DISCUSSION -- October 2014 300-word Writing Challenge (#15)

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Congratulations, Juliana! Well done, indeed. And, as usual, well done everyone for meeting the Challenge.

Thanks for sneaking in a late vote, Boneman, and for the runner-up-ship, Ursa!

Ratsy, please do tell Laura what a great collection of stories her picture gave us, and thank her from all of us.

Kerry, I forgot to say in my last post I enjoyed your story -- a pity you weren't able to post it in the Challenge itself, as it would undoubtedly have gathered a lot of interest and, I'm sure, a lot of votes.

Victoria, I got the Jeanne d'Arc references, and really liked your story, particularly the opening which makes it seem Catherine is mundane, not being able to see the visions in the clouds. An intriguing original opening line, too, and I'd have been interested to see where the story led if you'd kept it, since I can well imagine you'd have had to change the ending to make it fit.

If anyone is interested in my story, my initial idea was to have the bad guy as the dreamer and a good, over-worked poorly-paid chap as the DreamGuider, and it's the DG who's been badly treated (job/girl/whatever stolen) by the bad guy, and who takes his revenge when having to guide the dreamer out. But that felt a little hackneyed, and depended on the coincidence of the bad guy choosing to dream with this company and his dream going wrong, plus I was spending too much time (and too many words) setting up the backstory of faults happening all over, his being tired and depressed etc. I thought I'd try it from the other angle, and it practically wrote itself at that point, not least as baddies are so much easier and more fun to write! (And if it isn't clear, the sacked woman who is expert in dreaming has deliberately set things up to trap Hank, though I was never sure if the other employees were helping her, ie whether the food poisoning is something she's done or is a lie to get him into the dream.)
 
I thought that was a great story, TJ, and a fine example of setup and twist.

The idea behind mine might have been to cram in as stupid an amount of plot as possible. I realised this when I tried to describe the story to a friend and took about a thousand words to do so.

It's not the first time, either. I really can't seem to get to grips with how much or little to try to do with 300 words.
 
Well done, Juliana!

My motivation was simple - I was doing an SF story, dammit, no matter how many horses, swords or magicians I saw! So instead of a knight, I had my girl find a biological/ mechanical alien.
 
I had a mix of Harebrain and Alc in my motivation - I wanted an element of sci fi (for much the same bloody-minded reason, must be the Irish air) but the original story came in at 1000 words with a mythos that explained the whys and wherefores. I tried to simplify it a little but really should know that anything with a first draft over 800 words rarely works. Also, I was struck by how still the horse was and that's what made me think of statues.
 
Congratulations, Juliana and commiserations, TJ. With a couple of days to go I thought you had it in the bag.

Thanks for the votes, UM, Ratsy, TJ, TDZ, Phyrebrat, Abernovo, Mr Orange, Holland, and Kerrybuchanan. Thanks for the mentions / short lists, Talysia, Darkchrome, Johnnyjet, Alc, Martin321 and Farntfar.
 
Many thanks for the votes, JoanDrake, Remedy, Kerrybuchanan and Robert Mackay! And thanks as well to those who mentioned or listed my story.

Congrats, Juliana! Good thing TJ didn't win - she's getting too good at this, we may have had to consider banning her from entering for awhile just to give the rest of us a shot...
 
There's something a bit spooky about my story, in that it's almost a fractured fairy tale (one that's 225 words too long for the 75-worder). What makes it rather more odd is that the tale I've fractured is one that I've never read. Let me explain....

Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850), born with the name of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau in the real Lenauheim, was an Austrian poet. I would guess that few here have read any of his output -- I haven't -- but may have heard Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke (The Dance in the Village Inn), which is generally called the Mephisto Waltz (Mephisto Waltz No. 1, actually). It's a musical realisation of one of the scenes -- Der Tanz -- from Lenaus' poem, Faust.

Liszt took this scene, and another one, and created a work of programme music for orchestra, Zwei Episoden aus Lenaus Faust, the first episode of which is Der nächtliche Zug (The Procession by Night). All I knew of the programme for first piece comes from listening to the music and reading sleeve notes.

Faust enters a forest on horseback, beneath a sky filled with dark clouds. Unaware of the beauty around him -- an effect of having communed with evil -- he goes deeper into the forest until seeing a glow. It comes from a procession of priests. Faust hides from them, but cannot block out their heavenly music. He is at once repelled by, and attracted to, the music, the priests' virtue and their resulting contentment. Once they've gone, he considers his fate and weeps. (I've since read that the horse is his faithful companion.)

So now for the fracturing. Nikolaus has abandoned his life as a trainee Magicker (Magickers are the official magicians of his world) and fled. Needing help to make his escape, he has sought the aid of a Magickant (a street magician), who provides a horse. The horse -- no friend of Nikolaus -- takes him deep into the forest where he sees a procession of Magickers. Although he's almost tempted to rejoin them, he no longer can. Recognising this, the chief magician, who'd disguised himself as the Magickant, removes the illusion of the forest and the horse, leaving Nikolaus to weep alone for what he's given up.

As for Magickers and Magickants.... I first met the term, Magiker, in a blogpost by Culhwch, in which he said, at the end:
Officially, the unoffical magikers are termed 'thaumaturges', which I'm not so happy about. Popularly this kind of magic user (the illegal kind, cheeky ne'er-do-wells that they are) are termed 'witchkin', which I don't mind so much and is good for the plural, but more difficult for the singular - I'd prefer not to use plain old 'witch'. And I'd still like a punchier official term. But I'm out of ideas.
I replied thus:
I understand that in German, there is the Musiker(in f) (musician) and the Musikant(in f) (musician, minstrel) and even the Musikus. So far, so Collins German Dictionary. However, according to the late Louis Kentner, in an article which he wrote about piano playing, a Musikant is - I'll paraphrase to avoid legal action - someone who isn't really a concert artist, but more of an entertainer. (He doesn't mention the Musikus.)
 
I thought that was a great story, TJ, and a fine example of setup and twist.
Thanks! Oddly enough, I didn't see it as one of my twist stories, and I wasn't deliberately trying to mislead anyone, quite the opposite, so I was relying just on good old fashioned glad-to-see-his-comeuppance.

The idea behind mine might have been to cram in as stupid an amount of plot as possible. I realised this when I tried to describe the story to a friend and took about a thousand words to do so.

It's not the first time, either. I really can't seem to get to grips with how much or little to try to do with 300 words.
I have to confess that though I liked aspects of yours, I couldn't properly follow what was going on and who everyone was. I approach the 300 worders exactly the same way as the 75 worders, so only one relatively simply plot, but more time to expand it and make it clear. I wonder if anyone else has this problem? (Might be worth a thread of its own, prehaps?)

Congratulations, Juliana and commiserations, TJ. With a couple of days to go I thought you had it in the bag.
See, this is the reason I don't look at the poll until the last day. If I'd known I was leading at any point, I'd have been making little effigies of other people and sticking pins in them! :devilish:

Good thing TJ didn't win - she's getting too good at this, we may have had to consider banning her from entering for awhile just to give the rest of us a shot...
Oi! I heard that!

Ursa -- I love that explanation. I'd not heard of that Faust tale, but I did follow what had happened to the narrator, if not exactly why it had happened.
 
I approach the 300 worders exactly the same way as the 75 worders, so only one relatively simply plot, but more time to expand it and make it clear. I wonder if anyone else has this problem? (Might be worth a thread of its own, prehaps?)

It's just occurred to me that of my ten or so 300-word entries, there has been only one that didn't feel constrained by word-count (challenge#2) and it's probably no coincidence that this one got my highest number of votes.
 
Well first off, a big congrats to Juliana on the win! There were a lot of great stories and its neat to see my three votes went to the top 3 stories.

Thanks to everyone who voted and mentioned my story. It was by far my best showing at 7 and for a few days eaely , I held the lead. (That didn't last long!)

I don't really have a good story behind my entry. I just wanted to do a different take on the picture and went with something strange and dark. It just kind of flowed out.

I will make try to check if Laura had a chance to read all of the entries and I did thank her for the use of the picture.
 
Congratulations, Juliana!

And thanks to Ursa for the honourable mention. It was great to be mentioned among such a great group of writers & stories.

There were lots of excellent tales inspired by Laura's awesome picture. Maybe we'll get another picture from her sometime???
 
As for the background of my story, from the first second I read the picture was made by a girl/woman named Laura, the title "Laura's Escape" came to me, and I decided to stick to it. I also thought it would be nice for the story to actually include a painting (I thought I was so clever and that no one else would think of that :D).

The kidnapping story was inspired by several real-life teenage kidnapping I've been reading in the papers recenty, and since most of them didn't have a happy ending, I decided to give Laura one.

I know that I should have made the story more "speculative" in nature, but I just liked the the way it came out and didn't want to mess it up.
 
I must confess that I didn't quite follow Ursa's, but it makes more sense now with the explanation.

I thought HB's was brilliant -- it was the first of my votes, without a doubt. It was a great deal of plot, but it worked!

My first idea when I saw the picture was the Headless Horseman, since he doesn't have his head showing in the picture -- and since it was Halloween, I thought everyone would go that direction! I was really surprised that there weren't a lot of those. But I saw it as a twist where he wasn't really a bad guy. I just tried to fit too much into it and failed miserably (see full explanation in the Improving thread).
 
jastius! Sneaky and appreciated, thank you.

farntfar, thanks for the mention.

Congratulations, Juliana!


So, I looked at the picture and thunked hard. Apart from my eyebrows heading for the centreline of my forehead, nothing much happened. I was about to head for another coffee when I heard the words "There’s a funny-looking warrior, carrying a staff of light..." in a young girl's voice. I opened a Word doc, typed what turned out to be two lines and within ten minutes, the whole saga-poem had landed. Took a fifteen minute break, had a reread and did a ten-minute tidy up; it was happy to be left like that, so I submitted it.
 
Well done to Juliana! What a win!

Thanks for the shortlist TJ!

I got Victoria's reference and love Jeanne so I was pre-sold.
Same for TDZ's fab horseman story.

For my effort... Well, tho I think the picture is a beautiful work of art, as soon as I saw it I thought well, I'm out of it this time because I just find wizardy Knighty stuff so out of my orbit...

However the fallen tree reminded me of a little wooden arched bridge a friend used to have over their lake in the New Forest and it kind of went from there. At the same time, annoying hoodrats where I live were letting bangers off every night and it was really getting annoying by the second week.

I'd remarked to a neighbour about it and she said fireworks meant Diwali to her, just as much as Guy Fawkes Night, and all those things coalesced (along with my flat being on the horrid EDL march routes) into my story....

Loving the explanations, keep them coming; they're like special bonus features on a Blu ray :)

pH
 
I'm enjoying the explanations, too. It's fun to see how everyone came up with their ideas, and how they worked them out.


For a long time I drew a complete blank when I tried to think of a story to go with the picture. Not even a shadow of an inspiration.

And then the first line just came to me, about no one knowing when the golden rider would come. And then the idea that he would be in the sky, rather than riding through the woods. After that, it came to me a line or two at a time for a while, with no idea where it was actually going to go. I remembered the legend of Saint Nicholas and the story of the dowries mysteriously thrown down the chimney so that the three poor girls could wed, so it occurred to me that my rider, too, might be a sort of patron to young women -- probably the idea of riding across the sky suggested that, although only in the most roundabout way. Early on I knew I wanted to mention how amazing it might be to be taken with him on a blazing ride among the stars, but I couldn't work it in until the last line. And then, because it was sounding like folklore to me, I thought there had to be more than one variant on how it ended. (Although I knew which ending I would choose.)

Once I had the complete story I switched some things around, added some lines, condensed others. Somewhere in the middle it flashed into my mind that it was reminding me a little bit of Tam Lin -- though the plots are actually nothing alike-- which is why, having no other name for her, I named the girl Janet.

Then I had to think of a title for the story, and had no clever ideas for that, so I decided to present it as an authentic piece of folklore from an imaginary country. Fortunately, I had already invented a lot of imaginary places, over the years, so I didn't have to come up with something off the top of my head.

And then when I had figured out where the story was going to originate, I remembered that I already had a professor of languages and folklore conveniently located in that region, so I didn't have to invent him on the spot either. Mr. Gumley appears as a peripheral character in Goblin Moon, someone who isn't actually seen, but who is consulted by other characters. So I put him into the title as a sort of in-joke that only I would be able to enjoy.
 
I think this is my favorite bit of the challenges; reading everyone's inspiration and explanation.

I wrote a completely different story first, about a haunted book. Then a comment about how fairy tale-like the picture was made me decide to try a fairy tale-that-wasn't. A sort of anti-fairy tale?
 
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