Discussion -- August 2011 Challenge
- Thread starter The Judge
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Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
Ah yes. The next one will be something devilishly clever (she guffawed, twirling the ends of her moustache (*))
I'm thinking, honest.
(*) I've been reading Space Captain Smith... does it show?
Ah yes. The next one will be something devilishly clever (she guffawed, twirling the ends of her moustache (*))
I'm thinking, honest.
(*) I've been reading Space Captain Smith... does it show?
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
congratulations Hex
congratulations Hex
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
Hex, congrats! My all time favorite Andre Norten book is Catseye, and your story let us see behind the cat's eye.
Question: Would all novelists have to refrain from entering a contest whose theme was honesty?
Moonbat, belated thanks for the mention.
Hex, congrats! My all time favorite Andre Norten book is Catseye, and your story let us see behind the cat's eye.
Question: Would all novelists have to refrain from entering a contest whose theme was honesty?
Moonbat, belated thanks for the mention.
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
If by "tease us with your subject/ genres" you mean "pretend you've thought of something and aren't havering in a clueless panic" then yes, Mr Major, you have guessed my fiendish plan.
And honestly, Oskari, honesty? Not half fiendish enough.
Hahaha! HaHAhaha!
ps: thank you very much for the congratulations, everyone. I really do appreciate them.
For at my back I always hear
those ghastly pumpkins hurrying near,
and yonder all before us drips
slack's nuclear apocalypse...
(I'll stop now. I think we can all agree that's a good idea. And if you choose to take the rhyme as a hint of what I'm thinking about for September, please go ahead (but it isn't)).
If by "tease us with your subject/ genres" you mean "pretend you've thought of something and aren't havering in a clueless panic" then yes, Mr Major, you have guessed my fiendish plan.
And honestly, Oskari, honesty? Not half fiendish enough.
Hahaha! HaHAhaha!
ps: thank you very much for the congratulations, everyone. I really do appreciate them.
For at my back I always hear
those ghastly pumpkins hurrying near,
and yonder all before us drips
slack's nuclear apocalypse...
(I'll stop now. I think we can all agree that's a good idea. And if you choose to take the rhyme as a hint of what I'm thinking about for September, please go ahead (but it isn't)).
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
Argh! You were my mystery voter and I didn't thank you. I'm sorry, Mouse. The number of votes went up and I couldn't work out what had happened. Hmm. Thank you very much, Mouse. I especially appreciate a mouse voting for that story.
Argh! You were my mystery voter and I didn't thank you. I'm sorry, Mouse. The number of votes went up and I couldn't work out what had happened. Hmm. Thank you very much, Mouse. I especially appreciate a mouse voting for that story.
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
Um yes. Humiliatingly, I knew that, and it still didn't help me.
If you click on the number of votes you can see exactly who's voted for who.
Um yes. Humiliatingly, I knew that, and it still didn't help me.
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
Ha. Look at these noobs: http://www.esquire.com/fiction/short-short-fiction-contest-2011
78 words indeed. Ha! And indeed, pah!
Ha. Look at these noobs: http://www.esquire.com/fiction/short-short-fiction-contest-2011
78 words indeed. Ha! And indeed, pah!
RJM Corbet
Deus Pascus Corvus
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
Congratulations Hex. I voted for you on day one. Close thing though, Slack, and congratulations to you too ...
Congratulations Hex. I voted for you on day one. Close thing though, Slack, and congratulations to you too ...
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
I may have picked the wrong one (again!). So here's one I wrote earlier. In retrospect, when my focus group said "I don't like the dark ones," I should have recognised they might not have been a good judge this month.
*****
Loser.
Idiot.
You can't harm us.
They look so innocent in the playground. But I know they're not what they seem.
You don't have the guts.
I rise from the bench. Legs shaking, knife in my sweaty hand.
They look up, their eyes full of curiosity, wonder.
No...I can't...
I slice through my throat. The darkness brings blessed relief.
**
They peered down at his bloodied body.
"Told you you didn't have the guts."
"Loser."
I may have picked the wrong one (again!). So here's one I wrote earlier. In retrospect, when my focus group said "I don't like the dark ones," I should have recognised they might not have been a good judge this month.
*****
Loser.
Idiot.
You can't harm us.
They look so innocent in the playground. But I know they're not what they seem.
You don't have the guts.
I rise from the bench. Legs shaking, knife in my sweaty hand.
They look up, their eyes full of curiosity, wonder.
No...I can't...
I slice through my throat. The darkness brings blessed relief.
**
They peered down at his bloodied body.
"Told you you didn't have the guts."
"Loser."
Bob Senior
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2011
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- 376
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
Congrats Hex.
I never did get my story down on paper, so I knocked one out in a few minutes and entered it. My story continues to rattle around in my head and I would like to get it out of there. This is somewhat of a description of said story.
It's Vegas Baby.
The sign reads, "Senior Daze"-----"Bingo and 2 Free Shows"
The old folks crowd in by the thousands. Mid afternoon and suddenly people are running down the Strip, battered, bruised, bleeding, screaming in terror. Oh the humanity, they are jumping out of windows. A cop stops a man fleeing the horror, "what went on in there" he asks, "did the big cats escape"? " No, No, No", the man screams. We just sat through 3 hours of Ozzie Osbourne and Carrot Top back to back!
The cop asks the man, " why did you stay", "why didn't you leave"? The man looks the cop in the eye and says, "weren't you listening?------IT WAS FREE".
That is a load off my mind, now my only worry is getting that Afgan
Congrats Hex.
I never did get my story down on paper, so I knocked one out in a few minutes and entered it. My story continues to rattle around in my head and I would like to get it out of there. This is somewhat of a description of said story.
It's Vegas Baby.
The sign reads, "Senior Daze"-----"Bingo and 2 Free Shows"
The old folks crowd in by the thousands. Mid afternoon and suddenly people are running down the Strip, battered, bruised, bleeding, screaming in terror. Oh the humanity, they are jumping out of windows. A cop stops a man fleeing the horror, "what went on in there" he asks, "did the big cats escape"? " No, No, No", the man screams. We just sat through 3 hours of Ozzie Osbourne and Carrot Top back to back!
The cop asks the man, " why did you stay", "why didn't you leave"? The man looks the cop in the eye and says, "weren't you listening?------IT WAS FREE".
That is a load off my mind, now my only worry is getting that Afgan
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2006
- Messages
- 6,381
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
I had more than enough ideas this month. (Not all of them were any good).
My initial idea was of a man watching a play, realising that it is a play of his life, then in turn the man on stage is watching a play of his life, an infinite progression. But I could just not make it work with only 75 words.
I had a few more ideas, some good, some bad but at some point I thought of Hide and Seek, and from there I thought of someone hiding for real, as though it were more than a game, which led me to Anne Frank.
From there I read up on her and read the following quote by Richard Dimbleby, referring to his arrival of Bergen Belsen, the concentration camp.
It was the most horrific thing I have ever read, and I went with that, not coming close to the horror of his words.
“ ...Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
"This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life."
And in reading that it was strange to think that somewhere in all the bodies was someone who would become one of the most famous victim's of the holocaust, inknown, just another statistic until her diary was found.
I had more than enough ideas this month. (Not all of them were any good).
My initial idea was of a man watching a play, realising that it is a play of his life, then in turn the man on stage is watching a play of his life, an infinite progression. But I could just not make it work with only 75 words.
I had a few more ideas, some good, some bad but at some point I thought of Hide and Seek, and from there I thought of someone hiding for real, as though it were more than a game, which led me to Anne Frank.
From there I read up on her and read the following quote by Richard Dimbleby, referring to his arrival of Bergen Belsen, the concentration camp.
It was the most horrific thing I have ever read, and I went with that, not coming close to the horror of his words.
“ ...Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
"This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life."
And in reading that it was strange to think that somewhere in all the bodies was someone who would become one of the most famous victim's of the holocaust, inknown, just another statistic until her diary was found.
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
For a Parson the real danger would be winning such a contest and explaining what one is doing on a nearly porn web site.
Perpetual Man: You are right that was the most horrible story of all that we read, because it not only reflected the near infinite reality of humans to descend into the pit degradation, but it spoke undeniable truth of the demonstrable despicable demonic nether regions that humans have reached in so called "modern times."
For a Parson the real danger would be winning such a contest and explaining what one is doing on a nearly porn web site.
Perpetual Man: You are right that was the most horrible story of all that we read, because it not only reflected the near infinite reality of humans to descend into the pit degradation, but it spoke undeniable truth of the demonstrable despicable demonic nether regions that humans have reached in so called "modern times."
Last edited:
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- 6,381
Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
I think perhaps, that I wrote something that was horrible (as Parson stated) as opposed to Horror, so here are a few of the stories I pushed aside (I did get a bit carried away this month):
The air is cold as the shadows close in on me. Red brick walls loom above, crumbling mortar leering in the fading light. I hear...
I hear voices, telling me what they are going to do. My heart beats, sweat runs cold. Knives, claws, needles and blades.
Why, oh why am I here? I only came to get my ball. It was only a game.
Oh lord! Something growled...
But I was only playi.....
Aaaaiiiieeeeee!!!
Darkness suffocated the room, the silence palpable.
Furniture turned ominous, looming over him. Every creak and groan gave rue to the lie that there were no such things as monsters. In the wardrobe, under the bed, behind the curtains.
He was not alone, he had friends. Whiskers, Teddy, Bungie and the others, stuffed sentinels, night-time guardians.
Slowly with the popping of splintering bones, Whiskers head turned, eyes gleamed red, " Now," he hissed, "Let's play!"
The cards lay on the table.
He knows he has the winning hand. All he had to do was play...
Reptile eyes focused on him.
He flipped the rectangle.
Ace of spades.
But it wasn't.
Opposite the devil smiles, fire scorches flesh and crumbles bone, a scream like a little girls rends from smouldering chords.
A smouldering black marked card falls from his fingers, "You were never going to win," the beast rumbles, "I cheat."
The cogs creak as they turn.
They squeal and something snaps. A boot stamps down, kicking the bucket.
A metal ball rolls, I can only watch.
It rattles down the stairs, creaking bouncing.
It slithers down a rusted drain pipe, pivoting into ancient plumbing.
Rotting pipes squeal and screech.
Something springs free.
A bloody gurgle escapes from the drain.
The bath shudders.
Something the size of a head drops. There is a scream.
A splash.
A shadow above falls.
Trapped.
The images play out in my mind.
Fire ravages my body.
Sweat pools on the bed.
I am trapped on a burning pier.
Smouldering wood in a lake of molten rock.
Lava hisses and bubbles.
I try to run, but the devil stands over me, impossibly huge.
Blazing cloven hooves trying to crush me, smashing wood, spraying magma.
I shudder, shake and scream again, consumed by the burning eyes.
And entrenched in sodden blankets I wake.
It begins with an overture, my psychotic symphony.
The woodwind is the sound of breath in punctured lungs,
The strings are the snaps of tendons muscle fibre,
Separated by a brass replaced by stainless razors and blades.
The percussion is the sound of breaking bones and the only chords are vocal,
Stretching in a sibilant scream.
The cacophonic crescendo is the blood spattered beat of a failing heart.
And fade.
Until the reprise tomorrow.
He was born by caesarean section, a bloody birth of screams and gore.
As he grew they said he was a bit... odd, but his mother loved him.
Like any child he had his idiosyncrasies, quirks all of his own.
They laughed when he sang, or when he used to touch his mummy's tummy and say he wanted to go back in there one day.
Now a man grown, he sits in the dark, wrapped in the blood wet womb he has stitched from smaller ones, ripped from the corpses all around him.
No one is laughing.
The last one I actually did after submitting my entry, and wrote it for the hell of it, so I did not try to whittle it down to 75 words.
I think perhaps, that I wrote something that was horrible (as Parson stated) as opposed to Horror, so here are a few of the stories I pushed aside (I did get a bit carried away this month):
The air is cold as the shadows close in on me. Red brick walls loom above, crumbling mortar leering in the fading light. I hear...
I hear voices, telling me what they are going to do. My heart beats, sweat runs cold. Knives, claws, needles and blades.
Why, oh why am I here? I only came to get my ball. It was only a game.
Oh lord! Something growled...
But I was only playi.....
Aaaaiiiieeeeee!!!
Darkness suffocated the room, the silence palpable.
Furniture turned ominous, looming over him. Every creak and groan gave rue to the lie that there were no such things as monsters. In the wardrobe, under the bed, behind the curtains.
He was not alone, he had friends. Whiskers, Teddy, Bungie and the others, stuffed sentinels, night-time guardians.
Slowly with the popping of splintering bones, Whiskers head turned, eyes gleamed red, " Now," he hissed, "Let's play!"
The cards lay on the table.
He knows he has the winning hand. All he had to do was play...
Reptile eyes focused on him.
He flipped the rectangle.
Ace of spades.
But it wasn't.
Opposite the devil smiles, fire scorches flesh and crumbles bone, a scream like a little girls rends from smouldering chords.
A smouldering black marked card falls from his fingers, "You were never going to win," the beast rumbles, "I cheat."
The cogs creak as they turn.
They squeal and something snaps. A boot stamps down, kicking the bucket.
A metal ball rolls, I can only watch.
It rattles down the stairs, creaking bouncing.
It slithers down a rusted drain pipe, pivoting into ancient plumbing.
Rotting pipes squeal and screech.
Something springs free.
A bloody gurgle escapes from the drain.
The bath shudders.
Something the size of a head drops. There is a scream.
A splash.
A shadow above falls.
Trapped.
The images play out in my mind.
Fire ravages my body.
Sweat pools on the bed.
I am trapped on a burning pier.
Smouldering wood in a lake of molten rock.
Lava hisses and bubbles.
I try to run, but the devil stands over me, impossibly huge.
Blazing cloven hooves trying to crush me, smashing wood, spraying magma.
I shudder, shake and scream again, consumed by the burning eyes.
And entrenched in sodden blankets I wake.
It begins with an overture, my psychotic symphony.
The woodwind is the sound of breath in punctured lungs,
The strings are the snaps of tendons muscle fibre,
Separated by a brass replaced by stainless razors and blades.
The percussion is the sound of breaking bones and the only chords are vocal,
Stretching in a sibilant scream.
The cacophonic crescendo is the blood spattered beat of a failing heart.
And fade.
Until the reprise tomorrow.
He was born by caesarean section, a bloody birth of screams and gore.
As he grew they said he was a bit... odd, but his mother loved him.
Like any child he had his idiosyncrasies, quirks all of his own.
They laughed when he sang, or when he used to touch his mummy's tummy and say he wanted to go back in there one day.
Now a man grown, he sits in the dark, wrapped in the blood wet womb he has stitched from smaller ones, ripped from the corpses all around him.
No one is laughing.
The last one I actually did after submitting my entry, and wrote it for the hell of it, so I did not try to whittle it down to 75 words.
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