Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

steeltoedsneakers posted:

"Hello - Yes, officer..? There's glass and stones everywhere. Yeah, from the inside... I know, right? It's a shambles."
Kinda saw this coming, but at least I tried.

Aesclepia
Dec 5, 2013
Next verse same as the first.

THE BEST PART OF WAKING UP IS PROOOOOOOOOOOOOMPT

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Sham bam bamina! posted:

Kinda saw this coming, but at least I tried.

lol what is this weak poo poo

Nethilia
Oct 17, 2012

Hullabalooza '96
Easily Depressed
Teenagers Edition


if i'd'a won we'd have a prompt up already

twist is a lazy bitch, sleeping and poo poo

get up and prompt us

Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional.
Thunderdome is forever.
Please give us a prompt, too many people posting wrong and debating their stories

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER
My story was flawless.

Aesclepia
Dec 5, 2013
Next verse same as the first.

magnificent7 posted:

My story was flawless.

More like something flawful.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
TD WEEK 274: I Scream, You Scream



Ok I've been talking about doing this prompt with Kai for a while so here goes: you will be assigned an ice cream flavor from TD's Magical Ice Cream Emporium blah blah blah flavor text it's eight in the morning and I have to go to work write a story inspired by that ice cream flavor.

Additional theme for this week: someone wants something, but doesn't get it.

I hope you all get diabetes. You know, in a good way.

Signup deadline: Friday, 11/3/17, 2359 EST
Submissions Deadline: Sunday, 11/5/17, 2359 EST
No: poetry, fanfic, erotica, political satire
Wordcount: 1200 words

Judges:
Twist
Kaishai
Sitting Here
Djeser

Entrants:
Obliterati
ThirdEmperor
Jay W. Friks
apophenium
Tyrannosaurus
Sham bam bamina!
Hawklad
The Saddest Rhino
Thranguy
Mrenda
flerp :toxx:
crabrock :toxx:
spectres of autism
sebmojo
Antivehicular
QuoProQuid :toxx:
Yoruichi
sparksbloom
Deltasquid
HereComesEverybody
Fumblemouse

Ironic Twist fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Nov 3, 2017

Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional.
Thunderdome is forever.
In

ThirdEmperor
Aug 7, 2013

BEHOLD MY GLORY

AND THEN

BRAWL ME
In

Jay W. Friks
Oct 4, 2016


Got Out.
Grimey Drawer
In

apophenium
Apr 14, 2009
In

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
In.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
In.

Hawklad
May 3, 2003


Who wants to live
forever?


DIVE!

College Slice
IN

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



K in

Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010


Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.
in

Mrenda
Mar 14, 2012
In, but not for diabetes.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in :toxx:

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Yep, nothing about a tested friendship would involve either of those things.


steeltoedsneakers posted:

"Hello - Yes, officer..? There's glass and stones everywhere. Yeah, from the inside... I know, right? It's a shambles."

lol, these were both funny posts, you can feel good about them

hey SBB i have always enjoyed your f-plus contributions fyi

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






hey, did you know Some Artificial Raspberry Flavoring Comes From the Anal Gland of a Beaver?

in

:toxx:

daddy needs a new avatar

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
in

Mrenda
Mar 14, 2012
Overall, I don't think it's awful. I've definitely written worse. In a weaker week you might have ended up middling away elsewhere. There are problems, but it's not a heinous piece of writing, just that it has problems and misplaced ideas throughout. Overall you're over-complicating, and struggling to dole out what you need in a compelling way. There's problems about a bear attack representing everything the woman goes through, problems in the writing with how you phrase the action as occurring in her mind rather than just happening, and problems with unnecessary complexity. But it's not outright awful.

Exmond posted:

A Good Dog
752 word
I don't think this is outright awful, there's a nice core running through it even if there's a misstep in how you say it. You've jammed together two ideas, someone overcoming an their problems and a bear attack, and you have the bear attack and the success in getting away from it showing the person's development. Really, this feels insubstantial. I think a big problem is in how you set it out at the beginning. There's so much going on, so much detail you need to force in to get at the situation at hand that the story has no time to rest with the person and develop.

You start out straight away with the dog, so I think, "Ok, it's about a dog." Then you add a bear, "Ok, a bear attack because of a dog." And even then it's a dog that the person doesn't like or at least has some animosity towards. That's a whole story right there. Action based, sure, but a story about a bear attack, let me prepare my heart for pumping. Then in the second paragraph you have "Pangs of guilt," and introduce Ivy, and it seems like the story is tumbling away. This could work if you had a lot more space/time/words to deal with the situation, allowing you a more subtle way to establish everything but now you're just piling up information without giving me time to deal with it. You're pulling me around and forcing me to come to grips with what you're saying. It's not in a good way, it's not making me ask questions of myself, or a real world situation, it's asking me to simply comprehend what you're saying.

You keep adding to that feeling as the story goes on, with details seemingly coming out of nowhere, "I realized I was completely alone in the forest..." Ok, how are you going on an everyday dog walk and being completely alone, surely this will be near a populated area? It's like you're adding severity to the story for the sake of up'ing the drama. Then, "just give up..." give up about what? Ok, there's yet more going on, a reason this person might want to lay down in their life. Then we have Ivy's cancer. Then a bear fight. Dogs tumbling away.

Already you have so much information played out, not really dealing with anything that you're overloading the story. I don't need all this, or if I do need it I need it played out in a more human way. It seems like everything is externalised in this. There's no point where the protagonist gets to act or come to a realisation (despite you saying, quite literally, "I realise...") It's totally valid to let the world reflect a person's situation, scenario, story, whatever, but you're letting everything outside of them, all the action, all the plot points, all the events play out on the character. There's no space to get grounded in the internal dilemma of the person, and that's even before you get into whether the situation is plausible, as written, or whether the acceptance of their problems is a little deus ex machina with no justification given to it in the story.

She runs from the bear and does the "right" thing. Why? Because she was attacked? It doesn't show any growth from her, it's a near-death situation giving perspective but there's nothing more to it than that. There's no humanity to it. It could just as easily be someone walking down a road thinking, "Those kids are being a butt to their friend, I don't want to be a butt. The end." There's so much more to thought processes and doubt about things than an event prompting all this, and you don't get into that. You have the bear attack represent everything, when really it's a nothing event, only adding confusion and in your mind justifying the growth, which to me it doesn't.

Exmond posted:

A Good Dog
752 word

That dog was always going to be the death of me, I thought as I ran towards Ivy’s dog Don't "I thought" things, this is part of the POV character, you can just let us into their thoughts. The mutt had no had here, it convolutes, just state, even "the mutt always wanted me dead, even then it's adding stakes and detail I don't need, because it's not dealt with. "Ivy's mutt was just like her..." or something establishing issues with someone else. always wanted to kill me and it was finally going to get its wish. Spot dropped his beloved stick and barked at the loving bear. The bear roared and swiped its massive claw at the tiny dog. I dove and scooped Spot into my hands. For my bravery I was rewarded a small slice across my forehead. Blood ran down my face and one command echoed in my mind: RUN. again you're showing internal thoughts that should be actions. just show it/do it. Stop hedging.

I listened to my instinct and scrambled past the confused bear.again, "I listened to my instinct" no need for that, let the instinct work, give me the action. Pangs of guilt and frustration hit me as once again all I could do was run away.why pangs of guilt? It's revealed later in the story, maybe why, but it's not justified in anything you've told us so far. A bear attacks me on a walk so I should be guilty doesn't make sense Spot continued to bark warnings of ruin at the bear from my hands. Ivy had suggested we get the dog when she first got her prognosis and I relented. Worst decision of my life. I was surprised Spot hadn’t run and abandoned me.apart from the convoluted jumbling of thoughts, exposition, and storytelling so far another problem is the lack of lyrical nature to the prose. It's all short sharp sentences that do nothing to establish any rhythm. It's like being punched over and over with the same annoying jab.

Time slowed down as I looked behind me and saw the bear catching up. The trees glistened in the sunlight You've finally done something to establish the scenario with description, and even then it's a single sentence used to justify an "I realised." You should be giving me a feeling of the place a lot quicker than that. It takes bravery to give the story some mood with seemingly unimportant details when you've said "forest" but it is necessary, and will work. and I realized I was completely alone in the forest, that I was going to die alone. My brain went into overdrive, frantically trying to find a way to survive. stop telling me what a brain is doing, I just want to see it unless it's a complex thought dealing with a struggle In between the panic and my instincts yelling at me, a smaller, sinister part of my brain whispered. Stop. Just give up, it’s easy. You wouldn’t have to deal with Ivy and your fuckup.now you're adding even more detail in, so much for three paragraphs, and you're giving me more exposition-thought. You're telling me so much about the situation that I don't need delivered this way.

anyway, I'll stop there. Most of the rest of your story has the same problems.

I think you're stuck between the idea of making things clear in an everyday voice, that makes logical sense where everything is rationally justified and the way it happens in good stories. All your, "My brain did this," and "I thought this," is showing you're not latched onto getting into the perspective of the person in the story. This isn't a really bad story, there's definitely enough there for it to work, but the way you tell it doesn't have the rhythm of an accomplished storyteller letting the reader get the important information that makes sense in a literary way. You're not completely on top of knowing when to let story and storytelling tell its own way. Your instead focusing on the logical way someone might work through a situation, not the writerly way. It's tough to deal with, but for you I'd focus on cutting out all the hedging you do about your writing, and instead let the story and the progression of the story stand on its own, trusting in the reader to get your writing, inside your character's action and motivation.

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


Word limit this week?

Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional.
Thunderdome is forever.

Yoruichi posted:

Word limit this week?

Fukken ruined it mate

Mrenda
Mar 14, 2012

Flesnolk posted:

Refusal
1204 words

Two things immediately struck me about this, the purpose of the trial and its lack of tests, and the lack of setting for where it's happening.

The lack of tests in a trial is more content focused. I didn't get any sense that woman was waiting for a purpose nor did I get a sense she had given up or given into something that clawed at her. I figured there'd be a reason given at the end of why she was going through this, and while there is one, about being used, it didn't show that all she'd been through before had changed her in any way. Reading through there was no struggle from her, no interiority, no doubt, no question, no passion. I would have liked to see that, to see what she was going through. A lot of this was about humanity, and what's done to people and what those people suffer, and I didn't see a huge amount of that in there. She simply sat and refused. That's a decent premise but it wasn't teased out, instead it just showed her going through all the situations and not responding. The part about the beard being a sign of refusing to give up knowledge might have worked better if we could see how it tied in some way to the struggle she was going through, unfortunately they were too disconnected. It came across as dehumanised and dispassionate. For all the knowledge she had, there was no real time she felt at risk or had to deal with what she was giving up. She came across as certain throughout, not really sacrificing anything, even if there was some horror inflicted on it. Basically I think it needs more personality. If someone is being tested, and there absolutely was a test even if only to her resolve or certainty of what would come, or even in what she was foregoing, there needs to be more evidence of that test having some significance. What had she staked on all this, what was she risking? At the moment it just reads like someone going through something without any telling of why or to what purpose. More humanity, more doubt, more struggle, more human hesitancy about the "why" of her mission would all work.

The lack of setting was another problem. You didn't give me much to understand what was happening around the person. There were no details of the tent, no details of where she was in the wider world, no detail about what she was being pressured with apart from simply stating the spotlight was turned on. There was a lot of talk about people's faces, monstrous in many ways, possibly some aspect of their personality but I needed more than just the people, I would have wanted the setting to be more alive because at the moment it's all too focused on person and not the world the person is in. Another benefit of this is that you give the story room to breathe, while giving me space to appreciate the rather dense and surreal elements to the rest of it. It was very much told out without seeming investment in the emotion of it all, and I think it needs that outside detail to more fully situate the humanity. It's a dense piece of writing, with the surreality of it, and it needs some break from that and I think you could give that by externalising some of the aspects around her.

I think this story needs a bit more space for it all to operate in, something beyond the immediate situation, in both the person's mind and struggle she's going through, and the broader world. I liked it for what it was, which was very different, and it seems like its steeped in importance coming from you, I'd just be looking for that to come across more in the person's own mind and test, and the broader setting of the the world, and the premise.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh

Obliterati posted:

Fukken ruined it mate

I remembered on my own anyway. Wordcount is 1200 words. Will add to the prompt post.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh

Stracciatella!

Mint chocolate chip!

Chocolate chip cookie dough!

Moose Tracks!

Blue moon!

Neapolitan!

Cookies and cream!

Superman!

Green tea!

Mrenda posted:

In, but not for diabetes.

Spumoni!

Tiger tail!

crabrock posted:

hey, did you know Some Artificial Raspberry Flavoring Comes From the Anal Gland of a Beaver?

in

:toxx:

daddy needs a new avatar

Kani aisu!

Rocky road!

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









in

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

In. Pour some sugar on me

QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

:toxx: in

gimme something gnarly

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh

Phish Food!

Antivehicular posted:

In. Pour some sugar on me

Chunky Monkey!

QuoProQuid posted:

:toxx: in

gimme something gnarly

Chubby Hubby!

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


In

QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

Jay W. Friks posted:

Crit for "All the Vice President's Men" by QuoProQuid

better nate than lever.

Crit for Bacchus Lite

Line edits here.

I had serious difficulties reading this story, not just because of the subject matter (which is gross and grody and not my thing) but also because it is rarely clear. When writing about an elaborate fantasy world, there is often some table-setting that needs to be done. There must be some clear and concise explanation of the world that gives the reader a clear picture of what is happening. In your opening paragraph, this does not happen. Though you open with a "temple of booze" filled with "drowned alcoholics," your writing seems to jump back and forth between literal and metaphorical. I was unable to tell whether you were writing about a literal afterlife or some post-apocalyptic Bad Batch-style wasteland. It often seemed as though you were transcribing a movie in your head and, seeing as I cannot read your thoughts, was often lost by your exact meanings.

My second largest complaint with this story are the characters. To be blunt, neither Ozzy Bee nor Brenda are interesting characters. Ozzy Bee seems to be a generic bizarro diety obsessed with alcohol and little else. Brenda is an dead woman who is... obsessed with alcohol and little else. Perhaps their one-dimensional characterizations were intentional, given that both are braindead alcoholics in an afterlife that rewards braindead alcoholism, but it makes the story frustrating to read. Neither character really seems to have any drive or encounters any struggle. Worse, their dialogue is how I imagine a prohibitionist would write a drunk person. There are long extended vowels and bro-isms that often seem poorly used and mangled. When you are writing a dialect or particular kind of speech, I would try to make sure that you are familiar with it. As it stands, it is a frustrating barrier to an already frustrating story.

My last serious problem with this story has to do with the overall lack of conflict. Nothing really seems to happen here. Ozzy wants Brenda to do something. Brenda agrees. Then, that thing happens. You dawdle so long on the first part of the story ("Ozzy wants Brenda to do something") that most of the actual action seems to take place off screen. Though I can't imagine rewriting this story, a shift of focus to Brenda's mission "in the real world" would have been infinitely more interesting than this drawn-out back and forth between two seemingly immortal characters with nothing to lose but a hangover. As a rule of thumb, it is generally a good idea in flash fiction to introduce your central conflict within the first two to three paragraphs.

I have some comments related to grammar and style in my line edits, but those changes are easy to make. For now, I would ask yourself two questions while writing:
  • Is my story clear to outsiders?
  • Do my characters have well-defined motivations that lead them toward conflict?

sparksbloom
Apr 30, 2006
In.

Jay W. Friks
Oct 4, 2016


Got Out.
Grimey Drawer
Thanks Quo

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh

Oyster!

Garlic!

Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010


Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.
Crits of Two Stories I Have Something to Say About

Exomund's A Good Dog

Okay, first off, this isn't a bad story. It may not make it all the way to some people's standards for 'good', but yeah, not bad. Had I been judging, I wouldn't have even thought about DMing it before first dinging everyone who completely ignored the 'no death' part of the prompt (y'all know who you are) and probably not even then. That said, still not perfect. The best thing about going first person is that you don't have to do anything special to indicate the thoughts of the narrator, no italics or 'I thought' required, in fact they get in the way. Other than that, the opening does the job right. I'm not going to duplicate any more of what other crits have said. Instead, I'll point you at another story, by crabrock, with similar themes that succeeds by going more deeply into the narrative voice than you managed here.

Tyrannosaurus's korean|american

This story is technically impressive, doing an impressive job of presenting a large cast of very human characters, some of whom don't appear on-stage but still feel real, in such a small wordcount. It's good, but there's a fairly huge problem with it, and that's the central conceit. The multiple personalities here don't really come off as a metaphor for normal teenage identity building or the specific fragmentation of identity that a multicultural/multilingual teen would experience. Instead, they read as straight-up, barely-managed-for-now multiple personality disorder. It feels like you were going for Pixar's Inside Out and landed closer to Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order, which is, yeah, problematic because mpd strongly implies a history of repeated trauma and abuae that just can't be reconciled with the normal teen/happy family background that the story is trying to present.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Exmond
May 31, 2007

Writing is fun!

Thranguy posted:

Crits of Two Stories I Have Something to Say About

Exomund's A Good Dog

Okay, first off, this isn't a bad story.

:swoon:

Thank you for the crit!

  • Locked thread