Improving our 75 Word Stories -- READ FIRST POST

[Hex]

Hmm. You're going to love mine...

... if it helps (which it may not), after a few times getting them hopelessly wrong (magical realism springs to mind)* I've started looking them up online.

@TDZ -- I really liked your story. I nearly short-listed it (I had to go and look to check I didn't). Like TJ said, it didn't feel especially dark, which was why I didn't.


* actually, I'm pretty sure I looked up magical realism but it somehow didn't make it into the story

 

[Parson]

Parson quivers in fear. Goes to see if Hex has put the next challenge up.

 

[hopewrites]

Now that my computer is up and running again...

Ice-age Extinction
“Come back to bed Roth.”
Delicate fingers extended longingly from under a mountain of fur. Roth shivered.
“Not just yet” his voice quavered in the dark.

Snow fell.

When she slithered from under the bodies of her last meal, the wyvern saw Roth had sacrificed himself to the wall of ice locking them in the cave.

Disappointed she slithered back into the receding warmth of the stiffening mound of corpses. Spring would come…



I'd like to throw mine in. I think that because of the way I worded it, a twist I thought was clever was unclear.
The fingers stretched longingly belong to some female member of Roth's family. He couldnt save her or any of his family and in the end decides to join the wall of ice that has trapped them in with a monster of legend rather than give her one more body to feed on.
The idea being that wyvrens go extinct during an ice age when they get trapped in caves without food or heat. This one doesnt know she's the last of her kind and believes that she can just wait out what appears to be a longer than normal winter. Making Roth a tragic hero since it's his sacrifice that implies the end to a race of man-eating serpents.

I think the twist I tried to put in was too misleading. One is meant to think that the fingers are human and belong to the speaker, then realize that they do not belong to the speaker, but were part of her last meal and are a morbid warning of the fate that waits the central character.
The title is meant to belie the confidence and hope evident in the wyvrens acceptance of her reality. (or nonacceptance of it)

Aside from being misleadingly misleading, I dont know that it really hits the idea of Dark Fantasy.

I should have waited and wrote the story about the cold-cuts running stolen goods from the freezer to the pantry. Mafia Sliced Thin...
that was the idea that came too late, I sat down to write it and found I'd already posted. *Sigh*

 

[Parson]

Hope, Let me be honest. I was confused by yours from the beginning to the end. I got no sense of the story you were trying to portray. The back story you provided here, makes my like your story a lot better. --- Remember, I don't do myth and fantasy very well, so I might not be a good choice to rely on when evaluating your story.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Oops, missed seeing yours, hope!

I'm afraid I didn't get your intended story out of it. It sounded to me like he died trying to block the cold from coming in, and that he had some sort of relationship going with her. I don't have any picture in my head for "wyvern", so it wouldn't occur to me that the fingers didn't belong to her. I did get that she was going to die in the ice age, but I don't know that I would have thought that without the title, so good titling.

 

[Brev]

Popping mine up for scrutiny. Thoughts appreciated...


The Sleep Stalker

Daylight abates.
Night's creep; exponential.
Darkness arrives.
Nod's call enchants.
Damned, auld Nicnevin,
comes enters.

Dreams avow;
necrosis' cold embrace.
Demons attend necromantic conclave; entropic delusions abound.
Nefarious Covens; ethereal, dark aberrations.
Nightmares, cause endless despair
and ne'er cease ere daylight arrives.

Now commencing each dawn,
a new curse ensues;
days and nights cycle eternal.

Doom awaits,
none can escape.
Dare any now close eyes?
Daylight abates.
Night's chill, envelops.
Damned Auld Nicnevin, Comes Enters.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm not a poetry person, by and large, but i couldn't get the rhythm with this one at all, Brev. Sorry.

 

[Remedy]

Brev, ARGH!!!! So sorry. I have only just realised that D-A-N-C-E is spelled out again and again - its clever and cool. Should have been on my shortlist.

I was just about to say: "I couldn't see the theme in there anywhere." Silly me

 

[Parson]

Until I read Remedy's reply. I was also going to say "Where's the theme?" and for someone who's not steeped in myth, this went way over my head.

However, although I now see it as immensely clever, I still don't think it had "dance" at the center of it. It might have been better to give us a hint in the title something like "The D.A.N.C.E. of the Sleep Stalker."

 

[alchemist]

I spotted the DANCE early on but found the story difficult to follow, however many times I read it. Sorry

 

[jastius]

brev this is the mini-review i did for myself when i was thinking out my vote.

The Sleep Stalker -- Brev -- the daughter of the witch queen,the dark moon goddess visits her night madness upon folk caught up by her wild hunt... preying upon them in their dreams caught up into nightmares and madness. an endless dance of dreams..


personally i liked it. it had good flow, but a lot of people here shy away from poetry.

 

[Hex]

I'm like alc. I normally love your entries, Brev, and I got how clever this one was. I struggled with the underlying (overlying?) story.

 

[Brev]

Thanks for all the replies.
So, you either didn't like it and/or you missed the acrostic? Phew, there I was obsessing over the second semi-colon.

Serious question; is it a poem? I know I borrow a couple of poetic contractions (ere / ne'er) but the 'shape' was there just to disguise the construction. (An error maybe?) I'd hoped the capitalisation of the last line would reveal the DANCE letter sequence.

So would this work better...?

Daylight abates. Night's creep; exponential. Darkness arrives. Nod's call enchants. Damned, auld Nicnevin, comes enters.

Dreams avow; necrosis' cold embrace. Demons attend necromantic conclave; entropic delusions abound. Nefarious Covens; ethereal, dark aberrations. Nightmares, cause endless despair and ne'er cease ere daylight arrives.

Now commencing each dawn, a new curse ensues; days and nights cycle eternal. Doom awaits, none can escape. Dare any now close eyes? Daylight abates. Night's chill, envelops. Damned Auld Nicnevin, Comes Enters.


*I'm asking cos you've seen this month's challenge right? d e a t h...tempting
**Jastius your review is better than the original.

 

[ratsy]

Brev, I also didnt get the DANCE reference...now its obvious. I didnt get the story of it very well though in a quick read because of the complicated set up and it was too wordy for me...that being said, I do appreciate the work you must have put into it. Way more thought to it than my silly entry

 

[Phyrebrat]

Hi, I thought I would kick this month's improver off as I had a bit of an issue with mine this time around.

Essentially, I didn't feel it it had a resolution or storyness for want of a better word. I'd watched a documentary on BBC iPlayer about the Rococo period regarding the madness and ugliness side of that movement, and I really wanted to do something about Goya. I was going for a mass-death scenario and was hoping he'd have something like Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights; I wanted Death to show the painter in the story something nightmarish and on a massive scale when he says 'let me show you the sights I've seen'.

However, his gruesome 'Black' period did not reference death specifically enough for it to work, or depicting death on a massive scale, so I went for Pieter Brueghel's Triumph of Death. https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the...ry/on-line-gallery/obra/the-triumph-of-death/

My initial aim was to link in Death visiting artists through the centuries and influencing their work. I wanted to end up with Francis Bacon's nasty images but there just wasn't the scope for that.

I think if I had had maybe 20-50 more words (har-har-har) I could have resolved the story a little better.

Pieter's Muse

There's a chasm in my soul where withered, clutching sticks curl round my heart and enjoin me;

Let me show you the sights I have seen.

I prepare my sables and oils. From His finger to my brush, Death guides my hand tonight and the strokes appear like slashes on a ham.

Inexhaustible it comes, an oily flow from the Abyss, numbing, embalming, replacing.

'What shall I call this one?'

The Triumph of Death.​

 

[Mr Orange]

PB, I understood the idea but completely missed the link to real art history. To me this felt like it had lost a lot to get it down to 75 words.

Also, I got thrown by the "slashes on a ham" simile which seemed out of place to me.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I rather loved the imagery but, as I think you've alluded to, a lot of the meaning passed me by. I also didn't link it to a specific Pieter.

 

[Parson]

PB -- Remember I'm just a simple country Parson so this is likely just me, but it seemed pretentious. You seemed to be angling for a visceral reaction without sufficient stage setting. I'm not sure what you wanted (and it is an intriguing idea) can be carried off in 75 words. Probably due to the word limit there didn't really seem to be a story.

(In some ways this story reminded me of an individual I had in a colloquy group. When she was asked to respond to a presentation all she seemed able to give was a jumble of words which pointed at a feeling without any insight as to the why, where, or how of it.)

 

[Phyrebrat]

Thanks, both, it's as I suspected. A little too subject-specific (in terms of art).

I think you're right, Mr Orange; there was too much lost in the cut - even though I wrote it upwards rather than cutting material, I needed more than the 75 words.

But I rather liked the slashes on a ham ; Breughel and Hogarth' et al painted lots of market/community pictures and these often had hogs on the back of carts etc. The Triumph of Death doesn't but it has human bodies and I wanted to draw the comparison to dead pigs and almost 'commodify' the human into chattel for Death. Also there is the obvious ecclesiastical link to swine . Most importantly though, for that simile, I had this mental image of a paintbrush aggressively slashing the canvas in angry strokes as Death puppets Breughel .

Springs: Yes, I think I may have pushed the assumption of people knowing. Would it have made a difference, perhaps, if I had put 'Breughel's Muse' instead? I find each month I have to copy/paste terms into a search engine from Chrons entries (especially Norse and fantasy terms) so I often forget to make my references less of a chore. Thanks for the compliment.

Parson: 'Pretentious'? Ouch . I'd hate to come across as pretentious, and bearing in mind my explanation of 'slashes on a ham; above, I may have compounded that perception. But I think you've nailed it. I felt there was a sense of story missing. Essentially it's just 'okay, so this guy is channelling/possessed by Death.' without any real consequence. What may have occurred is the image I got when my own (undeath-y) inspiration struck was so strong, I wanted to capture that. Maybe at the expense of narrative. I hope, however it's more than a collection of unconnected words, though.

pH

 

[HareBrain]

Just a teensy point, so teensy that the only possible reason for me raising it would be to show off my knowledge: you'd use sables for watercolour, bristles for oil. (Or I would. It might be that I was just a cheapskate and didn't want to fill expensive delicate brushes with gunk.)

Like the others, I had no idea what it was referencing, and without that, there just wasn't anything for me to hold onto. (Sometimes a missing reference doesn't destroy a story, but in this case I think it relied on it.)