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Yeah, I'm signing up for this prompt.
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Feb 15, 2013 18:13
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| # ¿ Sep 8, 2024 03:37 |
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(The edit was to correct one word of a sentence that was added at the very last second. Fingers so loving crossed that it's all right.) The Great Escape (1,182 words) “Nineteen-and-oh” wasn’t some ideal statistic to the Sheeran family. It was a foregone conclusion, a fact left unwritten on the technicality of not having occurred yet. The numbers, along with phrases like “UNDEFEATED” and “LET’S GO PATRIOTS,” were plastered everywhere in their basement theater, even gelled on the cake their youngest daughter Kerry whipped up. “Nineteen-and-oh” was a destiny to be fulfilled after Eli Manning choked on the pressure of this final Giants drive. Of course he’d choke, Clara realized. All Eli ever did was choke. The Giants stumbled into this sacred game in spite of Eli choking, and the Patriots were too smart, too perfect to allow their championship to be stolen. Starting on their own 17, the Giants literally had their backs to the precipice, with only two minutes and thirty-nine seconds to push the Patriots off their own. Kerry sat next to Clara on the floor, clad in a Wes Welker jersey over a long-sleeved white tee. Her knees were fixed between her arms and her chest, tilting back and forth as she awaited fulfillment of the natural order. Any moment now. Destiny. Clara had never seen her Giants win a Super Bowl. Her dad got her into them when she was 8, telling her stories about the 1990 game where they won by just a point. A heartattack would take him five years after, not long after their failed 2000 bid, and Clara had been waiting for her own story to tell ever since. It was Kerry’s idea to bring Clara up to Medford for her parents’ Super Bowl party, where she’d be the only Giants fan in an entire state full of Pats fans. Her intent was honorable; down at Columbia, there was always a paper Kerry had to ace, always a football game for her to watch, always a friend she had to impress, yet lately she never had more than twenty minutes for Clara. In theory, a vacation would force them to stick together, and she was right. Still, there was no sense that this getaway was anything more than a short-term fix. Manning was fighting valiantly, throwing two crisp passes to Amani Toomer to buy some breathing room, but now it was 4th and 1 against a Patriots D-line that looked ready to absorb gunfire. Clara looked to Kerry, clapping, cheering, beaming whatever positive energy she could to Arizona. Of the twenty-odd ravenous superfans at this party she was the hungriest, her energy so thick and potent that she intoxicated them all second-hand. Even Clara’s Poor Dead Father™ didn’t seem to matter so much. Somehow, Brandon Jacobs squeezed through the line and picked up the first down. A little air slipped out of the room, but the party brushed itself off and rallied. Suppressing a twinge of pride and relief, Clara reached out for Kerry, stroking the skin of her delicate ginger hand. Kerry smiled back in response. It’ll be all right, she seemed to say. You’ll see. Destiny. Clara could see: She could see them all counting out loud as the clock ticked away to zero, the cheers shaking the very foundation of the house. She could see Kerry, glass in hand, gloriously drunk on champagne and pride, leading the crowd in a “Tessie” singalong -- not even Clara would give a poo poo that it was about baseball. They’d all go out into the cold, snowy streets to make sure everybody knew that the New England Patriots were the best team in the world. Kerry would be right next to Clara, hanging onto her arm just like she was now, keeping her toasty warm just by being-- “PICK!” Asante Samuel stepped in front of a pass and Kerry leaped into the air, breaking contact with Clara. The room seized, the air shifted, the ball bounced out of Samuel’s hands and they all settled back down with a groan. That was all Clara needed to see. Eli refused to breathe and work with the pressure; playing hard, but not smart. Soon, he’d hand the Pats their perfect season and go home the goat. Now he was getting blitzed; they had their hands on his jersey and he was going down. Except he didn’t. “Still up still up GET ‘IM!” Kerry’s father shouted amongst so many gasps as Manning pulled away from his attackers, carving out one precious second to dump the ball downfield, far too high for a decent athlete to catch. To Manning’s benefit and destiny’s detriment, David Tyree was way past decent. Respectful by nature, Clara’s hand slammed over her mouth on reflex as Tyree brought the ball down on his helmet, stifling her shocked triumph in front of two dozen infuriated Pats fans calling “incomplete” in the rudest possible way. Clara breathed, looked over to Kerry and saw a familiar face, the same face her Dad had watching the Vikings rout their Giants back in 2000: confusion, heartbreak, anger, depression. Clara squeezed her hand to let her know she was there. She felt Kerry’s studious eyes on her, heard her breath return; it was even, subtle, clearly affected. Then she squeezed back to tell Clara she was there too. They stayed like that for the rest of the drive, Manning proving that playing smart was at least somewhat overrated: If you want something bad enough, you’ll defy the natural order to make it happen. A few plays later, Plaxico Burress juked his man out of his shorts and caught the touchdown pass, leaving the Pats just over thirty seconds to answer back. And then Clara was on her feet, yanked by Kerry up two flights of stairs, whisking her down the hall, finally letting go as they blasted into her bedroom so she could shut the door behind them. She whipped around, eyes wide, jaw dropped, hands squeezing the back of her neck, “Oh my God did you see that pass to Tyree?” “That was...” Clara adjusted. She needed a moment to see that she wasn’t around a bunch of deflated Patriots fans anymore. In fact, there didn’t seem to be a Patriots fan in sight. “That was loving INCREDIBLE.” “How does Manning get away from those guys?” “How does Tyree leap like that?” “How does he catch it with one loving hand?” “With Rodney Harrison all over him?” “Unbelievable!” “That was insane!” They were shaking each other, lost in the ripple of a miracle until Kerry realized there was still a game to finish out. She dove for her remote and clicked on the game in time to see Tom Brady get sacked for ten yards, run over so hard you could hear it with the TV on mute. They both flinched, then Clara laughed, then Kerry followed suit, pulling off her jersey and letting it drop to the floor. She roped her hand around Kerry’s shoulders, let her head drop into the nape of her neck. “Your Dad would have loved this game,” Kerry said. A tear ran out Clara’s eye as Brady’s Hail Mary pass fell incomplete. Destiny. DivisionPost fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Feb 18, 2013 |
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Feb 17, 2013 22:53
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Well, since I'm a Thunderdome virgin who entered mainly to get some crit, I feel the right thing to do would be to hit all the entrants in return. It's gonna take a few posts (maybe even a couple of days), but here's hoping I can be encouraging and useful.SkySteak posted:Paradise (1,185 words) ...Oh boy, maybe not. Look, maybe you were going for irony by having this royal couple behave in a relatively calm (if hurried) manner while their entire country was trying to chase them out of their home of 30 years or kill them very violently (after what happened with Gaddaffi, my rear end they're just getting hanged). The only way I can see that working, though, is as a critique of the callous nature of the ruling class, and I just don't get that from this. I don't get much of anything from it, actually -- it's very much "Characters A and B look like C and D, they start out at point X and encounter point Y on the way to point Z." Honestly, I'm just assuming you have a point Y because at no point did I feel a turn, or a raising of the stakes. It's just flat the whole way through. This isn't a silver bullet -- I don't even know that I can provide you one -- but you absolutely need to work harder to define your characters. They're figureheads, empty slates that we don't have time to draw on because your prose is too concerned with getting to point Z to let the reader in. On the technical front, you need to start reading a lot more because your prose is stilted to poo poo. I mean, God knows I'm one to talk; even in my own entry there are sentences and even entire paragraphs that I wish I worded better, but for gently caress's sake: quote:Margaret now more dressed put a hand around his side and smiled, giving him a kiss on the cheek. Really? Really? Putting aside the fact that you need to add commas after "Margaret" and "dressed" (in fact there are at least 50 places in this piece that need a comma; I got all the way up to 30 by the time I was halfway through the story), describing Margaret as "more dressed" is uninspired at best and halting (in the "I will stop reading this broke-rear end story" sense) at worst. This was a good chance to set the scene a bit and describe what she was wearing; it could have even contributed to our knowledge of the character through show as opposed to tell. But at the VERY LEAST, you could have said "fully dressed" or really just "dressed," because OF COURSE she's going to be "more" dressed since the last time we saw her she was just "partially" dressed. It's laborious, and in turn boring as poo poo. And on a more subjective, superficial note, what the hell kind of name is "Dylan" for a king of a foreign land? (Let me be clear: I can easily imagine myself making many of the same mistakes that I criticize others for. I am absolutely a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy; by all means, think me a hypocrite, but please don't think that I lack self-awareness.) Bad Seafood posted:Engine Trouble (687 words) Now THIS was a cool little sketch. Let's just go to the highlight reel: quote:Carmine had always had a good fifteen inches on Tanis, not that she minded too Bam. In a few lines I get a solid picture of the characters, a sense of their rapport (I love the rapport in general), and a strong sense of how connected they are. Aside from the one (I felt) somewhat unnecessary word I struck out, I can learn from this; nicely done. quote:“You’re sure?” For some reason I can imagine people having trouble with "preeeetty." Maybe you could have italicized the word, maybe you could've described how the word was pronounced through attribution ("...drawing out the "re" sound..."), or both. Your choice keeps the banter going at a nice clip, though, and I think it's a good call. quote:“Then she’s dead Jim, and that’s all you need to know.” You were probably going for a certain cadence by dropping the commas, but it came off a bit labored. You could probably also do with a comma after "dead," but I think you can get away with leaving it off if you want to keep the pace up. quote:“ The biker's dialogue, in general, doesn't ring as nicely as Carmine's and Tanis's. It does a great job of setting him apart as a character, but it comes off as trying too hard. In this bit, I'd drop the "Ah ha ha" and describe his laughter through prose. "Stranger" feels redundant because "errant rear end in a top hat" communicates that better. (Changing "I've" to "I" is more of a subjective stylistic tic that you're free to ignore.) More commas in general wouldn't hurt: say your dialogue out loud, see where the pauses are, start from there. The comma that I added should help you understand a bit; it separates the "if" from the "then" in the biker's line of logic. quote:It was here Tanis interrupted them, her voice just above a whisper. "Interrupted" implies that she's breaking into the conversation in a visible way, which I'm not sure you're going for. I'd find a word or words that imply an interjection under the biker's nose. quote:“Carmine?” And a great ending, but if you want to make it even better, find a way to give a quick, clear picture of how Carmine and Tanis would nab the bike after the story's close; put some dots into play throughout the story and let the reader connect them. (Unless you did just that and I kind of suck at reading.) Really, a great job. I'm glad I read this. swaziloo posted:Amber Grove (725 words) I wish I had more to say. It was very well written; a bit slight, I really wish I had a better sense of who Jean is, but that may have been due to a failure to connect on my end. In all you did a great job sketching out this world in short strokes -- something else I can learn from. Symptomless Coma posted:In The Kingdom. 1049w. I stumbled a bit on your mention of "Top Trunks" at the very beginning since I didn't know what that was (and it hasn't seemed to factor into the story at large), but I've got a few semi-oblique football terms in my story, so I'd have to be a real rear end in a top hat to hold that against you. Anyway, excellent work; loved the ways Andy and Lucia could playfully tease each other, and how that laid the ground for how effectively they could snipe at each other when angry. (It speaks volumes that, looking back, Lucia was the only one who hit with any low blows, yet I somehow think Andy is equally capable of delivering one himself if pushed.) You also did great work economically setting up the natural arachnologist / mammalogist conflict; it paid off in dividends by informing the couple's playfully argumentative nature and setting up that fantastic ending. One minor formatting quibble: you could be a little more generous with the line breaks. I don't know if I can explain this correctly: I consider single-spaced lines of text and dialogue to be paragraphs. And as paragraphs, they should ideally encompass a, let's just say "rounded part" of an argument; one solid idea or subject that is part of a cohesive whole. For instance, the paragraph above covered all the things I liked about the story, and now with this paragraph, I'm getting into my criticisms. Or more accurately, I'm describing (or failing to describe) how to use paragraphs in this paragraph, and I'll use the next paragraph (or really, lines, since I'm breaking it up with quotations) to explain how you can better take advantage. I'll give you a few seconds to get your bearings straight. Now, let's look at this chunk of text: quote:I hadn’t known of the arachnologist/mammalogist wars when I first met Lucia, in the dolorous canteen of the American Zoological Conference, 1992. I was trying to gulp down a stale sandwich, she was trying to find a payphone. You're cramming multiple ideas and sections of an argument into one paragraph. We have the first meeting of the two lovers (and on that: personally, I'd put Andy's dialogue on that first line, but that's me), then we have the explanation of the inherent rift between the two lovers, segueing back into their first night together, then we have a bit of their banter, and then as time passes, we also honor that with a new paragraph (which, again, I would probably cut down to one line). Look at how much cleaner it reads when I break it up, ignoring the two suggestions I made to compress the space (allowing for it to be a stylistic choice -- more on that in a bit). quote:I hadn’t known of the arachnologist/mammalogist wars when I first met Lucia, in the dolorous canteen of the American Zoological Conference, 1992. I was trying to gulp down a stale sandwich, she was trying to find a payphone. Now, you compression could have been a stylistic choice that flew WAY the hell over my head, making this crit condescending as hell, and if that's the case I apologize. (If nothing else, you show that you clearly know how to use paragraphs in the final section.) But on the off-chance this was something you hadn't grasped before, maybe pointing that out can help. But really, that was a lot of space for such a minor quibble. Great job. sebmojo posted:Chandrasekhar The ending was a bit much and I'm not sure it was in the spirit of the prompt (if within the letter). And personally -- personally -- I think first person ended up working against you; I wanted a more objective sense of who Nicole was. Don't get me wrong, you did better than at least one entrant, but for the purposes of this prompt (which I guess should only matter to the judges, and it's more than possible that they don't give a poo poo), I didn't want to meet her from the perspective of a guy who was drunk in love with her and stoned out of his gourd on top of that. Less objectively, you also lean a little too much on simile ("...compressing down like hydrogen in the heart of a star..."), even crossing into cliche at one point ("...the water blue as a baby's eyes."). I have the same problem; we both have to work to cut down on that, it muddles our stories a bit too much. However, bits like this... quote:I lifted my hand in her direction, palm out, tilted it back and forth. The warm breeze skirled about my fingers, and I did it again. Aw, that was nice. Like fishing for butterflies in a river of air [another use of simile, but one that I liked]. gently caress, I was high. ...do a great job setting mood and atmosphere, I find, and reveal some real potential. Whatever you're doing to sharpen your skills, keep at it. Noah posted:Monday Nights I like this in theory; a portrait of a couple that's settled in for the long haul on an average Monday night. The main problem is you don't really do anything interesting with it. The characters don't really have any emotional definition outside of some surface references to David just having moved to California for Nancy, and that gives us absolutely no reason to connect with them or watch them have fun. I'm not saying you need to come up with this deep, tragic backstory for the two of them that makes this scene nice to watch in contrast. I'm actually fascinated by human beings in their element, so this story should work for me at least if you just make David and Nancy into human beings. It's much harder than I make it sound, but it's certainly doable. Just take a step back; ask yourself why you're so fascinated with the idea of showing an average, relatively uneventful Monday night in the life of this couple. If you just want to see people happy, then ask yourself why that is. Build your sketch around the answer you come up with. V for Vegas posted:Last Day - 670 Not bad! It's underbaked, but I liked how you took what one can easily imagine to be a low point in someone's life and turned it into something sweet and affirming, with just the slightest touch of appropriate melancholy. I can tell that this store meant a lot to Kate, and I can tell that she's surviving this strictly on James' support. I like how he teases her over reflexively multiplying any number by 13; it serves the dual purpose of establishing him as good-humored while also being sensitive (by not directly engaging her about the shutdown -- he does later, but it goes too far in that way that people sometimes do without thinking; it feels real), while also giving the reader a glimpse into Kate; we see that retail is practically in her blood. Again, though, it's a little underbaked in ways I can't really help with. For instance, the dialogue, while aimed in a truthful direction, doesn't quite feel natural; they just read like words to me, not really defined by who's speaking. If you're going for a certain detached feeling then it kinda works, but still. I wish I could be more specific. Just keep working on the craft, man; you've got some ground on a LOT of people with the same problem. Jeza posted:Milk and Honey - Word Count: 1058 drat, you're good. You do a great job building atmosphere from the very first sentence, you do a less-great-but-still-solid job of defining your characters, you set up an interesting premise with high stakes. With another pass this is a nice warm blanket of a story on a cold rainy day (to further beat a cliche into the ground). The reason I say "another pass" is that I think you lose your way a bit when you get into Elsa and Sarah's history. The main narrative drive of the story is that Elsa got into another stupid fight with Sarah, she hasn't come home yet, and she's so worried that she's pushed her past the brink that she needs to go find her herself and tell her how sorry she is. You did such a good job setting that up that I didn't need to hear about their past and how they met; it tells us the kind of person Sarah is and informs where Elsa goes to look, but that's stuff that, with a little work, you can neatly weave into the main narrative of Elsa's frantic search. You can take this stuff with a grain of salt, though; as it stands, I think it's wonderful and a solid contender for Thunderdome winner. --- I'll try to knock out some more crits later tonight, but let me just say: great prompt, Echo Cian! DivisionPost fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Feb 18, 2013 |
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Feb 18, 2013 21:16
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Fanky Malloons posted:Way to blame others for your own failure. I demand that you and Martello engage in a Well...I mean, since you didn't produce, you have no ground to stand on, right? So it sounds like you can't make that request. But I did produce. Assuming experience isn't a factor (it might be a benefit in this case since I'm unaware of any history between these two), and also assuming my submission didn't completely suck rear end, I'd be game to make the same request and also volunteer as the impartial judge. Just somebody else let me know if this is cool, and I'll start thinking of a prompt.
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Feb 19, 2013 00:02
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Fanky Malloons posted:Don't question me, you turd Ohhhhh gently caress I just saw that you're one of Those Deemed Worthy. Please accept my deepest apologies. Fanky Malloons posted:This is cool though, but you should totally use Sitting Here's prompt I don't know. I mean, I hate to question you again but look at it this way: if I do that, then if Heretic doesn't produce he can just use the same "I'M SO UNCOMFORTABLE" excuse when he doesn't show up. It'd be more humiliating if I give him and Martello a different prompt and he still doesn't come through. If you don't agree, then I completely respect your right to overrule me and change the prompt as needed. But if you're cool...then here's my prompt:  THUNDERBRAWL HereticMIND vs. Martello The Prompt You two are to write your own stories about the first meeting between two young lovers, taking place on Planet Earth between the years of 1983 and 1998. Your characters must be no younger than 12, no older than 15. Obviously, it goes without saying that you will not write a sex scene. Echo Cian's rules for her prompt still apply. You will SHOW US the seeds of a loving, beautiful relationship. You may not TELL US. You may not use phrases like "I think I'm in love" or "I'm falling for you" or any of that poo poo. You will demonstrate through narrative and carefully crafted dialogue. You will do it within 1250 words (I'm giving you an extra fifty), and assuming the terms are agreed upon, you will hand it in within 48 hours, starting from the time of this post. Is it agreed? Or did Sitting Here just beat me to it? EDIT: If this prompt is accepted, I will invite Sitting Here and Fanky Malloons to co-judge with me, out of respect for their veteran standing here. DivisionPost fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Feb 19, 2013 |
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Feb 19, 2013 00:25
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HereticMIND posted:I ACCEPT AND CAST THE DIE OF FATE. You can accept all you like, I'm waiting for an OK from Fanky Malloons and, I suppose, Sitting Here. You may have to bite the bullet and write the sex scene, bud.
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Feb 19, 2013 00:32
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Martello posted:Yup. Heretic mind, stop posting bullshit and start writing your posthuman sex scene. This, but I'm backing out of judging. Y'all can get your post-human freak on without me.
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Feb 19, 2013 00:39
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HereticMIND posted:BLOOD MUST FLOW. Shut the gently caress up and get this over with so I and everyone else can get some feedback on the poo poo they busted their rear end on.
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Feb 19, 2013 00:53
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Sitting Here posted:We're not delaying because of this, I'm just waiting for my cojudge to make the final verdict. Crits will follow not too long after that. That's good, and I'm sorry if I'm out of line. But I motion that he still shut the gently caress up and get this over with.
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Feb 19, 2013 00:57
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