|
 SITTING TWIST BRAWL JUDGMENT Prompt: The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient prohibitions. This was a tricksy curly Calvino quote but you both write tricksy curly words so there was a good fit. Twist, you wrote half a story of back story then had some piercingly beautiful words about some people sitting in a box. Like - they were really nice words. I liked them a lot. But still: people, sitting in a box. Shere, you squeezed your brain out of your fingertips in a literally dribbling deadline frenzy which was deemed 'hella gross' by all those who witnessed it, but you laced the prompt through your story like marbled Kobe beef. Your words were pretty nice too, but more than that the organising metaphor was potent and central to the story. Sitting here wins this round, and the brawl.
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 01:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 03:05 |
|
|
Broenheim posted:Prompt!!!! I mean poo poo in Bitch please, you're three people under me. Mojo, I'm in giving me a loser story.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 01:21
|
|
|
Somebody already stole my lame Beck joke, (and they did a better job of it), and I wanted to take the week off, and I'm busy traveling so WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 01:27
|
|
|
Hey, Obliterati, when are you going to let Broenheim know he beat me in our brawl?
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 01:43
|
|
|
Screaming Idiot posted:Hey, Obliterati, when are you going to let Broenheim know he beat me in our brawl? Tomorrow! Apologies.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 01:51
|
|
|
Djeser posted:I am a big loser. Week 85: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=1872&title=Father%5C%27s+Day epoch. posted:Somebody already stole my lame Beck joke, (and they did a better job of it), and I wanted to take the week off, and I'm busy traveling so WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER Week 158: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=3906&title=Energy Mercedes posted:Bitch please, you're three people under me. Mojo, I'm in giving me a loser story. Week 13: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=238&title=It+was+all+a+%28Teenage%29+Dream Ovaltine posted:In! Week 96: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=2223&title=The+Elaboration
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 01:54
|
|
|
Your transgression is forgiven, my child. Walk now in peace.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 01:54
|
|
|
I'm in it to win it, so give me a loser.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 02:01
|
|
|
SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I'm in it to win it, so give me a loser. Week 23: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=720&title=The+Long+Grass
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 02:06
|
|
|
urgh gently caress i'll co-judge
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 02:14
|
|
|
In. Give me some poor bastard's losing story.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 02:24
|
|
|
Roger Ebert once said "no winning Thunderdome entry is depressing, but every losing one is." Or something like that. So gimme one of them losers and we'll see where we can take some bad ideas. for abject despair of incompletion during genre week.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 02:30
|
|
|
I've never placed higher than a  so I think I fit in with the losers nice and snug this week.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 03:22
|
|
|
It's cool, with all y'all picking losers. Because that's what you are, in your heart of hearts. Losers.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 04:06
|
|
|
Meinberg posted:It's cool, with all y'all picking losers. Because that's what you are, in your heart of hearts. Losers. idk i think im the clear winner getting this masterpiece to work with
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 04:14
|
|
Broenheim posted:idk i think im the clear winner getting this masterpiece to work with Yeah, it's cool, you clearly need all the help you can get. My story isn't even WRITTEN! It's gonna be a major boss for me to take this story and make sweet music* out of it. *Actual music not guaranteed
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 04:27
|
|
|
After The War posted:Roger Ebert once said "no winning Thunderdome entry is depressing, but every losing one is." Or something like that. So gimme one of them losers and we'll see where we can take some bad ideas. E: I don't know what happened but somehow the link I gave you earlier was wrong, here http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=673 Fuschia tude posted:I've never placed higher than a http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=1113 next two persons in must be winners. if u get ur feelings hurt deal
The Saddest Rhino fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Sep 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 04:39
|
|
|
Meinberg posted:Yeah, it's cool, you clearly need all the help you can get. My story isn't even WRITTEN! It's gonna be a major boss for me to take this story and make sweet music* out of it. if you do an audio recording of your story ill line by line crit your story
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 04:44
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:Week 158: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=3906&title=Energy haha, gently caress. uh ... conflict of interest! judge interference! something! I shall do my best.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 04:49
|
|
|
winner. I'm always a winner. My mom's visiting, and that's what she said. OH yeah,
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 05:13
|
|
|
I'm back and a big time loser.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 05:23
|
|
|
Dr. Kloctopussy posted:winner. Week 1: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=3&title=Spudipus+Complex+ Mons Hubris posted:I'm back and a big time Week 101: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=2361&title=They+Shall+Not+Pass sebmojo fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Sep 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 05:33
|
|
|
Dr. Kloctopussy posted:winner. http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=1744 Mons Hubris posted:I'm back and a big time loser. NOPE SEE MY FLASH RULE ABOVE, YER A WINNER. http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=466
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 05:35
|
|
|
^^ you may each pick one of the stories you have been assigned, or do a hellish mashup of both. up to you which choice is the act of a warrior.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 05:40
|
|
|
jon joe posted:Flash rule me. your story must be of modern times, and the city/town must play a major character
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 05:41
|
|
|
Grizzled Patriarch posted:In. Give me some poor bastard's Week 20: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=466&title=Lessons+
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 05:53
|
|
|
The Saddest Rhino posted:your story must be of modern times, and the city/town must play a major character Have another flash rule; everyone in your story is inexplicably standing on one leg.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 06:00
|
|
|
In-cy win-cy spider
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 06:18
|
|
|
Fumblemouse posted:In-cy win-cy spider Week 4: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=89&title=Funeral+for+the+Rest+of+the+Europan+Humankind
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 08:21
|
|
|
Alrighty, time for me to be IN for my Thunderdome debut. I am definitely in the Loser camp.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 08:35
|
|
|
IN Give me a winner, please.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 09:43
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:Week 117: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=2716&title=A+Mother%27s+Worst+Fear As I requested a winning story and was given a losing one, am I to presume that I am not permitted to choose to be in the winning camp? Or was a mistake made. Should I use the winning story from week 117? http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=2717&title=Pumpkin+Dreams
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 11:27
|
|
|
Lazy Beggar posted:As I requested a winning story and was given a losing one, am I to presume that I am not permitted to choose to be in the winning camp? follow your heart
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 12:24
|
|
|
newtestleper posted:IN Week 27: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=802&title=Predator No Beer Left posted:Alrighty, time for me to be IN for my Thunderdome debut. Week 105: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=2440&title=Broken+Women
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 13:38
|
|
|
Djeser posted:Also please give me one of the losing stories Grizzled Patriarch posted:Give me some poor bastard's losing story. SurreptitiousMuffin posted:give me a loser. Mercedes posted:I'm in giving me a loser story.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 13:53
|
|
|
Hit me with dat winner
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 14:28
|
|
|
Week 161 JudgeCrits: These will be of variable length, generally longer for the stories that did the worst. I tried to talk at least about the beginnings and endings of each story. Some of these crits will have bold text inside them. That means that this is something that came up in more than one story this week, so if you're just skimming down to your own story, pay attention to those bits as well, and hopefully you'll know if you're one of them. Death on the Doorstop (week loser) Things start to go wrong with the opening sentence. 'Grinned' isn't the worst first verb you could have, but it isn't great. Pairing 'bare' and 'barely' with only one word between them hurts you, and piling two separate participle phrases on the sentence is rarely a good choice. Not naming most of your characters doesn't help things. I guess the mystery sort of depends on us not being able to tell who 'the girl' is, but that's a really cheap way to create mystery. Third paragraph, near the end you slip out of past perfect tense for 'told'. Generally speaking, you'd do better to avoid using past perfect for an entire scene anyways. Paragraph starting with 'The detective cast his net”: this is probably the best paragraph in the story, because you finally start hitting the kind of balance between long and short sentences that is good most of the time and that this genre in particular demands. Try to write more like this than the others. So, when we get to the freezer, I still can't be sure if the girl in the opening was the sister or the corpse in the rest of the story (with the corpse in her part being the one in the freezer.) If you had bothered to resolve anything, this might have been a satisfying little mystery. Instead, you went for a “but none of this really matters at all” twist ending. Timber (Honorable Mention) A strong, well-written opening line. Opening with a long sentence like that is a high degree-of-difficulty choice, but you nailed it. Having a strong first verb like 'hits' helps. I liked this story quite a bit. My one concern is that it may be relying a bit on the reader knowing what the theme was this week. A Man's Work A fairly strong opening, with a good verb, and the repetition gives the story a solid structure that works. Semicolons are rarely a good choice in narrative text. Whenever you've written one you should make sure that a full stop wouldn't serve you better.. The one you have doesn't pass that test. All in all, this was a story that took good advantage of the format. The Great Galvini's Assistant Strong opening sentence. quote:He stopped himself from slamming a fist into the side of his stool, bit on his hand instead, waited, as if Mother Mary herself was going to descend from heaven and bless him with a hug, make everything right This sentence sort of gets lost in itself. There's an 'and' missing somewhere in there for grammar, but for clarity it probably needs a complete rewrite. I'm very much not a fan of your ending. I mean, it was the only way to end the story, since any other choice would have been either anticlimax or an unearned dark comic turn, but, well, maybe you shouldn't have written yourself into that corner in the first place. When a story can only end one way, the ending is going to be predictable. Rhapsody for Asa An okay opening line, a weakish first verb quickly followed by a much stronger one. This was an okay story. My problems with it are mostly in the ending part, where I couldn't really tell how in the world this family of dirt poor dirt farmers manage to acquire vast tracts of land, and why during all of this time and prosperity, none of the forest has been cut down so that the border with the Woods is exactly where it was. My cojudges write this off as fairy tale logic, but the way this is set up its fairy tale logic land only inside the Woods themselves and fairly mundane outside. (And at least the first one could have been fixed fairly easily, by having her bring home something of great value as inadequate compensation or the like.) Camp Holloway (Honorable Mention) The opening is fairly abstract. The transition between the first two paragraphs and their family history and the more narrative part of the story is very jarring. In fact, I suspect that you could just lop those two paragraphs off entirely and be left with a stronger story. Overall, a very good one. Keep Warm (Honorable Mention) A very striking opening, and strong writing mostly throught. However, the second line: quote:The smoke reaches in with tendrils that crawl between your lips and through your teeth and pulls the breath right out of your lungs Is a bit of a garden-path sentence; 'pulls' feels more like a number-mismatch with 'tendrils' rather than the match with 'smoke' that you're intending. I was not a fan of this story. It was deliberately unpleasant, which is something that I could have gotten behind except for the fact that it's also completely pointless. It takes so much time for the character's nature and problem to be established that he doesn't get the to chance accomplish anything (he seems to think that he's learned something, but it's not all that clear exactly what. That the woman feels guilty, feels responsible for their situation? Yeah, that's a big improvement; that's not going to turn into massive resentment after the next few hundred years of painfully burning to death.), and we have another non-ending ending. The Hand that Stills My Wings (Dishnorable Mention) The opening is fairly strong. This might be a case where replacing the colon and semicolons with full stops wouldn't have particularly improved things, In general, the writing here is technically strong. It's just the story that's a mess. The main problem is that it feels scenes from three different stories put together clumsily. There's a completely mundane divorce story, a story about a child cursed to stop growing, and a story about a child caught in a time loop, and the three of them barely connect. In stories with supernatural or magical realist or otherwise fantastic elements, it's best to introduce at least some hint of them as early as possible, and, unless the owls are literally singing lullabies with English lyrics (and if they are it would need to be far more explicit), there's not hint for far too long that this is a non-mundane world. The shift between the two supernatural premises is where the story lost me. They just don't match: just a couple paragraphs before you're trying to claim the character is living the same day there are clear elements of time passing. And then we get an ending that doesn't resolve or explain anything, other than repeating the raising of yet another supernatural premise, the child split into two versions, except that we're never give any reason to believe that one to be other than a fancy of the child. The writing itself is, again, very good. It's probably impossible to actually write a story like this with a genuinely authentic 6-year old voice (or, what, 8, 9 or 10 year old who hasn't had any particular education, formal or otherwise in the intervening years and very little human contact at all), but the one you use comes about as close as possible. Minding the Hive A good opening sentence, and you continue to establish a strong gothic voice. It took a bit too long to actually get a conflict started, and so there's less story than there should be. The ending is reasonably well-earned, but isn't nearly as clever as it thinks it is. Knock on Wood A passably strong opening. In general, this was a fairly average story. It did provide a strong ending, which was a big plus this week. Terminalis A strong and striking opening that gets the reader's attention. Overall, the text seems a bit overwritten, leaning to heavily on complex sentence structures. And this was another non-ending, sort of, since the central conflict here is whether Lazslo is going to keep doing his job and, having learned that both doing it and stopping it aren't working out very well, we don't get any real clues to what his decision is going to be. Upon the Waters (Dishonorable Mention) Not a fan of the opening line: it's fairly weak and overly complex. Unfortunately, that trend continues. It takes you too long to firmly establish your conflict. I mean, you get 'guard it well' early on, but too much time passes before it's clear that this task is, fundamentally, preventing tool use, sort of like a Bizarro-world version of the monolith from 2001. And by the time you get there, you haven't developed your character's personality well enough that we have enough of an idea why he likes Eve better than the random apes from earlier. The Last Flight of the Valiant The opening is strong, if a bit cliched. In fact, this premise is so obvious that we got two instances in the same week, with Knock on Wood as the other. This is the stronger of the two in my opinon. Strongly derivative of Firefly and its universe, of course. (One hopes that mentioning the vehicle's insect-name class was a deliberate hat tip to that fact.) But I suppose not using the characters and making a few cosmetic changes (plasma rifles and swapping the Russians for the Americans) is enough to avoid a fanfic ding. Good ending, and a good story in general, but others were better. All That Remains (Honorable Mention) The opening is a bit confusing: in a story without a first person narrator, a reader is led to assume that the first named character is going to be the protagonist. Other than that, strong writing. And, in a week with this many non-endings, I was positively gleeful to see that the story whose ending includes a literal lady and big cat did not have one of those at all. Junctional Escape Beat Interesting opening. I wasn't expecting other people to go second person of their own free will, but all three of those stories made it work. My only problem with this story is that you have two different extended metaphors going on here, the house as the literal heart and the house as the emotional heart, and they bang into each other in clunky ways at times. A strong ending. The Dictator in Exlie A strong opener, a strong character piece that I liked quite a lot. No complaints, really. (This was on my HM list, actually.) Dreams of Babel The opening was a little weak, but at least interesting. There were parts I liked and parts I disliked about this one. I think that it could be rewritten into a much stronger story. The main problem I had with it was that the nature of the bold voice takes too long to establish. In the first couple lines, it sounds like a pre-recoreded impersonal computer message, and the shift in it to first person is jarring. Making that more consistent would help a lot. The ending here is strong. Dave: (Winner) Loved this one. It's entirely possible that you were aiming for the cheap seats and that's where I happened to be living this week, but you hit the target right on. You promised me a panda suit full of pudding, and you delivered without breaking stride. Builds Character (Dishonorable Mention) Weak opening sentence and early parts to the story, where your character seems to be a passive observer of his own body parts. I just didn't buy the premise of this story. In fact, in judgechat I mentioned that my crit might end up being more words than the story about how much I didn't buy the premise. So here goes. First off, I don't buy that he would even get the D. He'd either get an out and out F or a gentleman's C in that position. The only possible way he'd get a D is if the teacher was morally certain that he had cheated but couldn't prove it, and even in that case the administration would probably overrule him. But this is all assuming that we buy the other premise, that a D would keep him out of college, since rescinded offers make the school look bad. But I don't buy that one either. This guy has a solid average above 3.0 (no Cs ever before. Maybe a little lower if minuses are in play, but there are probably a few pluses and As involved too.) A single D is going to drop that about 0.05, not enough to make any kind of difference. Very unlikely to be enough for a college to care that much about. They might be concerned enough to rescind in the case of a total academic collapse, a card of all Cs and Ds ,but that's less because of the grades themselves than that that's a red flag for a student who has developed a substance abuse problem. To get a non-negotiable loss of offer takes getting arrested, getting publicly caught cheating, or failing to graduate entirely. There's also the question of what class this is. If it's an AP class, which is probably what most of a college-bound senior's last semester would be, the grade in the class is less important than how he does on the test, and the worst that happens there is that you have to take the introductory class. Just about the only thing that the school would particularly care about is if he's in a non-AP math class and that's the one, and in that case, they'll either have him re-take the subject over summer, make him take a remedial course when he arrives, and/or put him on academic probation when he enters before they'd actually rescind the offer. But let's say that somehow, despite all of this, he still loses his offer. There are still plenty of schools that offer late admission or rolling admission that he can apply to, and there is going to be a couple that are a little less selective than the one he was going before that he'll be able to get into. At the very, very worst case, he might end up having to spend a semester or two at the nearest community college before transferring to one of those schools. nos cedamus Amori (Honorable Mention) I don't like the opening all that much, as it seems a touch overwritten. It does to an excellent job of identifying the narrator. The ending is a little bit undermotivated: there's not quite enough sense of why this particular person, rather than any over the last hundred years, is causing him to change his ways, but a well-earned and executed callback can cover up some of those kinds of faults. Necropolis Now Probably my least favorite title of the week. The opening sentence, and the next few paragraphs as well, are breaking a lot of rules but managing to get away with it. I mean, generally speaking there should be a character by that point. But you managed to hold my interest without one. I was, in fact, almost disappointed when you did bring in a main character near the middle of the story. I think that this might have been a better story if you had either gone the harder route of committing to a completely character-free story or the easier route of bringing characters in earlier. Going the middle path between these probably the story a lot. The biggest problem is with the point-of-view, which makes a fairly abrupt shift from objective to limited omniscient. It's also rarely a good idea for the first reference to a story's viewpoint character to be the word 'someone'. The ending is a bit incomplete. In particular, I get no sense of why this Necropolis had to be completely destroyed (or turned into a virtual reality one) to make room for hers, or why there couldn't be a silicon gate added to this one while keeping it intact. The continued presence of a normal-sized line outside the stone gate implies that the world of the living hasn't ended or had everyone decided to upload themselves into computer brains or anything like that. She doesn't appear to have built any kind of way for the people in line to get into her virtual necropolis, either.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 18:09
|
|
|
IRC said to post, so I post. Crits. Will post more later too. Timber - Benny Profane Opening sentence is rough, runs on too long and messes up the flow right at the start. Thankfully the next sentence is better and brought me back into it. "blossom like a garden" kicked me back out. That whole metaphor is a bit rough, due solely to poor wording I think. "froth out like soda" is pretty bad too. I keep losing a sense of where we are and having to go back and reread sentences. On the other hand, the emotion of the scene is still coming through, and I am sympathizing with your character, which is good! The next couple of sentences just double down on that, and I am invested in this guy. I want to see what happens next. The payoff is worth it, let down only by the addition of a few more clunky metaphors. Looking this over again before I post, this might be my favorite story of the week despite some rough writing and awkward out of place metaphors. The Great Galvani’s Assistant - Entenzahn I tried to read this story three times and could not get more than halfway through it. The emphasis on people not talking made the lack of dialogue feel very imposed and it seemed to draw unneeded attention to itself, in addition to some of it being pretty much dialogue even then, and much of the sentence structure felt awkward. Since I didn't finish this, I can't offer much more than that. Not sure if it's me or you, I just couldn't get into it. Necropolis Now - Fumblemouse I feel like you were trying to say something meaningful in this story and I appreciated that, but it was let down by an almost complete inability to successfully communicate those ideas. On top of that, everything about the prose feels very... mundane, for what seems like it is trying to be a mythic and metaphorical story. I was mostly just following along until I got to the descriptions of the people let in by the gate. I feel like adding the professions and names here was a mistake - what purpose is there? It adds nothing to these passing characters and takes away anything that could have been implied by reducing them to a pair of labels. Either describe who they are in terms of something that matters or just stick to describing how they died. Additionally the wording in this paragraph isn't great at invoking imagery - how does a crushed face quietly plead for assistance? I'm not really seeing it. "Dependable as bone"? Is there an association with bone and dependability I'm not aware of? Cut out the cruft. "Their names are always found" (or a more active version thereof) conveys the idea well enough on its own, additional words should serve an additional purpose. Next paragraph is clumsy. Too many words for what is said. The passive language doesn't help a story that is already lacking in agency. You could cut out fully half the words in this paragraph, lose nothing, and get something that flows significantly better. It doesnt help that the first person you don't name doesn't even get a description - pronouns from the get go left me confused as to who was being discussed, since I thought Kelz was the "she" at first. After this it gets a lot better. This, the trip Kelz is leading her on, as she looks around, honestly could have been the start of the story. The gate of air brings us back to overly wordy descriptions that add little of value, the pointless names (at least professions are skipped this time), and a particularly bad type in "childess" that completely threw me for multiple reading attempts, especially coupled with the poor word choice of "delivered" which sends the mind in the opposite direction. The rest reads a bit better again, but I am not 100 percent on exactly how it ends. Is the little girl the spirit of the necropolis itself, and her arrival that which foretells its own demise, and her presence its rebirth as a monument to the dead of a new race, the dead of the old world wiped away to make room for the new? That would be cool, but I think its a wrong reading and I don't know why she's a little girl. The ending felt a bit rushed all told - a lot of words elsewhere in the story could have done more good here, it is strange that the reveal is the part where you finally stop adding details, right when I most want them! And then it doesn't help that the details you did add really didn't communicate much at all in regards to the bits I most wanted to know about. Dave - Sebmojo Overall, I did not enjoy this story. It felt superficial, a sequence of absurd events happening for no real reason except that they were required to get to where you started. There didn't seem to be anything of substance beyond the words as they were written, and the action felt hurried and lost impact because of it more than once. I did not care if the character retrieved his suitcase or fell to his death or about anything that happened really after the story ended. It wasn't all bad though - I liked the imagery of the scene where he was following her in the car. Unfortunately, that was basically it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 18:18
|
|
|
bye
anime was right fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Oct 27, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 18:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 03:05 |
|
|
anime was right posted:thanks for the crit thranguy Not an empty quote.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2015 18:34
|
|
