Year 2, Week 45: Results!

There’s not much to say this week… I enjoyed the entries a lot and the two winning stories are near to perfection. Well done everyone!

Runner Up

Angie with “Honor in dying”

I love the imagery.

I’d shorten the paragraphs to add to the tension, though.

Winner Y2W45

Bill Engleson with “The Art Class of War”

Excellent story. I love the twist!

The Art Class of War

Two thousand warriors drew their swords for a war they would not win.

It was downright embarrassing.

“Two thousand,” I explode. “TWO THOUSAND!”

“Shush, Moog,” someone says from a desk, three rows over. It’s Gorge the Hammer. I give Gorgie my best battle-weary finger and whisper, “You’re fine with this?”

“Shush, both of you,” someone further back chimes in. And then that shush-happy soldier adds, “Stick to the task at hand.”

“Frigging Pols,” I mutter, and return to my sketch, remembering how this all came about.

Was it only a month ago that General Scourge revealed the new policy from our superiors.

“Men,” he had said, in that deep gravelly voice that we all associated with the glory of attack, “We are in uncharted waters. Glimp the Younger, Prime Minister of Dampmania, has decreed that the glorious battles of yore, the ones once fought bravely, ferociously, and quite bloodily by our fathers and their fathers are no more. It is said that Glimp the Younger could not sleep one snowy night a few months ago. He went for a walk and upon reaching a small hill had an epiphany…”

“A what?” I blurted out.

“Moog. Is that you interrupting me?” the General demanded to know. The boar fat was in the fire now, I thought.

“Yes, my General. Two Thousand apologies.”

“You still have one serviceable ear, right Moog?”

“Yes, my General. Most of it.”

“Then use it. Listen and learn. Glimp saw the future. Our fighting men, all earless. All limbless. He saw that war would continue but perhaps Dampmania could profit by it, provision the armies of the world who continue to engage in pointless bloodshed.”

“Phooey,” I had said.

That was last month.

I refocus and continue drawing the Moog Blade.

It will be a masterful prototype. 

Thank you all for participating!

Until Saturday...

Year 2, Week 35: Results!

Okay, the first week of school took a bigger toll on me than I had previously expected, so I must apologize for 1) the late results and 2) that there's only one review. I did pick out two today, but time constraints are eating at me. 

Death of a Mule by Angie: This was going to be first runner-up, since I found it very humorous, between his life flashing before his eyes, the drug cartel, and the crocodile. Nice work.

Y2W35 Winner

AJ Aguilar-van der Merwe!

with Enchanted Love 

I was intrigued from the get-go on this piece; line one was cleverly written in the fact that it gives us a glimpse into the future but doesn't tell us why the prince's eyes might be death-like. It was an excellent foreshadowing technique.

The passage read choppily to me; most of the sentences follow one of two sentence patterns, and they tend to be very telling instead of showing, so it ends up with a kind of "See Spot run. Spot runs fast," feel ("Her name is Mary," being the prime example). Perhaps if this piece were written in third person limited, possibly past tense (I am biased towards that, I confess; I did feel like the present tense could work if this were less of an overview and an in-character shot). 

I like the idea of the story--that of a prince stuck in a political marriage but loving a forest goddess, and the forest goddess basically claiming him as her own. There are great building blocks here. Good job!

ENCHANTED LOVE

His eyes would be cold and lifeless when he arrives back from his ride in the forest.

At breakfast, his father, King Eduardo, makes it clear that he, Prince Alejandro, must wed Princess Annabella, King Felipe's daughter. The marriage between the sole heir and heiress to the thrones of the two biggest kingdoms would make one massive, powerful and invincible dominion within the Asianic territories.

Unbeknownst to King Eduardo, his son is in love with another. Her name is Mary. Prince Alejandro tells the king he is going riding to clear his head but he's meeting Mary to tell her about his father's intention.

Mary is waiting for him near their favorite giant tree by the river, not far from the waterfall. Her long shiny black hair glistens. Her pearl skin seems to sparkle. Her eyes incandescent, she flashes the most enchanting smile Alejandro has ever seen.

As they embrace, their love radiates like nothing the forest and its inhabitants have witnessed.

Alejandro vows not to marry Annabella. He only wants to know how to break the news to his father without disappointing him. The king's heart condition is no secret to them. She urges him to go home and assures him that everything would be fine.

Upon seeing his son looking like death, the king sends for a healer. The prince protests saying he feels fine despite looking ill. He asks that his wish to retire to his room be respected. He persuades his father that his energy will replenish soon.

Alone in his room, peace surrounds Alejandro's entire being. His father doesn't need to know. He is happy. He is in love with a 'diwata', a forest goddess. His soul belongs to his enchantress and must now be taken to her kingdom.

Year 2, Week 20: Results!

It wasn’t easy to judge this week’s fabulous entries. I read and reread, loving all the twists brought on by the prompt.

Finally, I knew which ones resonated with me. And why.

Announcement: Cracked Flash Fiction Competition is taking a hiatus for the holidays and will return for week 21 on the 7^th of January 2017.

 

Honourable Mention

Carin Marais with “The Sewer Rat”

The revenge-element along with facades – obvious and metaphorical – made this a great read. I grinned with glee at the end. Note: either indent paragraphs or leave a line open. Also, “gold leaf” and “voice box”.

First Runner Up

Angie with "My Abuse Kit"

So often the abuse on women is overlooked or brushed off as nothing. Loved the ending where the character had left her abuser and went on with her life.
 
Note: use paragraphs; start a new idea in a new paragraph; leave lines open between paragraphs. Use a colon after “ultimate truth” to emphasise that he didn’t like what he’d created. And a semi-colon between the sentences “I never lied about it; I simply omitted…” to bind those thoughts closer together. Also, don’t use capital letters after colons. Great read. 

Y2W20 Winner

Kelly Griffiths with "The Prettiest"

Dressing up corpses? Awesome! Loved the dark take on glittering things. Note: I removed the extraneous inverted commas in paragraph six.

 

      “Sometimes it’s better to hide the unsightly with shiny things than to try to fix it,” said the mother. “Grab that box of Christmas tinsel from the attic. And a fork.”

The child’s noisy rifling through the silver drawer induced a clamorous tune, followed by staccato thudding on the attic stairs. She returned breathless, holding a fork in one hand, a dusty red box in the other.

“This?” She asked, fingering the wayward silver strands.

The mother took the bright silver lengths and held them to the light. The tinsels flashed and shimmered, squirming in her arms like a lightning strike. She gravely handed the tinsel to the child. “You do the honors. It’s your first time.”

The child wrapped the silver noodles around her fork and jammed it in an eye socket.

“Yes, that’s it,” counseled the mother, “Now hold the tinsel down with your fingers and gently slide the fork out. Now the next one. We can stuff her mouth with dryer sheets soaked in cinnamon oil, so she doesn’t stink. Grab the red sequins and we’ll sew her mouth closed, but we’ll leave slits like a sachet. See?” The mother beamed with pride as her daughter bent to the work, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

“Yes, like that. Sew her mouth into a smile. You just have to pull hard on the thread. She can’t feel anything.”

“I think I hear her crying,” the child protested. See, where she’s coming apart?”

“Just use more tinsel. Wrap it like a necklace and no one will know her throat is cut.”

The child obeyed, her eyes widening at the transformation. A slight smile played at the corners of her tiny mouth.

“This is the prettiest Christmas doll ever, Mommy.”

“Almost as pretty as you,” murmured the zombie.

 

 

Thank you all for your participation! Until January…

 

 

Year 2, Week 17: Results!

I loved this week’s prompt – it had me writing until late on my NaNoWriMo novel. As I read through the entries, I was amazed at the different takes on it.

 

First Runner Up

Angie with “Doomed Shipwreck”

I enjoyed this. Very vivid descriptions of this strange sea. I can even see it as a strange metaphor for bathing the dog. Great twist ending. Good job!

 

In terms of constructive criticism: dividing the story into shorter paragraphs will ease reading. Also, repeating “the ship” and “Pulga” so close together (ending a sentence with it and starting the next with the same) weakens the idea: either find another word that conveys the same meaning, or rewrite the sentences to make them shorter and more powerful.

 

E.g. “Swirls of copper and bronze, typical of this region, flowed steadily past the ship on her maiden voyage. Pulga, a wealthy sheik living three continents over on Croup, had commissioned our ship and crew to find out the whereabouts of the Psýllos inhabitants of an island somewhere in this region.”

 

See that? The flow is better and all the words that didn’t contribute to moving the story forward had been cut. Also, the numeral was replaced with the word (the way we write in fiction for the most part) and the word “colors” was cut because we already know that “copper” and “bronze” are colours – don’t overload on adjectives. Mark Twain wrote: “When you catch an adjective – kill it.” And Stephen King believes that the road to hell is paved with adjectives. We don’t have to go that far – adjectives have their place in fiction, we just need to know when they are unnecessary and when they can give startling intensity to a noun.

 

Your story is very imaginative. Remember the basics when you read over your stories, making sure it flows, and your writing will soar.

 

 

Y2W17 Winner

 Benjamin Langley

 

with “Pioneers”

Ooh, a creepy, yet fascinating, take on the prompt. Did the experiment kill them, turn them into weird ghosts or some form of medium? I like the way you use the repetition of “three days” to show the awful state they’re in.

 

In terms of constructive criticism: I would’ve placed each confession in its own line for effect; the last line too. Don’t jump from past to present tense (there’s a lot of reasons for that – check out the Writer’s Digest or similar publication), though I understand that you wanted to go for a sense of immediacy – rather use the different types of past tense.

 

Using different punctuation marks will make some of your writing clearer: e.g. “… but on the third – as I said – shapes, no more than that: hazy and distant.” See how the dashes and colon changes the meaning slightly? The colon can even be replaced with ellipses for effect.

 

Remember to read through your writing to pick up on typos like “if” instead of “is” before the confessions start. Good job!

 

Pioneers

 
It took us three days before we started seeing shapes in the fog. Three days without sleep. Three days in the sole company of like-minded folk desperate enough to get involved in the kind of medical research that’s advertised on the dark web. Three days with nothing to eat but the meal-replacement bars laced with Dr Hoffmann’s experimental drug.

Pioneers. That’s what he called us every night before he sent us out into the graveyard. But he always remained on the other side of the door. Two dropped out immediately, refused to enter the graveyard. We lost five more over the next two nights, leaving only three of us: Tim with the lazy eye, a homeless woman called Mary, and me, who thought doing this would solve all my problems.

I thought this would be easy. On the first two nights, there was nothing but mind-crushing boredom, but on the third, as I said, shapes, no more than that, hazy and distant.

It’s day four.

“Pioneers,” Dr Hoffmann says. I’m not listening to the rest, because there’s another sound; it gets louder when he opens the door. Tim steps out first, cautiously, and I follow. I’m so exhausted it’s more of a shuffle than a step. I can hear Mary begging not to go, but then her voice if lost among others, a thousand people all talking at once: “I slept with my brother’s wife.” “I stole from the church.” “I slipped poison into my husband’s tea.”

The voices started to take on shape. People, long dead, confessing their sins, over and over. That’s when I realise where I am. Purgatory. I back away towards the sanctuary. I reach for the door, but my hand passes right through it. I want to call for help, but instead I confess.

 

 

Thank you all for your participation! Until Saturday…