Discussion -- 300 Word Challenge #8

Bowler1 said:
The late posts are coming in, all well polished I've no doubt. I can't do that, I get too excited and pop mine up early.
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Oh, don't count on that -- I'm never a late poster because I spent a month polishing my story, I'm a late poster because I didn't think of anything until the final week. Then I write it in one night and post it, so the next morning I can wake up and say, "oh, darn (or something like it), I just thought of a phrase that would have worked better!"
 
Perpetual Man said:
PB – There is the feeling of a ghostly, ephemeral existence, almost taking the story into legend and myth territory, of a phantom carnival that plays on the edge of reality. It is more than that, possibly a real one that has been caught up in a disaster, damning those there to become ghosts, memories of another time, including the protagonist, lured away by the siren call of the show, trapped forever with his memories, looking back just as his mother wishes he will return, he wishes to return. But for me, the high point of the tale was the description of the carnival itself. The four lines that tell the tragedy of the real sideshow and those who filled it, those that return time and again, those four lines are near perfect, giving life to the dead and filling the mind with images in a way that is both wonderful and terrible.
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This has been a real s****y week and that review of yours has really cheered me up, Perp. Thank you so much, for such a thoughtful review. I love the way you make my stories sound so much better. If I ever get a publishing deal, I am going to insist you write the cover blurb ;).

pH
 
Phyrebrat said:
This has been a real s****y week and that review of yours has really cheered me up, Perp. Thank you so much, for such a thoughtful review. I love the way you make my stories sound so much better. If I ever get a publishing deal, I am going to insist you write the cover blurb ;).

pH
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Gosh! Glad I could make your day a little better.
 
Well then. There I was, thinking I had no ideas and missed the deadline, only to take one last look at the picture before reading the stories when an idea jumped into my head, cue sad sigh of missing deadline only to realise that I still had a day! So I wrote and posted and now have to get on and write a piece for an application that is inspired by a picture (thanks for all the training chrons!) but that picture is much less inspirational than this one!

Now to sit down and read all the other entries through! :D
 
Cheer for the excellent reviews, Starbeast and Perp. It's always good to know somebody read it :D
 
Last day, finally entered with an idea I'd had since I saw the picture when it was first posted. What a fabulous photo.
Thank goodness we have three votes is all I can say, there are so many excellent entries...
 
M. Tullius – There is a feeling of a complete mythology, a forgotten history here, and epic squeezed into three words. Cleverly there is enough said for the reader to know just what is going on, enough unsaid that the imagination can fill in the rest which may give rise to different interpretations, but surely that is the wonder of creative writing. It seems we are reading about survivors who have followed in footsteps of their ancestors. The calamity they are fleeing from is horrendous, but what could be worse is arriving at their goal and finding those they expected to wait for them... gone. Of course there is always hope, and another adventure begins, which I guess is the search for their ancestors.

Hex – Oh my goodness gracious me, what a wonderful and amusing tail! (I can pun too) The mermaid myth is perfectly updated; a love story that might be bordering more on obsession, but not only set in a different era to others, but seen from the mermaids perspective, which is probably the thing I enjoyed more than anything in this epic story. We often hear of how the sailors are lured to their dooms by the tantalising seductions of the sea maidens, but here we learn how it is for them, told with style and panache, a humour that is thoroughly suited to the medium, and there is a sting in the tale, after all the laughter a threat that seems all too real.

Kylara – This too could be considered a love story, but here love is for the land. There is an encroaching force here, something that is slowly stripping the beauty from a beautiful world – well as seen by the protagonist – and transforming it into something else. There is the feel of science at work, or an encroachment by a ‘civilised’ race wiping away the free magic of the indigenous inhabitants. For some reason I found myself thinking of the Europeans moving into the plains of America, forcing the native back as their land was taken and consumed. Here it is the skies that are slowly taken, but the feeling is the same. The last line is heartbreaking, perfect and clever.
 
I would title that 'Coming up with something to say I participated'
Thank heavens this month had 31 days.
 
Great minds think alike, TSP...



...well, apart from the actual content of the entry, the idea behind it, who is in it, what they're doing, that sort of thing....
 
It's a bit late for this quarter, perhaps, but a reminder for late entries and for the next challenge -- check your word count by hand. We've just had to pull a very good story which went over word count -- the computer count would have made it 300 but finger power, actually checking the words themselves, made it 302.
 
Shame. :(

It was a fabulous story and one of the ones at the top of my list.

Tricksy things, words.
 
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