DISCUSSION -- October 2015 300-word Writing Challenge (#19)

Thank you for the mentions and long-listings from Cat's Cradle, Victoria, Starbeast, and Johnnyjet, and a huge thank you to J D Foster for the vote! :)

My own votes went to Tim James, Mosaix, and Hex, but if I'd had a couple more votes Droflet and Culwich would have got one too. So many fantastic entries!
 
Wow, Travis, you've placed me in with some pretty exceptional company. Thanks a lot.
 
Well 'm voting for
Droflet
Ashleyne
and Mad Alice

But it could so easily have been so many others, they were all so good.
Special mentions to

Cat's
Ursa
Luiglin
Tim (Perp)
Vaz
Kerry
Alc
and The Judge


And lots of thanks to JD and Starbeast for the mentions. They really cheered me up after a hard day.
 
Holy cow. A vote, among this lot? Double wowza!!! Go ahead, Farntfar, make my day. (spelled it right this time (y)). And you have. Many, many thanks.
 
Travis Woodward said:
Thank you for the mentions and long-listings from Cat's Cradle, Victoria, Starbeast, and Johnnyjet, and a huge thank you to J D Foster for the vote! :)
Click to expand...

I felt the emotion in your story so strongly, it really worked for me, I think it's amazing how much you made me care for Kiera with just 300 words

farntfar said:
And lots of thanks to JD and Starbeast for the mentions. They really cheered me up after a hard day.
Click to expand...

I think the pace, themes and comedy were all pitch perfect in A rush of howling, glad it helped on bad day!
 
Hello everyone. Time for my shortlist and votes.

I knew that Travis Woodward and Robert Mackay were definitely going to get two of my votes, but the third one proved to be harder. In fact I would have just liked two votes so I wouldn't have had to commit, but my other shortlisted entries are:

Tim James
Victoria Silverwolf
DG Jones
Mosaix
Alc
Hex
TJ

And after some really specious reasoning for thinning and trimming, I gave my third to Victoria.

Congratulations all who entered.

pH
 
About time I got my votes in. Tough month - sorry I've not time to do a more thorough reading of my favourite stories as I would have liked, but it doesn't mean I don't love you all :D

The following constituted my shortlist.

Desolare - @HazelRah - wonderful natural power infused with innocence; there's something Spielbergesque about the depiction of the character of the storm as something that has always been there, but untouched and undiscovered - amid all the lifeless rocks and stones being pored over, the most mystical thing of all escapes understanding, or even being spotted. There's also a playful, knowing sort of humour at work; the character of the storm is quiet, contemplative, and clumsy ("I think I broke it with my power") which bely the storm's aggressive, terrifying exterior.

Redemption on Hellowe'en - @TitaniumTi - The setup to this comedy horror is simply brilliant. Poor old Ableb. He carries the perennially defeated air, and the kind of weird combination of inane stupidity and malevolent cunning, of Wile. E. Coyote. He's definitely an anti-hero worth rooting for. The run-in with the trick-or-treaters is a rare delight. Sadly the final act lost a bit of clarity for me, which probably precludes it from a vote, but I would love to see this as a larger piece because the set-up is both instantly classic and amusingly original.

Obsessive, Compulsive Order - @mosaix - a grand tale of the slow creep of insanity of isolation in the telling, with a macabre reveal at the end. Dear old Hendricks, the loon, is the perfect inflection of the storm itself. It is raging and violent, unpredictable, destructive; he is (at least on the outside) calm, still, and ordered - but both he and the storm achieve the same effect of "wiping the slate clean" and reducing their world to the perfection of the blank canvas. In the storm Hendricks has found his perfect companion where all those other human colleagues failed.

The Maiden's Canticle - @Phyrebrat - as usual, Ph indulges us with wonderful, poetic flourishes and immerses us in a small but fully-formed world of rich imagery and established myth. The story - the Canticle - carries the myths used by the little village of Goldenball (sounding just a little like a dirty Bond film) Barrow to make sense of the unending flux and reflux of seasonal change: the descent of mists, the stealing of apples, the harvest. Ph cements key points in our mind with cleverly constructed couplets; flowers semi-hidden among the grassy prose.

Disconcerted Action - @chrispenycate - coming across as something like "Ted Hughes does Spinal Tap", there's a furious dichotomy at play whereby the ordered structure of verse plays against the chaotic maelström of the rock concert in full flowing prose. Anyone who's been at a gig that has acquired its own sense of rampant energy could understand that the Judge's opinion at the end is actually an ironic one; the coming together of all in chaos, as happens so often at concerts, is an Act of God, inasmuch as the crowd literally becomes enraptured. Oh, and "The firmament obscured by cloud" - Pink Floyd reference, perhaps?

The Rover - @Mr Orange - definitely one of the more intense pieces submitted this month, and the sheer pain and effort of the character of the Rover comes through in gory spades. Ultimately the story is one of the futility of raging against death, and ends in peace, acceptance and - we hope - forgiveness for whatever act caused the catastrophe ("My fault."). Short, spiky sentences mimic the snap of the character's sinus line as it jerks towards death, until blessed relief. Very close and effectively painful writing.

Baseline - @Robert Mackay - you're in a bit of a purple patch at the moment, Robert, and have produced some really beautiful Challenge pieces for a few months running now. This is no exception: it has a brilliant, Oldboy-style setup that wouldn't be out of place in the Absurdist Fiction challenge over the road, and a la @mosaix uses the storm as metaphor for the MC's own mind, and similarly has the storm as the remover of all semblance of what has gone before. This time the storm is internal, implicit, unseen, but no less violent for it. In trying to figure out his way out of the chrome-plated rat's nest of wires and bacon, he chips away at his own memories, little by little. Brilliantly high-concept and bleak.

Madiha - @Venusian Broon - what can I say? Sheer imagination at work; the fact you've squeezed so much history and world into such a short space is admirable. Yet everything feels real and complete and believable. It's also uproariously camp and funny, with stage management, makeup and acting directions being required in order to prevent nuclear catastrophe. In an insane world, it's as good a method as any for preventing global meltdown. Like Robert Mackay's effort above, it also is wonderfully absurd, with the loop repeating every 13 hours, just in time for the matinée performance. This is probably what it feels like to do panto in a crummy seaside town in front of a group of pissed-up navvies, night after night after night. Though after that you'd probably be praying for the apocalypse.

Beneath The Storm God's Eye - @alchemist - wonderful, classic fantasy about nature's power to instigate rebirth and regeneration. Very tight storytelling combine with the mythological to create an epic scope of an arid world in need of relief, but also has room to display the human: random acts of kindness that can ripple out to become the seeds of events of cosmic significance.

Toe The Line - @Hex - Ok, ok. Let's deal with the chicken first. Best. Last. Line. Ever. I mean, talk about battery hens... But it takes more than a bit of voltry-poultry to make it onto my shortlist, and luckily the rest of this blackly comic tale of the epic mundane delivers in spades. A cynical voice tells the tale of the everyday tribulations of lower-middle-class interplanetary economic migrants, ending in an apocalyptic teatime. A barmy tale whose heart lies in the humourous figure of the wife, forever knitting: whether it be stitching her crochet patterns, knitting bones back together, or weaving her magic to wreak revenge upon the everyday morons who make our lives just a tad too difficult. Rock on, chick.
 
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I started off with a shortlist of around two thirds of the entries and it's taken me days to prune it down. Apologies to all the authors of brilliant stories who I didn't mention.

My votes went to three stories that made me laugh, because I really need to laugh right now:

Glen, because seriously, how could I not vote for someone who uses Bohemian Rhapsody so well?
Luiglin, because his story made me choke with laughter on my tea.
Hex. I mean, an electric chicken? Had to get recognition.

Runners-up were CC's poopuns, Chrispy's poetry, The Judge's cleverness, and Ursa's Wordsworth-smithing.

Shortlist: Hazel Rah, DGJones, Phyrebrat, Jo and Culhwch.
 
I have found it so very hard to narrow the votes down this month. I had a shortlist but it was over half the entries and any one of them could have made it to my final three.

So I'm not putting the list up,

the vote getters are

Drof, J D Foster and Luiglin.

A special mention goes to CC for his crap entry ;)
 
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