Improving our 75 Word Stories -- READ FIRST POST

[Stable]

@hopewrites It's fun and enjoyable, I like the tone and love the "human cogs..." line, I think that really makes the whole thing interesting. I dislike the *actions*, I think that's a little vulgar (which makes me sound like a snob, but hey, if the shoe fits...!) and I wonder if you could have achieved the same effect or better with normal language use, which may have allowed you to work in some imagery too. On the other hand *actions* is solid forum language and we are on a forum... so maybe you deserve props for form experimentation! *Hands hopewrites some props*

As far as the overall story you may be a little low on the conflictometer, which makes it hard to get votes when you're up against a busy mother putting a supervillain in the fridge while changing a baby then getting lip for not having the dinner done (which is 3 or 4 levels of conflict crammed into no time at all).

Also, is concifies a word? Because if not it should be. You are a Shakespeare for the digital age.

 

[Stable]

I'd also love some feedback. I'm especially wondering if there's a way to up the despair and just make the whole thing really depressing (muahaha ), I feel I could have done better in that regard. Thanks in advance!

****

Farmville 2025

I clicked rapidly, keeping my APM high. A drone dropped off the shopping at the front door, I had no time to pay attention the fridge could handle that. A user from Ohio was storming the rankings and I’d been barely keeping in the top 100 these days. Drop one place and my family would be back in the projects.

I kept clicking as the sweat came on.

The kids would thank me.

One day.

 

[Mr Orange]

@hopewrites: i had no problem with the action written as you did it, although maybe the use of italics would have helped differentiate this a bit better

*door catches on foot* "Tonight?" *distressed pleading face*

or maybe not. unfortunately the story underneath didn't really work for me. couldn't say why exactly (sorry).

@Stable: i liked your story and the ideas behind it. it narrowly missed out being a finalist for me, i think because of the lack of connection between how failing at Farmville would leave the family in the projects.

 

[saulfan]

As a newbie and first-time contributor, I'd appreciate some feedback on my contribution as well please.

Tensing, Reika Minnesdotter anticipated her newborn's implant handshake. The pulse in her template heralded the notifications. She shuddered.

Life Gift: 124.67 Earth Years. (Below the mean. Way below)

Gender Specification: Male

Assignment: Viral Implant Vessel.

Without weakness, she completed the acceptance ritual.

No calling, profession or dignity for her child. Simply toil, exertion and suffering. To what end? Bettering lives of the blessed?

Cradling her son, past the cautionary sign, "Work Will Liberate". She jumps.

Many thanks!
David

 

[Parson]

Farmville 2025

This was a clever story, but I think it fell apart in that I couldn't see the story as anything but humor, but I felt that you were going for realism. It made for a disconnect for me.

@saulfan .... Solid dystopian setting, and I liked the idea, a lot, but for me it seemed too little story and mostly description. A very, very, easy thing to do when you only have 75 words to work with. We all struggle with that aspect.

 

[Cory Swanson]

I'll offer mine up for dissection. I thought I had a real good idea here. I only made a handful of mentions and one vote. I wonder if I offended anyone? Was my twist on the theme too far out there?

Behold the Works of God

“What a day, eh Zeus?”

“No kidding, Yahweh. I can't win converts to save my life these days. You've got armies of missionaries, I've got nothing but crumbling monuments. I've been cracking all over the place lately, but nobody even notices.”

“Buck up, buddy. The way things are headed, all my followers are going to end up killing each other.”

“I guess.”

“Don't forget to clock out. The guy upstairs really freaks out about that.”

 

[Cathbad]

The guy upstairs really freaks out about that.”

I was thinking...

The guy upstairs... is it Stan Lee? It's Stan Lee, isn't it?

I bet it's Stan Lee.

 

[Parson]

Behold the Works of God

This was a very clever idea. It had a very much unforeseen (at least by me) ending. It even had some contemporary relevance. In the end I would have to say that the story was just not my style. Remember there's no accounting for taste, and for me I'm one who just doesn't like send-ups or sarcasm. Sorry. But lots of other people, don't let that change what you write.

 

[Shyrka]

@hopewrites - I didn't quite click with this one somehow - I didn't have any issue with the *actions* style. I suppose one could view it as cheating of a sort but I think it's a necessary evil I'm prepared to forgive in the 75-worders. In the end, I don't think the 'human cog' thing really worked for me. I just couldn't quite make the leap between a machine and a human cog - were they actually being used literally as cogs? I couldn't quite see the 'why' in there.

@Stable - I voted for this one so I obviously don't have many real criticisms. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably a bit too niche in its appeal. For example, having a gaming background, I know what APM means but many others might not. In this situation, you're rather 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' as that niche language was what appealed to me but it could very well have left others scratching their heads. In a longer peace, you'd have time to introduce such concepts to your readers gradually but the 75-worders are pretty unforgiving.

@saulfan - This was good - an interesting concept, well written. I think I was probably being a bit dense when I read this the first time but the final line wasn't exactly clear so I found myself guessing a little at the end. Maybe you needed a bit more set up to sell that final line (I'm assuming she's jumping off something high, but without any setup to build that image, it comes out of nowhere)

@Cory Swanson - I have no issue with this one but I think the concept felt a little familiar to me so didn't have quite the wow factor one might imagine. I'm not sure exactly why this is - maybe because there was a similar entry in the competition and that left your concept a bit watered down. Individually it's hard to fault, it just didn't draw me in quite as well as some other entries did.

 

[Aine]

Hi all! I thought I would post my story here and see if anyone would give me advice on how to improve it. I'm pretty happy with the reception I got, especially since it was my first time entering, but I would love to know how I could get better.

The Last Job

“This is the end of it, then.”

Richie had returned three weeks earlier, grey in his hair, but the same sparkle in his eyes. The same grip of my hand.

“One last job,” he said, “A big one. I need you,” and I (retired at twenty-eight) couldn’t say no, so we went to work. Spaceships didn’t rob themselves.

Lights of army ships twinkled through the window. I never thought death would look like fireflies.


Thank you!

 

[Parson]

Aine.... For me this story left me with too many questions. I loved the opening line. But who says it? And then Richie appears. Is he the Main Character? And why did you bring in all the stuff about grey hair and eyes sparkling and the grip? It seems to be hinting at something; time travel? But there's nothing more to it. Are they thieves? "Spaceships didn't rob themselves." Is the "posse" after them? Is that why there are army ships?

My feeling is that you wanted to put too much into a 75 word story. Basically you can only have a beginning, a middle, and an end, with hardly any elaboration at all. The story has to be spare, and it has to be clear or 75 words just won't cut it.

 

[Aine]

Parson - Thank you so much for your feedback, it's super helpful! I see where you're coming from - in my head it was clear that Richie was an ex-(romantic)-partner of my (female) main character who, years after having parted ways, came back looking for her help for 'one last job' - which was robbing spaceships. And then they got caught by the army.

You're absolutely right that I was trying to put too much into 75 words - but it was definitely a learning experience, as was this. Thank you again!

 

[Stable]

@Cory Swanson I certainly wasn't offended. I can't recall an actual example, but the gods-as-office-workers seemed a familiar idea. I didn't get any emotional connection to the story, although the dialogue seemed solid.

@saulfan Good dystopian feeling, some nice despair in there. I liked the call back to Arbeit Macht Frei too. This was actually pretty high up my list, it just didn't quire cohere fully.

@Aine Not much to add to Parson's review. It's as though you picked lines out of a much longer story.

 

[hopewrites]

Thanks for all the feed back!
@TheDustyZebra I knew it wasn't cheating cheating, just that slamming one word right over the top of another would scan as if i had. I did count the half words in my hand count because I felt that not counting words I'd started but not finished would be cheating. Sort of a veriattion on unnatural contractions, which I know count as all their words.

I mean more that not using ellipsis, paragraph and sometimes even space brakes, taking the time (and words) to properly notate the actions of my characters... would be kinda like cheating in more traditionalists writers minds.

If I thought I was coming close to smudging actual rules Of Course I would have contacted a mod for clarification. As anyone should. And thank you for pointing that out because real cheating is bad for one's emotional health.

I'm glad that my formatting was more acceptable than I worried it would be!

@Stable I don't believe concisify is a word yet, but I'm hoping to infect enough minds with it to have it be added to modern parlance by 2025. *sassy wink* I don't in any way consider it snobbery to want stories submitted in a flash fiction competition to use traditional language usages. Traditionalist, but not snobby.
And thank you for the compliment, I'm quite chuffed by it. Thank you.

@Shyrka as often happens when I go in for steam-punkery or Sci-Fi, it comes off more Gas Lamp. Human Cogs would be organs, imo. Squishy gloopy organs which are hard on 3D printers set up to make parts for large machines or robots or something. And who would want to be the manitanace guy called in to fix that mess. Like those guys who go from Office building to office building fixing the copiers when the office staff jam them up or put the ink cartridge in backwards.

I grant there was a lot of world building I skipped over, and edited out to keep my last line. And I don't think it was ever very clear even in my mind just what the gloopy messy human cogs were ment to be exactly. Livers, animatronic spleens, toe joints, who knows. Let the reader decide

 

[Ihe]

Hi all, I'll be trying this thread for what I think is the first time. I really liked my 75er for March, but it didn't get much heat. Just to clarify, the title is a reference to the "all work and no play" line from the Shining. Any suggestions?
--------------------------

No Dull Boys

Our fleet tears through the stars. Worlds burn; civilisations vanish.

The cries of billions never reach us. The silence of space is a mercy, some say. High Command has blocked the enemy’s outgoing communications and we now only converse through incandescent flashes. Our chats are always short and one-sided.

Draftee resolve falters with each bloody victory. Volunteers like myself remain strong. The trick is to enjoy one’s work.

I am proud to lead by example.

 

[Parson]

Ihe... first, I did not understand the title at all. My thought was that draftees were the "dull boys." More importantly I thought the idea was good but it felt undeveloped to me. Which, of course, is the perennial problem with a 75 word story. It seemed to me to be an introduction (first 2 sentences) followed by four sentences of description (and I was not sure what the inner fleet communications had to do with your story) followed by a conclusion (next 3 sentences) and ending with an unrelated revelation.

 

[Cathbad]

Really? I understood it, but this was, indeed, a story that really suffered from the brevity of the 75-worder. I think it'd make an interesting short story!

 

[The Judge]

I was going to remind people of the Improving thread, then forgot, so I'm delighted to see it getting a lot of attention while I've been away.

hope -- your stage directions grated on me a little, not helped by the lack of proper spacing and punctuation in places which rendered it a little hard to read. My main gripe, though, was that it seemed a bit lacking as a story -- he's interrupted in his meal, grumbles, but that's it. I'm no one to insist on lots of conflict in a piece, but I do like something a bit edgier. And just to reinforce TDZ's comments, do be careful when removing spacing and using words like "buncha" without checking first, which might mean you fall foul of the 75 word limit.

Stable -- I liked how you ended your piece with the snappy lines, but I'm afraid I didn't understand the story as a whole. I thought Farmville was some kind of computer game, but I didn't know how it worked, what an APM was, nor why he has to stay there playing it or whatever, so it was rather lost on me. The shopping and fridge made it clear it was SF, but to my mind added nothing to the story by way of conflict or real interest -- to my mind you'd have been better with something more pertinent eg he has to let the house robot take care of an ill/injured/crying child as he's too busy, which would compound the irony of his working for their future while ignoring their present needs. Also the punctuation of that shopping/fridge sentence wasn't right, which meant I marked it down.

saulfan -- I liked your story, which is why I shortlisted it. In nit-picking mode, I had trouble with your word use in places. I wasn't happy with the "anticipated" in the first line which to my mind is the wrong verb, nor "cautionary" for the sign, and I was a little confused by the "handshake" (since shaking hands wasn't involved) and "template" (I actually wondered if this was a typo for "temple" which didn't help). More importantly, you shifted tenses from present ("Tensing") to past for the bulk of it, then back to present at the end ("cradling" and "jumps") which lost you marks. Although I guessed by the "jumps" she was killing herself and the baby, I agree with Shyrka that it would have helped if you'd made it clear earlier that she was standing at the edge of a cliff/pit/whatever -- and for me, it would have made more sense for the baby to have been fated to be a miner/cliff-face worker so as to tie up the scene and his work and introduce irony there. And though it didn't affect it much, as a matter of style, I'd have perhaps separated out the specifications by way of a different font, or indenting the line, to make it clearer.

Cory -- it didn't offend me, and I can't point to anything specifically wrong with it, but it seemed a bit tired as a trope, with nothing to lift it as a story. Sorry I can't be more constructive than that.

Aine -- again one I liked and shortlisted. I understood the story perfectly, including their being ex-lovers, and didn't have any of the questions Parson raised, though my legal instincts twitched at the army killing thieves without trial! I loved the last line in particular. You were let down, for me, by a few errors in punctuation, but that was pretty much it.

Ihe -- and a third I liked and shortlisted. (And I seem to be on the opposing side to Parson each time, which must mean something, but I'm not sure what!) I saw the lack of communications as being important, because they're not attempting to speak to the civilisations they encounter; they're just killing, and the bombardments and -- for those with sensitive imagination -- the screams of the murdered are the only noises, so for me it was the perfect link between orders and atmosphere. I didn't understand the title, though, and I assumed it was an mnemonic and NDB was an acronym for something to do with warfare. I would never downgrade a story for having a title which I find unintelligible, so it wasn't a problem as such, but a good title can certainly lift a piece, so it helps if it can work on all levels.

Hope that helps.

 

[Ihe]

It seems it was necessary indeed to explain my title .

(and I was not sure what the inner fleet communications had to do with your story)

Aah, I wasn't talking about inner communications, but the communications between the fleet and their enemies. There was no parlance of any sort, no negotiation, not a word between the destroyers and their victims. Only death and explosions seen from the silence of space.

ending with an unrelated revelation.

The last line was simply to portray the MC's murderous/sociopathic tendencies, but point taken. It wasn't a strong finisher, as I didn't set up the hook properly.

I will keep in mind that it might've been too much description in the middle bit, and that good, simpler titles might complement the story somewhat.

Good stuff.

 

[Parson]

(And I seem to be on the opposing side to Parson each time, which must mean something, but I'm not sure what!)

[sigh!] I'm pretty sure what that means. It means that what a person who is a reader sees somethings one way, while someone who can write wonderful prose sees things quite differently. I know who I'd want giving feedback and it wouldn't be some old and gray, not graying, Parson.