who is this narrator My soon-to-be ex’s subtle siege had kept me in the shelter for three weeks. He’d broken into my facebook and email, put pressure on my friends to tell him where I went. Nothing was safe.ah, cool. thats serious business so this is a strong start “The community garden is right next door.” ... The smell of bergamot and damp earth suffused the garden office. “Jessica.” The wordname? caught in my throat as his hand closed around mine. Gentle. Firm. “ “Sure.” Crow’s feet bloomed around his eyes when he smiled. I thought of him as young, but he was probably my age. Younger than my husband or our friends. “You want anything to drink? Coffee? Tea?” “Is that Earl Grey I smell?” I asked. He made us tea in silence, fragrant and hot and strong. My husband hated the smell of bergamot. When I raised the cup to my lips the steam smelled of freedom and the scalding tea left a warmth inside that felt like happiness. that last sentence is way too much. the rest of this is good. “What do you know about gardening?” he asked. “Nothing much,” I admitted. We lingered over the tea while he told me what would need doing. “You’d best come back tomorrow,” he said when the cups had gone empty twice. “You won’t want to get your pretty things dirty.”that sounds really condescending. also - if they drank two cups of tea, i want to know what they talked about (or didn't) way more than 'he told me what would need doing' I blushed like fire. ... Dampness? soaked my knees as I knelt in the empty bed, transplanting basil seedlings. The trowel felt awkward and heavy in my hand. I pressed it into the dirt but couldn’t break through the heavy mud. “Like this,” Sean said, stabbing sharply downward with the shovel. The violent movement sent my heart skipping, made me pull back defensivelya bit passive, maybe "i pulled back defensively", but he just repeated the motion, digging out a hole with a few deft flicks. I pulled the spade back and plunged it into the dirt. The blade crunched through the soil to the handle. Vicious pleasure surged through me, and I stabbed downward again and again, loosening the dirt and scooping it aside. My breath was fast and ragged through parted, chapped lips. I shrugged out of my jacket, set it aside. The weak spring sun touched my bare arms. Sweat coated my skin; the cool breeze turned it instantly chill, and the hairs on the backs of my arms stood up.nice I glanced up to find Sean smiling at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners. cool callback about the crow's feet, makes his appearance memorable … “Are you ready to sign the papers?” My lawyer asked me, as she had every couple days since I’d called her. I picked up the pen, feeling that same warming thrill, that same violent impulse I had so reveled in earlier. I signed. i like this but maybe "I signed the papers" or "i signed them"? i signed seems like a fragment ... “Back again?” Sean asked with a smile. “ “Can we do both?”cute We took our time over the tea. He broke a muffin in half and pushed one towards me he broke a muffin in two halves and pushed one towards me. I hesitated to take half his lunch, but he insisted. “Go on. I baked it myself with berries I grew here.”i don't like this dialogue. "baked it myself with the berries I grew here" reads like a writer trying to shoehorn information into a character, not like a character saying something. its clumsy. what do they even talk about? why do they enjoy their tea time together? The plump blueberries looked amazing. I broke it into dainty bites with my fingers. broke the plump blueberries? If I caught his eyes lingering when I licked my fingers clean, I didn’t mind. It was his turn to blush.very cute … “You’ll still have to appear in court,” the lawyer warned me. “You’ll have to see him again.” i like the jumping back to lawyer stuff, to remind us what's going on … My basil plants were growing new leaves. I smiled at them, gently ran a finger along the edge of one sun-warmed leaf before moving on with my weeding. nice but feels out of place/pointless ... I gritted my teeth and put on my nicest white pantsuit. White for brides, white for innocence. It made me look pale, fragile. I cleaned the dirt out from under my nails and painted them bright red. I walked into the courtroom with my head held high, and I looked the bastard in the eye while the lawyers showed the pictures of my bruises. I looked him in the eye and thought of roots growing underground and leaves reaching for the sun and did not flinch or cry or look away.cool. this is a big deal though so maybe a bit more here? it feels too short and easy, like this is a big deal but it just works out fine really quickly. i get that Jessica's grown and become strong and everything but its a bit of a letdown … Sean found me kneeling in the back of the lot, dirt under my red fingernails and covering my white blouse. My jacket was discarded on the ground, and my pants were ruined. Mascara streaked my cheeks, which were sore from the force of my smile. wait, is her smile forced? anyway this is a nice image, it's cool that she doesn't give a gently caress and just ruins her nicest pants “So it went well then?” he asked, dropping to his knees beside me. His shoulder brushed mine and heat like sunlight raced over my skin. I leaned against him. whaat, is that it? you couldn't even give us a kiss? * * * * * The ending felt really abrupt, like you'd run out of word count and wrapped it up quick. I get it that they'll get together but at least a kiss would have been nice, or something more. Feels a bit limp, the way it is. I also think the dialogue could use work. Except for lawyer at the start, it felt a bit off, though I struggle to pin down why. Maybe it was bland, didn't say anything interesting? I'm not sure. The earth imagery was quite sexual in places. Good use of the prompt. I thought this was a neat story, but no standout. I fear it might be forgettable - the start was strong, with the protagonist in a harsh place, but everything went so smoothly from there for Jessica. This doesn't make for a thrilling tale. After setting up some good hard stuff at the start, the second half of the story felt too easy. Sean also wasn't much of a character at all, which hurt the piece - we have a romance but we know nothing about him other than he gardens and has wrinkly eyes (although his physical descriptions I did like). Still, I think this is a legit decent story and I enjoyed it. I like the way you write in general - your style is very nice. It's evocative, interesting, and there was good imagery.
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Nov 13, 2014 01:55
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 Week 118 Crits: Part 1/3 Don't worry about not getting your crit. I'm toxxed to have them all done by Friday. In general, this was an ok week. Not stunning, but ok. It was interesting to see how people represented their element/season, though some of the stories veered toward the cliché. A ton of stories had nothing, or very little, happen in them. So, in the future, please have a thing happen in your story. JABC Personal caveat: why does Thunderdome love planetary landings so much?? The action is reasonably clear, but the main character wasn’t very strong. All I know about them is that they’re the person whose equipment got smashed, so they get the one-way ride planetside. I feel like the head engineer is better characterized, and he’s a relatively minor character. You could do with a lot less “confirmed”s and similar dialog. Give your characters something to talk about that makes this more than a hollow semi-action sequence. This piece is like a movie preview. You start with action, cut to dialog that explains the stakes of the story. Cut to the shuttle turbulently ripping through the atmosphere. Cut to the narrator stepping onto an alien world. Cue panning camera shot. Cue bleak music. COMING SUMMER 2015. Hammer Bro So, like, I’m not going to say, “RRRRrr never do dialog-only ever”. But given that you had some worldbuilding to do, you certainly set a pretty high learning curve for a flash fiction piece. Luckily, Kaishai is in possession of all Earthly knowledge, and was able to suss out (“sussed out” was a phrase that came up a few times in judgechat this week) what your story was more or less about. The problem is this: The payoff wasn’t quite worth the work involved. I think, if you had done this a little more conventionally, I would’ve been more intrigued by the premise (A wine that either lets people interact with the dead, or brings the dead back temporarily? But kills the drinker while it does it?) . Like, I feel like the dialog-only thing was there purely to obscure the premise. The gimmick doesn’t interact with the plot or theme in a meaningful way. Judgment took a while this week because we really were hung up on our winner and loser. All of us agreed that you could’ve told a competent and possibly enjoyable story, if only you’d just told the story. But at the end of the day, even though I read it before the big influx of submissions, it was still kind of a chore to get through. All that said, it wasn’t a total mess. I appreciate what you were trying to do. Now I expect better. Cacto I’m not sure if you meant to start the first four paragraphs with “James”. I guess it’s not a mortal sin, but to my eye it read as unnecessarily repetitive. I didn’t really like “Beyond a build that made James blush, his best feature was a cocky grin and his worst a near pathologically casual approach to life that left James uncertain about where he stood. James liked the uncertainty most of all.” at all. Mostly because you go on to show Zav’s casual approach to life later, when he decides to ignore the encroaching wildfire for some reason. That line I quoted honestly read like something I’d find in a grocery store paperback romance. It was really frustrating that these guys would keep boning in spite of the oncoming wildfire. It seemed like you were just setting up for James to take control. There was character development here, but the circumstances felt so contrived and forced that I wasn’t really feeling it. Chairchucker My only complaint is that this was a bit talky. On the other hand, I quite like your dialog. It’s easy and natural, and you did a good job of showing how the two main characters care for each other. I liked that you created a sense of urgency with the impending migration, very light brush strokes there. But you evoke a feeling no one wants: being left behind. I think you could have used a few more words to describe the setting a little more. You had about 300 more to work with. While I think this story is a good length, and I appreciate your word economy, it felt slightly sparse. Still, it felt complete and sincere. We were please by this offering from Thunderdome’s resident jester. JcDent This is literally two nameless characters talking about worldbuilding stuff while looking at a flaming mech. I think you take waaaay too much from video games. It’s one thing to be inspired by the media you consume, it’s another to be completely derivative of it. You had some decent sentences and turns of phrase, like “Flames colored his winter gear orange, and the high snowdrift made him raise his legs comically high.” I don’t like the repetition of the word “high”, but the image is really clear and amusing. But as a story, this doesn’t work. I’m also not sure whose perspective thes story is from. The narration seems like it’s from someone’s POV, but it’s not clear who we’re “feeling” things through. FouRPlay This was all kinds of hamfisted and unbelievable. Jack is a caricature of the Dunning-Kruger effect (even though i hesitate to use a common goon-ism). He wasn’t very fun to read about because everything that he did and everything that happened to him was really predictable. Because you telegraphed everything from the beginning. He was either going to fail catastrophically, or overcome his ego and show up the reporter. Basically, your character does a total 180 because the story is about him doing a total 180, if that makes sense. Quidnose Okay, full disclosure. I was so ready to hate this when I started reading. If you want a good example of how to do the “naive kid”, I would direct you to Rhino’s Johnny Beamer character (I don’t have the links handy, but someone in IRC might). On the other hand, the voice wasn’t enough to put me off from the story entirely. What made me not dislike this was the last two paragraphs. There’s some emotional meat there, this idea that the “good guys” can’t save everyone, and that sometimes when we are hurting, even the good guys seems like the bad guys. I think it would’ve been better if you’d indicated the dialog with paragraph breaks and quotation marks instead of italics. You kind of added a gimmick to a gimmick. Still, I ended up thinking this was a pretty okay piece. Anathema Device This was sweet and very much felt like one of those movies that people force their girlfriend/boyfriend to watch with them so that you can ~cry together~. The dialog was good. The description was good. The background conflict of Jessica’s crazy ex husband is good. I guess this didn’t win just because Chairchucker’s story was juuust a little more original, and a bit more happened. Thematically, this is strong. You use gardening themes to parallel Jessica’s divorce and healing really well. I don’t have a lot to critique about this, it’s very strong for what it is. Benny the Snake This is one of your better pieces. My only concern is...did you learn anything from writing it? I know you got some help with this story. But you’re not going to have people around to be your training wheels forever, you know? That said, I think this would fit in with some “memoir” type story. Someone (maybe one of my cojudges?) pointed out that it’s weird that the characters motivation switches from “i wish i had my gameboy” to “I want a beer”. I noticed that too, though I think what you were going for was “I don’t get to have my gameboy? Fine. I’m gonna bug you for beer.” But I think you could’ve clarified that a bit more. I did smile a bit at the part where you’re describing the scenic lake and the birds chirping...and it just pushes the protag over the edge. All in all, this story had ok dialog and an identifiable arc. Just try to write more like this, but with less help, kay?
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Nov 13, 2014 05:40
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Ok I guess nobody else has the courage to go first, and in remembrance of Veteran's days, I will learn from their example and be brave in the face of danger. I'm dreaming of a Moons Over My Hammy 627 words I breathed a sigh of relief after I rolled the incendiary bomb through the slightly-ajar door, having never been a competent bowler, and I had been experiencing incredible amounts of pre-rolling anxiety, but everything went as planned. I jogged back to the lawn where I’d left the others waiting after our late-night retreat from our motel room. "That should take care of the lot of them,” I said, and picked a spider leg out of my teeth. We set down our arsenal of shoes, fly swatters, and rolled-up magazines. Johnny, who was both the youngest member of the impromptu spider-assault team at age 7 and covered in spider bites, rubbed his eyes and yawned. "What does ‘imcindry’ mean anyway?" he asked. The device was given to me by my good buddy Dale when I'd called him up at 3am and said: "I need something to kill a lot of spiders, fast." I patted Johnny on the head. "You stupid, stupid child. Obviously it's poison." The explosion begged to differ. We were knocked off our feet by the shockwave and peppered with shards of glass. Flaming spider carcasses landed in the yard around us, giving me the worst case of "tight-butthole syndrome" I'd ever had. I let out a series of eeps and meeps as I (having been unconsentingly "stopped" and "dropped" already) rolled over the dewy grass in a futile attempt to ease the pain of the burning spiders fusing to my skin. But the dead ones weren't cause for concern nearly as much as the ones that, recovering from their shock of jumping a few pegs up the evolutionary ladder straight to "bird," had begin scampering around. I'm talking eight little legs, each independently on fire, each dancing to their own rhythm, crawling every which way but back toward our erstwhile motel. Johnny, obviously failing to appreciate the gravity of the situation, laid motionless on the grass. "Get up, you stupid child," I communicated to him with my voice and a thrown shoe. But the stubborn brat declined to move. "Whatever, we can't wait here for him to decide to develop some semblance of unselfishness. We have to get to the extraction point." I cinched the buckles on my Rollerblades. "But that doesn't mean we can't go in style." I busted out a quick 720 to demonstrate my finesse on the bladed wheel, and the rest of the team enthusiastically or reluctantly (depending on your penchant for denial) grabbed their own pairs out of their bags. "See, aren't you glad I insist we pack them?" We stood as a family, watching our home away from home burn to the ground, casually swaying on our wheels. The vacation to Florida was supposed to be relaxing, but I had straight-up Griswolded the thing. I guess it's true that you get what you pay for, and that goes doubly for discount Christmas tree farms, where the employees look straight out of a Tim Burton movie and the trees look like they are straight out of a Tim Burton movie. The price seemed reasonable until the egg sacs started hatching. Still, besides the burns and bites, it had shaped up to be a beautiful evening: the cracking of the motel fire, the gentle glow of neighboring eves as the conflagrated arachnids roosted in their new (albeit unbeknownst to them: incredibly temporary) nests, and I got to experience it all with my family. We held hands and my stomach grumbled. "Extraction point had been changed to Denny's," I said. We rolled down the street, hand in hand, silent but for the unoiled wheels of Sally's blades. We didn't need words to sum up the lessons of that night; Johnny is a horrible, selfish person, and next year: buy a fake tree.
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Nov 13, 2014 18:41
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I guess I'm second. The Tram 568 words The tram has been knocked right off the rails by the blast. It now lies on its side amid the snowdrifts, like a dying animal. Snow settles on Isak's face through the shattered windows. He opens one eye and stares up, unseeing. He can taste blood. There's something hard and round under his back. He reaches down and feels someone's fur hat, wet and sticky and then the unmistakable texture of hair. I'm lying on someone's head, Isak thinks and starts laughing, the sound small and surreal in the stricken tram. To his right, someone swears at him, calls him a lunatic. Isaac turns his head, but he can't see the speaker. He tries to open the other eye and finds it's swelling shut. The winter wind plays with his hair, whistles into his ears, chills the tip of his nose. He shivers under his shuba, but nothing drives him to move. A curious sort of tranquillity has settled over him, a dream-state that makes everything feel like he's watching his life from behind a thick plane of glass. He hears screaming that barely registers, swearing that passes right over his head and the gentle crunch of fresh snow under feet. There's a centimetre of snow on his face and the head below him is moving, bumping against his back. In the distance, the Stukas wail as they dive. Another blast makes the tram rock, blows the snow from Isak's face. The head beneath his back jerks up and down, nudging him. Isak sits up, his movements slow and deliberate, like he's moving underwater, and turns to look at the man he landed on. "Are you simple?" the man growls and Isak slowly shakes his head, though he can't quite understand the question. No, comrade, he's quite complex, thank you very much. The man under him shoves him forward and Isak flops over like a marionette, hitting one of the seats with his knee. The pain jolts him, makes him whine. He stumbles up, finding his footing on another fallen citizen. This one doesn't move. Isak climbs out of the window, the shards of glass nicking his mittens enough to cut the skin of his hands. His boots slip and he lands on his arse, right between the tram-tracks. Another howl of the Stukas sounds in the distance, but fainter, further away. Isak barely feels the next blast. He climbs to his feet, slowly, slips a little but clears the rails before he collapses again, panting. I'm not going to make it, he thinks and shivers, again. His ears, exposed to the Leningrad winter, are growing numb. He wonders what they'll look like, if frostbite sets in. The sirens wail again, giving the all-clear. Isak puts his hands over his ears until the sound dies away. He tries to get to his feet, but his legs fold under him and he flops, face-forward, into a drift of snow. Powder fills his nose, makes him panic, makes adrenaline surge. He sits up, wrenching his face clear and pants. Around him, Leningraders hurry about their lives. Survivors climb out of the stricken tram. He sits back and reaches into an inner pocket of his shuba and pulls out his ticket and stares at it. Eighteen hundred hours, it says. He glances up at the darkening sky and grins. He's got time to walk to the Bolshoi.
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Nov 13, 2014 18:54
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You people and your early submissions. You don't get extra points because you submit before Sunday night. Probably could have used a few days to edit your stories.
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Nov 13, 2014 20:14
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In. Flash me up if you have a mind to.
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Nov 13, 2014 20:16
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Mercedes posted:You people and your early submissions. You don't get extra points because you submit before Sunday night. Probably could have used a few days to edit your stories. I challenge you to find even one mistake in my piece. Just because I submitted it before the due date does not mean I didn't edit it. Do you turn in all of your school assignments right before they are due too? I always turned mine in early, and I think the professors enjoyed it.
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Nov 13, 2014 20:53
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Man, Cache Cab, you've really slipped. You used to be a credible idiot, now you've reached Survivor status. I believed in you, man. You were the chosen one!
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Nov 13, 2014 20:59
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Cache Cab posted:I challenge you to find even one mistake in my piece. Well, for one thing, you prefaced it.
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Nov 13, 2014 21:16
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Gau posted:Man, Cache Cab, you've really slipped. You used to be a credible idiot, now you've reached Survivor status. I believed in you, man. You were the chosen one! I don't get this reference because I've never watched survivor. Please explain? also I said "in my piece." And my sentence before wasn't even about the story. Plenty of people here post something before their story and I don't see anybody else bitching about it, so why don't you get off my loving back?
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Nov 13, 2014 21:16
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I like how your av is slightly bigger than others that are otherwise the same.
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Nov 13, 2014 21:27
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What, Cache Cab wasn't just joking? He's being fully serious right now?
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Nov 13, 2014 21:29
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Your first sentence is a run-on sentence
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Nov 13, 2014 21:34
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You have an unnecessary comma in your third sentence. E. You could use one there, but there's no ambiguity as to who's doing the action.
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Nov 13, 2014 21:38
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Broenheim posted:Your first sentence is a run-on sentence Maybe he is trying to goad people into giving him detailed crits. Because I found a comma that shouldn't be there. But I'm not telling him which one. Also, quote:"Get up, you stupid child," I communicated to him with my voice
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Nov 13, 2014 21:39
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When you use 'thrown' as an adjective, you deprive us of the action that would otherwise describe the scene. While not a technical fault, I still do not like it.
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Nov 13, 2014 21:41
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What I'm saying is you should probably edit your document and correct these few things we've pointed out. What's the worst that could happen?
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Nov 13, 2014 21:48
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It looks like your semicolon and colon need to be swapped in your final sentence. You also have a random colon to indicate dialogue once, and only once. Also: editing is not always about proof reading, it's about coming at the story with new eyes to make adjustments after you've had time to get over the honeymoon phase of "I made this thing from nothing."
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Nov 13, 2014 21:49
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In, I've wanted to try this for a while. Flash me!
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Nov 13, 2014 23:12
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 01:46 |
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If you guys think you're better then me then brawl me who is brave enough to go up to bat for their friends?
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Nov 14, 2014 00:35
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