Hmm... the opening grabbed me, as time-travel is wont to do.

You lost some of my interest pretty quickly, however, particularly with the wolves; I highly doubt a pack of wolves would attack a human, especially one with a fire. They're really extremely cautious animals, and humans are not their usual prey. Oh, and describing one of them as a 'hound' really threw me. Wolves are hunted with hounds. (Probably poodles, in France.)

Also, former leper? Perhaps I'm wrong, but even if leprosy was curable then (which I doubt) I don't think Joan would buy this, or even be willing to be near someone who'd had leprosy. The disease does not have a nice reputation. Consider some form of pox, perhaps?

Further on, this descends into a sort of bizarre slice of life? Not really sure what to make of the middle bit.

The ending does give some closure to the time-travel, and is honestly a pretty decent wrap-up. I can't help feeling, however, that most of the preceding doesn't really play into it. This would have been, for me, very nearly the same story if everything between their meeting and parting was cut out.

This is competently written, but drags a bit too hard in the middle to really hold my interest; I feel it would be better if more of that was spent building to a more compelling ending, instead of just banter and navigation and 'ooo, so mysterious'.

Aaaaah, sorry, one last nitpick. They really don't need to skin the pig, or probably even gut it much. (And if they do, they shouldn't do it near their camp!) Just hack off the bits they plan to eat, or go straight for the liver. Pig liver's supposed to be pretty good.

Anyways, this wasn't bad, per se. Just not, you know, very compelling or gripping. I like the concept, and the mechanics are sound enough, but the execution of the plot leaves something to be desired.

This was interesting, and a novel take on Star Trek style space cowboy shows, the meaning and intention of fiction and narrative, and overall flowed well and was entertaining to read. The concept was really striking and great.

I'm not completely sold on the execution. The prose worked well enough and was easy to read, but there were some missteps. It felt like In Kin Dri/Inkindri was supposed to mean something, or be revealed as a specific thing at some point, but it never was, which kinda bugged me. It was a minor issue though, but ties into a bigger problem.

The first section up through the start up of season three has a different pace compared to the rest of it. It was smaller and more intimate, while the rest rushed by through a laundry list of things that happened and feelings Inkindri had about what she was setting out to do with the Focus, and as a result of how much stuff happened that intimacy went away and the story became an exposition dump. An exposition dump that lasted for, like, half the story. The emotional arc was delivered kinda flatly through all that, and felt like an "I'm telling you all this stuff so I can tell you something later," like a kid wanting to talk about an episode of a tv show he thought was cool, but needs to give you backstory first, so he talks your ear off for an hour giving you a synopsis of everything.

It was easy enough to read, but it took up way, way too much of the running time of the story. And I gotta say, the payoff of the 'I told you this stuff so I can now tell you this' really didn't do it for me. Turned the whole thing into a shaggy dog story. There just wasn't really a punch here. There was some interesting stuff about the nature of storytelling that felt like it might have a poignant conclusion, but the conclusion was to just become recursive, and, yeah, no thank you. To be honest, I was kind of surprised the story had kept going at all after Inkindri was made CTO. It felt like a fairly complete, if a little too hokey (but fitting with Star Trek) story of an extra breaking free and becoming principal cast. And then lo and behold it steered down a long, dark corridor of exposition about going off and back on the rails and trying to find a satisfying conclusion to the show. And then not ending with a satisfying conclusion at all.

Which is possibly intentional, in which case, well played, but that doesn't make me like the story. Just annoys me. I think it could work and be a really neat story about storytelling if the season play-by-play could be radically truncated in length, and then given a nice, solid ending where the day is saved and that someone else gets their fulfilling story. As is, I'm just disappointed.

>>bats
Once again I am sorry. Thickier skin and a writing guide. Gotcha. You sir are wonderful just the way you are.

Just do It

Well, the first line has my attention! That’s a good start.

I managed to read through the entire thing without feeling the need to write something down. So at the very least nothing stuck out as problematic.

But when I reach the end, I’m left with… well, I’m not sure what. A character had a problem, a character made a choice, and then everything worked out for the best. I’m happy for Tim and Kayla, I guess, but I’m not sure I learned anything. They didn’t struggle at any point, it seems, except to the extent that they struggled to break out of their old, tired lives.

In both stories and real life, following your dreams is difficult. In stories it is difficult because, if it isn’t, it’s not a very meaningful story; in real life it’s hard to follow your dreams because, unfortunately, being an astronaut is tough, and if your dream is something simple like bartending or DJing, you have to compete with everyone else who’s willing to do a shit job for dollars on the hour.

In other words, there’s a struggle involved. But in this story, true to it’s title, there is no struggle. Here's my summary of how the climactic conversation in this story went:

Tim: I want to follow my dream of being a bartender, but it's hard.

Kayla: No, it's actually easy! But my dream of being a DJ is hard.

Tim: No, it's actually easy!

Both: Yay!

They had had a problem they were ready to face head on, and... well, then the problem went away. They just did it, as the title said, and voila, happily ever after. And for that reason it feels lacking to me. I guess, unlike Mr. A Hat and BB, I'm not as impressed with the happy ending or the smiles – I can get those any day in the children's section of the bookstore.

(Edit: I realized how terrible that last line sounds. From the books.)

/ˈmiːm/


I'm finding this one very hard to review. I suppose your root problem is that you've got a lot going on here, between the narrative styles, the complex cyberbiopunk world, and the offscreen war. By itself, that's something I admire, but here it doesn't quite hang together.

There's nothing for the reader to hold on to – as soon as we start to get used to the barrage of future-shock terms, something even weirder happens, and we're at sea again.

What could be something for the reader to hang on to? A good character, for one. Your current character is very flat – I had no sense of her personality beyond a sort of generic professional stress. She doesn't seem to relate to the world with any depth – but with the revelation at the end, it looks like there's plenty in this world to relate to. And you could always do double duty – by foreshadowing those traits which reveal her decision at the end.

What else? If you don't go in for character, some forward motion might work. All she does here is get home, arrange a party, pass out a lot. It didn't really compel me to read onwards. A plot other than the mystery might help.

Okay, I'm coming dangerously close to telling you how you should write, so I'll drop that and sign off with a couple of things I did like:

The tense changes for the segments. This is a great way to add structure the reader can use, without being too hamfisted about it.

Some of the ideas at the start, when you get away from the generic cyberpunk stuff, were pretty cool. I'd like to see a few more of them spread around.

SPOILER ALERT DO NOT READ THIS BEFORE THE STORY

Hm this was a good read. A highly confusing jumble mix of emotions and questions. Overall it wasn't too bad, though I felt I had to picture something entirely not in the story to make it more entertaining for myself. while reading this story, I though of a steampunk world. Where files were tape recordings. Where religion was mixed in with politics so much that certain deities and morals were encumbered into golem like creatures. Programed to withhold these morals like a bible type of terminal.

From what I got in this story was that a lone golem was affecting the others. The method wasn't know, but one thing is for sure. That the natural golems from the government were starting to malfunction and break down, due to someone; or something's; intervention. We take a look at two inspectors , form this government, who ask a favor of a priest to track down the current golems meant for public religious use. Not sure why the priest himself was asked to do this rather than the proper authority figures, but he did a great job tracking down the culprit. Which turns out to be the result of a certain project. Which we the readers would have to assume it's a sentient golem that thinks logically while at the same time has been filled to the brim with the knowledge of the other golems. The main struggle in this story was so psychological that it was mind blowing. It's really something to commemorate about. Onto the review.

NEGATIVES
-Complexity
This story seems to be so complex and difficult to understand that I needed to reread how many sentences or look up the terms used in the plot. Doing this breaks your reader away from the immersion of the whole story. Thus breaking the whole emotional bond part of the experience. You worked hard either finding these words and using them in your story, but do very horribly trying to explain it to the reader. Your audience needs to be able to grabs the things going on in your story, in order for it to come alive and speak out to them. Being interesting is one thing, but being interesting can lead to some complications.

-Detailing and Backstory
This bothered me. Once again we find ourselves tossed into a world with no intro of what we might run into. With little to no backstory on the characters. Though the author does a really proficient job explaining the occupancies of the characters' jobs. With Emet being a Priest for the public, Adam being a detective, Loewre being his partner of sorts. Even with the villain's background in the mystery of the tape file which is given to Emet to adi in his own investigation. I could care less for the characters, but I had enough reason to believe that they were doing justice within the story, that I was rooting for them to succeed in the end. It was like watching a wrestling match at a really young age. You know who the good guy is and thus you root for the good guy because you know he's trying to fight fairly and do the correct hing. Other than that I had no connections with the characters besides their struggles. Which was merely on a personal level over one crime. Which is very well done indeed. Though I wanted more out of Emet and especially the detectives. In fact we don't even seem to be informed about how these characters look like or their age bracket. we're to assume that Emet is much older, since he's giving advice to others and his job as a priest, and that Adam and Loewe are old enough to be working as cops. Even the golems were lacking on detailing. Leaving little to imagine over than voices and stick figures.

-Word Usage and recycling?
The names were throwing me off left and right. I could barely manage a one shot read without having to try to research some name or phrase to decipher the story. The names were so over used that I just didn't care anymore. Some board or guy caressing and blessing this and that in their wake. I really didn't care. Those names didn't need to be in the story so much. In fact looking back at your story, the phrase used with these names take up one third of your entire story. Leaving that much material to be confusing and just bland. It was highly creative but you need to give the audience something to follow. If they don't follow the story ends up just like a speech. Words on a page that people tend to drone out. It gave me something to learn about though. With a certain religion and it's beliefs leaving more than just a story but a religious overlook in the eyes of an old fashion priest. Overall I loved Emet's take on life and how he was able to tell lie from truth. I just didn't like how he spoke out.

POSITIVES
-Climax
Knowing what Emet was feeling and seeing all his training come to a failed attempted at reasoning with this culprit, only made me shake in anticipation as I read on. The battle of words falling over one another as reasoning and logic were the only weapons allowed on this battlefield. It was a golem that could ahve easily shredded Emet alive and Emet clearly shows his fears as he was confused and began questioning his own faith. While it was left unclear if the regular golems were damage through means of physical behavior or logic matrix loops, Emet was scared of not only losing his life, but more so his own religious morals. The golem even challenges this by asking Emet to judge him. Much like the government had already done so in the damage he had caused. The ending comes to a sudden stop and just left me with an all time high that could have been sculpted into something very very beautifully done. By leaving the conflict at the end, you really don't give your own story an ending. Instead you leave your readers wanting more or little to no reason as to see Emet's demise or triumph.

-Setting
While it took forever to gauge anything for an image or the time period. Readers would assume it's somewhere along the lines of a futuristic period? I ask that like a question because this can still work for steampunk worlds and worlds like in the universe of "The Order" or like something from "Wild Wild West". The technology and plot can basically fit into both of these timelines, but it's never addressed so it leaves one to wonder and ponder back. Which backtracking takes away from the quality of the story as it breaks the focus of the reader. But this is a positive due to it leaving the reader's mind to think freely about what he may prefer. While I may have thought of it like a post-apocalyptic steam punk world others may have though of it as a futuristic tech world with the glow lights that were described in the story. Leaving your audience the freedom to think about the world can spice things up and leaves them interested for more. the way certain lights were described could have either been oil lamps and candle or just light bulbs designed to shine like a star. I loved the ability to set up my own images while at the same time immerse myself in the story.

This read was very good. Aside from the fact it confuses you every other line. The meat of it all coming to the point that the author made great use of the character's dialogues and conflicts. the lacking of information hurt this story so much that I kept finding myself brought back into reality time and again. What really doesn't do this amazing work justice is just how it comes to an end. The author could have easily spent another hour and used a scene skip to show the end results of Emet and the angel. Instead we're left with an open conflict that didn't seem to benefit from a good background behind it. I didn't know why it seems to be a religious argument all the time, but it was epic. I don't know why a priest is strolling around town for this investigation, when the officials should already know where to look? Though who am I to judge this wonderful world the author created? Overall, this story is not meant for people who don't wanna research on terminology outside of the story. Or if they can't seem to get into a street slum style crime mystery scene. The atmosphere was great but was questionable. The wordings were masterfully done, but so complex. The conflict was amazing for all it's simplicity, but was left with a wide opening, which left hanging feelings that go nowhere. Overall well done, sir or madam. Keep it up. I'd love to see a second chapter to this one. Probably one that explains this universe more?

I got them through a small pill of information already sliced and digested by my extended ego.

This would be wonderfully poetic... if I didn't have a suspicion that it's literal. D:

Starting out, I'm going to assume that this techno-capitalist wasteland is the result of what happens when we fail to curb the Meme infection before it spins out of control. One day you're on Tumblr, sharing your rare Pepes with the begging populace—and the next you're staring out your window at a talking dog and the eight-year-old shareholder who leashes him.

Some comma splices:

Baseball has been a solved game for almost a decade, there wasn't a league worth more than a couple of bucks anymore, and yet the sales of bats never went down.

Those commas should be emdashes. Also it's a weird tense change.

The streets were almost empty, 8 P.M. was a shitty time to walk around my neighborhood.

Comma should be a semicolon.

I loved the scene of our protag threatening the gang of bankers with strongly worded letters.

Ari sleeping in his old armchair were a sight for sore eyes.

Cliche.

A principle of headache pulsed weakly behind my eyes.

Not sure what this means.

The Sun Prophet section was good—and would be even better if it weren't for the comma splice in the last sentence :V

There's so many terms and names here that go undefined. That's not necessarily a problem, but it becomes a problem when they're not given the proper context that would allow us to infer what they are. As such, the confusing terminology makes a lot of paragraphs that rely on them a slog to read.

Is the Sun Prophet JOHN CENA? Doge?

Watch out for an overuse of 'to be' verbs. There's lots of spots where they can be substituted for stronger, more active verb forms.

Is... is it possible to burn out your sense of smell?
Oh, wait, these guys are robots maybe?

Okay, so what I'm taking from this is that our protag used to be a member of a theocratic militia, but after a bunch of children died, decided to donate his memory to a nurse (for some reason)? And now, years later, the memories are returning, torturing him and reverting him to his past ways.

Hrm... not terrible. Honestly, I think the biggest problems here stem from the prose. The jargon really clouds up everything, and confuses what plot there is. Also, the dialogue sounds pretty stilted and unnatural. All in all, I'd say this needs a good run-through by a line-by-line editor to clean up the prose.

>>Cold in Gardez

I'm not as impressed with the happy ending or the smiles – I can get those any day in the children's section of the bookstore

Or from the daily Hollywood blockbuster.

I can really only echo >>TitaniumDragon here. I just couldn't make myself interested in Liar, nor his situation. Sorry.

So this is a story that had me going up until the ending. I mean, I wasn't sure how much the story would revolve around normal thoughts about the narrator's life and how much it would be suspense about who the ghost would end up snatching. I was fine with it mostly being about the ghost, because sometimes my expectations are really off track.

But then, instead of reacting with horror at the implication that Alex saw the ghost's face, she doesn't telegraph her emotions until she enjoys the confirmation of her kill? What? Why would she want him dead? I read this more closely than I usually read things and I still didn't see any hint of motivation or character in this decision. You almost had something decent, but until you tweak it, this ending just doesn't work.

This story was so-so. (5/10)

REDACTED 'CAUSE THIS IS PLAGIARISM YO

This is one of those stories:

Where I feel like I should've taken different classes in college if I wanted to pick up on everything that's going on. The title, for instance: I'm sure it means something, but I have no idea what that something is.

But then the whole concept of "the singularity" has never appealed to me. I mean, I don't even have a cell phone, and I still have a hard time successfully walking from room to room with all the distractions modern day life throws at me. And by "modern life," I mean "shoelaces"...

As for possibly useful comments, that my interpretation of the events here is so different from >>Dubs_Rewatcher's should tell you that things aren't exactly clear. For my part, I'm seeing two sets of memory downloads slapped into our unnamed narrator's head: one from the Sun Prophet's follower and one from a doctor working in the ruins of Manila. That just a guess, though, and if that's really what's happening, I'd like to see that emphasized more fully. 'Cause then you could have the conflict between the two sets of messages--kill people vs. save people--at the center of the story as they fight it out in our narrator's brain. I also would've like to have know that our narrator was female back at the beginning of the story, and I was wondering what Kerberos is. Anti-virus software for the brain? 'Cause if that's the case, I'd like to suggest that it's agents from the anti-virus company who call in the actual authorities at the end.

Another good story here!
Mike

This story:

Seems to be largely plagiarized from Z.Z. Packer's short story "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere."

The opening sounded familiar, so I Googled the first line and found this match in Google books.

So I think this makes this our third disqualified entry this round...

Mike

>>Baal Bunny

Holy shit. Nice one catching this, dude.

I feel so cheated right now. I was happy for this author, but fuck, man.

come on! the prompt was "No Prompt Have Fun" not "No Rules Be Unethical"

This was an idea story, not a character story, and I'm fine with that. It's a style I appreciate even if it is a lot less common today than it was in the '60.

Here we get an interesting idea, a couple of implications, a few bare-bone yet functional characters, a handful of rules and then a gentle invitation at discussing the thing. No real answers are given but I think they are not needed.

This kind of story is fuel for discussions.

It entertained me, but I think it'll need to establish a few more rules to have a certain punch.

Wild guessing and spoilers ahead:

I currently see a few possible explanations for how the machine works, the one I think the most probable being also the not horrible one.

First theory (the most probable one IMHO)
The machine only works across universes with other machines. Which means it copies the positive traits as it doesn't seem like people getting random wounds from other universes switching parts with them. In this case Ken's condition seems to be the prerequisite for the machine coming into existence, which means that there is no better template for him to use. Here we have a positive sum game and really nothing horrible going on.

Second theory
Universes with the machine switch parts (only physical parts, minds seem to stay) with other, machine-less universes. Ken's condition is a universal constant. We have lucky universes preying on less-lucky ones. This one requires some hand-waving to explain Ken's uniqueness and is, I think, less elegant than others.

There are probably a lot more possible permutations of all the elements, but this two are the main ones I thought up.

To summarize: nice idea, interesting concept, good writing, needs something more to really shine, being it strong characters or some hints on what is really going on.

>>Baal Bunny
Y'know, it's semi-implicit in the rules but technically we don't actually have a rule explicitly stating that what you submit needs to be your own work...

That might be an oversight we want to correct?

Since we're getting into wild speculation:

>>Orbiting_kettle
So I generally agree with your first theory, and I think the author clearly laid seeds for that.

I've got this weird ancillary theory though, that relies on a bit of my own metaphysical thinking. I think of us as all occupying a possibility space as described here, but I don't think of the whole "mirror image worlds" as representing actual different instantiations of us. I think we exist across a space of possibilities, but our minds organize that information in such a way that we really only perceive ourselves in one particular part of that possibility space. All the "mirror world" versions of us aren't separate at all, they're parts of what's literally our own body, spread out over a couple extra dimensions, and that we have a hard time perceiving accurately.

So the thing I find really freaky here is that, under this multiverse interpretation, what Cousin Ken's device is really doing is shunting everyone's perception into a particular reduced subset of possibilities. If the possibility space is infinite in an undiminishable way, that probably not a big deal. But if the possibility space has some sort of achievable limit on it (e.g. if the reduction factor created by the device is large enough), everyone's eventually going to start having Cousin Ken's problem and free will may go out the window, because there simply aren't enough universes left that people's consciousness can habitate in. I find this a rather scary and fun potential consequence.

Yes, I'm probably a little bit of a crazy person.

>>Aragon

"Brownies":

Is another terrific story in that same collection. Your local library might have a copy--it came out in 2003 and is called Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.

>>Bradel

Well:

Since this story was published in the New Yorker more than a dozen years ago, I'd say it violates the rule about being written before the prompt was selected. Oh, and since it was published, it must've been submitted, and the rules say, "Submitted works may not be submitted elsewhere until the event's conclusion." So even if Z.Z. Packer herself submitted this, it would still violate those rules.

But yeah, something about submissions being the work of the submitting author wouldn't hurt...

Mike

Oh dammit. D: Come on, Writeoff. We're better than this.

>>Bradel
Even if there was no specific rule against plagiarism, and even if we ignored that plagiarism is against the spirit of the Writeoff, it does explicitly violate an existing rule: it was written before the start of the writing period.

… That said …

After a little bit of thought, I'm going to assume good faith here. While it's possible that we have someone here trying to score Internet points with a stolen story, it seems at least as likely that someone wanted to see what sort of critique we would offer on a professional-quality story, and had planned to self-disqualify after the experiment but before scoring. I really hope that that's the case.

And "how would we critique a professional-quality story?" is in fact an interesting question!

As it so happens, this was on my slate, and I read it last night, and I would have started writing a review if it I hadn't fallen asleep on the couch. I actually had a bit of trouble figuring out my critique, and ended up gnawing on it overnight. Because I think that the question above is relevant regardless of the intentions of the author, and we can learn things from good stories as well as bad ones, I'm going to mentally rewind a bit, and write another post to summarize what I would have said.

Along with that, I'd like to emphasize that I'm primarily doing this because I've already processed it so much, and I can speak up knowing that this is what I was going to say before learning of the authorship. I don't know if anyone else is in that position, and as interesting as the question is, giving feedback to authors who legitimately worked on an entry is important too. Almost certainly more important.

Has anyone noticed that any time a story gets over 10 comments this round, it gets disqualified?

<gulp>

Also, upon following the link to the source story: what was submitted is clearly plagiarized, but not identical to the original fiction. Example:

In the next game, all I had to do was wait in a circle until it was my turn to say what inanimate object I wanted to be. One guy said he'd like to be a gadfly, like Socrates. “Stop me if I wax Platonic,” he said. The girl next to him was eating a rice cake. She wanted to be the Earth, she said. Earth with a capital “E.”

ZZ Packer's original paragraph follows:

In the next game, all I had to do was wait in a circle until it was my turn to say what inanimate object I wanted to be. One guy said he'd like to be a gadfly, like Socrates. “Stop me if I wax Platonic,” he said. I didn't bother mentioning that gad-flies weren't inanimate—it didn't seem to make a difference. The girl next to him was eating a rice cake. She wanted to be the Earth, she said. Earth with a capital E.

I mention this specifically because my reaction to that paragraph was "But gadflies aren't inanimate." :V

Given that the Writeoff submission was a bit over 7500 words, I suspect it was cut for space, although changes like the added quotes around the "E" suggest a further level of editing that I don't understand.

>>horizon

Might have been transcribed by hand out of a book or magazine, rather than copy/pasted. That'd result in some typographical changes just as a matter of course that don't have much meaning.

>>The_Letter_J
Sorry it got disqualified man. Though for what it's worth, opening this up was one of the few bright spots on what was otherwise a pretty lousy day for me yesterday, plus the hidden message was cool! So thanks for posting it :-)

Horizon's Review As If This Were A Legitimate Writeoff Entry
(Written in my head last night and this morning, and recreated from my mental notes)


Alright, author: I have to start with a warning. This is very clearly literary fiction, and very clearly aiming for literary fiction, and I am very much not the target audience for literary fiction. I'm going to be falling back a lot on "wise reading" here, giving you my raw reactions to the text, but I don't expect a lot of this to be useful. For example, it's got a certain elusiveness of meaning that rubbed me the wrong way, and I think this would be a better story if that were addressed, but that would probably make it objectively worse as literary fiction. If you are planning to polish this and submit to those markets, find a prereader in that target audience, and if you take any of this advice, make certain you have a firm idea of your goals for the story so that you can weigh the utility of my feedback against them.

The overall effect of this story was powerful, and left me uncomfortable on a lot of levels that I'm having difficulty deciding if they were intentional. Part of that is there's a weird thing going on here structurally. The prose here is great — lines like "That is correct." are razor-sharp and kept me reading. This has got some powerful themes that it develops throughout the story and that tie neatly into each other making the story feel like a unified whole — e.g. Dina's misanthropy and the conversation with the psychiatrist about how she's using it as a survival mechanism. The forest is great and the trees are great. But there's some middle level between them at which this story feels to me like a hot mess. We get a series of disconnected or loosely connected scenes that don't narratively tie together even though it's trying to tell a coherent narrative. And the most frustrating part is that that works even as it doesn't work — this feels like a story from a misanthropic narrator, making no effort to compromise or reach out, doing the equivalent of sitting naked in front of its door every time we come around.

The main problem with that is that, Dina's misanthropy or no, this is a story centrally about a romance and a romantic relationship. It explores Dina's side of that pretty strongly, and the way she feels about Heidi, but I never got a sense anywhere in the story of what Heidi's getting out of this, especially how it was that Heidi kept putting up with Dina's abuse right at the beginning when she was legitimately vulnerable and needed a friend. As clever as the line was from our outside perspective, why did she stick around after being told "That is correct"? The majority of the scenes we see them together, she's enduring behavior like having feet stuck in her face at a sleepover, or being shown how to murder a mouse she's holding, or having her fears about her mother's cancer blown off. The overall effect feels like we're being shown an overtly abusive relationship, and while that's great for characterization, it also means that your protagonist is an unpleasant person who is unpleasant to read about.

There was another issue that made me uncomfortable, and I'm not sure I should open the can of worms, but I'm trying to react honestly to the story. Right in the very first scene, the first thing we see is the main character's blackness being a central point of contention. I think it's pretty much impossible in 2016 in America (in which this story is set) to write a story with major racial themes without the story becoming about race, and … well, I don't even know how I can react. Honestly, the racialized encounters in the story feel false to me; e.g.:

“It's all cool, it's all cool,” the counsellor said. Her hair was a shade of blond I'd seen only on Playboy covers, and she raised her hands as though backing away from a growling dog. “Sister,” she said, in an I'm-down-with-the-struggle voice, “you don't have to play this game. As a person of color, you shouldn't have to fit into any white, patriarchal system.”

Spoken by the counselor who literally proposed the game of Trust to the group, knowing that a black woman was in it.

Because this is anonymous, I can't rule out that encounter being drawn from real-life experience — and I've gotta own my white privilege here; if that anecdote is a retelling of real life, my reaction says a hell of a lot more about me than about this story, and challenging me with it is important. But if this was written by a white author and made up to give character to their black protagonist, the way that the protagonist continually abuses the system along racial lines (with the implicit or sometimes explicit support of authorities) gets into weird problematic territory. Well, in general, the racial aspects here are, given that the protagonist is presented in a pretty unflattering light. This may be a case where the Writeoff is simply a poor forum for this sort of writing — because when dealing with racial issues, context is extremely important; and without knowing that context I am simply incapable of judging whether the portrayal is strong or problematic, which makes it impossible to fairly judge the story on those merits.

[Context note: ZZ Packer is a black female author. -h]

Setting that aside, this is a pretty textbook example of a Solid tier — easily within striking distance of Top Contender, but I can't ignore the weird fundamental disconnect of the relationship portrayed here, along with the scattershot nature of the scenes, and I have to shove a lot of this story into my blind spots in order to judge it independent of its racial context. Again, I'll note, unless this is a story that's specifically supposed to start conversations about race, in today's environment you'd be better off trimming that content from the story entirely, because otherwise it would be very easy for those elements to dominate the conversation.

I appreciate good faith, horizon, but I think you're going too far. That's review space you could have given to someone who actually wrote a story, and there are quite a few stories that don't have nearly as many reviews as Revolver.

Edit: It also occurs to me that, aside from being against the Writeoff rules, unless our mysterious entrant is ZZ Packer herself, it's straight-up illegal to violate copyright in this manner. He's actually putting Roger at risk by using his website to host copyright material.

>>horizon

Weirdly enough:

It was the moment when Dina shouts "Plagiarist!" that made me realize I'd read this story before--references to Frank O'Hara's poetry are few and far between...

Mike Again

Damn, the experiment was going so well! D:

Hey, friends. I guess I owe some explanation...

For months, even before the advent of the General Fiction writeoffs, there have been constant discussions in both threads and in chat about how the output of an average Writeoff round would compare to a professionally published work. It’s something that I was wondering myself. In my eyes, though, the only way to accurately measure something like that would be to subject the professionally published piece to the same standards as a typical Writeoff piece—in other words, completely anonymous and with its publishing status unknown.

And when I saw this round’s non-prompt, well…

A few minutes after fic writing began, I contacted Roger, asking him how he would feel about my experiment. He was apprehensive at first—after all, as far as I know no one has ever plagiarized a Writeoff story, and we didn’t want to start a precedent. But after some thought he accepted, and we set to work.

The biggest problem we faced—and the one that eventually brought the story down—was if someone found out. If another user found the original story, the jig would be up. That’s why I changed the title (the actual title of “Revolver” is “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”) and put Anonymous in the author box (as opposed to ZZ Packer).

Of course, that didn’t remove the threat of someone having read “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” before and recognizing it, as Baal did. Part of Roger’s requirements for picking a story to post was that it had been vetted for quality by multiple sources. That was easy enough to fulfill—but a story being published in multiple places by multiple editors also increases the likelihood that someone has read it.

I had a whole anthology of short stories to pick from, and I went through each piece, google searching the first lines of each. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single one that you can’t find somewhere online, whether it be the publisher’s website or Google Books. There was one that could only be found in a locked JSTOR database… but when you searched it, it still showed enough text to give it away.

Eventually, knowing that no decent story would be perfectly secret, I said “fuck it” and picked “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” which I thought people in the Writeoff would enjoy. And it seems like those who read it did! Well, except for Hat. But Hat doesn’t like anything I submit. >:V

I hope no one was/is upset by this. At no point did I ever intend to use this to cheat. In fact, I had even arranged with Roger to have the story separated from the numeric results at the end of the contest, so it wouldn’t knock anyone out of the spot they deserved. If anything, the fact that I felt the urge to do this experiment is a testament to the quality of Writeoff writing.

Love you guys. Sorry I made you waste your time on a disqualified story. :B

TL;DR: Roger and I worked together to submit a professionally written, edited, and published work to the Writeoff in order to compare it to the average Writeoff story. Peeps found out. WHOOPS

>>horizon
There are multiple versions of this story, yeah. The one you guys read is from the New Yorker. It’s also published in ZZ Packer’s own book, and the anthology Deepening Fiction (which is where I read it).

>>Haze
D:

>>Dubs_Rewatcher

Ethics of plagiarism aside, I'm irritated that I spent time reading and reviewing this when I could've put that time towards reviewing someone who, y'know, actually wanted a review.

>>Dubs_Rewatcher

Once again:

I demonstrate my uncanny ability to stumble into other people's schemes and inadvertantly desrupt them...

Mike Again

>>Cold in Gardez
I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't read the story last night already — it literally was on my slate and first in my reading, and I'm not lying, I had to grind my mind against it for a few hours (all of which time was spent before knowing of its origin) — and I already noted your argument in >>horizon.

Your concern is legitimate, but I stand by my assertion that my review had value too. People can learn from critique of stories that aren't their own. And my choice was between typing out my thoughts, and letting that analysis go to waste because of the situation.

That said, yes, direct feedback is absolutely important, and as usual I will be providing reviews to other contestants as well. Just haven't had the chance for much reading yet.

Edit: To make this crystal clear, I had nothing to do with >>Dubs_Rewatcher's decision. I only found out about it now like the rest of us.

I was actually in a similar position to horizon; it was on my slate and I'd read it before the reveal, although I hadn't gotten as far along in composing a review.

My general impression was along the lines of 'this is an impressive piece of work, with a lot of depth, but it's not really my cup of tea. It was still moving, though, and had a very strong literary feel to it, that I think would knock some readers socks off.' Also, yeah, pretty polished for a 3-day composition. While not something I would normally choose to read, I don't regret having read it.

Since it seems it'll be excluded from the results anyhow, I'm going to rank it as if it was still a contender, in which case it is currently second after The Necromancer's Wife.

There is an interesting premise here, but the story itself feels a bit flat. As the climax is centered around a corruption of memories, that so much time is spent on the revival process and reflections on the differences between the past and present seems ill-deserved. Some of the descriptions really drew me in, this one in particular: "It had been a precious and cherished year she shared with the two of them before Martin had been drafted into the war and never came home, but it had started with such agony her body had forced her to forget until just that moment."…. Unfortunately, much of the rest seemed rather flat and offered little beyond the barest of facts; I cannot tell if that was deliberate for tone or a result of something else.

This one didn't wow me, but it played with a 'what-if' and that's something I can nod at.

One technical error I noticed that may or may not have been important: Before I I must know whether
Also (inconsistent!) spaces around em-dashes goes against all style guides I know of.

Echoing what earlier reviewers have said, the universe here is very intriguing—there are clues enough to give context to what is happening, but just barely. Such concision of detail is no small feat, and is handled very well here, I thought. That being the case, however, the reader has to either be familiar with some elements beforehand, research after the fact, or be very studious about making sense of the clues as they come along. Sophisticated like that, and possibly foreboding for it.

The open-ended nature of the ending was dissatisfying for me, personally. The first half of the story gives context for the characters and the second half presents a puzzle… but to what end slips by. The nature of this 'angel' may give some hints, but there is little context to place him within the hierarchy we are shown. "There is no Word inscribed in its clay — no, that is a lie. Its body is animated by a Word, but it is the Word from which all other words are formed." Taking 'inscription' at face value, the denial seems in error…. I am simply at a loss.

The world and contextual sophistication on display here are impressive, but a hole at the conclusion leaves me dissatisfied.

What the others have said.

Characterization and the zaniness of the setting fit in with the farcical, comedic tone. There remain just the issues of one-offs that befuddle more than amuse and an ending that, while concluding the story in its way, really doesn't clarify anything (and the addition of names actually makes things worse).

A silly romp that could easily be compelling after some attention.

This fic impressed me, despite some flaws and rough edges.

My first impression was that it felt choppy. I’m not a grammar expert, but I think that you frequently used periods in places of commas, resulting in fragmented sentences. It almost felt intentional, as it did enforce a certain mood, but I don’t know that it helped more than it hurt. Generally, I think it would read much smoother with a grammar pass to be more conventional.

As well, for all that it feels choppy, it’s also overly wordy at times; I saw a lot of redundancies. For example, “If Fate’s eyes were upon him, then he should at least make himself presentable before that gaze.” Great sentence - I love the meaning it conveys. However, I feel that the ‘before that gaze’ section at the end doesn’t really add anything, and would be better left off.

Another example:
“His black robes hung around him in layers. About his waste a black sash tied the robes loosely about his person” could be rephrased as: “His black robes hung in layers, tied loosely by a black sash about his waist.”

These grammar snags are a shame, because the imagery you’re conveying is otherwise excellent. For example, ‘To one side lay a mat, worn thin by years of condemned men tossing and turning through their last nights’ is an absolutely sterling line. Indeed, despite my earlier caveats, I had a vivid mental image of his trip through the prison.

TitaniumDragon already mentioned the malapropism issue, so I won’t reiterate, except to say that I noticed it too.

The plot was simple, but the imagery was enough to carry my attention, until at the end there was suddenly a whole lot more going on and I didn’t have the context to understand it. I ended up just knowing that something had happened, but without any idea of who or why.

In the end, I can tell that this was the product of a first rate imagination. The scenes you portray are vivid, the story is well-paced, and it cultivates an emotional tone. I’d advise working on the grammar to make it smoother and easier for the reader, as well as throwing us a few bones of backstory so we know what’s going on at the end.

From my spot at the bottom, I couldn’t see the top of the hill. Just twisted brown branches and weathered granite slabs, stretching out forever. Getting some major Neil Gaiman vibes here. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the rest of this piece is nothing at all like The Graveyard Book… but this whole paragraph is just sooo up my alley that I think I’m already in love with this story.

The word seemed to strike her like a gust of wind. Had a bit of trouble interpreting what this was supposed to mean. Do you mean that she’s been taken by surprise? That she’s shocked, or perhaps hurt? Or indifferent?

“Maybe that counselor was right,” May said, face screwing up into a smirk. “Maybe you really are crazy.” There’s something about the way this information is delivered that feels off to me? I mean, I appreciate that you’ve taken the effort not to have Claire simply state in some boring info-dump that she’s been in therapy. Even so, I think this line still comes across somewhat… expositiony, I guess is the word. Like, it didn’t feel very natural to me.

I was way too old to be getting help from my sister, after all, and I still wanted to be mad at her. Having grown up with an older brother, this character detail rings incredibly true to me. Great job!

When I asked Mom, she said that they were baby corns—I didn’t even know that corn could have babies. Hah! Nice!

May affixed me with a wretched glare. “Shut the fuck up, Claire.” There’s part of me that wants to call this conversation melodramatic and over the top, but May here reminds me so much of what my older brother used to be like that it isn’t even funny. So again… yeah, this whole scene works for me. Each member of this little broken family feels distinct, vivid, and three-dimensional. I feel like I already know them intimately.

I knew deep down that all of this was my fault. It was up to me to fix things, and once again I had failed. Obviously, Claire’s not thinking rationally here... even so, I wish that you had spent more time showing us how she reaches this conclusion as opposed to the tiny paragraph that we end up getting. Why does she say that she’s always failing? So far, there hasn’t really been an awful lot in the text to suggest that she regularly feels this way.

In those days, but three months removed from the fire. I’d rephrase this a little. It sounds out of character – like, it feels a lot more formal to me than how she’s been narrating so far.

before Dad got that call in the middle of the night, before he grabbed his gear and ran out the door. Before the police came the next morning, hats over their hearts, beards twitching, and asked if Mom was home. Before May turned white, and before Mom ran out to throw up. I wonder if possibly this is a tad overboard? So far, the story has done a truly excellent job at giving us enough information to let us piece together what happened without making it seem saccharine or overdone and such, but this paragraph kinda ruins that a little. It’s really on the nose. It’s like I’m gone back in time 12 years and I’m stuck in the cinema again bored out of my skull watching friggin’ Ladder 49.

heaving mass of flesh on the bed opposite mine. Perhaps use a different description? This makes me think not of a teenage girl, but of a big pile of raw meat or something -_-

Also, Kurt Cobain was apparently “overrated trash.” Who knew? Yikes!! May, for goodness sake, ditch your friends and make new ones!

At least I didn’t have to see a counselor anymore. I would seriously suggest fleshing out the details of her counselling, since so far it feels totally ham-fisted and thrown in there – considering how subtle and effective this story has been so far, it really sticks out, and not in a good way. (EDIT: Having now read to the end, and having seen how much she fears that she might actually be crazy, I feel this point is more important than ever. I love your work, but this whole aspect of her character is poorly set up, and ends up hurting the story as a result).

I would fall asleep thinking of our old home, and the friends I had known since childhood. Seems a bit weird for a nine-year-old child to think about the friend she ‘had known since childhood’. Maybe say ‘known since kindergarten’ or something?

I hesitated for a moment. Then, as quiet as I could, I grabbed my coat, put on my gloves and boots, and headed out. The build-up to this is another moment which I wish had lasted longer – I think it would hugely benefit from showing us more of Claire’s hesitation. She’s only nine after all, and even the most fearless and foolhardy nine-year-old might think twice before sneaking into a creepy graveyard in the middle of the night. Is she scared? Does she stop to think that she’s just hallucinating? Or is she genuinely that confident that her father’s really returned, and that there’s nothing to be afraid of?

My nine-year-old mind ranted and raved, every instinct telling me to run and bury myself under my sheets. Ah, now this paragraph is more like it! Though I stand by what I said before.

“I was about to go out looking for you!” May hissed. “You know that? Mom ran in here screaming and crying. You wanna give her a heart attack or something? You wanna be a fucking orphan…” When I was younger, I did something very similar to what Claire does here, so I can say from first-hand experience that everyone’s reactions here are completely on point and relatable.

Even at that young age, I felt pathetic. I wouldn’t put ‘even at that young age’. You’ve just spent several thousand words showing us that you have a real grasp on the fact that children are perfectly capable of feeling and understanding deep emotional pain, but narration like this kind of undercuts that a little. Perhaps you could argue that it’s in character for the Claire of 2016 to come up with such a flippant remark? But if so, I still don’t think it’s worth the trade-off. This story isn’t about Claire-the-adult-narrator, but Claire-the-nine-year-old.

“I’m not a… a scizzo,” I said. The lights went off. “You are!” Yeah, you tell her, Claire :-P

___________________________________________________


Egh, this comment ended up being looooong >_<. And I didn’t even touch on the whole ending sequence, which was the best bit of all.

Obviously I can only speak for myself here and nobody else, but damn, this just worked for me on so many levels – pacing, plotting, characterization. It’s bittersweet without feeling saccharine; it ends on just the right note of magical realism. I would go so far as to say it’s one of my favourite things I’ve read in ages.

Thank you for writing it.

Yay! Something I can actually sit down to and stand to read. What I can't be harsh? I took to this story and found it literally hitting my inner child. Time and again it had shown that the author's intent on entertaining me was top priority. while the writing was stylish to a point and blended in with some Monty Python style comedy, it overall was able to keep my attention throughout the whole story. Though some points need to be addressed as, I also found myself not only questioning the jokes, but also at a lost for what to feel for the characters. As always let's point out features of the story to help improve an author's writing.

POSITIVES
-Character Interaction
This was brilliantly done. I could feel the author had taken the time to script and write his jokes. By being able to implement it in your story, you've shown not only daring nerves of steel, But the fact you still think about the simple things in a story that make your pop out. In a way that just made this enjoyable. A different flavor for a different audience. Though as bold as it is, some people may not come to like this type of story style. while it was certainly my own cup of tea, others may look at it as silly and childish. I for one, loved how it reminded me back in the days of reading a fairy tail. Twisted with a mature sense as the jokes were right around my corner. The characters conversation added a flair, that I usually do not see in stories, ever. Simple lines and actions by the minor characters played a big part in this like yelling out profound lines as the punchline. Or simple thought that the crowds just accepted. Even the bishop with his instant judgement over the knight really made my day. Short sweet and simple to the point where I could reread it all day and not feel any different about it.

-Simplicity
This was like a sauce to me. It made the meal ever so fine to indulge in and just makes you happy to partake in it's glory. While the story's elements didn't shine as much, I just adored the way the story was an easy read. none of the content was painful to understand. None of it was cringe inducing. I sat there with a smile on my face for majority of the read, as I just couldn't seem to easily place my eyes off of the screen. Yes it was cheesy, yes it was lacking in certain aspects, but it was entertaining and blissfully simple. To the point where I would love to read this to someone else. Pose and act on my feet and knees and just enjoy it with someone else. while this may be a negative for some people I find that getting a reaction from simple words, while still upholding it's classy like appeal, is far better off than something completely confusing and takes forever to read due to backtracking all the time.

NEGATIVES
-Action
Onto the more dreaded parts of the review. While action wasn't your focus, it was most definitely a weak point. At certain scenes, it seems that the action just cuts off to a result where I can't seem to follow. The knight runs away! But how far exactly did the knight travel inwards and why did he have so much room to charge in an opposite direction. The Dragon didn't have an reaction whatsoever to the arrow. It merely fell and died. Even at the end conflict with the spear striking the beast dead, ended up just being a "whatever" moment. I think more effort could have been placed here. As the action felt like watching a child's toy fight. One figure topples over and I'm just suppose to accept whatever actions took place by another voice. I don't see the expressions on the drawn out plastic figures faces. Nor do I sense any type of wound or weaponry affecting the outcome. It wasn't a big issue as the comedy was the main topping to this cake. Overall every event and element end up affecting the total reaction by the end of the story. While this wasn't any focus on how I enjoyed the story, it may be otherwise for different readers.

-Intro and Ending
Again we jump straight into the action. The scene given to us is a minor conflict within the story that actually takes up majority of the story progression. The classic "Knight kills Dragon and saves the Princess" bit. While it had a different way of foretelling the struggle, the end result was the same. It gave way for the rest of the story, but a dragon slain by an arrow to the mouth. Unheard of. Just completely baffled on how it could have happened, but it did and made sense on what happens next in the story. The ending for me, while still funny, was left on a low note. It didn't hit heart,but it did leave an impression as the knight is forced to eat in celebration. Even though he was the one to cause all of this to happen. Which was the biggest punchline in the story. The heroic knight failed to kill a dragon. It slayed a bunch of holy priests and wrecked havoc only for the knight to regret what he had done,not because of failure, but because he had hurt his princess and an innocent dragon. All in all, the ending could have been much better, but still left a unique impression on me.

-Details
Part of an action scene or just interaction in general. When no words are said but more so a character's actions make up majority of a certain portion of a read. Descriptions to the details end up creating this field of vision for you audience. once again the dragon had no reaction to getting hit with an arrow or spear, which in turn made me not care about that result at all. Not until after it was done and we got around to how the characters interacted with said result. the characters dialogue was on point but there didn't seem to be much action towards how they reacted themselves. Leaving it looking much like two barbie dolls, place din hand, having a conversation. Stiff emotionless characters that tend to feel like mannequins with a voice. They had simple actions too, but for some readers, more details is appreciated. This is not as big as a negative as I'm placing it but this can certainly spice up your story to have more an effect on your readers. The less a reader has to make things up within the imaginative world of the story, the more immersive a reader will be.

In conclusion, this story was the most entertaining one out of the lot I've read. It's just my style and fits the goal of entertaining it's reader through very basic simple means. The use of wordplay is minimal, and yet well done as certain wordings still was able to keep my head in the story. Grabbing my attention here and there, reminding me to use my brain to think rather than drone out and get it over with. The jokes were somewhat effective, though some just stuck a smile on my lips as I was forced to see characters having to deal with certain things in story. While there was lackluster details and action scenes, the story won me over by just being itself. It's a wonderful read and shows how the author places his own heart into his words. It's not just his choice of genre, jokes, or story style, it was how he connected with me on a whole level that most authors don't think about these days. Overall, I want to see more work from this particular author and I can see his other stories affecting others as well. While some are reaching for that highly sophisticated level of writing. The fact remains. People will read high level material once. People who really enjoy a book will pick it up now and then and continue to make that story flourish. Well done Author.

>>KwirkyJ
Hm. It didn't bother me that much. Some stories actually use this lack of information to further entice a reader. You know them only as by their job title. Giving them the sense of a one way character that is suppose to feel and act this way, when an author; especially a comedic one, can turn around and say "Naw! He ain't like that." to have a much more adverse effect on the story. Yes you're lacking in character development, but the purpose from what I've sense, was to place an expectation and suddenly break it all in sake of entertainment. Which worked fine and well. The knight was suppose to be a knight, though failed in his duties and ended up being a perv. The Princess should have been a Princess, but ended up being a spoiled girl with a dragon fetish, the dragon should have been a dragon, but almost became the hero. I thought it was a really smart and unique uptake on the plot(HAH! PLOT!)

>>KwirkyJ I just wanted to note: There's likely a missing verb between the two 'I's. This might help understanding the omission.

Before I act, I must know whether

Also, I researched while reading this story, and then went through and read it again in whole and again in parts. I can't say that I caught everything going on, or even interpreted it correctly, but I got enough out of it to really enjoy it. Had I not been sick, I probably wouldn't have been able to spend the time on it that I did. And this is one of the downfalls of the story in a contest like this, but for me at least, it's forgivable.

Taking 'inscription' at face value

You don't really need to take it at face value, since it could be taken as metaphorical, but golems were said to be empowered and defined (or confined) by the Hebrew letters inscribed on their forehead. Either way, the point is that Emmett sees that the Angel is much more than a simple follower of a Word (Law) inscribed on and controlling it. It is "the Word from which all other words are formed", meaning that it's free to choose what it will be, and Emmett is very afraid that this is so. The Angel is a leader, designed to bring change to the world's order, and that's a pretty scary thing for someone who's world consisted of its comfort in unerring Truth just 5 minutes ago.

So yeah, just my take on it.

The intro seemed a bit choppy in places, but the story soon settled down and read smoothly.

Well, that premise is a whopper. My first thought on seeing it: it would be one hell of a twist for the message to have just been something displayed by a bunch of aliens for shits and giggles. Save them the trouble of destroying the world when we do it ourselves. That was later shot full of holes by additional detail about the nature of the notification. Oh well.

The characters were well developed and provided good perspectives. While not particularly meaningful and with no overarching connections, they nevertheless do a good job of showcasing humanity, and it fits the overall theme of the piece.

The biggest issue I had was the believability of the reactions of the general public. I was surprised by the ‘returned to normal’ - I would have expected mass lunacy. The various rationalizations employed made sense, but I would have expected virtually complete absenteeism outside of those few jobs with an innate sense of fulfilment, and many more breakdowns of order.

I felt like the prose was generally tight, and I spotted few mechanical glitches.

Overall I liked it and consider it a very strong story, despite you having a more optimistic take on human nature than I do, which ended up stretching my suspension of disbelief.

Well... I honestly can't say that I enjoyed this story. I don't think it's a bad story at all: it's well-written in the sense that it's competent and was able to get its ideas across. However, the style of it was far too glib and often too melodramatic for me to be able to take it seriously. That, combined with the abrupt transition to a simple, fairytale ending closed the door on it for me.

If I were to offer any advice, it would be what others have already told you: flesh out the story more, give the reader something real to latch onto. As it is – and I'm being absolutely literal here, no offense intended at all – this story read to me like a normal bad day, followed by the realization that your dreams were immediately obtainable by walking through that door to another world you just found in your closet. I can't really feel any of the happiness for the characters that you were probably striving for because it felt unearned, so in the end they really didn't mean anything to me.

I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.

18 – /ˈmiːm/

I'm definitely a fan of the information density at the start here, though I think you've set the learning curve a little more steeply than I'd recommend. In particular, that third sentence (with the map) really throws me off because it's assuming a lot of information about things like method of travel that is nowhere on display before that point. The sentence structure gets a little clunky through repetition, and I think you could make the information pill section a bit more active. I know I'm being very nitpicky here, but you're setting yourself up with some excellent ideas in that first paragraph and if you're looking to shop this story around, I think you're going to get a lot of mileage out of polishing the first few paragraphs here until they're fluid and crystal clear.

Damn, man, this is good. I'm about five paragraphs here, and you're really hitting this out of the park with some very subtle, specific word choices: agents, instances. You're getting some tremendous buy-in out of me with these words. Whoever wrote this, good job.

"Hags" feels off to me. It's carrying a lot of unearned character information that throws me out of perspective a hair, and with this learning curve I feel like I need to be really focused. I think it's especially worth pointing this out, though, because I think this marks a thing you could potentially be doing better in your lead-in. I said I liked the word choice; that's because it's carrying a lot of setting information. It's not carrying a whole lot of character information yet, though, and if I've got one complaint with the start of this story, it's that the perspective character feels like a blank slate. I'm seeing her interact with her environment, but I don't have much sense of who she is aside from "a person who's habitually using betting markets"—and the text seems to strongly imply that that's so normative that it's not really good character information in this setting. Anyway, point being, think about editing this first section to get some more character content out of your words. It's going to boost the value here.

Actually, while I'm still on about the intro, you might consider paring down some of these sentences for readability—again because of the learning curve. I think the more attention you can leave for the reader to apply to learning your setting fast, the more it's going to pay off down the line.

Baseball has been a solved game? Okay, that throws me. This world has to be a lot more alien than I'm giving it credit for, if a sport can be a solved game. Frankly, I don't really buy it and I don't know that this line is capable of not throwing me without considerably more justification (which probably isn't worth it).

Spotting a number of grammar and usage type issues here, but you should be able to pick those up when you start editing.

The characterization is getting fairly cliche here, and some of that is word and sentence choice again. The clay tablets bit and the Idiot box bit (why capital-I?) both fall in that bin. I connected with the ideas and the setting early on, but you're starting to lose me on character and plot as the novelty of the world wears off. I haven't found any compelling reason for hanging out with these people. (Writeoff Note: check out "To Make a Choice" for how to stick good character work in the middle of an idea story.)

Skipped on to the end. It's pretty rare for me to read a story that I think genuinely needs to be longer, but this is one of them. I like a lot of the ideas on display here, but (as I've been saying) I think this would benefit from a slower learning curve instead of the fusillade you've got going. Also, I think you need to do some more character establishment before we get into the meat of the story. I know, strong words, "you need to do"—but I genuinely think this is a must on this story. One of the biggest weaknesses here is that we never get much sense of who this is happening to. I get that you may want to keep it that way so we can hit the reveal at the end, but I still think you can give us a lot more than you're giving us. We don't need character backstory, but we do need character personality—especially if we're supposed to feel any impact with the fact that much of that personality may not be coming back.

There's a lot of potential here, but I feel like a lot of it is getting squandered with some loose execution. I think this could be a really great story after you've done some editing. That said, at the moment this winds up being a miss for me. I'll be curious to know what happens to this after the Writeoff ends.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Almost There

I want to say, Author, that I think you're getting some excellent feedback on this story. I've just gone through and read the reviews, and I think you're I agree with just about everything people are picking at. I want to highlight, in particular, >>Icenrose's discussion of the line breaks. That's a thing I didn't think about, but I think focusing in on those some more is some very good advice.

Anyway, good luck with this one!

8 – The Plight of the Unicorn-American

It's weird to feel like I'm reading another entry in GaPJaxie's Actingverse stories. I'm guessing it's not intended to be that, though. I definitely like that first paragraph, though—it establishes a strong tone from the first sentence. I feel like I'm reading a report in a newspaper or magazine straight off the bat, and I think it's fair to guess that's exactly what the author is shooting for.

There are a few editing issues here that should be easy to clean up with a careful read-through. Also, a whole passel of sentences starting with "While" about halfway through the text.

Honestly, that's about all I have to say. This is nearly pitch-perfect. Good job, horizon. Your story's better than mine again.

HORSE: Why do I even bother?
TIER: Top Contender

This one left me mostly unsatisfied. I’m with Bats here. The concept is funny and nifty, and we don’t really know if we are in a series or a derived video game.

But the execution kills almost all. The beginning is far to slow, then you finally get a good pace in the middle, when you reveal the identity of the hero, but then it goes haywire again and begins to harp on and on, and that detracts almost all from the humour. And the end, while I see the metaphor on the Borg, is somewhat of a letdown.

Really you were lucky I’d somehow endeavoured to read it until the end, because I was quite close to give up after the first quarter.

If I had any advice, it’d be to heavily cut and redact. The concept is clever, and deserves to shine, but in its present state, it way overstays its welcome.

Just Do It

In this feel-good tale sharing the title of a Nike advertising slogan, Tim the stereotypical millennial learns to stand up to the corporate world and deal with the guilt of having to listen to a poverty-stricken widow by abandoning his job in the middle of his shift and fucking his co-worker.

You may have noticed I didn't like this.

It feels almost as though everything in this story is engineered to rub me up the wrong way: It's shallow, melodramatic, cloyingly sentimental, and filled with a continuous, grating snark, both in the narration and the voices of both characters.

Perhaps I shouldn't penalise it on those grounds. Some people like schmaltz, after all.

But there are two things I can't forgive. First, for a character piece, it has close to no characterisation. Tim and Kayla are essentially identical boxes of watered-down aspiration and sarcasm. Second, for a message piece, its message is not only unrealistic but self-indulgent.

Judging on those criteria, it won't go to the bottom of my slate even though it was the story I liked the least. But neither will it get a good ranking.

Homebound

8,000 words on the dot! I’m not sure I’ve ever managed to really max out a story like that. Maybe one of the minifics.

I spent a lot of time staring at the intro paragraph, trying to figure out whether it was trying too hard to be evocative. The wail piercing the darkness, the primal worry. Just in that first sentence I feel like these words are trying to bully their way into me. After a while thinking about it, I decided that it might not be how I would write it, but that’s fine.

A few pages on, and I think I know what’s bothering me – almost no noun escapes without an adjective, even nouns that don’t seemingly need them. Confused sweat, frantic heartbeats, worried knot, grasping elastic web. Later paragraphs do better, dialing back the adjectives, but then we get “electronic cry of woe.” This writing is… well, I won’t call it purple, but it’s treading the line.

Okay, after chewing through the narrative, we finally get to something that really grasps my interest: ‘This one works.’ There’s a lot implied by that note and those few words.

As we draw closer to Earth, I feel the story finally starting to grip me. I get the feeling there’s something wrong back home, too, and I’m surprised Vance isn’t intuiting that as well. There’s a good amount of tension in this writing, which is one of the hardest things to pull off as an author. In fact, tension is probably the critical factor that separate compelling fiction from ‘bleh’ fiction.

There are quite a few typographical, grammatical and construction errors throughout, particularly in the middle, but those don’t bother me much in the Writeoff. Just fix them at some point.

When we get to the end, a lot of the tension is left unresolved. As Bradel notes, we don’t get an answer to the most interesting question in the story. We don’t find out what happens to Vance, either, but really Vance is pretty much irrelevant to the reader’s interest – the fate of humanity weighs more on us than the fate of one individual.

The lack of dialogue starts to weigh on this story, the longer it goes. “But Cig, it’s a one-person story! There can’t be any dialogue!” Ah, but that’s not true! Look at Cast Away, one of the greatest marooned-self-rescue stories, or The Life of Pi, and you’ll see authors who manage to add dialogue to stories with only one character. That let’s you step around the dreaded overuse of italics to indicate thoughts.

Overall, I’m left with mixed feelings about this story. The tension was great in the middle, but it never really went anywhere. The over dramatic writing, especially early on (e.g. “electronic cry of woe”). But that fortunately faded toward the middle of the story, once we got away from description and more into action. Character development was minimal. I feel like Stone and Hansen were actually better realized, even though we only saw them in snippets. Again, perhaps, because they had actual dialogue and obviously made some very hard choices.

But I keep coming back to the tension throughout the middle and end of the story, which was great. Find some way to realize the tension with actual, meaningful consequences, sand off some of the rougher edges, and this story will really shine.

You have way too many comma splices. I'm sure that I used to use them all the time, but at some point I conditioned myself to learn what they are and how to spot them, and now I can never not notice them. Definitely a priority when you start proofreading this.

But I like where this is going. It's an introduction to a setting that feels different from the usual, and even though some of the little details you introduce seem implausible, most of them are at least surprising. (The exception being TV shows as malware. We live in an age where there is more good TV than ever before, so future fics like this have to really sell me on that trend reversing.)

I can see why the other reviewers would say that this is too confusing, but after a second read-through I get the gist of it. I'm willing to reread certain novels immediately (everyone go check out The Traitor Baru Cormorant), so a short story is nothing, really. So far this needs the least work out of all the stories I've read.

This story is very good. (8/10)

I think it’s a pretty good story, but it suffers from a lot of minor flaws:

1. You seem to imply that ‘advance cryogenic’ technology was already available in the ’90s, but I don’t really see what you’re referring to;
2. If there is a problem with memory corruption, how does the guy know the name of the gal she’s reviving? Should be a lottery each time;
3. You allude to some unpleasant fate once the revived leave the hospital, but we never get a chance to know what exactly looms at the exit;
4. You also refer to a waste a material when the first body is shattered to atoms, but somehow you fail to explain who or why those people are revived, and who pays for it (or if it’s done for free);
5. The phone call is a rather telly way to make us discover things;
6. The end is anti-climactic.

And, well, the story is well written, even though the idea is far from being original (though the usage of a 3D printing machine to remake a body from start is a real corker). But the arc is fairly thin.

I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.

6 – Just Do It

Cliched opening line—but frankly, I laughed. I think that's a good start.

Okay, I'm going to let myself be nitpicky in the next couple paragraphs, then I'm moving on. First up, does anyone say "merry hob"? It sounds very weird to me. It's better than "merry hell" here, since you're already overusing hell in this stretch—but maybe that's a sign you should be avoiding constructions that ought to use the word, not just the word itself.

Another small thing tossing me out early:

As usual, a cavalcade of mouth-breathers flooded the chat client with every plane that finally made it off the ground, demanding free wifi service for the inconvenience of not being allowed to risk plummeting to their deaths from thirty-five thousand feet.

I'm actually a bit of a fan of "mouth-breathers" here, because I think it's working to elaborate characterization you're already establishing in the story's first line. The circuitousness of this sentence and that really awful construction in the back half of it, though, just make this sentence a nightmare. "For the inconvenience of not being allowed to risk"? I'm going to carefully keep my hands in my lap right now, so that I can avoid punching things. I will, however, calmly point out that you've got two more prepositional phrases directly following those two, in addition to the three you've crammed into the sentence before this point. Calmly. I will point it out calmly.

Okay, I... uhh... this is sort of a weird experience. Author, you've managed to completely throw me out of the story with Tim's reaction to basic human civility. I think you did some nice work setting up how awful his job could be, but the fact that he's shocked to the point of stupefication when someone doesn't yell at him... Well, for one it makes me feel bad for Seligman's dogs. For another, I just plain don't believe it. Maybe the world is a considerably shittier place than I give it credit for, but given that I am the polite person on the phone in situations like this, and none of the customer service people I've talked to have ever seemed overwhelmed by my being a civil human being, this just feels completely unbelievable to me. I like that you're trying to make Tim an active character by giving him strong reactions, but you have to give him real, human reactions or he'll just become some sort of crazy alien caricature.

I'm enjoying the scene between Tim and Kayla much more. There's a really good balance of description in here for my taste, most of it really working with the tone of the story—cold and isolaton is pretty much perfect here. The dialogue occasionally dips into cliches and pop-culture phrases that momentarily throw me out of the story; I'd rather that didn't happen, but I find it at least sort of forgivable given the quality of the scene as a whole.

Let me revise that. I like the Tim and Kayla scene until they quit their jobs and go romantic. There's some obvious chemistry between then—enough that it bothers me when Tim is completely oblivious to it. And then they're talking about quitting their jobs as a pair, but they don't even seem to be close friends and Tim plans and expects to never see her again? There's a real disconnect between the intimacy displayed and the intimacy Tim seems to assume they have.

Aleph Null is a great band name. I'll bet you can really count on them to produce the hits.

Final thoughts: I like the execution on most of this, barring a few spots I'd want to see ironed out. My biggest problem is that Tim has a couple bouts of being some kind of crazy animatronic robot instead of a real live boy. Also, I don't know that I ever really buy the soul-crushingness of the original job. I do in the abstract because fuck customer service jobs—but that's a thing I'm bringing to the story as a reader, not a thing I feel like you've really established well. There's too much emotional manipulation running around in that first section: screaming, swearing customers; a penniless widow who tries to be very polite. It's manipulative far more than it's convincing. All that said, though, I still enjoyed by far the greater part of this story.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Almost There

On second thought, after listening to smart people—like... well... >>Not_A_Hat, >>Baal Bunny, >>Cold in Gardez, >>Southpaw, and >>Scramblers and Shadows—it seems I've kind of overlooked the fact that the only serious conflict in this story is very manufactured and artificial.

It's still going to place decently on my ballot, I think, just based on me enjoying most of the writing. But I can't help thinking these guys have a pretty important point. (And feeling like I need to be a better reader, that I had such an easy time missing it when I read the story myself. I really need to get back into my writing game...)

I think I have to agree with everyone else that this story ended up feeling like it had too much going on. The depressed, borderline-suicidal (and actually suicidal) protagonist never really excited me as a person, nor did Rhos, and the whole thing just never quite felt like it came together for me.

It threw a great deal at the reader, but in the end I'm not sure if it really "worked". We have all this weird stuff flying around, but a lot of it ended up coming off as being strange for the sake of strangeness rather than anything else. What was the point of it all in the end?

I think that in the short story format, it would have worked better if the guy had been a human from Earth who had been revived, as we'd have more of a frame of reference for the strangeness.

---

Welp, that's it for my initial slate, thanks to DQs. Time to get cracking on the rest.

I agree with the opinions of my esteemed colleagues here. This was a good story, but it wasn’t a great one. Vance is somewhat lacking in the personality department; he’s a person, but he’s a bit on the bland side as we don’t get to see much of him. The lack of any real resolution thus lead to it feeling like it didn’t quite go anywhere; it isn’t that it isn’t a complete story, but that the answers which seem most interesting end up unanswered by the end, and Vance’s lack of personality means that while we vaguely hope he survives, I’m not sure if I felt like it was as gripping as it would have been if I actually cared about him.

The tension of his actions towards the end of the story, of having to make a series of very hard choices, and him not knowing if it would even matter, worked well, I think.

All in all, this was solid, but it could have been more so if either we had cared more about Vance or if we got more resolution about the fate of Earth.

Whew! Boy, this one took me for a ride. The story is excellent and covers it’s flaw through principles of innocence. I’ll explain more in the review. The story takes the perspective of an object. Now while it sounds bland, it’s actually quite whimsical! The story starts off on a questionable scene. It got very confusing very fast. With an open mind we start to see the world around us forming into someone’s, or something’s, viewpoint. At first I thought it’s probably someone traveling through dimensions of space or the gift of life. The word that completely confused me once again was “kitty” and “puppy”. So in the end it makes you think if it’s an animal giving birth. That’s not the case as this strange being ends up hugging it. Me being a dog owner knows pet 101: You never just touch a newborn pup or kitten. So that ruled it out. Now I continued on to thinking about the giants mentioned and the smooth girl who was getting in touch with this character that was just described. After figuring out the answer that puzzling question that is was a toy. I had to take a break, from the surprise. A toy? All that beautiful intro was meant for unboxing a toy and presenting it to a young daughter named Claire. It really blew my mind. So the story continues on and tells the tale of a little girl’s love for her favorite stuffed toy puppy.

NEGATIVES
-Realism
Let’s start off with the negatives first. The story does little next to nothing to show reality pass this toy’s view. I would have loved a scene where Kitty gets hurt and needs to be tended to in order for him to be more realistic to the reader. This is to further hint at what he actually is and where he would stand in. It would have made a sweet potential part of the story that would have been heartwarming while still holding interest in how a toy would feel being handled and broken. Though there’s a very good reason why the author doesn’t point anything pass this toy’s mentality. It wouldn’t be a sin to break pass this point and present the reader with Claire’s point of view to show more of the story. The author probably felt like it was taboo breaking away from Kitty’s perspective, when that wouldn’t be the case. The years Claire took to growing up, could have spelled out why Kitty was left to collect dust in the first place. The potential here was Claire could have had an internal struggle with comments coming from her mother, her father, her friends, or maybe even a boyfriend. Either way I wanted to see more slice of life stuff, but ended up being denied from it to keep Kitty’s side solidified for the reader. This alone could have easily tripled the content of this story. In my opinion, this is the biggest flaw of this story. It’s barely even a flaw in itself to even mention this, as the story still works just fine without these properties.

-Description
Alright let’s be honest here. I disagreed with some of your descriptions as it just seemed odd or over the top. It would bring out the wrong idea. Like the intro pertaining to having a universe pop out all at once. As something comes into existence. With three words beginning the story, leaving the world in thought, to be barren, wasteland like, or a deep void. It’s a bit much for a toy. The word usage such as “plane” and the way you use “light” seem to refer to almost a space like feeling, giving us the impression of a wormhole or a rift of some sorts. I understand it would feel that way for Kitty, but it is highly dramatizing for something so simple. You could take a mess of words and make an epic scene out of an old man trying to chew his food. He’s still just trying to chew his food. No amount of words I use will make it any different. Though it was very touching it was drawn out to where you could understand how their bond starts between Claire and Kitty. It was just less effective since I was expecting something totally different and epic. Even the way smell was used at the start shows that it’s probably going to be used later in the story or that this thing being described is an actual being. Not only was smell barely used for content, the fact that it’s a human characteristic meant it should have been alive. But from what we get is that Kitty only comes alive through the imagination of person interacting with him. Thus him being able to smell before he can come alive just threw me for a loop. The author does excellent in all other aspects having this pseudo relationship work out. But the smell part didn’t seem to mix in well.

POSITIVES
-Interpretation
Whew! I’m excited for this part. I have so much to say for this story. The main viewpoint we read in this wonderful tale is from Kitty’s eyes and mind. Being a toy leaves for knowing next to nothing in regards for being a non sentient character. It’s beautiful how it’s translated into a live character through the imagination of Claire’s mind. From the world popping into color before Kitty, to being able to see exactly how playtime with her would be like from the eyes of a toy. With Kitty playing as a character in one of many worlds created by Claire. From space battles to monster fighting and even playing house with Dad and Mom, whom we never see btw in the story as both are just mentioned only at the start of the story and once more in between. Kitty was on a switch constantly from being alive in one place to not knowing what would happen next. Which is shown through Kitty turning almost completely inanimate as Claire leaves his side. His vision starts to blur and colors fade out as pure imagination that fueled his character leaves him. Letting only light that shined upon his button like eyes be the only thing he notices, along with dust and an overview of things in which he can’t seem to understand until he is held once more. I felt my heart skip a beat as the ending just seem to come out and touch me with Kitty once more coming back to life. Though his reaction seemed again over the top. With Kitty “imaging savory images and smacking his lips” to the feeling of being alive again from having Claire introduce him to a baby boy. I can’t say much negatives to this as it is a wonderful change of pace from normal storytelling. Though I can say that this could have also been broadened a bit more. Which would have made the ending hit us a lot harder than it normally did.

-Theatrics
Never thought I’d see such an element be used to such an extent as to literally keep me connected with my love and passion for Disney movies to keep me hooked onto a story. The imaginary world Kitty was placed in seemed so real to him. You could literally play along as he mentions what he sees through the mind of his owner. From conversations with Claire to scenarios where Kitty felt like the world in Claire’s mind was his own. His heart beat in tune with Claire’s because that’s where his identity laid within. Every toy wants to be played with and loved. Or so it’s what we’re taught as children. So the author uses this fact to give Kitty more of a sympathy role in the story. Just when I thought I was going to see Kitty interact with some trashcan, he’s instead gets handed down to another owner.These realistic moments could have played such a vital part in connecting with Kitty to a child standard in which we would all understand personally. I just thought it was wasted that this wasn’t explored more. I had so much fun reading about how much “fun” Kitty and Claire’s time together was. It made me wanna find my old toy and just hug the stuffing out of it. All of awe driven moments which could have been much more powerful with more effort.

-Content
I was between myself placing this trait of the story as a negative or a positive. Since the story does well without consent on it’s very own content, I decided to place this under positives. Now don’t get me wrong the content was just amazing by itself. I have almost no advice to give in this regards. Which this entry will mostly sound negative, though it’s just friendly advice to the author. Now the only bad part of this was, that is just simply didn’t feel like enough. Bogus right? Anyways this is one of the shorter stories in the gallery and just surprised me with how genuine it felt to read it. Though several parts of the story felt like it was missing chunks. Like big entries for Kitty. The mention of Winter comes up with only a few paragraphs to explain Kitty’s experience in the season. He doesn’t even get friends to play with, in which me myself; even as a boy, got several stuff animals when I was a child. So seeing Kitty being Claire’s only stuffed toy felt like it was missing a relatable touch. There was so many things that could have been done to make this story so much more. The author decided to stick to minimal length for this story. It could have been that they ran out of gas writing this story or maybe a lack of effort, but you can kinda feel a sense of that within the words of the story. Regardless the author is very talented and the spotlight really shines here. This loving story could use more love. Some time placed in this story would have made it a star in it’s own right.

This is one of the stories I would recommend to read. It’s so touching that it’s almost poetic. I’m such a sucker for these types of stories. While it may be perplexing in some senses, it stands out doing things you’d never expect from a story. While the title does seem to fit quite well (Spectrum:meaning the infinite condition of a set of values, ranging from field of vision to even opinions about a certain topic in a neverending scale.) It does spark a cover of a close up on Kitty’s button eyes shining with the light on him, in my mind. Per the title of course, since the word is highly associated with light and shades of colors.. Though this is only me trying to understand the author in question here. It was a great read and something I’d love to tell smaller younger readers about. Or just read as a bed time story. This story was very surprising for an E rated type. Overall good work and keep it up. (I cheated and looked up the definition of Spectrum. It actually fits the topic of this story. Explaining the infinite views of a child’s imagination. That’s what she was going for.)

>>Ratlab
could be a nerf gun. It would make sense with a round foam piece able to shoot out. And with Kitty's perspective the round piece should blow up, as per Claire's imagination. Since it's, you know, a weapon. That one took me a while to figure out, but nonetheless I think I hit the nail there.

Like Icenrose, I struggled up front with a lot of it, as it felt like it was throwing a bunch of terminology at me. I was confused by the names up at the front of the story, and I feel like the first few paragraphs could be disentangled and made a lot clearer.

This is a story about golems. I picked that up once I realized that they had words on their foreheads. I'm not super familiar with the meanings of the words, though, so if Yaron and Emmett's names are supposed to have some special significance, I don't know what they were. Explaining this might be helpful. I figured out that Emmett had something to do with truth, but I don't really know if there's some special significance beyond that.

Really, this story mostly took off in the latter half when he confronted the "angel", and I'm not quite sure if it is supposed to be a literal angel, or a golem who was animated without a Word (or I suppose, given actual life).

The conversation with the inspector was necessary for establishing the character of Emmett, but I think that a lot of this story would have worked better if I had a better idea of what the significance of the golem's names were, and a few other things.

The climax and resolution were pretty good, though.

Tell me the truth. Are my reviews too big? I just noticed how much I write for them when I'm only focused on several traits for the author. Since handling one or several elements is best for improving rather than trying to change your style completely, I stick to just five per review. Is it much?

Btw how does voting and prelim work? 0.o' I have no clue how to do them or what they do. Can I only choose what's currently in the prelims right now? Someone help me! I'm sure someone will be wanting my vote, but I'm kinda scared with interacting with this strange system.

I agree that the story went a bit over the top with the "goddamns", but otherwise this was a fairly decent piece. The butterflies and rabbits and all being entrusted with making the world a magical place for people was a cute idea, and of course, who doesn't love Painting the Frost on the Windows?

It didn't wow me, but I think on the whole it worked well.

>>Remedyfortheheart
Your reviews are more than fine. They are very insightful, so please do continue to write them. :)

Voting system:

You drag the stories you read from the lower half and drop them on the upper half of the voting page, where they will stick. Then, within that upper half, you can drag/drop them to establish your voting slate, the highest the percentage, the highest the ranking.

>>Monokeras
Thankies! Sigh. I'm having a lot of fun reviewing. I really did want people to read my stuffies. Oh well next time, I'll put on some gloves. Because Remi is gonna try to impress next time. Does that mean planned out stories is bad for these things. Because I have just about a dozen ideas, mentally scripted already as well. Would that be cheating? In this regards, you can argue that a piece is not original if already planned out before hand. Though, since it remains to yet be written, that means it's still an original piece? I bet everyone is planning ahead. I just went on a whim for this contest.

This flowed pretty well and I found myself following the main character's emotions perfectly, but by the end of it I ended up realizing there isn't much new here and the last reveal and poignancy kind of fell flat for me. There's nothing really wrong here, but there isn't anything that interesting or spectacular.

This story is so-so. (5/10)

>>Remedyfortheheart
Nope, do all the planning you want. Using pre-planned ideas is quite common; many of the writers here keep idea files/folders, filling them whenever inspiration strikes in day-to-day life, and then sifting through them when the prompt drops to find something that fits. I imagine that went doubly so for this round, where we had free reign to choose our theme.

So long as there's no actual drafting of the manuscript until the buzzer starts, you're okay.

>>Remedyfortheheart
I agree with Ratlab here. I myself, had the idea I elaborated upon a few days before the WriteOff started. Sometimes the WriteOff is a nice incentive to put down an idea you've been toying with for long but never had the guts to tackle properly.

So go ahead.

And yeah, I'm sorry for what happened. I could tell you also how my first WriteOff were ordeals, and I self DQed more than once, and I was like a wreck for several days. But I just stuck through because—it's very addictive and the people around here are simply the best critics you'll ever get. Now, after more than a year, I have improved slightly, so I am able to fend off the hardest blows. But I'm still tailing amongst the clumsiest. I don't want to elaborate anymore, but yeah, It was tough. But the game's worth the candle.

And oh I forget: I love your avatar.

I’m going to be terser than the other commenters. First of all, I was also somewhat surprised that Adam is a girl. It made me retread the first sentences because I feared I had missed something.

The beginning is hard to slog through, and I agree that the multiplication of names whose significations are obscure doesn't help. It takes time to adjust to your world where golems and humans live together. I get some references to the Jewish tradition, like words being living things.

The end of the story sounds very much like Spinoza’s Ethics where the transcendence of God is proved in that He is beyond logic. The absence of word on the final golem could mean this golem is God himself, since the word for God is never written. But I don't get the final line. Does God request to be himself evaluated by his creatures? Does being Human mean being outside, or not restricted to, logic? Is the truth beyond logic? Is there is truth no beauty? Oops, that's a Star Trek episode.

Overall, it's a well-written story, but definitely either for insiders or highbrows, laden with symbolism and riddles. In the Pragish style. Somewhat Kafkaesque. Interesting but maybe tinsy-winsy too mind-boggling.

I'll echo a lot of what has been said already, Writer. I'd like to add that I found it frustrating how, as the story is written, Liar oscillates from calm meditation to strained, turbulent doubt. For example:

Again the silence closed in around him. His ears straining to catch a sound were none lurked. His breath began to slow as peace again took hold of his body.

Are his senses turned inward or outward? Is he focusing on his thoughts, or is he listening for the guards' inevitable return? For much of the first half of this story, his actions are written as though he is simultaneously succeeding and failing at meditation, alternating almost every other sentence. I found it jarring, and would recommend condensing his successes and failures into their own paragraphs at the very least. Ideally, I think you should portray him either mostly succeeding at introspection, or mostly failing, depending on how conflicted you want to portray his character.

Also, I had hoped to finally learn more about Liar through his encounter with the Priest, perhaps through a recitation of his ostensible crimes. Alas, no. By the end of the piece, I still know next to nothing about why Liar was imprisoned. If I had to hazard a theory, it would be based off of this line:

It was a smile born of a life lived in complete contradiction to all things the priests held dear.

Between that line and his name, I suppose Liar is some form of heretic? A blasphemer, guilty of leading members away from the flock, in defiance of the powers in charge of society? I'm given so little context as to the situation at hand that I can't even decide if this is a good thing, or if I want to side with the Priest or the prisoner. Ultimately, I'm left with no guidance.

Final Thought: Rudderless and Adrift in a Sea of Prose

It led in with an unusual hook with pleasant shades of whimsy, though one that didn’t seem particularly connected to the story.

So, running out on a test was cringeworthy for me. I had some trouble empathizing; my fortune at being someone who generally tests well, I suppose. Then that WHACK was rather jarring - I kept wanting to read it as her running into something, rather than slamming a door open.

Once she got out into the field though, the story was engrossing. I loved the detail there, and her energy was infectious. If there were mechanical issues, I read over them.

I dug the narrative voice on this one. Irreverent, ebullient, a little bit poetic; it complemented the story well. There were a couple times where I felt it went too far (the stomach routine comes to mind), but those were the exception, rather than the rule.

I also liked the use of repetition; how you echoed and twisted the exam themes into later parts of the story.

Unfortunately, it was weaker once the focus moved off of Sophie. Her classmates felt shallow; granted they didn’t have much time, but they still seemed rather similar to each other. Beyond that, while this story showed a really fun scene, I never got much of the sense of it being a part of a larger, living and breathing world.

In general, though, this story was firing on all cylinders for me, and I quite enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, author, I've got to join the chorus that the story here just feels too aimless as presented. Others have covered that well, so I'll try to offer some concrete suggestions.

1) The most critical thing jolting me out of my reading was, multiple times, to be given what felt like a complete description of the protagonist's surroundings, only to be informed of an extremely crucial element later on which was never initially mentioned. Such as:

You know that feeling you get when you feel like you walked into the wrong room? That’s what struck me right as my eyes adjusted. There was an outside, like the building was a cottage in the quiet edge of an enchanted forest of sorts. Ahead of me was a dirt path that cut through much of the forest. Not much else was outside… which sort of disappointed my hopes that maybe this would be an adventure. I kept my ears alert as I reached over for the door. All I hit was air. A couple more reaches before I glanced behind me. The door wasn’t there. Neither was the building.

Something dark cast a large shadow as it soared over me. I ducked and shielded my head as it roared overhead. When I darted my eyes towards where it went, all I could make of it was a large, black sphere before it arced down into the ground in the distance. A loud poof sounded in sync with a shockwave that pushed me back a few feet. I felt my head hit the ground along with my back. Curiosity got the best of me as instincts told me to get up and back away from where my head was. If the shock wave pushed me one foot further, I would’ve fell presumingly to my death from a deep hole in the ground that had no bottom.

We are shown a generic outside-of-the-cottage scene and told there's nothing exceptional about the scene. In that first paragraph, we discover at the same time as the character that the house has disappeared — this is not problematic. (I would have liked to have seen more of the protagonist's reaction to this apparently rule-changing happenstance, but based on the protagonist's actions, clearly the disappearance was as much of a surprise to them as us.) However, in the next paragraph, we are shown a UFO hurtling across the sky, and then suddenly the protagonist reacts to a change in scenery we're never shown, dodging a hole that was not previously there, and we don't know what she's doing until after she's safe.

This is a big no-no. Your descriptions are the only way that readers have of putting themselves into the story. If the protagonist knows more than the reader, and takes action based on that hidden knowledge, we literally have no way of following along with the story. Hiding information about your world so that we know less than the character, if you're going to do it at all, should be rare and deliberate — such as building up unreliable narration, characterizing the narrator by what they're omitting, and even then it can be risky. (The characterization effect of your narrator not mentioning the holes, right now, is an implication that she wasn't shocked by them, which means she knows a lot more about what's going on than she's telling us, which is frustrating as a reader and ruins the impact of her own search for answers by making it look insincere.)

2) The protagonist, like us, is being blindly dropped into a situation with very unusual rules. You specifically imply at one point that she's from 21st century Earth. So the expectation your readers will have is that the laws of physics should work the way that we're used to — and more importantly, that any deviation from those rules is exceptional and worthy of mention and analysis.

Why do I mention this? Because your protagonist is not reacting that way. See directly above for one example, but a bigger one would be their casual acceptance (upon waking up and reading the note) of being dumped amnesiac into a crazy house with a "mission" and the deliberate inability to remember their name. What's the last thing they do remember? Clearly they know something of their previous life if they can offhandedly reference "normal 21st century clothes". If I woke up in that position, I know I'd be awfully concerned about the deliberate block on my memories — maybe there's a legitimate reason for whoever's running the show to do that to me, but it's a pretty clear indication that there is someone pulling the strings, and the note didn't even make an attempt to explain. I know you characterize your protag. as someone looking for adventure, but even so, this setup feels super manipulative, and the fact that she's shrugging and playing along with that is breaking my engagement hard.

This is reinforced in a huge way when she's forced back into the house and the second note mocks her for trying to escape. AT THAT POINT THIS IS NOT A GAME. To your credit, there's some of that sense of tension during the monster scene, but then the note tells her to go to the train and suddenly her reaction again is "Trains mean travel, and travel means adventure!" This is NOT how to react when some sort of psychopath is getting you to dance through his strings in a virtual world.

3. Work on figuring out in your own head what the actual rules here are, so that you can give us more of a sense of consistency in the bizarre happenings of your story — and so that your protagonist figuring out the rules can feel like progress. For instance, there's the repeated motif of random holes appearing. She almost falls into one as the UFO passes overhead, and then a second one as she tries to go to the UFO. Then there's a third hole that opens up and kills the monster. There's never any sense of what caused those to appear, which robs you of a significant moment here — the monster's death feels totally arbitrary, and yet the note congratulates her as if she'd scored some kind of victory. I would have loved to see those first two holes lead her to some sort of realization of how to get them to appear, and then upon realizing that the monster was tracking her down, and that she had no methods of self-defense, to lure it someplace where she knew she could take an action that would get a hole to appear. That would have made the congratulations feel less hollow — she's starting to master her environment — and perhaps given more impact to your second twist, that of the second set of notes showing up once she'd foiled the plans of the first.

Overall, this bizarre-world-excuse-plot sort of progression can work for a medium like an adventure game, because even if the player isn't invested in what's going on, they have agency in the trial and error that they are using to solve the puzzles, and can start to build a picture of the world's rules through their own actions. With a static medium like a story, all we can do is see what you're explicitly showing us, so you can't just Solve Problems and trust that to carry readers' attention. We want to feel like there's a greater context in which the problems matter — something at stake that needs to be resolved, rather than just "having an adventure" — and everything in the story pulling its weight toward that exploration of how the central question will go.

Tier: Needs Work

the first Goddamn already felt forced to me. and after that it kept spilling everywhere. I bet the author is tired by now of reading the same repetitive complaint about the Goddamns. TOOOO BAD, you better Goddamn accept what you did.

The concept isn't too bad, with nature itself being some kind of Disney World type staged show put on for the sake of humans. Those silly humans, romanticizing the beauty of nature, when it's all a bunch of corporate manipulation. I'm not personally fond of either view, but I'm not entirely sure if the message here is poking fun at it or glorifying it. Especially in the final speech where the cynicism seems to turn right back around to saccharine, with how noble they are for inspiring and bettering us all with the magic of spring. Is she for real? Is the story making fun of Mauli or am I just being too cynical myself?

The line about Halloween makes me wonder if this is sort of a Nightmare Before Christmas type of world. Well maybe not. Those characters revelled in their holidays and didn't gripe about corporate politics. And then it went in a strange unique direction. Maybe these bunnies and butterflies should've actually tried to put on Halloween like they said. It wouldn't be original, but maybe more interesting.

Teb kind of annoyed me since he mostly recited stuff that the characters already know, just to inform the audience. I get that it's gotta be done, it just felt too transparent to me.

It felt really weird that the insects are so anthropomorphized, rolling their compound eyes and behaviors like that. At first I was willing to accept it, but when it introduces mammals and then actual humans, it gives me a very grotesque mental image. Eew. Why give a bouquet of flowers to a tiny songbird? Aren't the flowers sentient and part of the performance too? Maybe I assumed too much. I mean, they even talk and act like humans, just with some alternate vocabulary swapped in. The story's self-aware about the pathetic fallacy, but are these animals supposed to be viewed as human or inhuman? Why should I feel sympathy for them when they are the ones suggesting that my sympathy is just an illusion?

It feels like a tug-of-war, and my heart's not being moved in either direction.

The suspense made it fun to read, though the whole time I was waiting for some dark "Owl Creek Bridge" twist at the end, because there didn't seem to be any kind of conflict for a while. The doctor's explanations and procedures felt convincing enough, so nothing really broke the immersion there. The one problem I noticed is that it took too long to know much about Jessica Tambour's life (such as her age). What we do know about her needs to be established earlier, since the story heavily depends on her expectations vs results.

As to the big reveal, well... gotta agree with Baal Bunny. What's the purpose here? The shock value of killing duplicates isn't anything new, and stories that did that at least provided a reason behind it all, to set up the horrifying controversy later on. Perhaps the title is a clue, and the real message here is about "dang glitchy machines," but.... if true, that theme could've been emphasized a lot more. After the well-written setup, I was expecting the story's message to have more clarity.

Very nice imagery:

As one would hope from the title, but it didn't sell me entirely on its background premise. Why would every major country institute population control measures? Even China's stopped their "one child" policy at this point, haven't they. I'd say just go with the fertility collapse thing. That'd work just as well on its own.

Mike

I won’t lie here: whilst I really do appreciate what you were trying to do with the ending, honestly, it left me feeling cheated. The best way I can describe it is… imagine if Gravity had ended the moment Sandra Bullock starts her descent towards Earth, or if, when watching The Martian, Matt Damon begins his attempt to make it into orbit over Mars, only for the credits start rolling halfway through said attempt. Picture the reaction from the audience! There would’ve been rioting in the cinema!

And I bring those two films up not only because they share similar plotlines to your story here, but also a similar adventurey sort of tone… whilst I consider both of them to be major artistic achievements, ultimately, neither of them were aiming to be high art. (Though don’t get me wrong, I absolutely do not mean that as a slight against them, and by extension your story. I think a lot of people severely underestimate how gosh darn difficult it to write a decent crowd-pleaser). Both of them showed enough self-awareness of what they were to know to give us a definitive ending for their respective characters. I hate to say it, but for me, your ending didn’t feel particularly meaningful or challenging so much as it simply felt abrupt and non-committal.

BUT! It would be amiss of me not to acknowledge that, judging from some of the other comments here, this wasn’t such a problem for other readers. Maybe I wasn’t the right audience for this?

And honestly, right up until the ending, I was digging the absolute hell out of this story. The tension in the beginning was fantastic, and my mind was going into overdrive imagining what horrors Vance was going to uncover (‘This one works’ was such a brilliant moment). This was followed by a wonderful middle where the high stakes contrast brilliantly with the mundaneness of life aboard a tiny spacecraft. And the approach to Earth was both beautiful and chilling all at once – Lord knows that I spend enough time worrying about the future, so the vague clues we’re given that something horrible has happened on Earth hit me pretty hard.

As for Vance… I think my thoughts here are going to contradict themselves a little bit, but please bear with me. On the one hand, a few more little character moments here and there would be a huge benefit to this story – it would give us more of a reason to like him, and empathize with the sheer horror of his situation. On the other hand, it was also very cool to read about a level-headed professional handling a terrible situation with grit and ingenuity. I think a lesser version of this story would’ve taken the easy route and just had him PANIC, PANIC, PANIC in a cheap attempt to wring our sympathy for him. I sooo glad that you rose above that.

I mentioned The Martian earlier, but it’s worth bringing up again, even if it was in a different medium to this (I haven’t gotten round to reading the book yet). That film was a masterclass in walking the line between having the main character being a likeable human being with deep seated emotions vs having him act as cool, calm, and collected as you’d expect any NASA professional to be. It achieved just the right balance, and it was enthralling. By comparison, Vance isn’t quite there yet. But he’s close. Very close.

To summarize, for as much as I hated the ending, for the most part I really truly enjoyed this one. Bradel probably said it best. ’If I were shopping for a magazine, this would get a very definite "Sorry, we're not interested—but please send us your next story" letter.’

TIER: Solid

There's a lot:

To like here--I especially like how the opening leads us in. But once I got in, I found myself anticipating every step the story was going to take. I'll even admit to skipping lines and even paragraphs sometimes just so I could get to the next story beat that I knew was coming up.

The writing's very pretty, but it's a story that's been told many, many times. We don't need so much of it devoted to the disapproval of the authority figures in her life, for instance: less is more in that sort of situation, I've found, and it starts getting a little repetitious. Come up with something that makes Sophie's situation unique, something about the problem here that can only apply to this character in this place, and focus on that. If you were to ask for my advice, that is... :)

Mike

Fun:

But it raises too many questions that it's not interested in answering. I mean, unicorns can't be seen by people who've had sex, but they can hear them? Otherwise, how could they work as voice-over artists? How did the unicorns get on board the ships that brought them to America? Were people constantly tripping over them? If they're invisible to most adults, I would think that they would've gained a reputation as thieves--the real thief could always blame the unicorns for stealing stuff, after all.

Like I said, it's fun, but it doesn't think through the world nearly far enough for someone as anal-retentive as me.

Mike

Am I the only one who thought the idea of an airplane(?) named Aaliyah was darkly hilarious?

When I realized what sort of world you'd build and the idea you went for, I was interested, and I like the research you did into these mystical names. I don't think a reader needs too much familiarity with that field in order to get the main idea (the concept of golems isn't that obscure). I think my biggest problem is that the open ending strikes me as nothing more than Emmett being unable to make a decision, or maybe the author being afraid or unable to commit to having him making a decision. I don't think the ambiguous open ending, makes the story better. It strikes me as an abrupt stop.

I'm also not sure whether or not this whole society of golems strictly bound by the word of God, as if they were Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, is supposed to be a good or bad thing. That works out better than the ending in terms of helping the reader come to their own conclusion. Ultimately, aside from that, I'm not sure how this could be better.

This story is good. (7/10)

Ctrl+F:

Tells me that there are 36 "Goddamns" here, and with the story length being listed as 2,715, my calculator says that the story is nearly 1 1/3 percent "Goddamns." So yeah: maybe a few too many.

I also wondered if the story might be stronger if there is no God. All there is is this vast conglomerate of Nature Inc. making humans think there's a God for reasons of their own. Other than that, though, I got nothing.

Mike

Testing.

In terms of criticism, I don’t feel that I have much to offer that hasn’t already been covered. That ending really does just come out of nowhere and makes her seem psychotic – the relationship between her and Alex isn’t nearly as developed as it should be.

Perhaps you were going for shock value? Perhaps you wanted it to feel like a surprise? But I think it’s worth bearing in mind Alfred Hitchcock’s little story about two people having a conversation at a café as a time-bomb ticks away beneath their dinner table (obviously, he was talking about film, but the same principle still applies). In one version of the scene, the audience (or reader) doesn’t know the bomb is there, which means that the explosion comes out of nowhere and does nothing more than give us a little shock. But the other way to approach the scene is to let the audience know that it’s there, and that it’s ticking away. Suddenly, the character’s conversation becomes fascinating. Every word of it is like a countdown.

The ‘bomb’ in this story would be the reader’s suspicion that your MC is planning to kill Alex. In another version of this piece, the tension would be electrifying i.e is she really going to do what we think she’s going to do? Does she have the guts to go through with it? Is she really that mad at him? But instead, all that potential intrigue and tension is traded away for a cheap twist at the end, and it harms the story as a result.

(Granted, ol’ Hitchcock does make the caveat that perhaps the surprise is the whole point of the story. But in this case, I don’t think that the twist is nearly strong enough to get away with it).

However, there was a lot of stuff which I honestly liked! In particular, I loved the first third of it where she’s telling us the lore behind the ghost and the game she used to play and such. Her voice feels authentic, her character motivations relatable. And the story of the ghost itself is wonderfully strange and creative, and genuinely creepy to boot.

But what makes the tone of this piece truly special is the matter-of-fact way in which everyone casually accepts the existence of the spirit, as though it’s completely and totally normal that there should be a killer ghost lurking on the beach. Nowhere is this exemplified better than with people’s reaction to Tom’s death, where, rather than explore every other possible, more sensible explanation behind his disappearance (kidnapped? Ran away from home? Swept out to sea in a tragic accident?), instead, all the characters leap straight to, “Tom’s gone missing, you say? Welp! I guess that means the ghost got him or whatever. Let that be a lesson to rest of you.”

… Sorry, written down like that, I must make it sound like the story was being lazy. But I really did appreciate this element of your work. As I said, it gave it a very unique tone, and it was fun to read.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Needs work, but definite potential for something really cool.

I guess I know which story's going to win, now. It might need a little polish here and there, to prune some of the stuff the above commenter said about Claire's narration having stuff that wouldn't fit a nine-year-old child, but other than that, there's a pretty strong emotional throughline. The awful things that May and her mom do and say to each other and Claire put me on edge and made me wonder if reconciliation was actually possible or if Claire was going to grow up in a completely broken home.

I admit, I don't usually tend to seek stories like this out. I certainly don't write them, because the lure of a high-concept genre idea is so much more appealing to me in both cases. But I can also recognize that that can complicate things and obscure the core of a working story. You make being simple work well.

This story is excellent. (9/10)

I like the concept, a nice blending of the hopelessness and confinement of Alien with the at-odds survival of The Martian. Makes for a good, short hard sci fi story.

Related, I think the plot has some of the same problems as The Martian (book, not film, haven't seen the film), wherein tension mounts as a new thing goes wrong over and over again, but it doesn't really up the tension all that much because things are already bleak as sin, so rather than feeling consequential, it feels repetitive. The overall beats are fine: opening and the propulsion issues, the stuff wrong with earth, the stuff wrong with the other pods/crew, the hard choice, the likelihood of it failing, up through the ambiguous ending. Other stuff feels extraneous. All the little systems failures that are things going wrong, many of them that don't even get specifics, feel very repetitive, and the radiation sickness feels touched on too much for not going anywhere. A lot of it could be tightened up and feel just as treacherous. In the freed up space, might be worth exploring more of Vance's character and his past. It's there a little, but more to forge a stronger connection with him would not be remiss in the slightest.

Mechanically, the story is pretty easy to read, though I was distracted by the reliance on adjectives and adverbs. I love adj-words as much as the next guy, but too many of them lessens their impact, and can be distracting. Not to mention, adverbs can be kinda ungainly.

The one that stuck out like a sore thumb to me was "She looked around and sighed gustily." Gustily just feels awkward to read, and even more awkward to say. It also doesn't really add meaning to the sentence. What does a gusty sigh look like compared to a regular sigh? Windier? Albeit it's more descriptive than a heavy sigh, but that isn't necessarily a good thing, as it's kind of obtuse instead of clear. It'd work okay to reorganize the sentence so you could use the adjective form of gust instead (ie: She looked around and heaved a gusty sigh.), or switch it to a less awkward adverb like 'heavily.' Or, perhaps better yet, go for a more precise verb and ditch the adverb (ie: She looked around and huffed.). It's not too bad overall, and got better the further into the story, but strong, direct word choice with fewer modifiers will make the ones worth keeping more impactful, and make the prose that much stronger.

Overall pretty solid, though.

Interesting story based on a relatively widely discussed idea. I think the philosophical foundation of the story was quite solid, and while it wasn't the real focus, it was a good framework for showcasing something different.

I've seen this mainly as a deeply humane story, about the struggle to go through life with a inhumane, incomprehensible deadline hanging at the horizon. Something so deeply outside our experience most people really don't comprehend it.

I loved this story, the writing was great and I deeply cared and felt for the characters. This goes to the top of my slate, and I'm thankful to the author for having written it.

The ending was also perfect for me, even if it seems it didn't work for others.

“Huh? Yeah. Don’t tell me the US military is working with philosophers, now.”

“Of course they are. We have the best ideas, after all.”

And here I became afraid.

>>Ratlab
All hail the mouse on a block of cheese! Thank you for the wise words. And that cancels out half my ideas as they've been put on paper already with a quick list of events and summary of a beginning.

>>Monokeras
Thank you as well. From what I'm sensing your an above average write. And this is comparing the levels of creativity and originality from other authors on FIMFICTION and well "roleplayers" from about three different sites. You're improving more than you take yourself for. One step at a time and you'll become better than you've ever expected to be. Don't sell yourself short. I know I use to do it to myself.

Awww! You called me pretty!....Say it again! TELL ME I'M PRETTY!

>>Oblomov
Sabas que, Cocino?!

Ang gulo mo?

Nani kore wa?!

O, eto russkiy.

-Translation
Spanish: What did you say, bad boy?!
Tagalog: What do you mean?
Japanese: What is this?!
Russian: Oh it's Russian.

>>Remedyfortheheart
Thanks for your kind words! 😘
And no, you’re not pretty… you’re gorgeous! 😉

Okay, so to begin with I know how you managed to get to 8,000:
…Providence was coming in coming in low…
…while the the landing…
No, just kidding. Proof is, you forgot some words too:
Over the next two minutes, he watching the with bated breath…
And there are some typos here and there:
His gazed shifted over the control console…, Hopefully the medicine is doing it’s thing., etc.

The opening paragraph stroke me as stylistically very repetitive: An electronic wail pierced the darkness, muffled, but stirring a primal worry. He tried to flinch but couldn’t move, the effort serving only to alarm him further. The insistent tone drilled into his head as he tried to open his eyes, but they were sticky-dry, the lids leaden sheets. His lashes parted like he was lifting a mountain, revealing a crazed green glow in front of him. “Clause, clause.”, four times in a row. I found it later on in this passage: He made his way down the hab module and tried dinner as a pick-me-up, but the food was ashy paste in his mouth. He went to bed early, but his thoughts went wandering to the cryo pod.

Anyways. The story is not bad, although, as other have pointed out, people coming to back to Earth to find it strangely unresponsive is one of the most mythical themes of Sci-Fi. There are problems, though:

• There is no real tension. The plot is very linear and somehow the difficulties the character has to face are relatively minor. The feeling I had was more of boredom than tension;
• The end is premature, happening exactly when the tension begins to build up towards a climax!
• The middle part drags on too long. I don’t pretend you should redact, but the minutiae you describe, while they give colour to the set-up, are mostly bland. I found myself skimming over it. Instead of feeding the tension, they water it down. Really, if I had my druthers, I would’ve liked you to chop in the middle in order to get some leeway and write a real end;
• I don’t understand why the pilot, the one who is awaken mid-way, is not still alive. Maybe I’ve overlooked a titbit, but I failed to register when he died and why;
• (nitpick) rehydrated waffles? Really?
• (nitpick) Time references: the guy finds out what date it is, but respective to what? Except at 12:00 GMT, I think you can always find on Earth two places where the date is not the same.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised, because, except at the end when the dragging on was a bit too much and I sorta riffled through the last paragraphs, it was a nice read. I was anxious at seeing the word count, but it is easy on the eye.

So, good work here, but deserves some burnishing to make it still better. And please, write a decent end! 😡

EDIT: I wonder if you made a good choice when you opted for third person. I think the story might’ve come across as less telly if you had chosen first person and present tense instead.



Wow. The pièce de résistance is done. I’m almost finished! 😀

Hollow Man

Okay, four stories into my slate and I’m yet to be really wowed by any of them (though reading some reviews of stories that aren’t on my slate indicates that there are a few to be found). Let’s see how Hollow Man stacks up!

Okay, so, there’s some interesting stuff going on, here. But I’m confused by some of the narrative. Let’s look at this:

The mirror stayed, for now. He thought they'd take it away after he broke it and tried to use the shards instead, but he couldn't even get that far. His fist just bounced off, and his face kept staring out of the damn thing. Not that it mattered, since his beard would be long enough to look okay in a day or two. Not great, but okay.

There’s, like, some mental time-travel going on here. He thought they would take away the shards of the mirror after he broke it (past tense), but he couldn’t break it (also past tense). These two things can’t both be true. Also, his inch-long beard is just two-days away from looking fine? How fast does his facial hair grow?

Weirdness abounds and we’re only two paragraphs in. There are other persistent oddities throughout the text, and I can’t tell if they’re deliberate or not. I would normally call them errors.

So the centaur-thing just walked in, and I’m starting to realize that this story’s strategy is to employ in media res in a very alien world. I’m not sure I’d have gone that way, since the point of in media res is to introduce a story with action, but when there’s so much oddity and sheer… well, alienness going on, it really just leaves the readers overwhelmed. Every paragraph has something new, unexplained, and as-yet unexplainable.

"Very well." Frøy took a deep breath. "You've been dead for a long time, and so has the Dragonbond Empire. Something called the Descension killed the First Race and warped the face of the world. I wish we knew how long it ago that was, but it was long enough for some new species to take over. Some of them, like mine, think pretty much the same as you, or close enough. Others don't. They're dangerous, and they're in the majority.

"Even those of us who aren't Returners are realizing just how much has been lost. It's not safe to travel beyond the Eurian Rim, and—"

"The Returners?" Mattello asked. He was starting to find the conversation more engaging, confusing as it was.

Yeah, that’s what I was talking about. Bam! Take that, reader! A whole bunch of references you have no way to understand.

Okay, so it turns out all this was just a framing story. Mattello’s story, which he relays to Rhos, is the real story here. So, I wonder, why does the framing story exist?

We get to the end, and the second-to-last paragraph drops some bombshells on us: “It was an absurd idea, later tempered by Rhos's confession that the headmaster had ordered his food laced with experimental medicine.” Really? That’s a pretty big deal to just hide in the middle of a nine-line paragraph.

This story baffled me. I have no idea what happened, despite fully half the story consisting of the main character telling another character what happened in a previous life. That sounded sort of interesting, which leaves me wondering why the whole story wasn’t just Mattello’s tale? The endless dropping of names, places and events without even an attempt to explain them isn’t world-building, it’s just bamboozling.

Sorry, author. I had a lot of problems with this. I read through it twice, and I still can’t even explain what this story is about.

Oh dear. This is a cheesy story, and I don't think you meant for it to be one. I mean, I can kind of see how this concept would be played for laughs, but that only happens in a few spots, like when you have Joan say the "you ain't no sissy" line. I sincerely doubt that Joan of Arc talked like Flava Flav in casual situations. The stuff with her explaining her rude habits in contrast with her devotion to God is weird slice of life stuff that doesn't really jibe with her distress that God hasn't been speaking to her lately.

The best thing you can do for this story is decide what you want to do with it. Either you dumb it up and make it like, I dunno, Konosuba with a real historical figure, or you go for a more straight-laced sci-fi/historical tone. It's probably possible to do both, but that "sissy" line sank your chances of that.

This story is weak. (3/10)

>>Remedyfortheheart

I don't think written outlines and summaries are necessarily grounds for elimination; how else are we supposed to remember story ideas otherwise?

So long as there's no actual narrative text, (or at least little enough not to violate the spirit of ther rule) you ought to be fine. I don't know that having a line or two would necessarily be grounds for disqualification. My idea seeds sometimes contain a first line, last line, or some particularly evocative snippet.

そして、なぜローマ字に書くの？ちゃんとに書いてください。:raritywink:

>>Ratlab
Τις λέγεις; 😜

>>Monokeras
どいたしまして。

I recently talked to my friend about this writeoff and I explained the idea of commenting on your own story to disguise the fact that you wrote it. He thought it was a pointless, silly thing to do that would only get you in trouble, and while I told him that I won't get kicked out unless I actually say which story I wrote ahead of time, I couldn't think of a reason why it's a sensible thing to do. Can anyone else?

>>Solitair
I never do it, which practically does not matter since I never happened to review all stories in a round.
It’s important in case you want, as FoME and some other endeavour every so often, to make a grand slam.

>>Solitair

Assuming you don't review your own story, then the more stories you DO review will decrease the pool of possible candidates for your story. So it'll be easier for someone to figure which story you wrote by process of exclusion. (Especially if you get through to the finals, and especially if you have a distinctive style.)

I suppose it's only really helpful if you regularly review a large portion of the stories.

>>Solitair
The obvious answer is that it can help ensure anonymity. If you're only commenting on your initial slate, then it probably won't be necessary, but if you're reviewing all (or even most) of the stories, then you should consider including your own in there just to allay suspicion.
Some people have also been known to comment on their own stories to explain things when the other readers aren't understanding the story. Obviously this could make some people think you wrote the story, but it won't be enough to disqualify you as long as you can maintain the guise of a normal reader who happened to pick up on things that other readers didn't. It could be argued that this is somewhat unfair, but it's really up to you to decide.
Along similar lines, I suppose you could make a comment that basically says "hey, this story brings up this interesting point. What does everyone else think about it?" just to spark some discussion and draw attention to your story. Or if you really have no morals, you could give your own story a glowing review to try to influence other people's opinions of it. But in addition to their questionable ethicality, a review like these could easily backfire, and will probably only work once anyway.

>>The_Letter_J

Or if you really have no morals, you could give your own story a glowing review to try to influence other people's opinions of it. But in addition to their questionable ethicality, a review like these could easily backfire, and will probably only work once anyway.

Oh really? I pretty much do this every writeoff. :derpytongue:

More seriously, though, I find reviewing your own story to be... an interesting experience. It definitely does let you highlight things you thought were important that other people were missing, or push back against what you think are basic misunderstandings. At the same time, I'm mostly in the Death of the Author camp, so I tend to feel like if you want/need to do either of these things, your story is failing on a fundamental level anyway (though of course it's perfectly reasonable to have one or two readers who completely miss the point—but if everyone's missing the point, that's probably not an issue with your readers).

There are also a lot of little considerations you have to worry about on doing a self-review well, I think. I know there are some very specific differences between my self-reviews and my normal reviews, and I'm not going to mention what they are because I think y'all might well be able to identify me based on the tells I've noticed, even though I've been working to cover them up. And like J said, I live between I and K being too positive on your own story can work out badly sometimes. I think one of the more common tells is when someone nitpicks a minor point that doesn't really speak much to the overall quality of the story—though this happens in conventional reviews quite a bit as well.

And there's the question of when you do it. I've wanted to drop the first review on one of my stories for a while, but that can be particularly dangerous since I often don't have a good sense for what the reaction to my story is going to be. Jumping in and joining the consensus later is much easier, because you can blend in with the crowd and share insights from other reviewers as if they were your own. On the other hand, for someone like me who makes a point of avoiding reviews on stories he hasn't read until after he's gone through the story[1], one easy tell to develop is to respond to other people's comments in your review of your own story while not doing it in your reviews of anything else.

tl;dr reviewing your own story is an art.

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[1] Speaking of, Roger, I just want to say that I adore the story-linked comment setup. It's really nice to be able to finish a story, add my review, and then immediately read what other people thought and respond to their comments if I feel like it. This is one of my favorite features of the new site structure you've got going on. Thank you!

I wasn’t as bugged by the ‘Goddamn’s as others, just because not being a native, I don’t hold the same gut feeling you boys have with that kind of words. I found it a mere annoyance because they were a bit too many of them, that I plainly agree.

The concept is nice and the execution is fair. It makes for a light, but savoury read, and the spat between the two supervisors is a joy to read. Beyond that, I’m not a sucker for anthropomorphic animals, so I can’t say I was precisely enrapt. The ending is nice, but you can’t wrench out of my mind that butterflies live at most a week I think, and some only one day, so it makes your final line a bit difficult to eat up.

However, on the whole, I spent a wonderful time with that fic, and it goes right atop my slate! 😉

>>Bradel
I think I might not have explained myself properly. I didn't mean that you should never give your story a good review, I was thinking more that you probably shouldn't give your story an undeservedly positive review. If everyone thinks that a story is mediocre at best, except for one person who claims it's the best thing they've ever read, and that person turns out to be the author, then people might start getting suspicious. And if that author writes another very positive review on a mediocre story in the next round, then people will probably start to think that they're at it again.

I agree that reviewing your own story is an art, or at least the application of a developed skill. You need to be able to ignore your own pride and prejudice and see your story for how good it actually is. And if you can't do that on your own, you can always use other people's reviews to guide you.