Improving our 75 Word Stories -- READ FIRST POST

[Parson]

@Elckerlyc .... That was a good story; very original and well constructed. I'm with the @The Judge that nearly everyone --- I'd actually bet on everyone who read the story on this forum --- understood the story. Five mentions is excellent, I don't think there's a need to change anything. No votes DOES NOT MEAN, bad story. Just that no one of only 40 or so voters felt it was the best.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

I thought more about your story overnight, @Elckerlyc, and read it a few more times today, and not clearly understanding the denouement was on me - it's a clever story, and should have made my shortlist.
I think, as mentioned earlier, the title did it no favors. It's called Felix, and once we meet Felix the title really adds nothing - no foreshadowing, no riddle to seek an answer to - to the story. The title is one word, and that one word is also the first word of the story...so it starts:
Felix
Felix...
Titles are free words for a 75 worder - if yours had been something whose relevance is cleverly revealed in the story's body, your story likely would have done even better than it did (five mentions isn't bad!). What if the title was something like one of these two:

Here or Gone

-or-

Observed

Just something to foreshadow what the story might be about. There are so many stories to read through, and a good title, a strong opening line and a zinger at the end really make a story stand out. But you really did write a clever tale, well done, CC

 

[Elckerlyc]

Well, about the title...
Naming it Felix was a bit of an escape mechanism when I couldn't think of anything else that would add to the story. Except that to me the story was foremost about the cat and its miserable position, hence its POV, and I thought to underline that by giving the story - that is to say, the cat - a name that to me is almost synonymous with it: Felix. Clearly that didn't work for everyone. People recognized Schrödinger, but not Felix.
In hindsight I should have given the title a little bit more thought.

Dead or Alive, That's the Question
The Small Matter of Being Observed or Not

A better title would have helped, sure, but as Mosaix and TJ have pointed out, the absence of an emotional element was the major flaw here.

I thought more about your story overnight, @Elckerlyc...

Anyway, you're most kind, but I'm sure you have better things to contemplate overnight!

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Well, as a person afflicted with insomnia, trust me, it's nice to have diversions at 3am.

 

[mosaix]

Well, about the title...
Naming it Felix was a bit of an escape mechanism when I couldn't think of anything else that would add to the story. Except that to me the story was foremost about the cat and its miserable position, hence its POV, and I thought to underline that by giving the story - that is to say, the cat - a name that to me is almost synonymous with it: Felix. Clearly that didn't work for everyone. People recognized Schrödinger, but not Felix.
In hindsight I should have given the title a little bit more thought.

Dead or Alive, That's the Question
The Small Matter of Being Observed or Not

A better title would have helped, sure, but as Mosaix and TJ have pointed out, the absence of an emotional element was the major flaw here.


Anyway, you're most kind, but I'm sure you have better things to contemplate overnight!

@Elckerlyc please don't think my mention of the lack of an emotional element in any way implied a flaw in your story. I mentioned it just to highlight that votes sometimes go to stories that have an emotional element and, because there's only one vote per person, other stories miss out. This is not a criticism of authors or voters. Many of my entries have had, quite intentionally, an emotional element that, I'm sure, attracted a vote or two because of it.

Why does it attract votes? My view is that it's an 'instant impact' on the reader and something that sticks in the memory. Surprise endings can work in much the same way.

 

[paranoid marvin]

@Elckerlyc please don't think my mention of the lack of an emotional element in any way implied a flaw in your story. I mentioned it just to highlight that votes sometimes go to stories that have an emotional element and, because there's only one vote per person, other stories miss out. This is not a criticism of authors or voters. Many of my entries have had, quite intentionally, an emotional element that, I'm sure attracted a vote or two because of it.

Why does it attract votes? My view is that it's an 'instant impact' on the reader and something that sticks in the memory. Surprise endings can work in much the same way.

I agree; anything that makes a story resonate with the reader has more of a chance of gaining their interest (and their vote). I think that the emotional element in this story was left to the reader to produce. This was (thankfully) a theoretical cat in a fictional story, but still the situation presented did evoke an emotion of pity in me, and regret that the cat didn't make it out alive.

If you wanted to (understandably) steer away from making the story too obvious by mentioning Schroedinger, you could have chosen something like 'The Experiment' or 'Observations on Life and Death' or (my favourite) 'A Quantum of Solace'.

 

[Elckerlyc]

@Elckerlyc please don't think my mention of the lack of an emotional element in any way implied a flaw in your story. I mentioned it just to highlight that votes sometimes go to stories that have an emotional element and, because there's only one vote per person, other stories miss out. This is not a criticism of authors or voters. Many of my entries have had, quite intentionally, an emotional element that, I'm sure attracted a vote or two because of it.

Why does it attract votes? My view is that it's an 'instant impact' on the reader and something that sticks in the memory. Surprise endings can work in much the same way.

No worries, I didn't take it as criticism. But it did point correctly at something that was missing in my story. And I'll retract the word 'flaw'. Bad choice of words.
I think the emotional element works so well because it is something most readers can relate to, it touches on some inner string we all have had pulled before in some way in our life. Where as Schrödinger's cat is a highly theoretical scientific experiment which, for most if not all of us, is a distant clinical reality and wish to keep it there.

 

[JS Wiig]

The Quantum Kitty

 

[Parson]

Upon reading the comments, I agree a great title would have helped. I generally don't notice a title unless it is really good, and a really good title might have made the difference in your excellent story.

 

[WSDuffy]

I remember liking this story, but I admit that I didn't make the connection to Schrödinger's Cat and that may have affected my experience of the story. For me, I reacted mostly to the macabre imagery, and as a result I missed out of the "connection." With the large number of good entries, when I was shortlisting and voting I first and foremost focused on the ones that really hit the "connection" theme. In terms of technical improvements, you should probably ignore me given that I got zero shortlists this session, but I do agree with people that a pointed title is helpful in a 75 word space, and I would hit the "Felix is a cat" really fast (like first 10 words fast) to frame the story. By the time I hit "cat" I was already in Saw sequel world in my head, and it was hard to remove the picture of people from my reading.

 

[Peter V]

I do not usually put my entries up for dissection but lets have a crack with this one. It got a few entries and a vote, so not a complete disaster. It may sound strange that I look back on some of my entries and think meh, but I quite like this one.

Where did it miss for most of you good folk?


Quincember 34th: Spring Equinox

“Haven’t the druids danced around the stones already this year?”

“Aye.” Old Bill drew leisurely on his pipe. “Just keeping something of distant Earth alive in their hearts.”

“I think it’s silly.” Claire replied, continuing to plait his beard. Bill knew that combing it out later would be a nightmare.

“You don’t think it’s silly when we have two Christmases in a year though, do you?” He chuckled, kissing the top of his granddaughter’s head.



Okay, kevlar on so fire away...

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

It is not entirely clear to me. They are on a distant planet that has its own equinox and want to celebrate their origin planet's equinox too? But why two Christmases? Two gods?

 

[Peter V]

It is not entirely clear to me. They are on a distant planet that has its own equinox and want to celebrate their origin planet's equinox too? But why two Christmases? Two gods?

This is the problem with only 75 words and a lot of stories to read, details can easily be missed.

Yes it is another planet but of course, other planets will have different length days, and take who knows how many days to circumnavigate their star - years could be shorter or longer than Earth years but they would have to adapt to their environment and create a calendar that fit, especially if there are seasonal variations. Quince from the title is fifteen in Spanish. Quincember 34th: We are on a world with at least fifteen months and these months have at least thirty-four days. What we don't know is how long each of those days is but in all likelihood, day and night cycles would be adapted to unless they were extremely different to those of Earth (and who knows in time, maybe even then).

I deliberately referenced the druids and old Earth to imply that it is Spring equinox on Earth (to match the theme) - despite their own calendar, they keep a separate note of the time and date on Earth and observe Earth traditions. This is speculative fiction, no universal "stardate" in this fictional universe. By inference the year is longer on this unnamed world and consequently there will sometimes be two spring equinoxes (and two Christmases) within the "year" on this world and of course their dates will vary from year to year for our protagonists whilst remaining fixed on Earth. Basically it is a tale of family and keeping tradition alive.

They don't get any more Christmases than us Earthlings

 

[Peter V]

Or I could simply have said

The druids are marking the Spring Equinox on Earth. The majority of the population celebrate Christmas at the same time as Earth.

But there are more days per month and more months per year on this world, so sometimes it happens twice within the same "local" year.

That's better lol

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

.
But there are more days per month and more months per year on this world, so sometimes it happens twice within the same "local" year.

That's better lol

Ah, now I see. I just wonder how many people got this on first reading.

 

[JS Wiig]

@Peter V I thought the use of different length days, years etc on a different planet superimposed on an Earth calendar was interesting.

The issue for me was I had a hard time discerning the characters, particularly with the sudden appearance of the granddaughter in the last sentence. It seems as though Bill and Claire are talking but then Bill appears to be responding to his granddaughter, who I then thought perhaps was Claire, but then again his granddaughter wouldn’t have a beard, so I wasn’t really sure who Claire was and if it was him speaking in the first paragraph and where the granddaughter came from.

 

[Peter V]

@Peter V I thought the use of different length days, years etc on a different planet superimposed on an Earth calendar was interesting.

The issue for me was I had a hard time discerning the characters, particularly with the sudden appearance of the granddaughter in the last sentence. It seems as though Bill and Claire are talking but then Bill appears to be responding to his granddaughter, who I then thought perhaps was Claire, but then again his granddaughter wouldn’t have a beard, so I wasn’t really sure who Claire was and if it was him speaking in the first paragraph and where the granddaughter came from.

Claire is Bill's Young granddaughter and is plaiting Bill's beard - only the two of them present.

 

[JS Wiig]

Ok then in that case this sentence is what confused me:

“I think it’s silly.” Claire replied, continuing to plait his beard.

…as I read it that Claire was a he and plaiting his own beard.

 

[Peter V]

Ok then in that case this sentence is what confused me:



…as I read it that Claire was a he and plaiting his own beard.

The idea was to portray the patient grandfather, tolerating (and probably secretly enjoying) her plaiting his beard.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

I didn't have a problem with the characters (who they were and what they were doing). Just with the whole calendar thing (although I knew it was connected to a different world with different characteristics to Earth - days, months and years all different).

Its hard to make everything absolutely clear in 75 words. That's part of the appeal. I think in my own story I realized it was not clear whether the protagonist was about to have a pleasant night of kinky fun or whether he was in some sort of serious trouble. But perhaps it doesn't matter because either interpretation works. The reader is left to their own preferences in that respect.

I think I did miss the genre somewhat. And I know some folks will mark a story down for that (justifiably). I'll be focusing more on that next time around.