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Time was almost gone. The seconds ticked off the clock like the footsteps of doom.
"What's the range?" he called out to the nav com as his fingers danced over the keys.
"Two-thousand, eight-thousand," came the reply. "Can't pin it down any more. And no horseplay on this one, you're on your own."
Of course, he thought. But there was no time for bitterness. The keyboard rattled under his flying fingertips as the clock ticked on, shaving the seconds away, and his eyes roamed desperately over the white expanse of the viewport, which was filling up, but not fast enough...
There! That sparkle in the distance, a golden gleam! He had one clear shot. With the calm of one who has gambled everything he has, including his honor, even his life, he reached at the last possible second for the submit button, and clicked–
***
"What do you mean, I had five more minutes!?"
"What's the range?" he called out to the nav com as his fingers danced over the keys.
"Two-thousand, eight-thousand," came the reply. "Can't pin it down any more. And no horseplay on this one, you're on your own."
Of course, he thought. But there was no time for bitterness. The keyboard rattled under his flying fingertips as the clock ticked on, shaving the seconds away, and his eyes roamed desperately over the white expanse of the viewport, which was filling up, but not fast enough...
There! That sparkle in the distance, a golden gleam! He had one clear shot. With the calm of one who has gambled everything he has, including his honor, even his life, he reached at the last possible second for the submit button, and clicked–
***
"What do you mean, I had five more minutes!?"
“On Dangerous Ground, When the Citrus Came to Town. Goats. Goats Everywhere. Breadful Sugar and Ot. The Elephant in the Room! Bananas? What Bananas?”
“Taravana?”
“It’s Not As Bad As It Looks, I Swear!”
“Promises…”
“What is, love? Baby? Don’t hurt me--”
“That’s A Keeper. Hell is Other People, More than Meets the Eye.”
“A Winter Afternoon, A Fresh Start With a Twist. Why Are You Doing This?”
“The End is Never The End. Circular Frame of Reference. Discovery of a Lifetime, In Hope of Spring Resurgent!
Despite Your Disbelief, This Is Heaven. Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
“Taravana?”
“It’s Not As Bad As It Looks, I Swear!”
“Promises…”
“What is, love? Baby? Don’t hurt me--”
“That’s A Keeper. Hell is Other People, More than Meets the Eye.”
“A Winter Afternoon, A Fresh Start With a Twist. Why Are You Doing This?”
“The End is Never The End. Circular Frame of Reference. Discovery of a Lifetime, In Hope of Spring Resurgent!
Despite Your Disbelief, This Is Heaven. Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
Hmmmm:
I've got the rewrites on my Discord vs. Daylight Saving Time fic that I want to do this weekend and a couple interviews I'd like to send out to potential inductees into the Royal Canterlot Library, but some of these prompts are just so fine, if one of them wins, I might have to throw all my plans to the wind and do this instead.
Hmmmm...
Mike
I've got the rewrites on my Discord vs. Daylight Saving Time fic that I want to do this weekend and a couple interviews I'd like to send out to potential inductees into the Royal Canterlot Library, but some of these prompts are just so fine, if one of them wins, I might have to throw all my plans to the wind and do this instead.
Hmmmm...
Mike
Hm. I can definitely work with this.
... And it would be good to enter a short-story round for the first time in ... ugh, eight months. Yeah, I'm in.
... And it would be good to enter a short-story round for the first time in ... ugh, eight months. Yeah, I'm in.
>>horizon:
Me, too, despite everything. I've had an idea kicking around my head for weeks now that'll fit right in with this prompt, so, I mean, I have no choice but to take advantage of the opportunity and actually type it out, right? Isn't that how this whole thing works?
Also, whoever submitted "When the Citrus Came to Town," that is the single greatest prompt I've seen in the five hundred years I've been hanging around this place. I'll definitely be writing a story to go with it at some point in the near future.
Mike
Me, too, despite everything. I've had an idea kicking around my head for weeks now that'll fit right in with this prompt, so, I mean, I have no choice but to take advantage of the opportunity and actually type it out, right? Isn't that how this whole thing works?
Also, whoever submitted "When the Citrus Came to Town," that is the single greatest prompt I've seen in the five hundred years I've been hanging around this place. I'll definitely be writing a story to go with it at some point in the near future.
Mike
>>Baal Bunny
That prompt was mine. I don't tend to re-submit prompts so I've not problem coming forward on it. I thought of the normal "circus" variant but that's overdone and then because of the way my mind works the word "circus" matched to "citrus" when I thought of ways to re-use an old phrase.
I was planing on doing a story about main-land doctors looking into a new "wounder food" coming from "the island people" that was proving to be viable prevention/cure of a deadly illness they hadn't been able to treat before.
The reveal at the end was going to be that they were treating scurvy with lemons.
----
Sadly I'm going to have pass this round, some things have come up that is going to suck away all of my time in the next few weeks.
That prompt was mine. I don't tend to re-submit prompts so I've not problem coming forward on it. I thought of the normal "circus" variant but that's overdone and then because of the way my mind works the word "circus" matched to "citrus" when I thought of ways to re-use an old phrase.
I was planing on doing a story about main-land doctors looking into a new "wounder food" coming from "the island people" that was proving to be viable prevention/cure of a deadly illness they hadn't been able to treat before.
The reveal at the end was going to be that they were treating scurvy with lemons.
----
Sadly I'm going to have pass this round, some things have come up that is going to suck away all of my time in the next few weeks.
Hooray, I've finished my editing pass! Time to submit!
*clicks*
...oh. The deadline was half an hour ago.
...
Well, I guess it's a good thing I submitted the unedited version when I finished it, then. :P
*clicks*
...oh. The deadline was half an hour ago.
...
Well, I guess it's a good thing I submitted the unedited version when I finished it, then. :P
>>horizon
Always good to have a back-up plan.
I'm not in this round. Need a few weeks to finish up other projects. Can't wait to see what people have cooked up, though!
Always good to have a back-up plan.
I'm not in this round. Need a few weeks to finish up other projects. Can't wait to see what people have cooked up, though!
>>Cold in Gardez
>>horizon
Yep. I submit my first draft, then every major revision up to the deadline. I actually had over an hour, this time, when I told myself, "That's it. Go to bed."
>>horizon
Yep. I submit my first draft, then every major revision up to the deadline. I actually had over an hour, this time, when I told myself, "That's it. Go to bed."
I scribbled something on a piece of paper. Instead of burning it, I submitted it here.
Disclaimer: I haven't read any of these stories in their entirety, so I may be off point in what AndrewRogue was actually saying. And I'm making this comment after the results were posted, in a thread with very few entries, so very few people will see it, and... yeah, probably not a great use of my time.
But I saw Andrew make a particular point several times recently, and it's one I mostly disagree with, so I thought it was worth some discussion.
And that point was that if the story is supposed to be about a certain character, then that should be your perspective character. It's entirely possible to tell a story about one character through another's observations of him.
For starters, consider an omniscient narrator. On the one hand, that's a case where there is no perspective, so you can't assign it to the main character, and it's obviously possible to do a story that way. But then sometimes omniscient narrators aren't dispassionate. Terry Pratchett is a great example of that. His narrators aren't defined characters, but they have their own personalities and express their own opinions. That gets rather close to having a perspective character who tells a story about another character.
But even if you have a limited narration told from the viewpoint of someone other than the main character, you can tell an engaging story. You're restricted in what ways you can relate what the main character's emotional state and character arc are, but it's still quite possible. I can think of several "classic" novels that do this to varying degrees, and that's certainly up to debate, but the fact there even is a debate about who the main characters of those novels are should say there's some wiggle room.
I will agree that it's not as easy to do it this way. For one thing, like I said, you have fewer options for how to show the main character's growth and change. You don't get their internal parts of it, but it's still possible for another character to interpret it through their observations. For another, you're making the reader see the story through this other character's eyes, so you need to make that experience interesting. If this perspective characters is flat and boring, then the story will be as well. So that has two important consequences: to a degree, the reader needs to be made to care about the perspective character as well, and even though another character experiences the central change of the story, the perspective one needs to be affected by it in some way as well, meaning they also undergo an arc, though one that's not as profound as the main character's.
That said, there's another aspect of this that maybe Andrew was hinting at the edges of, and I have criticized authors for this in the past. Sometimes a story lacks focus, where it seems like one aspect of it is the deepest and most interesting, but the story spends most of its time telling another less-interesting part. Then I'll often ask the author what he actually wanted the story to be about. So that can happen in the above example as well. Say the perspective character is the one the author's more focused on showing some sort of growth for, but it's kind of a lackluster arc, and one of the background characters actually has a much more engaging arc. That's when I'll ask the author who they actually wanted the story to be about. If the background character has the more interesting arc, then they likely deserve to be the main character. While that means it's easier to tell the story from the other character's viewpoint, it doesn't follow that it's necessary to. Because it's more difficult, it's the kind of thing an author probably shouldn't attempt until he's got his feet under him, but I don't agree with a blanket statement that it's the wrong way to write.
However, when a story spends time in multiple perspectives, and the one clearly intended to be the main character is the only one undergoing any significant growth, then I would tend to side much more with Andrew. The author was willing to use the main character's perspective, and the other viewpoints aren't adding anything, so there's nothing productive in using the other ones. A tighter story would just keep to the main character's viewpoint.
But I saw Andrew make a particular point several times recently, and it's one I mostly disagree with, so I thought it was worth some discussion.
And that point was that if the story is supposed to be about a certain character, then that should be your perspective character. It's entirely possible to tell a story about one character through another's observations of him.
For starters, consider an omniscient narrator. On the one hand, that's a case where there is no perspective, so you can't assign it to the main character, and it's obviously possible to do a story that way. But then sometimes omniscient narrators aren't dispassionate. Terry Pratchett is a great example of that. His narrators aren't defined characters, but they have their own personalities and express their own opinions. That gets rather close to having a perspective character who tells a story about another character.
But even if you have a limited narration told from the viewpoint of someone other than the main character, you can tell an engaging story. You're restricted in what ways you can relate what the main character's emotional state and character arc are, but it's still quite possible. I can think of several "classic" novels that do this to varying degrees, and that's certainly up to debate, but the fact there even is a debate about who the main characters of those novels are should say there's some wiggle room.
I will agree that it's not as easy to do it this way. For one thing, like I said, you have fewer options for how to show the main character's growth and change. You don't get their internal parts of it, but it's still possible for another character to interpret it through their observations. For another, you're making the reader see the story through this other character's eyes, so you need to make that experience interesting. If this perspective characters is flat and boring, then the story will be as well. So that has two important consequences: to a degree, the reader needs to be made to care about the perspective character as well, and even though another character experiences the central change of the story, the perspective one needs to be affected by it in some way as well, meaning they also undergo an arc, though one that's not as profound as the main character's.
That said, there's another aspect of this that maybe Andrew was hinting at the edges of, and I have criticized authors for this in the past. Sometimes a story lacks focus, where it seems like one aspect of it is the deepest and most interesting, but the story spends most of its time telling another less-interesting part. Then I'll often ask the author what he actually wanted the story to be about. So that can happen in the above example as well. Say the perspective character is the one the author's more focused on showing some sort of growth for, but it's kind of a lackluster arc, and one of the background characters actually has a much more engaging arc. That's when I'll ask the author who they actually wanted the story to be about. If the background character has the more interesting arc, then they likely deserve to be the main character. While that means it's easier to tell the story from the other character's viewpoint, it doesn't follow that it's necessary to. Because it's more difficult, it's the kind of thing an author probably shouldn't attempt until he's got his feet under him, but I don't agree with a blanket statement that it's the wrong way to write.
However, when a story spends time in multiple perspectives, and the one clearly intended to be the main character is the only one undergoing any significant growth, then I would tend to side much more with Andrew. The author was willing to use the main character's perspective, and the other viewpoints aren't adding anything, so there's nothing productive in using the other ones. A tighter story would just keep to the main character's viewpoint.