>>horizon
Flash fiction is a well established form of writing these days, maybe even as common as the short story. Many flash fiction contests, which you can find all over the place, have more restrictive word limits than here. A lot of good authors out in the world have done a lot more with a lot less.

If 750 words isn't enough to accomplish what you're trying to do with a piece, it might be worth rethinking what you should be trying to accomplish in those 750 words.

I worked on a student lit journal once upon a time, and about two-thirds of the stories read like this one. The basic format was always, Misfit talks to psychologist. Psychologist psychoanalyzes misfit. Lessons about humanity are learned. Psychology is a favorite go-to subject for people writing on a budget. I get it. Psychology is a fascinating subject and we want to write stories about it. The easiest route is to write about psychologists talking psychology. But I'm just letting you know. There's a lot of psychology stories out there. It's a hard genre to stand out in.

You did dodge a lot of cliches though. It doesn't take place in a therapist's office. You get big points for that. Also, the psychologist is wrong. A lot of times these people are treated like holy prophets speaking the voice of God. Even better, there's almost a story here. The biggest problem with these kinds of stories is that there's really no story in them. At best, you can get a lot of character, and you've done a pretty good job with Emmie. But you're not really doing anything with her besides sitting in a coffee shop and talking pop pyschology.

I'll point you in the same direction that I point everyone else. Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Characters sitting around talking about their neuroses can make a good story. I don't know how, but Carver did it.

I felt it shoving me back, I felt the sand clawing at my skin and the sound rattling my bones.

A minor little thing. Write what he felt, not that he felt it. It shoved me back. The sand clawed at my skin.

A thought experiment. What if you cut everything before this line:

I put my hand on the grip of my rapier and unsheathed it, then I said, "I come from the city of Tala, which is no more for the Red Plague wiped it out. I am here to demand justice, and I shall have it."

Honestly, I was sort of bored with this one before here. Dude stumbles around in a sand storm. Climbs a rock. Weather is mean. By no means a necessarily boring concept, but in terms of writing hard not to make monotonous. You can only describe sand in so many ways. But then I got to this line, and then there's conflict! Drama!

Instead of pursuing that drama, you went for a mythic, cyclical, world creation bent, which is very cool, but doesn't ever really get fleshed out. You could take this a lot of different directions, but if you want it to be a story, you're gonna have to go where the theater is. And the only real theatrics in this story come in that one line.

You've set yourself up for one hell of sucker punch here. The guy's got a ghost riding shotgun in his back pocket, a bombshell who's absence is apparently ever present. She's your story's Big Bang. Her being gone sets all the rest in motion. And you gave her voice! You gave the dead an undead message, just one, to be delivered to your audience. And then we get

Steven, when things are difficult, look at this photograph to remember this day, the day you made me the happiest girl alive. If you are sad, or hurt, or depressed, remember that I will always be here for you.

I love you, now and forever.

--Hannah

This is your once chance to give 'Hannah' character, personality. Whoever she is, she scrambled this dude's eggs so bad he can't even make a beer run without tripping over her corpse. But all we get are bunch of girlfriend cliches. 'the happiest girl alive' and 'i will always be here for you.' If you're gonna give a ghost anything, give her a flame thrower. Turn the nozzle and light up this guy's pissy attitude and awkward small talk.

A play by play of New England Patriots coming back from a 28-3 deficit and winning in overtime wouldn't be a bad story, but it would be boring.

But tell me about how the whole world wants New England to lose because they're arrogant beast-men who don't care about anything but winning and routinely beat unsuspecting American apple pie loving patriotic teams into the dirt just for the fun of it, and they're dirty cheaters who would gobble cocaine-laced snot rockets if it gave them even the slightest edge, and in they're downtime they go to little kid birthday parties and pop all the balloons and piss on the cake and carry off the moms, and then they come back from a 28-3 deficit and win in overtime. Now that's just good theater.

This is a good enough technical description of the game, but where's the humanity? Does this guy ever sweat? Does he get frustrated? Does he have a dying pet koala at home he promised he would win the game for?

I think you may have left the rest of the story at home, because it's not here.

“It's so important to make a good first impression, isn't it?”

Yeah, I totally agree, and I'm not gonna say this is a bad first impression, but why this first impression? What follows is a stupendous whimsical adventure of alka seltzer alchemists dune buggying deserts drip dropping magic and explosions, and you're gonna pull me into your story with a vanilla conversation between two whoevers talking about did-she did-she-not sleep with someone I don't care about? Are you telling me about the most interesting day in this guy's life? Why not?

My socks are ready and willing to come off, man. Blow 'em away. I know nothing about the narrator, but I am getting some decent bits of character out of Magic Cat Woman. For so little words, do we need him at all. She's more interesting, she's got more pizzazz, and if she was starring in a musical, I'd be more likely to buy a ticket.

Darrah walked up to him, an almost animal grace in her steps

This is one of the few descriptions that really stood out to me. I don't know what animal grace is, but I want to know more. Drop some of the femme fatale cliches and pick up a few more of these weird descriptors.

Oh, huh, I just read another one of these. Well, I'll say the same thing here, stop relying so much on the twist. A story is more than a single subversion of expectation. Cutie Cupid Junior trying to slingshot pot shots of lust around town while still making time for school and a boyfriend is an interesting enough story on its own. Tell it. Why do so many write off authors try so desperately to hide their stories? If you've got a cool idea, slap me upside the head with it, force it down my throat. Don't strap it up in a demure dress and blush and run back upstairs when I tell you I'm interested.

at a man sitting peacefully on a park bench

As opposed to sitting violently on a park bench?

Just about every other story has this same intro, lead up, twist, silly subversion format, but only your story has a psycho squad of cupid copters precision rocket striking romance at love-lost losers on a suburban sidewalk. Flip this whole thing upside down. Don't wait until the very end of the story to reveal the one thing that makes your story different from all the others. You've just just scratched the surface of a weird world of long range tacticool pick up lines, surely there's another story that can be told here aside from just a single twist of expectation.

When General Sam Ridgemont rose from the dead for the second time in his existence, his first thought was that he must be getting old.

I love this as an opening line, but I think it's making a promise that the rest of the story doesn't keep. It's quick, catchy, clear. A lot of the rest of this is sort of meandering and vague. Where'd the punchiness of this first line wander off to and let's get it on a leash.

Leaping into action, General Ridgemont rolled over and made to stand up, barely catching himself as he plummeted off a gurney. He pulled himself to his feet, swaying dangerously but still mobile. The world flashed white as motion-activated lights turned on.

A wrecked operating room came into focus, the exit on the Farr wall. Picking his way across biomat containers (scattered and emptied of all biological material), biological hazard containers (overflowing with emptied blood bags), and some sort of wiring (were the doctors really so busy with war trauma victims that they couldn't tidy after themselves?), he staggered into the hallway.

Rereading the story, I still don't know quite where we are here or why. Sam takes on in the chest, doctors haul him over to a nearby ER. Then doctors give up on him and march Clone Sam out? Leaving Other Clone Sam bleeding but very much alive and capable of rocking and rolling? And completely abandon the ER? And the ER is floating in some vague word space with a view of the Very Important I swear Launch? And the assassin is here too? Wiggity what and wiggity what the hell are you talking about?

"I'm getting tired of killing you," his assassin said.

Aahh! There it is again! Everything that made that first line great suddenly somersaults back onto the page with this line. Punch me in the face a few more times, man. I can take it. I've been around the block a few times.

"I'm right here."

Goddammit, you sure are. Screw the frown. Give him a scowl. Give him a war cry. General Bloody Nose Rocket Ship is right damn here, Death, come and take him if you've got any balls. Death's standing between you and soup for supper. Get upset about it.

He blinked, then looked down at himself. No, his uniform was still there—albeit bloodstained and devoid of accoutrements—but it was unmistakably him boarding the shuttle.

I like this twist. It's surprising. It's fun. There's some decent lead up. I think more than anything, this story needs clarity. I need some who, when, where, what, and how, and why does it matter again?

There's some lovely tidbits of life in some of these descriptions.

A young man in a collared shirt and clip-on tie

Screw the collared shirt. I don't care about his collared shirt. Tell me more about this clip on tie. I want to hear about the guileless idiot who thinks he's getting an internship at a law firm while wearing a clip on tie.

New shoes, but tinged with mud underneath.

Everything in this paragraph is fine but bland until this line. He's got mud on his new shoes. That's much more interesting to me than brushed hair and generic slacks. What sort of mud has this pencil pushing freak been dumpster diving in? He's trying to look professional, but the whole damn world rained on him to show Kaufman & Kaufman the truth, and the truth is he's a mud stained shoe begging for elevator holds. Tell me about it.

looking like a schoolkid--if not by his youth, then by his optimism

Bitter. Cynical. Ageist. I love it.

“When I first went into C.S., I had big dreams. I wanted to build the next Google, or Facebook, or even Zynga. But then I quickly realized just how little impact I had--babysit this database, write that login page, monitor our product for whatever’s making our cloud stuff so expensive to keep running. It just wasn’t for me.”

“So you decided to go into patent law.”

“It’s a growing industry, and I figured arguments here would have more impact than how a button looks on devices of different sizes. And the technical details are still intact--that’s what makes it different from, say, bird law, doesn’t it?”

All right. Cool. But who cares? This is pretty good fodder for an interview, but the reader isn't in a position to hire him onto anything other than a good story. This matters. I'm certain this matters, but I can't tell a lick why. This dude's hocking his whole life. Sell me on it. Am I supposed to be rooting for him? Do I like him? I don't know.

“I’m Miranda Kaufmann, partner here at Kaufmann & Kaufmann.” Now I’m smiling. “And a bit of advice: you may want to look just a little more into who leads a firm before the interview lest you run into them. Good luck.” We walk through the door to the office, and Josh is led to a conference room somewhere.

Eh, I don't know. A twist like this would make sort of a funny story to tell at the next family reunion, but you've only got seven hundred fifty words to change my life, and this isn't doing it. All in all, this story feels lukewarm and I don't know what it wants from me. Does it want me to laugh? Maybe a couple explosions next time. Maybe cut the wire and let the elevator drop down the shaft. Maybe Kaufman is his long lost mother and Kaufman is his great granddaughter time traveling from outer space.

>>Southpaw
I think the 'toned' makes sense. Another word or phrase would probably be stronger, but it makes sense to include at least a small description of how apple bucking has affected her physically. 'Toned' implies physically fit, or at least physically capable. That her fitness/capability/usefulness comes specifically from apple bucking, something that is quickly being outmoded, is important to the story. Usually 'toned' would be a positive adjective, showing health or hard work, but here there's something wan and pessimistic about it.

My only real criticism of the use of 'toned' would be that the word is used so often to describe both Applejack and Rainbow Dash's physical condition that it's become sort of cliche. It's one of those words that has been used so many times that it's stopped meaning much of anything anymore.

This sets up a very cool situation, with great potential for both comedy and drama. But by the end, you haven’t done much with that situation. Both characters are in the same place at the conclusion as they were at the start. Sure, Daring Do is more excited about the game now, but is that really all that can be done with these two very dramatic characters in this very dramatic situation?

This is a nice little bit of pointless fun. I think it might drag on a little long. It was fine at the beginning, but I ended up skimming through most of the last third.

A lot of really good character specific details here. I’m iffy on the twist. Do you want this to be a story about Twilight’s funeral, or do you want it to be about how the Mane 6 would prefer to be remembered? As is, it’s really more of the latter, but that final makes it seem like you meant it to be the former. The twist is at odds with the rest of the fic.

This one didn’t grab me until nearly the very end, but I absolutely adore that final line. I think this fic desperately needs to be expanded. I would love to read a story about Applejack contending with a changing farm that’s leaving her and her skills behind. That said, I do think you’ll need a much stronger opening hook.

I’m not sure what ‘like cut glass’ means. I’m guessing you mean ‘broken glass.’ Glass cutting is a very precise process that doesn’t generally lead to many sharp angles. But then ‘broken glass’ might suggest something else entirely about Rarity’s emotional state.

Otherwise, this is a fun little fic with a cool premise. Rarity’s reaction and voice are mostly perfect, and the whole thing is pretty funny. I found the line ‘Twilight, is it really so hard to accept that we might not be around some day?’ to be distracting.

For a split second, this starts to become a fic about accepting the inevitability of loss, but then glosses over it. It’s not there long enough to add anything to the story and it’s never resolved, so it ends up feeling like a weird distraction from the comedy. I’d suggest either expanding or cutting that plotline. That said, it could make for a very cool story if expanded.

This has some really great tension and atmosphere building, but I think I have to disagree with other people about the ending. I don’t like it. I think this would really benefit from the ‘Let your characters suffer’ mantra. Rarity feels too perfect here, and the conflict (which is set up very well) is resolved far too easily. You have a good opportunity here for really digging into these fears, but it’s wasted because you let Rarity resolve things too quickly.

Is it some requirement that every single minific has to have some funny twist at the end? Like, seriously, over half my ballot is made up of these types of endings. This one is funnier than most, but what’s the point? Sure, the set up is fine, the punchline is decently silly. But why are we writing so many stories that are nothing but a long set up for a single punchline?

It took me a long time to find this thread. So how exactly is this working? I'm seeing comments/reviews both here and on individual story pages. Are we copy and pasting, or is there some way to post a comment on both at the same time? Also, is the spread sheet still a thing?