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Jan 9, 2019 00:36
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794 words Amphisbaena . The World is a Rat archives flerp fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Jan 13, 2019 23:37
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Pham Nuwen posted:Yeah but the prompt tho
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Jan 15, 2019 23:09
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steeltoedsneakers posted:Right? hello this week's prompt sucks ill fight u 
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Jan 17, 2019 03:32
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week 336 crits ive written too many words on too few stories but i dont want them to go to waste. i will probably, eventually, write crits of more stories this week and they will probably, unfortunately, be as in-depth Dolash Ok, let’s talk about something called “active voice.” Let’s look at this sentence and I’ll explain why it’s bad quote:The words of Peter's sister still rang in his ears as he dug through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck's passing. So, when you read this sentence, the first noun is “words” and our brains go ok that’s the subject of the sentence. BUT! That’s actually not the true subject, because the actual subject, the person doing things in the sentence, is Peter. This is why the sentence is passive -- the object of the sentence comes first, and then the subject comes later. The sentence would be better as quote:Peter heard his sister’s voice in his head as he dug through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck’s passing. Notice two things. First, The action is immediate. Peter is hearing something immediately and gives the protagonist more agency. In the first sentence, it’s like something is happening to Peter. In the second, Peter is now doing something, even if it’s just hearing. Subtle, but it makes the sentence more engaging. The second thing is that it cuts down word count. It’s two words less, which might not seem like a lot, but flash fiction is all about doing as much as possible in as little space as possible, so cutting down two words while making the sentence stronger gives you two more words to work with later on in the story. Besides passive voice problem throughout, the story itself is decent. It’s mostly just an action piece, with adequate buildup and release. It’s fine in the sense that a hour long car drive is fine if there’s no traffic, but it isn’t going to actually be memorable in any way. The character is just kind of there for the action to happen to w/o really any personality. It’s a lil odd that he’s out here to hunt, he gets into a spot to kill an animal, and then doesnt. The line “weighing the cost of returning home empty-handed” also makes me think he’s hunted before so it’s weird that he’s just like “well, ima just not shoot these deer” with no explanation of why. And the resolution is that the buck is lying there next to the water, vulnerable, so there’s an implication that Peter learned to not hurt animals from his encounter with magic stag, but he already did that earlier so there’s not really a lesson learned, right? Maybe im reading the ending wrong, but otherwise, the ending is just “there’s some deer around too” and like okay i guess thats an image but does it mean anything? Oh yeah, and your first two lines don’t really make any sense because it being the royal forest never comes into play. Or the sister. Or like, anything. Cut your first paragraph. Bolt Crank Off the bat, there’s a pretty big flaw, in that most of the beginning doesnt really make sense if you dont know the characters are hedgehogs. You only drop that in like four or five lines down, and then im like ohhhhhhh and i have to reread the rest of the lines to be like oh ok thats what was up. There shouldn’t be this many characters. In flash, you barely have time to flesh out one character. Please, do not have four characters. The really big problem with this story, though, is that it doesn’t focus on a character for a very long time. At the start, I can’t figure out if Parosh or Fior are the protagonist, since they seem to have equal weight, and there doesn’t seem to be any attempt to distinguish one from the other. They both speak pretty similarly, are equally mean to each other, have the same motivations, etc etc. So, when the story has Fior become the protagonist it felt jarring because i was like whoa ok i guess Fior is the protag now??? And then, you do this: quote:Shortly after Fior leaves, the naked Gruyere begins to feel the seeping chill of the autumn air. This is very subtly bad, and, contextless, doesnt look like it should be bad. But, read through your story, and you’ll realize, nearly all your descriptions of things are all observable. That is, none of your descriptions involve a character’s perception or feeling. Your narrator was third person objective throughout the entire piece. And now, all of a sudden, we know what Gruyere feels, which is very jarring and strange. BUT the bigger problem with this is that Gruyere is just a supporting character. He isn’t established as a protagonist, or even as an especially important character besides having shiny stuff, so it’s weird that now that you’ve finally decided to put us in the headspace of the character, you don’t give us Fior’s perspective (the protagonist), or even Parosh’s (the antagonist). You instead put us into the headspace of a boring side character. The resolution is really bad, but it shows a thought process that makes me hopeful. You know that it would be too cliche to have the story end with Fior getting the girl, and you know Parosh would be too predictable as well. So instead, you try to subvert both of those expectations and try to surprise us with Gruyere being Ourra’s choice. However, the problem is that isn’t foreshadowed. Hell, I didn’t even know they were trying to gently caress Ourra. I actually thought Ourra was an elder that they were trying to impress (probably because of how incredibly overwrought ALL of your dialogue was). But like, the ending is surprising in the same way that a car accident running over a protagonist is a surprising ending. You literally couldn’t predict it because Gruyere just kinda showed up and Ourra was like i guess ill have pity on you and also ill shake off all of my spines for some reason and become a naked mole rat. And then the resolution being Parosh’s and Fior’s relationship developing into something positive is, in some sense, a good idea, but it’s heavily rushed. It just comes out of nowhere because they were at each other’s throats for the whole story and then IMMEDIATELY they become friends. It’s a bad ending in it’s execution, but the actually ideas surrounding the ending are not actually bad. If it was executed better, it might’ve worked, which is a pretty good thing. Yoruichi This a decent piece. I think, ultimately, the problem is that Bram isn’t forced to learn anything. He helps the stoat and they breed like crazy and eat all the birds. That’s fine, and it can have an actual character development where Bram realizes ok yeah maybe my grandfather is right, maybe we have to kill things for a reason. BUT Bram doesnt actually have to come to that realization. Because, the consequences of Bram’s earlier actions are not solved by Bram, but by his grandfather. So, we get a story where a kid does a stupid thing, and then his grandfather does what he does, and there ultimately isnt much change in this story. That’s not to say that the story has to end on Bram realizing that sometimes you have to kill things, and that life isnt sacred, or whatever. It can end on Bram coming to the opposite conclusion. The problem is that Bram makes a decision, and the interesting part about decisions are the consequences. So, what I want to see, is how Bram deals with those consequences. In some sense, it doesn’t matter what Bram actually learns from this, as long as he seems to learn something and whatever he learned, he translates that into an action. But instead, the grandfather makes a decision for him, and while maybe you couldve explored that dynamic, you dont. It builds up to Bram making a decision, and being forced to see what his decision did, but then it isnt resolved by Bram then doing something about the consequences. It’s solved by somebody else. Also, the ending line made me physically wince at how unearned it is. Or, at least, how unrelated it is to the whole entire piece. The reason the ending line doesn’t work is because it seems to end on this kind of bittersweet relationship between grandchild and grandfather, but the thrust of the story is not focused on said relationship. So the ending doesn’t work because it doesn’t provide an ending to the real story. The story ended, mostly, before the scene break. HopperUK You set up the mother as a kind person, helping the poor and all of the cool stuff. And then you set up the reason why people hate her as “she did not govern her tongue around those she thought foolish.” Now, I’m not saying that that’s unrealistic or whatever, but it creates some really weird situations. One, is that the mother is a virtuous person who goes out of their way to help everyone. And then she dies and curses them all to die and even the people who try to put out the fire die and she poison the wells and its like wait what didnt she try to help these people????? And then the mother tears out the guy’s throat with her loving teeth? There’s an odd disconnect between moments in this story, and it can be kinda explained as it being told not wholly accurately because it’s the sister recounting the story, but it still is jarring. Like, even just imagining a woman ripping out a guy’s throat. That seems like something that would be a lot harder than it sounds but i cannot say from experience and im nervous to google the answer. But really, this creates a problem where you’ve established the mother as a kind, caring person whose character flaw is “kind of a dick to some people” BUT THEN she curses the entire village??? That doesn’t make sense. However, it might make sense if we look at it thematically, through the lens of the town’s anger transforming this kind person into a witch so petty that she curses the entire village to die. But if that’s the case, the anger of the village is neither adequately explained, nor is it made very detailed. I’m not saying the anger needs to be 100% logical. It doesnt. But, there’s no motivation for the anger. The rich man just doesn’t like the mother. Like, there’s not even an excuse for not liking the mother. There doesn’t need to be a reason that makes sense for his anger. There probably shouldn’t be a logical reason for his anger. But it needs to exist because anger doesnt exist for no reason, and if it does exist for no reason, there’s usually some way a person justifies that anger to themselves. So, even if that anger is that he thinks she’s a witch, and then there’s a famine, and then he’s like “ah you see this is what witches do” and then ok that shows an irrational, but real, sense of anger. But the other problem, which is that you don’t show the anger, creates the largest problem in this story. I like this idea -- a caring witch who helped others becomes hated by the community, and the anger of the community transformed the witch herself, and decides to curse the community itself of help it (it reminds me of DocKloc’s Bone Loom). But the problem is that the execution doesn’t work when we don’t actually see the vivid anger, the pain the mother might’ve felt to see the people she help turn against her. Without being able to see it, the transition from kind person who goes out of their way to help the poor to murderous witch who wants everyone to die feels sudden and jarring. also, big problem, you don’t ever show the mother's flaw. You just say it exists and people hate her for it, but “she did not govern her tongue around those she thought foolish” can mean a lot of things. She could be like “hey you’re a dumb butt” or she could be like “you are a scourge of the land, your existence is meaningless, i hope you suffer for all eternity, and everyone would be happier if they knew you did not exist.” Without being able to see the character flaw in detail, we have to assume information, and it also establishes the mother as a super kind person who helps everyone, but is hated for no real reason. I’m not saying she needs to be a massive dick, but being giving us details about how she actually acts, we can see some motivation for disliking her, even if the reader themself doesn’t dislike her. Pham Nuwen This is cute, but cute only does so much. The story is overall pretty boring even if the conceit itself is kind of interesting. Ultimately, the big problem with the story is that while the idea is neat --- a guy says he dreams every that comes true, but really the gang he’s in make it true -- why does it matter? Your protag is just there. He says a little thing to be like “oh im here because i cant get work” but that motivation is weak and, ultimately, just a shallow excuse to get somebody new into the group so you have a reason to have exposition be directed to him. The story hinges itself on the conceit, but a conceit does not make a story. It needs to have something bigger than just a kind of neat concept, because it doesn’t actually engage in any meaningful way. It’s a satisfying story, in the sense that it’s “twist” is adequately foreshadowed and feels good, but when you try to engage with the story in a more intellectual way -- is the plot entertaining? Are the characters interesting? Are there themes or other ideas? Is the prose interesting? -- there’s not much there to actually unpack. The disappointing bit is that the story end right when the story gets actually interesting. I think there’s stuff to actually unpack in this story, but you focused on ending the story on the twist, when what’s actually interesting is exploring what that twist means. How does the protag deal with this relevation? (Actually, that question is bad because your protag is a nobody with no motivations, but let’s assume the protag actually has motivation as a thought experiment. Like imagine if he joins because he thinks El Oso can dream up a cure for his mother’s illness and it’s like oh shiet hes a loving liar). What comes of El Oso’s lies? Why does the gang follow El Oso if they basically have to make El Oso’s dreams come true? It ends in an actually unsatisfying way because it doesnt resolve anything meaningful. Yes, okay, we learning he’s kind of lying, but what does that mean. How does that affect the narrator in any way, or the group, or el oso, or anything? The story becomes even more aggressively clear that it’s only about the conceit when, once you reveal the twist, it ends. You “resolved” the story by answering the core question: are the dreams real of fake? But the reality is that that resolution doesnt actually give us any closure onto the story. Nothing really changes, as it seems like the gang is just the way it’s always been and the protag doesnt change at all besides knowing El Oso has basically been lying the whole time. So what? There’s things to explore, but you don’t push the concept far enough to actually be engaging.
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Jan 20, 2019 19:06
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ok whatever its not technically active voice but it still sucks and is a problem and yes sometimes active voice is overemphasized (which is also why i critiqued other parts of the story) but in an action story having weird sentences that are close to passive makes action feel stilted and bad and now your actions story’s action feels bad. i also explain why it’s bad, it’s not like i only say “this is not active so it’s bad” but whatever go off i guess im not brawling over dumb pedantic poo poo like “this isnt technically this phrase” when i describe why it’s bad to begin with flerp fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 16:30
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im willing to have this discussion somewhere else because i dont think the thread is a good place for it and kayfabe is going to get in the way and also its just making GBS threads up the thread more. i shouldve said this to begin with rather than reply as i did (or ignored it) but what’s done is done. if you want, you can bring this into FA if you rly wanna have a larger talk about it, or ill try to be in IRC tonight if you want. but this thread isnt the place for it
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Jan 22, 2019 18:49
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Jan 23, 2019 05:27
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1000 words fortune cookies are bullshit anyways archives flerp fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Jan 28, 2019 07:20
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Jan 29, 2019 17:46
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personally, im dead
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Jan 31, 2019 03:15
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nah
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Jan 31, 2019 04:49
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toesbrawl 673 words same but unironically archive flerp fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Feb 1, 2019 06:00
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Saucy_Rodent posted:
yeah crits are good in
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Feb 5, 2019 04:13
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 1200 words A Rifle Isn’t a Maybe Kind of Thing Though archives flerp fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Feb 11, 2019 07:16
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Sitting Here posted:This is a good post! Much better than piling on with empty quotes, in a writing thread, where you are supposed to use your own original words to express your ideas.
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Feb 19, 2019 20:43
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Saucy_Rodent posted:
Thranguy posted:In for the brawl, saucy_thranugy brawl your entry will not be a story and it will not be cyberpunk (it will be proofread though). the prompt is: "wasps, but good." do w/ that whatever you feel like. remember, dont write me a story 750 words due feb 28th 11:59pm pst
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Feb 20, 2019 03:49
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yeah in
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Feb 26, 2019 16:21
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in
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Mar 5, 2019 21:38
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flash plz
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Mar 6, 2019 21:52
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saucy thranguy results thranguy wins mostly because i like the comparision of wasps and atomic bombs. you almost lost because you said wasps die when they sting which they dont and normally i wouldnt be mad about that except thats what your entire poem is based on!!!!!!!!!!! but thranguy's ultimately flows better than rodent's and rodent's central idea of "we need bad things for there to be good things" is alright, but played out. thranguy's take on comparing human nature to a wasp's hosed-upness is a lot more original. i do wish u had toned down on the philosophizing tho.
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Mar 8, 2019 04:25
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Your authoritarian believes in samsara. 816 words The Moth archives flerp fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Mar 11, 2019 04:54
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in flash
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Mar 12, 2019 04:52
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third outsider brawl third asked for a horror prompt, so instead, youre going to give me a feel good story where everyone is happy. also, it's about a flower shop due 3/28 11:59 pm pst 1250 words
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Mar 15, 2019 20:40
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The witching hour is more powerful than most people know. It's also not when most people think it is. 1180 words If cats don’t go to heaven, then what’s the point? archives flerp fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 22:53
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onsetoutsider skunk story crit this is rather low effort, which the ending gives away very heavily. and i think it's obvious why the ending doesnt work. you set up a kind of horror-adjacent idea -- an ever growing pile of skunks -- and end it with a dude yelling "Sir Stinky the Smell-nifiscent" so yeah anyone could tell you didnt try with this ending. having your character die of a brain hemorrhage is also somehow even worse than the predictable answer of "getting murdered by a creepy weirdo in the woods" because now the story doesnt even teach a valuable lesson like "dont follow skunk carcasses into the woods and knock on the door of a cabin where the skunk carcasses seem to be coming from." anyways, ending bad, so what. the rest of the story is relatively decent, but it meanders way too much. like, you couldve cut the first paragraph, and just made the first line be "there was a big ol' skunk pile," and this is already a story where barely anything happens. the other thing is you set up the skunk pile as being something supernatural -- dead things not smelling or even having flies is not natural at all -- but the ending doesnt pay that off at all. it's just a dude in the cabin. why arent the corpses smelling or decaying or covered in flies? the answer is, of course, you were lazy. however, your character has no reason to do anything. she stops at the skunk pile because ????? and then she follows the skunks into the woods because ???? and then she enters the cabin because "well, i came this far already, might as well" which doesnt work because she wasnt motivated to do anything of this to begin with. again, another tell-tale sign of laziness. the character just does things because the plot needs to happen and it's very self evident. and, of course, your character has no character. they do things because you know characters are supposed to do things in stories. the initial buildup to the skunk pile is decent, although the first paragraph is v wordy, you build into something resembling tension as you slowly ramp up the weirdness. hell, it mightve staved off a loss if it had an ending that was more interesting than "creepy dude in the woods" and had at least some kind of supernatural element that justified the skunks not smelling. it all completely deflates at the ending, of course, but the tension is there. but the protag doesnt matter and the ending doesnt matter and nothing really matters in this story, as i think we all know,
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Mar 19, 2019 02:10
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in flash
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Mar 22, 2019 23:29
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Your story is told as a series of letters. 993 words To the gods it may concern archives flerp fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Mar 25, 2019 05:31
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Mar 27, 2019 21:11
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flerp posted:third outsider brawl per a mutually agreed upon request, deadline is 3/29 11:59pm pst now
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Mar 28, 2019 15:09
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that was pretty easy to judge third gave me a pretty neat bees kidnapping loved ones story that had pretty solid prose, but shouldve started where it ended. onset gave me about every cliche in the rom-com book. third wins handily longer crits later
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Mar 30, 2019 16:38
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ThirdEmperor posted:welp that's five brawl wins in a row https://thunderdome.cc/?story=7264&title=The+Moth tia
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Mar 30, 2019 17:29
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1466 words It Runs in the Family archives flerp fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Apr 1, 2019 06:29
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 dog week 2: this time, you actually write something i won and everyone disappointed me last time i won so it's dog week, again. you go to this website http://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/ and you pick a dog and link it in your sign up post (or you can have me/a cojudge pick a dog). no repeats. your story must include this dog UNLESS you . if you do toxx, then u can just be inspired by said dog. if you have a chihuahua, it can be set in mexico, if it's a fluffy white dog, somebody can be fluffy and white, etc. also, no dogs may die as that is illegal. additional rules: no poetry, no google docs, no erotica, fiction only. also, all dogs are good and this is a very strict rule. word count: 1000 words sign ups close friday 11:59 PM PST submission close sunday 11:59 PM PST judges me Salgal80 Fleta Mcgurn people who are going to write words and arent going to fail Thranguy https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/schapendoes/ Chili https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/newfoundland/onsetOutsider https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/alaskan-malamute/ kurona_bright https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/japanese-chin/Anomalous Blowout https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/saluki/ Nethilia https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/rottweiler/ Sitting Here https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/samoyed/ animist https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/australian-kelpie/anatomi https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/czechoslovakian-vlcak/Flesnolk https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/lowchen/Simply Simon https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/mastiff/ Nikaer Drekin https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/st-bernard/ Lippincott https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/rat-terrier/ Yoruichi https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/golden-retriever/Tyrannosaurus https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/bluetick-coonhound/ flerp fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 20:49
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Thranguy posted:In, flash. https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/schapendoes/ kurona_bright posted:
https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/japanese-chin/
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Apr 3, 2019 05:17
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Flesnolk posted:I wanna judge dog week you failed the last four times you entered. i want you to write. doesnt have to be this week, but still. thunderdome is about writing. Fleta Mcgurn posted:I am also down to judge. welcome aboard
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Apr 3, 2019 17:46
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Flesnolk posted:>:| https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/lowchen/
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Apr 4, 2019 01:45
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brawl crits third this is good, in the way that it's a solid intro, but when u rly dig into the story, it's rather lacking. not because it doesn't work, it works well enough, but that the story opens up a lot of questions and doesnt resolve rly any of them. why are bees stealing people? why did hugo want to go with the bees? why did bees kidnap/borrow/take other people? what's the dang point of all of this? im not asking for all of these questions to be resolved, but even then, the ending just kinda happens. it's like, welp, they reunited, so that's the end, roll credits. but like, there's so many questions here that this feels mostly incomplete, to be quite honest. it doesnt really resolve and it feels like an introduction to a larger narrative that we dont get to see any of. i dont have much more to say, tbh, just because i think this is technically fine and i could nitpick the hell out of it if i rly wanted to, but there's more here that needs to be explored. i guess prompt-wise, this was a bit lacking. i dont rly care about the flower shop thing because that's not rly a big deal, but a character who thinks their husband was kidnapped by bees? i dont think thats a happy person. but i dont rly care that much, and you wrote a better story, so hey, grats. onset onsetOutsider posted:Flower shop story so yeah, this story technically has the pieces of a story. it has characters that sort of have motivations, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, there's a conflict. but like, when u look at all the pieces, none of it matters. none of the characters are interesting or even close to having any depth, the narrative is basically forced while also being cliched as hell, and the conflict is resolved just kind of randomly by making it "oh they actually liked each other the whole time even though there was indication of that at all."
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Apr 5, 2019 04:33
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Lippincott posted:In for this week because dogs. https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/rat-terrier/
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Apr 5, 2019 18:56
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| # ¿ May 23, 2025 00:29 |
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sign ups closed please write words for me!
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Apr 6, 2019 08:11
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