Improving our 75 Word Stories -- READ FIRST POST

[Tisiphone]

Wow - very much appreciate the feedback guys. Thanks for taking the time to review the piece.

It was difficult to build the genre in to the piece and therein lies the challenge. Easy to get waylaid when you think you have a story to tell but I will bear that in mind for the current challenge.

Maybe I was trying to achieve too much, to tell the story and deliberately not mentioning any colour but trying to let ones mind conjour them up with words (and being too cliche in the process) and yes I realise that the link was tenuous.

The quality of the writing is very high within the competitions - I just hope that over the coming months I can improve.

 

[choccoweeble]

There were a number of stories I liked this month that didn't capture the theme enough, but it was very tricky to get it in there in 75 words - I think the science fantasy element in my own was a little subtle. I'd be interested to know people's thoughts.

Saved

My toe traced elaborate patterns in the parched earth.


“Tlaloc to Gunga Din, Over”


“Receiving, Over”


“Operational in one minute. Ensure the collection devices are in place, Over and Out”


Streams of ethereal energies poured from the device tethered high in the atmosphere.


Agonising moments staring at a hazy sky.


Then, it gradually faded into view.


Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet.


It worked.


A single tear hit my shoe milliseconds before the torrent.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think it is an idea for us to remind everyone about the importance of theme and genre when it comes to voting, though, and we'll try and remember to do that when the polls open -- though experience tells us that not everyone reads what we post...

Maybe we can post the theme and genre in the first post of the voting thread. Not that everyone will pay attention even then, but it might make a little difference.

 

[Mouse]

choccoweeble, I didn't understand yours at all. But, I don't ever understand that many of the entries.

Regarding voting - I always take into consideration theme and genre. But last month I had no idea what the flipping heck 'science fantasy' was, so I just voted for the story I liked the best.

 

[Arkose]

Here I ago again. I tried simplifying what I was saying to get the grammar under control.

Reviewing my story again, I have no idea why I interrupted at "alg," and not just finish it off with "algae." I also wouldn't have used preceptor.

Magical Effects on Water Quality

With both hands, I lowered my staff and sent a pulse of red magic into the water. The lake flashed a purple hue, and I could see dead fish starting to litter the surface.

“What the hell?” I wondered, my nose catching a whiff of rotten eggs.

Mr. Nally, my preceptor, yanked the staff away.

“But the alg..”

“You idiot,” Mr. Nally interrupted, “blue-green algae absorbs red magic; increasing toxicity, not killing it.”



Choco: I agree with Mouse.
Springs: I liked it, but I didn't get your use of the science part of the theme.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@TJ; now I need a story; eek , and the semi colons didn't quite work (plus there was a badly placed comma in the last line you generously didn't mention) Petals would have been tons better in place of the last flower.. @arkose, yep, I thought the theme got a little lost, or rather was a bit subtle...

with the Alg, I thought it should end with a - to show interruption.

Chocco, I read it as a sort of rain making machine, but didn't get the sci-fantasy angle Sorry.

 

[Hex]

Regarding voting - I always take into consideration theme and genre. But last month I had no idea what the flipping heck 'science fantasy' was, so I just voted for the story I liked the best.

You made an excellent decision, Mouse.

choccoweeble -- afraid I didn't really understand. I thought it was a rainbow-making machine and the maker was crying (but now I see springs' interpretation that makes a lot more sense).

 

[StilLearning]

StilLearning -- I've no real comments about your piece from the other month, save that it reminded me forcibly of my 300 worder from last year! A good workmanlike story, but for me it didn't have the spark to push it into my shortlist when there were so many others of quality.

Thanks TJ. That's high praise, considering that it was the first piece of fiction I've ever written with the intent of someone else seeing it! 'Spark', or at least a reasonable facsimile of it, will come with practice I hope.

BTW, I'd like to state for the record that this months entry was in no way aimed at you!

 

[StilLearning]

I tell a lie: I had posted a short story before, in a different part of the forum. So it was my 2nd attempt.

 

[Alex The G and T]

Pass The Time


"What can we play besides chess, HAL?"

"Eat this Monolith, Dave"

"It's too tiny, between my fingers, to seem a 'Monolith', HAL"

"Yet, it's a magic window into an alternate universe, Dave."

***

"Open the Doors of Perception please, HAL"

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid that I can't do that. You must wait for about an hour."

***

"I'm beginning to feel like I'm falling, HAL"

"Have a nice trip, Dave."

"The Stars! All those pretty colors...."

 

[Parson]

Alex,

I think you got Hal's voice just right and using the definition that Science Fantasy is Science Fiction light on science, you got the genre right. But I did not understand the end at all.

Does Hal space Dave and he sees pretty colors in his head as he's dying? That did not seem right to me, but it was the best I could do.

Tisiphone,

I thought your story had a nice poetic feel to it, but I am with The Judge about modern poetry. I thought the girl was color blind, not actually blind.

Knowing she was blind would have made a world of difference for me.

I thought putting a "witch" in the story was confusing and made it Fantasy. "Witch" also felt like an added thing which did not advance the story at all.

Genre was trick but for your story I might have tried something like making the girl a time traveler from a person's future who brought color to a person who didn't appreciate color or something like that.

(Now that I understand that it was speaking about someone real to you it is much more poignant.)

 

[StilLearning]

Alex: Daves dropped a tiny monolith like an acid tab, which has given him an experiance very much like the actual second half of 2001: Trippy. Am I close?

 

[Alex The G and T]

Alex: Daves dropped a tiny monolith like an acid tab, which has given him an experiance very much like the actual second half of 2001: Trippy. Am I close?

Bingo.

I knew there would be a limited audience who would actually get that, in this day, age and venue; but such was my inspiration and the story I had to write.

The concept that the "light-show" sequence was heavily inspired by LSD was a given in California, at the time the movie was still being shown in theaters; and I was at an experimental age. };-}

(And a Laboratory product which creates fantasies seems, to me, to epitomize the name of the genre)

 

[Brev]

Bingo.

I knew there would be a limited audience who would actually get that, in this day, age and venue; but such was my inspiration and the story I had to write.

The concept that the "light-show" sequence was heavily inspired by LSD was a given in California, at the time the movie was still being shown in theaters; and I was at an experimental age. };-}

(And a Laboratory product which creates fantasies seems, to me, to epitomize the name of the genre)

Whoa...I wasn't even close to that one.

I got the HAL, monolith etc references to 2001, but that film for me is a hazy memory at best.

 

[hopewrites]

Your Going Where?
​

A fairy handed Hope a flyer,

Come to No Sense

​

In No Sense​

· Everything is free.​

· Everyone loves you as much as you love yourself.​

· Things that could hurt you, won’t.​

· Everything you wish was real, is.​

· Everyone looks out for your best interests.

​

Hurry Now! This incredible place can’t last forever*.

​

*Try our reality suspension elixir and keep No Sense with you wherever you go.​

“Sounds like bliss,” she muttered sarcastically, throwing it away.







I'd like to go ahead and put this up for critique. I wasnt sure if I got away with it being once sentence, or if my play on words was too predictable.
I do appreciate all the nice things people had to say about it, and am vary honored by the votes and mentions I got for it. Another "Thank you!" out for those.
Trying to improve my writing style so all advice and thoughts welcome. (Plus please help me learn grammar)

 

[chrispenycate]

I thought that putting it into flyerese, ie. grammar much less important than how it looked on the page, was definitely playing to your strengths; not, perhaps, quite as challenging as it might have been, but using the sloping playing field to your own advantage is a worthwhile thing to practice, too.
And the fact that nobody else fragmented the word suggests that in no sense was the idea obvious or banal.

The only concept I would question is "loves you as much as you love yourself". Even egocentric ol' me might balk at that, and for some here it would be condamnation to a cold, hateful company, only slightly better than "may you have the friends you deserve".

But I enjoyed it, and the lost grammar point was from the title:- "Your", the possesive pronoun, should have been "You're", the contraction of "You are".

And the comma after "A fairy handed Hope a flyer" is not really strong enough. There is no real conventional way to indicate an integrated document, but possibly a colon, or even a colon and an 'n' dash?

 

[hopewrites]

ah contractions, haven't thought about those in about 9 years...
in the original draft the statement "in No Sense" was repeated for each attribute, but it use lots of words that I was happy to get back by making a list out of it. I did have to requestion myself on each item on my list, and the one you mentioned got left in because I remember as a child assuming everyone loved me just as much as I loved my self. So running up to a stranger and demanding to be loved made perfect sense to me then, I've since learned better manners. Of course if I were to apply my current self-love (or heaven forbid the self-love I had 4 years ago) to that statement I can decidedly see how could be a boot to the teeth, rather than a cuddly inducement.

I must confess a fear of colons, I never know when to use them, and always feel I must be doing it wrong. But I will try to remember, in future, to think of them with less trepidation.

while I'm asking, should I have capitalized each line in the list, or allowed the dash to indicate they were to complete a sentience started by the bolded statement preceding the list?

 

[David Evil Overlord]

Theme: Innocence

Genre: Science Fiction or Fantasy

Distress Call​

First Contact. A beautiful beam of coherent light. A dying race’s distress call.

When Vraxial reached the planet, he stretched his limbs, and drank in alien sunlight. His tendrils tasted alien dirt. His senses caught an approaching alien tool-user.

The Uplifted dog had looted an axe from the dead Masters’ city, and was hurrying home. He paused long enough to innocently do to the alien tree what dogs have always done to trees.

 

[chrispenycate]

Punctuation (and capitalisation, and splitting into paragraphs) is there to reduce the effort involved in getting information off the printed page and into an almost audio format that is what we are most accustomed to. That way, the concentration can be put where it is most important; understanding the text itself.

Which means conventions are useful; the reader knows immediately where a concept ends and a new one is introduced, when a pause is minimal and when protracted; the sort of details I've been annoying people here with for several years.
However, certain layouts, certain organisations don't lend themselves to standardised techniques, and with the format you have chosen for this piece:- ideas neatly separated on individual lines, breathing spaces while each facet of the offer is studied, the actual symbols become more visual than communicative. I find the upper case line starts effective, but would have been quite satisfied with lower; it is not a situation where rigid rules are essential. Equally, if you're not confident with colons, don't use them; you are unlikely to find yourself in a situation where they are essential. A period there would be fine.
Contractions? They're (contraction of "they are") where you've (contraction of "you have") squeezed something not over important out, and you need to put an apostrophe in its place (without epidural). Lots of people on this site get the "your/you're" thing wrong, making me foam (gently) at the mouth. But grovelling apologies for the missing "s" in "possessive"

indicate they were to complete a sentience started by the bolded statement preceding the list?

Sentience? Intelligent figures of speech? (Sorry, couldn't resist).

 

[hopewrites]

yes I do try to give my figures of speach as much intelligence as I can, you wouldn't believe how often they run away with themselves. Again thank you for your help. (Only now it occurs to me to ask if the possessive you, like the possessive it is 'less?)



David: I loved the imagery you used, but it reads better the second time round. I was also quite distressed by my ideas of what use a dog may have for an ax. Imagining grim mass murders in the masters city I could not help questioning the innocence of his casual use of the tree. All in all I love when a story kidnaps my imagination and over runs its printed course, and respect the stories that finish before spilling over. I feel yours does both. For me the true innocent here is the alien, not the dog. How often i have made overreaching assumptions, attributing more malicious behavior than was intended to the words and deeds of others. It is only recently that I have learned to look with less biased eyes and bring myself back from the brink of war.
Perhaps I ask too much (always a failing with me, by seeing only the best in others, I come to expect their best) but I would have liked the first read to be as enjoyable as the second. I think I might be asking too much of the limited word count in this, as I have no ideas or suggestions for how you might do it.