Improving our 300 Word Stories -- READ FIRST POST!

[Swank]

I really enjoyed it Swank but couldn’t understand the last line

His father's young body is a gift to the now old, once abused boy. They trade places and the old body dies. The "mirror" is the moment he sees his old self from the now sighted eyes of the young man.

Thank you.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

His father's young body is a gift to the now old, once abused boy. They trade places and the old body dies. The "mirror" is the moment he sees his old self from the now sighted eyes of the young man.

Thank you.

Ah that’s lovely - I’d have needed that to be clearer. But that might just be me

 

[Swank]

Ah that’s lovely - I’d have needed that to be clearer. But that might just be me

As I constantly get feedback that my stories are too hard to understand and rarely get votes - I doubt it is just you. Thanks again.

 

[Parson]

@AltLifeAStory .... I'm not sure I see anything that is actually wrong or poorly done. (I'm not a punctuation wonk.) As I think about the story it seems to me that it should have been one that really appealed to me. I love stories about sacrifice for someone you love, and it certainly had that. What I can say is that I found it hard to identify with the mouse characters. They seem just a bit detached from the very present and real threat. I think that there was too much dialogue involved for the situation. (But be advised that I just hate those overwrought death scenes where the two main characters are having this philosophical discussion while the bullets are flying over their head. Since this kind of scene is so ubiquitous it is probably my problem.)

On the plus side, it felt like an old and much loved fairy tale for children.

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@Swank I agree with @Jo Zebedee about this. The final line makes me shake my head and go. "What?" "Who?"

Also I couldn't follow the action. The first paragraph makes it sound as if the main character is looking at the diorama. The second finds him/her headed to a French airport. Then the third finds us back at the diorama? Did s/he take it along? Was it his/her parent's house? A hospital room? Were the mice now seen as people? Was there a copy diorama involved? Was someone a clone? All in all there were just too many strings dangling for me to really get a handle on the story.

On the plus side, I think you have a wonderful idea going here. It either needed more words or more work.

 

[Phyrebrat]

As I constantly get feedback that my stories are too hard to understand and rarely get votes - I doubt it is just you. Thanks again.

Hi.

I often vote or shortlist your work because it lets the idea breathe in the reader’s mind. Irrespective of what we intend, I’m a firm believer that it’s up to the reader to decide what the story ‘means’ (and this obsession with what it ‘means’ over what one experiences reading it has always befuddled me).

I think part of the problem here is that there are non-short story readers/fans amongst our cohort and so are applying novel rules to flash or micro fiction. I’ve been a short story and flash reader for decades and often they are there to give the reader a sense of something as opposed to the answers. Esp in genre fiction.

Anyway. I liked it. I voted for it.