>>The_Letter_J
Can I write a fake review of my story and say it’s the worst shit ever?

Because, you know, I’d rather do that than the opposite

>>Monokeras
You certainly could, though I'm not sure that there would be much of a point, except to convince people that you didn't write it.
There have definitely been times that I've felt that way about my stories, though they usually end up being not quite as bad as I think. Those prejudices that I said you need to ignore when reviewing your own stories can go either way.

>>The_Letter_J

You certainly could, though I'm not sure that there would be much of a point, except to convince people that you didn't write it.

Which is precisely one of the goals you seek to reach.

I can’t say I’ve (yet) written a story I’m proud of. All of them I end up disowning, either before I actually finished them (as it happened this round) or a few days after the end of the contest at most.

>>The_Letter_J
Didn't >>TitaniumDragon do that once? Or possibly more than once? :duck:

(I figure it's pretty fair for TD, though, 'cause I think he usually does think it's the best thing he's ever read and everybody else is just wrong—so it's not like he's actually trying to be manipulative.)

>>Monokeras
Yes, but a mediocre review or one that just goes along with what everyone else is saying will achieve that goal nearly as well, with the added benefit of not potentially shooting yourself in the foot.

And I don't just mean that your story might not do as well in the rankings. If your negative review of your own story colors other people's perceptions of it, they might be more likely to just agree with you and reinforce your opinion of your story. And isn't it more useful to you as a writer to get pure and uncorrupted feedback instead of your own opinion echoed back at you?

This does apply to the really good stories here too, but not quite as much, I think. If your story is good, and you know that it's good, then trading more useful feedback for a higher score/happier readers might be more worth it. But trading more useful feedback for low scores and disappointed readers doesn't really make much sense.

Clever hook, and the story got moving quickly. Clean writing; I was never distracted from the message.

Character-wise, while they could have been developed more, they were enough to get the job done; the main star here was the idea, and it was an interesting one. You wove a lot of implications and dark hints that really stimulated the imagination.

While what there was is already solid, it feels like there is still some untapped potential here. Even as the story ended it felt like we were standing on the cusp of a deeper reveal.

For example, given how much talk there was about choice, and the the underlying themes of understanding Ken and the dark implications hinted about the machine, I was almost expecting Dav to come to some sort of realization and decide against having his fingers fixed, or that he might have an epiphany would prevent it from working on him anymore. I could also easily see Dav making a later visit with Ken and seeing just how much deeper this rabbit hole goes.

Overall an engrossing and well written story, but one that I felt didn’t fully explore the scope of its idea.

>>Bradel
Possibly? But I don't know. And now that I think of it, I don't think I've actually read very many of TD's stories, so I don't know how he's been reviewing them. I don't actually know of anyone who's been doing this sort of thing (though I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to it either). So it's all just hypothetical to me.

But the fact that you noticed that TD has (possibly) done it before kind of proves my point. If you notice him giving a story a much more positive review than anyone else now, won't you be more likely to guess that he wrote it?

>>The_Letter_J

If your negative review of your own story colors other people's perceptions of it, they might be more likely to just agree with you and reinforce your opinion of your story.

Or, on the contrary, they might strongly disagree and point out the positive things that stand out.

I think it’s a crapshoot strategy, so, as a result, I just don't review my own stories and get as objective reviews as one may get.

If your story is good, and you know that it's good, …

Irrelevant, at least in my case.

>>Monokeras
I suppose that is hypothetically possible, but it seems unlikely to work, in my opinion. I still think it would do more harm than good though.

There's been:

A lot of good stories this round!

The only suggestion I have here is something the story brings up but then doesn't address. May mentions the girl who killed herself when her mother died of cancer, so the question becomes: why didn't the magic that happens here happen to her? Why are the Sullivans special when every other family who suffers this sort of devastating loss isn't?

It might not be a question you want to--or can--answer, but maybe Claire could think about it at least.

Mike

I never review my own stories. I don't want someone to check the comment count and assume it has enough reviews already.

Ooooh~

I’m always a sucker for magic in modern times, and I’m fascinated by the magic system you devised here. Necromancers fuel their spells by quoting morose literary quips? Writer, you have all of my yes! And I adore the relationship between Peter and Sabriel; believable, wistful, supportive, melancholic. Very well crafted indeed.

Now, there are a couple of issues. Peter dismisses his green blade twice while discussing licensed dark magic with Cynthia. Also, the climactic combat scene gets a little janky - it can be difficult at times to keep track of who is doing what. For example:

"Urgh." Peter groaned as the power lashed out, spiraling into a long, fierce bolt.

It stabbed at his wife, lacerating her arm and searing her shoulder.

So Peter is attacking his own wife? Either this is misattributed action, or the scene where Crowley took brief control of Peter’s faculties was cut. Either would work, but the few lines above and below this quote are where the combat gets the hardest to follow.

This is mostly just polish, though. I love this story, Writer - sign me up for the series.

Final Thought: Top of the Class in the Necromantic Independent Study Program

>>Haze

A few rounds ago I faked the spreadsheet (added white text in a few cells) so that people would think my fic had more reviews. I didn't want my fic to be reviewed anymore.

Removed the padding when the round was over :B

This was a difficult story for me to review. It didn't work for me, I think I know why it didn't work for me and explaining the reasons comes dangerously close to telling other people how to write.

Let's start with what I liked. The characterization done through archetypes with all the connected baggage and then pointing at the small differences and cracks in those images was nice. It works fine for this kind of story, it gives us all the information we need.

I thought the scene with the bishop was hilarious. The dialogue between the Knight and the Princess flowed nicely.

Let me try now to explain what didn't work for me without being a pompous ass. You have chosen a very difficult kind of comedy, so I respect that, it's very difficult to make it work.

The Story seems an assembly of different parts that don't fit really together. This is something that can work, but needs some kind of extra glue to not collapse under it's own structural weakness. An absent minded narrator for example. The Grammar of Fantasy by Gianni Rodari explores this kind of narration, along with the creative power of errors.

The non sequiturs are nice, but you either have to hit on the surreal experience or there needs to be some kind of backing logic, even if it's a dreamlike one. The other possibility is building expectations and then shatter them. I think you should have chose on e of this possibilities and moved in that direction. Currently the story seems a bit aimless.

The plot became also a bit predictable for a while (up until the Dragon awoke again) which was a bit strange considering the creativity that went into other parts of the story.

To summarize my opinion: a very difficult and challenging story to write, you have the seeds of something with a lot of potential but it needs work.

1 – The Name Upon His Forehead

I like almost everything about this first section, with two exceptions: "Yaron lies" and "Adam". "Lies" is a sore thumb saidism to me, especially in the first line of this piece. I don't normally have that big a problem with saidisms, but this one feels awkward to me. Personally, I think the whole thing would read smoother with one additional sentence added very early in. Yes, I know, I'm being super nitpicky—but I've read the intro here twice, and that bit at the end of the first line throws me each time. With "Adam", on the other hand, I'm not sure what to say. It's fairly clear that Adam and Inspector Loewe are the same person, but this is the fifth name you've given in three lines of text, and figuring out that this is a redirect can take a bit of work. On the other hand, I think Emmett's choice to think of him that way carries some good characterization, so I can't just write this off as a bad choice. It's a good choice, that I think is working poorly. Anyway, enough on the hook; let's read this thing.

...okay, this is going downhill for similar reasons to what I mentioned above. I think you've got too much information density here, much of it coded in the form of names. You've just added proper nouns Aaliyah, Chadash Haifa, Ophek, and Zohar, and it turns out Adam is female. "Hilla Loewe" has serious potential to be the straw that broke the camel's back for me here—in no small part because Emmett's choice to refer to Adam / the Inspector / Hilla Loewe as "Adam" over the other options is already starting to work against the strong characterization bent on honesty-to-the-point-of-avoiding-any-imperfect-phrasing. If Emmett accepts calling her Adam over the others, it suggests that "the Inspector" and "Hilla Loewe" are both substantially less critical markers of who this person is—and given that you're already confusing the issue kind of tremendously, it's a big deal that we've got no information at all on the most critical piece of this puzzle (i.e. how Adam is the best name).

That said, except for the "lies" saidism and the naming issue, at the first hard break this is nearly pitch-perfect to me. I'm all the more disappointed about feeling like the name thing is needlessly overcomplicated, given that the characterization and setting feel so wonderful going in. I think my best suggestion would be to actually go back and slow down the opening with a few more sentences to establish the pieces you're talking about, especially prior to the soft break. It's not often I want more sentences in a story, but this is one case where I think they'd help.

Second section, again, I just feel like you're setting the learning curve too high. I have a hard time breaking down what's going on in these transcripts until the very end. Maybe this story / writing style just isn't to my taste. I know Iain M. Banks used to throw out stuff that was basically garbled nonsense you'd have to come back to later, after he gave you the pieces to decypher the text—and I do love Iain M. Banks. Keeping this tight a character focus is worthy of a lot of praise, and I'm enjoying it. But at the same time, because of how alien Emet is (or is it Emmett?), a lot of this comes off as frustratingly unclear on the first read. I want to say "frustratingly and unnecessarily unclear"—but that's the real crux, isn't it? I'm not entirely sure that it's unnecessary. But it damn well is frustrating.

Her belly is heavy, and the airlanes of Chadash Haifa are full with Adam's evening pilgrimage from temple to house.

That sentence is carrying a chunk of information I really wish you'd hinted at before now. I get it now. I'm still kind of annoyed it took this long for you to make it clear.

Adam's brownstone homes — filled with the crackling hum of Barak's Word

Eeyup, this story would be freaking beautiful if I understood more Hebrew. This I got, and it's wonderful. It's pretty easy to infer much of the rest now.

Dammit, my objection to using "lie" as a saidism just got quashed. Nope. That needs to stay at the beginning.

Welp, whoever wrote this one—Gardez, I'm looking at you—I think you've probably earned my vote for best story in this Writeoff. It's going to take a lot to knock this off the top. I stand by my earlier frustrations, but this is just bloody fantastic.

HORSE: Decline to rate
TIER: Top Contender

I think I'm going to stop giving numbered scores for stories and full reviews. I don't really have the time and energy for that and I don't know the best way to review short stories. Judging by my performance in previous writeoffs I rarely know how to write them.

Sorry if this sounds selfish, but everyone's reactions to this story made me very jealous of your ability.

I agree with earlier commenters, particularly >>TitaniumDragon and >>Icenrose, about the early going of this story. I was looking for something to hook me — some reason to feel like there was a greater context which made this man's execution matter — and never found it. The thinness of the scene with the priest in the particular was rough — that was the perfect excuse to insert the exposition we never got — but I was skimming restlessly through long before that; an awful lot of words are expended before anything really happens.

So let's talk conflict and stakes.

Providing a hook is all about getting readers invested. There's a million ways to do that — some audacious writers can provide a crazy narrative framework and hook on the strength of their prose, for example — but typically this is going to involve providing readers with characters they care about and/or a central question the story promises to answer.

Early on, one of those is ruled out, because we're told in no uncertain terms that there's no reason to root for Liar:

Even without the knowledge of his past, there was precious little about him that spoke to being redeemable. In fact, the few redeemable parts were long gone. Strangled by who he had become. He had simply fallen to far, wholly out of the reach of any saving grace.

There's a little dissonance here you can work with — he's calm, accepting, and meditative, for example; and a character doesn't have to be good to be sympathetic — but I felt like he was never fleshed out enough to drive the story, and if that was your goal you need to establish that connection. Some questions you might ask and answer to do that: Why was he in jail in the first place? Did he regret his actions? Are the judgments you make in the quoted paragraph his, or yours-the-author's, or is it his (possibly evil) social system telling us he's beyond redemption? What's important to him, and how — in this place where he's almost powerless — does he go about attempting to achieve it? Is calm in the face of death something that's important enough to him that he might try to evangelize his fellow prisoners, or his guards? If not, what is important enough to drive him from introspection and make him take action? That "taking action" is pretty crucial — if he only ever reacts to the situation around him, then Liar lacks agency and can't drive the story forward, and that's pretty dangerous ground for the person you're focusing the story around.

Another type of hook you can build is setting up some greater conflict that the story is actively working to resolve. The core of a conflict is posing a question with multiple plausible outcomes, and some sort of stake that your readers care about that will keep them flipping pages as the story unfolds and you answer the question. Both "multiple plausible outcomes" and "stakes the reader care about" are important in increasing tension, and it's that tension of needing to know the resolution that "hooks" the reader into continuing onward.

For example, the cliché conflict of (say) a stereotypical Daring Do adventure is "will Daring survive?" Admittedly that's a pretty compelling question if you like reading about her, because no more Daring means no more stories — but we've also been conditioned by a lifetime of adventure tales to expect that no self-respecting series will kill its protagonist off, so "multiple plausible outcomes" is a tough sell. When that happens, the tension drains away, which is why simply putting Daring Do in a death trap isn't enough. Often it's fruitful to refine the question and put less at stake — such as "Will she be able to save the priceless artifact from being destroyed?" or "will she escape the trap before it cripples her wing?" — because those are things we can see going either way while leaving the story able to continue. That re-introduces the tension while still keeping the stakes significant.

Here, when the story starts, I'm not certain what the tension-generating question was meant to be. We're shown a condemned man in a jail cell, but he seems resigned to his fate, so "Will he survive?" doesn't have a lot of room to assume multiple outcomes. There might be something going on like "Will he make peace with his crimes?", but there's a couple of factors working against you there, the main one being that you need to find stakes the reader cares about, and that drives back into the issue of there being no particular reason to root for him. This is where grounding his crimes in more specifics might suggest a compelling conflict — like maybe he committed some major sin in order to ward off something even worse, and has to struggle with the morality of it? More grounding might also suggest other avenues for your conflict, like "Will the injustice of his arrest be corrected?" — which, even if the main character dies, might be resolved via e.g. discussion with the priest.

Ultimately, though, in the context of the whole story, you are working toward the escape scene at the end — which is a good thing! That's the best part of your story, with a lot of high-stakes action, a tight reversal, and setting up some specific conflicts to bear fruit later on. What that implies to me is that maybe your conflict should be "Will Liar survive?" right from the start! And what that means is you've got a very easy way to punch this story up, right from the beginning: Add foreshadowing that orients the reader to that major conflict.

Right now, the existence of Liar's compatriots is barely even hinted at until right before the end, with one notable exception:

Breathing deeply, he sat up a little straighter. Flexing his tired muscles, stretching his weakened frame. Oddly enough, as Liar battled internally to keep peace, fear and sorrow held little sway upon his thoughts. Anger sat at the foremost, anger at allowed himself to be caught. Anger at failing to protect those around him and to accomplish all he had set out to do. Followed closely by a sadness directed towards those who relied upon him. And pain, a deep cutting pain. As if, by same strange means his death were a betrayal to those he held so dear. He was abandoning them and there was nothing he could do about it. And that hurt most of all.

I think what you should do is take that tiny little nugget of information and wrap your entire first half around it. What happened to Liar? We don't now know, but there was at least some way in which it involved his friends. If he's dealing with guilt and angst, it should be about them. But more importantly, keep in mind that you want to set up a conflict around that friend angle. If it's "Will Liar survive?" then we should be seeing him do everything possible to cheat fate. If it's "Will his friends be OK even though he's gonna die?" then we should be exploring his relationship with them and the way in which his capture hurt them. Either way, that scene with the priest should be a major, pivotal moment — crucial information should come out, or Liar should take some action, that ties directly in with your conflict and pushes the story significantly forward.

So the bad news is that right now, the text as written feels like a miss. The good news is, more importantly, I think this has the solid foundation you need for some story-defining edits that will coalesce this into something engaging.

Tier: Needs Work

I don't think I have much to add that hasn't been said already. I'll simple say that I'll be biased towards any story that can make me think fondly of Calvin and Hobbes. This is an interesting take on that sort of story.

Anecdote: for no apparent reason, at the line, "Do you think there’ll be squash?", I got kinda choked up. Couldn't tell you why. Some deep well of emotional context was breached, but the message was lost in the transition to conscious thought. Perhaps a bittersweet nostalgia for the days what it was ever-so-easy to transition from one reality to the next? A yearning for the days when I didn't even need to close my eyes to repaint the world as I saw fit?

This story does an excellent job of evoking those feelings, and for that, I thank you, Writer.

Final Thought: I Should Reread My C&H Collection

The characters and tone here is very, very effective, as others have noted. However, for all that the story is built around there being a spirit (or not), the vast tracts cut around it and the multiply-subverted reveal makes it sit oddly with me—it didn't quite connect, somehow, and alas I cannot put my finger on why. Rating this one will be difficult.

>>Remedyfortheheart

Sabas que, Cocino?!
-Translation
Spanish: What did you say, bad boy?!

¿En cuál dialecto? No reconozco nada que usted presentó.
La mejor sería: ¿Que has dicho, (o qué dijo/dijiste) energúmeno?

Leads off with a pretty good hook. The early section with returning to a changed home was something I could relate to all to easily. There was also some nicely subtle foreshadowing about her brother here, when it’s mentioned that she didn’t have any other close family left alive.

Descriptions were good; the pier, the beach, the sand. Along those lines the ghost encounters themselves where a high point, good at drawing out an evocative mood. Eerie and deadly serious, but at the same time, a known quantity that schoolkids abuse for their own ends. It’s a unique and provocative combination.

The characterizations were good, except that I have to agree with the other commenters; we don’t get enough foreshadowing of Alex’s transgressions for her attitude and actions to make sense. There’s the repeated “No, I have nothing against you” line, but not much more.

Overall, this has a lot of really good elements, but then doesn’t quite stick the landing.

I also want to know more. I guess the terminology had the opposite effect on me that it had on Baal Bunny (even though spelling 'lich' with a T kind of bothers me). I'm also skeptical that the bad guy needed to be Crowley, and the fight with him is the weaker part, but I think this is a pretty good approach.

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

12 – Tiny Planets

I like the start. As of the exclamation point, though, I have to say I'm really hoping for some Terry Pratchett type fun here.

This moves at a really good clip through the first couple pages. Breezy text, wonderful to read.

Sorry, Author, but I'm not going to have a whole lot of comments on this one. That's what you get for being entertaining. That said, I feel like the bit about fire as advanced magic could use a little foreshadowing. You're having an event happen and then you're telling us after the fact why it's important instead of building that in on the front end so that we can recognize when Sophie creates fire that this is a really big deal. The moment should have a lot of emotional impact, the way you've got it set up—but you're having to backfill that impact with a post-hoc explanation, which bleeds the feeling dry.

Thoroughly enjoyable throughout—though part of me feels like the quality of the writing is almost a crutch here, because I'm really not sure what to think about the conflict in this story. Sophie feels beaten down by the weight of expectations, so she abandons her exam and... discovers that she's always had the power to make her dreams come true? I remember people mentioning in the comments on "Just Do It" that the conflict seemed to resolve without any real struggle or learning of lessons. I feel like that's perhaps even truer here than there. Honestly, this is a wonderful read and I really enjoyed it. But I can't get over feeling like it's sort of thematically hollow once you scratch past the surface.

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

Reading through the responses of other commenters, I find myself disagreeing a little bit with many of them—though honestly I think I'm wrong and they're right. The bits of repetition (like the constant appearance of her mother) didn't bother me a whole lot, though I think that's because the writing was doing so much work pulling me through the story. I liked a lot of the family expectations background, but I think >>Baal Bunny is right that you could probably pull back from it a bit as the story goes on and use different context to flesh out the world and story better, instead of going to the same well so often.

Similarly, >>Ferd Threstle's comments on over the top reactions didn't really hit me, but again I suspect this may be a product of the writing pulling me through so well. I think you managed to write a story that's pretty awesomely targeted at my weak spot (clean, transparent prose), to the point where you really got me to skip past things I mightn't have liked. That's pretty awesome, honestly—to be able to do that for part of your audience. But I think it's probably worth listening to folks who don't seem to have gotten quite so engaged so you can see where you're missing them as well, and try to turn this into a thing that's going to give everyone the sort of ride it gave me.

I love how Bradel is so at odds with every other commenter here.

>>Solitair
Well, that's why it's getting that "Misaimed" from me. I can tell that there's some solid quality here, but this is really not my style. I'm still going back and forth about whether to abstain on it or not. Part of me feels like I ought to (and I'm frankly not going to feel bad if it makes the finals), but another part of me feels like it's unfair to the stories I genuinely like better and appreciate more to move them down-ballot just so I can not penalize a story I didn't like a whole lot.

It's tough. I know it sucks getting a reader/voter who's just not interested in what you were going for, and knowing that's likely to weigh down your scores. But boring me is one of the cardinal sins a story can commit in my mind, and this one definitely bored me. It's... ugh. I definitely feel bad for the author, because it seems pretty obvious he/she has got some very good skills and just got unlucky getting me as a voter.

This story strikes uncomfortably close to home, all the more so because I was May in my version of the story, to my little sister's Claire.

So many notes here ring so very true: May, unable to abide interacting with her family; the mother, enforcing her will, perhaps her delusion, that they can be and are a happy family, and her inability to accept anything less than that, however contrived it may be; Claire, wanting nothing more than for things to go back to the way they were, as only childlike innocence can entertain.

The moment that struck me to my core:

Mom dragged a hand through her hair and stood up. “Lord above,” she whispered, pulling her bathrobe tighter around her. She glanced between her two daughters, looking at us for a moment like we were aliens invading her home. Then, shaking her head, she said, “Girls, please—it’s time for bed. Please.”

That awful, gut-wrenching moment when the mask slips, when the illusion is shattered and everyone sees each other for who they really are and how nobody is happy and everyone just... can't... anymore.

I know those feels. I suspect you do too, Writer. If this isn't at least partially based on personal experience, I'll be truly impressed with your ability to walk a mile in your characters' shoes. Either way, top marks for so thoroughly hitting the nail on the head.

Final Thought: I Only Just Now Got the Title

22 – Don't You Cry For Me

Author, I want you to be aware that this is what went down on Writeoff Chat just prior to me reading your story:

BRADEL – Well, let's see what happens if I add another to my slate. Somebody may be about to get happy.
BRADEL – "Don't You Cry for Me". I guess you're off the hook, Mono.
DUBS REWATCHER – @Brad Let's see if you think it's as good as everyone else is saying
OBLOMOV – inb4 Bradel destroys the story

With that in mind, let's see what happens when Bradel Tries to Take Down Everyone's Favorite Story. (No, really, I'll try to enjoy it just like I try to enjoy everything else, I promise.)

So, the hook. Missing word at the end of sentence two. I laughed at the idea of fresh air and less crime constituting an adventure. I feel like your intro could be a little smoother prose-wise, but I'm honestly pretty happy with it. It's giving me a lot of information and it's getting me curious enough about the characters to want to move forward. You can't ask for a whole lot more than that.

Yeah, this is a very solid start. Paragraph three is especially excellent. There's another missing word in paragraph four, though.

From the hiding-in-her-room bit, I was assuming May was the younger of the two, but based on the arrival dynamic, she's starting to look like the older. No real suggestions on this, but I think it's worth noting.

I may be a little neurotic, but I'm really disturbed that nobody cleaned up May's stir fry that was leaking on the floor.

The characterization on Claire is generally good, but every once in a while it goes a little wonky for me. For example, the backpack of stuffed animals and the stuffed animals on the bed are great to me, and I feel like the overall characterization here is of a little adult that's not fully equipped to deal with the world (which is generally a characterization I like on kids). Why do I mention the stuffed animals? Because when you move somewhere, you bring your life necessities, whatever those may be. Books, a television, a computer, cooking tools, etc. The two stuffed animals bits make me feel like Claire's stuffed animals are serving as something of her critical life tools, which is an attitude I can see a kid unconsciously having in her situation. (The situation itself is great, in that it creates a lot of conflict and tension immediately, and leaves me wanting to see what develops. I don't think you're necessarily doing a lot of heavy lifting to motivate my attention, but I'm frankly fine with that. If you've got a nice trick like a story premise that can do that heavy lifting for you, take advantage of it.)

Anyway, I was saying the characterization occasionally gets wonky for me. When Claire needs to explain to May that they live next to a graveyard, she definitely comes off as the more intellectually mature of the two (especially given my lack of clarity on ages through that section). Claire takes ripping her skirt very calmly, like it's just another thing to be taken in stride—which is in keeping with her characterization, but still feels kind of weird for a nine-year-old under considerable stress, to me. And she pays enough attention to the grunge friends' conversations to report back to the reader on Kurt Cobain, which just doesn't seem like the sort of thing a nine-year-old would care about enough to report—it feels like a clear fourth-wall break. Certain metaphors also feel strange coming from a nine-year-old. Metaphor is a hard tool to lose as a writer, but I just don't know how much I can buy a nine-year-old being able to consistently think with that level of abstraction.

This is another really minor thing, but every time you use the verb flew/fly to describe Claire's motions, it throws me a little. Obviously it's supposed to feel abrupt, but it's so at odds with the discursive narrative around it that it just feels off to me. (If I were in the business of suggesting, which I totally am, I'd suggest playing around with sentence lengths so the piece has more variable pacing based on the emotions you're trying to evoke in specific scenes and passages. If it's reflective, sure, use long and slow sentences. But when something's caught Claire's attention or gotten her stress level up (or is about to), maybe try moving to shorter and more direct sentences.)

Timing: I got really thrown off by the timeline of all this for a moment. I think the culprit is "It had been four months" (do a search on it), which in hindsight is supposed to refer to how long it's been since the fire, but I read as how long it's been since the move. When there's a later comment on Valentine's Day, I'd felt like the calendar had gone all screwy.

Well guys, that's the best I can do—some nitpicking on fairly limited or advanced stuff. This is just a plain old good, solid story. It's got an actual arc to it, including a climax where it pays off emotional tension it really does earn. I teared up for a fraction of a second at the end—even my cold, scarred, editorially excessive heart can be touched. It's just good.

This is recapitulating, but there are only two real weaknesses I see here: Claire coming off as a little too adult with no clear rationale (like a frame story where she's older and recounting this), and the generally monotone sentence pacing that leaves some of the more urgent moments a little flat. But those are some pretty high-level issues to me. This probably won't go to the top of my ballot, simply because I'm not that enamored with it as a story, for all its good execution. I think I'd like to see it shooting for a higher bar, like my current ballot leader. But this sort of solidity and execution definitely deserves some reward in my opinion. Good job, Author.

HORSE: Decline to rate
TIER: Top Contender (which I'm apparently giving out like candy this round)

>>Bradel
You're the best reviewer here. I wish you could grace every story with your insight.

>>Bradel

BRADEL – Well, let's see what happens if I add another to my slate. Somebody may be about to get happy.
BRADEL – "Don't You Cry for Me". I guess you're off the hook, Mono.
DUBS REWATCHER – @Brad Let's see if you think it's as good as everyone else is saying
OBLOMOV – inb4 Bradel destroys the story

Did you deliberately omit my: “NOOOOOOOOO” between your two first lines and my ‘phew’ just after the second? 😜

>>Monokeras
Sorry, I did. I figured it'd be a long review. I didn't want to waste too much of my review space on chat logs...

Хорошо, вот еще один обзор, потому что CiG сказал что нам нужно исправить что есть только 4 отзывы здесь. Кроме того, я обещал Dubs что мои обзоры были на русском языке, и он призвал меня написать больше. Это его вина.

Предпосылка этой истории интересно, но я чувствую что это не выкроить достаточное историю от него. Это просто окно в жизнь нескольких персонажей как раз тикает вниз. У меня есть трудное время заботы об этих персонажей, и я не чувствую что есть на самом деле что-то значительное происходит с ними. Это как, ситуация они помещаются в интересно, и вещи просто случаются. Это не поможет что—как сказал другой—я бы думал что массовой паники будет в этой ситуации. Все это кажется довольно ручными. Плюс эти ядерное оружие.

Насколько я могу сказать, написание кажется твердо.

Я хотел бы выразить словами лучше почему эта история не работает для меня. Но у меня нет такой большой проблем с окончанием как имеет с другие люди.

Оценка: Финляндия.

>>Bradel
How could I not forgive you? Good night! 😉

This is definitely a good story, but, of course, I still have some minor gripes:

1. Some typos: You sad that last time, too. Litch. Journeman;
2. Some sentences: wrought-iron gate worked with roses. (wrought is already the archaic past participle of work, so that looks a little odd); The city, held back by the tall wall that segregated the living from the rest: why ‘rest’ and not ‘dead’? ‘Rest’ seems a little bit too sweeping.
3. Pinkie promise. Why did you invite a ‘Pinkie promise’ to this fiction?

All right. To the story then. The plot is fairly thin, but it’s well executed. The relationship between the two main characters is nicely depicted, and the way they complement each other is great. And the magic formulas were great, too.

It is a bit heavy loaded with dialogue. Bordering on talking heads.

The fight isn’t that compelling. We’ve got the impression the trio just trounces their only opponent. It’s finally a fairly easy task to drub that arch-mage, to the point where we can question his abilities—if he can sense the others’ magic, I would expect him to be more prepared for the brawl. I would’ve preferred a plot where the evil necromancer escapes at a pinch, and the policewoman asks Peter his help to further chase him.

Finally, the end was slightly weak. There’s no real resolution or elaboration on what we’ve already guessed.

Overall, a pleasant read, but not as outstanding as I would've liked it to be.

This was a very interesting one. It was so well composed, that I didn’t mind some missing details or more descriptions in the storyline. Here we find several chunks of human lives reacting to an ominous message in the sky. Claiming that a major event will take place in one month’s time. We do not get just one story but several. Not one character but multiple. Which was very interesting for a short story idea. It must have been really hard to plan and work on. The way the author weaves this tale makes it seem like he was toiling over a boiling pot. Carefully adding seasoning after seasoning after seasoning. Well, I for one, just love what came out of the pot as a result. Needless to say that this story came out, not like a thin like soup quality, but a very rich and flavorful curry style. Leaving much to taste and admire in the wake of the author’s efforts.

POSITIVES
-Multitude
The story comes in chunks, as mentioned before. While this is very tricky to handle and often times leaves a reader to lose interest within a story, the author does it very well to keep attnetion in the one thing they all have in common. That the end is coming and that each person has their own way of coping with the up and coming finale. From Brianna’s fearful thoughts, to Cesar’s denial leading to anger, and even Matthew’s curiosity. Each character played a role to showcase a different type of reaction within each storyline. As small as each one was, it still played a huge part on the ending and fits well for the single conflict that each one must confront. Another advantage this story holds is that having multiple storylines make it easier for a reader to drop and pick up at a later time. Thus giving the reader room to relax find a drink or a snack before moving onwards with the next storyline. This was highly refreshing. As I didn’t need to stick with the story to keep my head immersed. I could just push everything aside and keep an open mind for what was next to come. Even as the author by passes days to shorten the story, all is forgiven as there is just so much content potential in the story. Intentionally leaving out the more boring parts, made the story pop out more as there was a good natural balance between the several characters. While this was well done, I couldn’t help but feel it was all for naught. As strangely as the author places so much hard work defining each character. The ending just kinda dabbles in and trickles out as if the big boom we’re waiting for was just a small ripple in the uneasy tide.

-Conflict
This was by far the biggest thing to talk about for the whole story. No matter what I read or what the characters themselves would do, everyone was reminded of the the mental sign in the sky. Something so simple created a panic among the world. Humanity trying to desperately hold on to something they just couldn’t understand for themselves. We see viewpoints from the common citizens to officials of both law enforcement and education facilities try to work out angles on how to beat this unforeseen and unpredictable fate. It even hints at what the government was trying to do in order to work out a solution. We see people dealing with their lives through acting out and feeding their desires or trying to ignore the possibilities of an actual end and maintain their sanity through work and study. This is what made this so realistic. To where you can understand the concerns and adrenaline pumping through their veins or the numbed hearts and minds of being threatened all the time. This I could relate to on a whole different scale with my own past experiences. This is what made the story. Though sadly it’s not justified with the way the story ended.

NEGATIVES
-Ending
This was the biggest problem in the story. The impact right as the story ends just left me with nothing but questions and an unsatisfied feeling. The content was well written and planned. The characters and events were easy to follow and entertained me on many levels. Hitting the mark each and every twist and turn of the story. Even I felt like I was a citizen in the story wishing that the end wouldn’t come, as I made a connection with each character. Reading their thoughts and admiring how they indulged things in the last final moments of their life. Or dealing with certain strifes that scratched away at their very souls. By far, the biggest point of the story, faltered by the end. With a record scratch on the last dozen words of the story. Which made no sense to me. I had to stop and think about how this ended or what the author intended. Which my theory is, that all of life stopped in place, cutting off the mental functions of every human, animal, and plant alive. The spark of life held within each vessel suddenly coming to a halt as if, by the flick of a switch. Created nothing else but empty shells of beating heated flesh in it’s wake. This is characterized by the record skip. When a track is abruptly stopped or needs to be reset. With no explanation to this outcome, the author effectively kills the ending by leaving out a simple description as to the real events. The possibilities were by far the largest quantity, I’ve seen in an unanswered “imagine it yourself” type of ending. Thus creating a very big deadpan feel to the story.

-Content
I could barely find negatives for this story, but when I did, it was of some of the simpler things within the content that I’ve found to be lacking. I’m not sure if you were racing time or you just ran out of rounds in that impressive gun of yours, but I felt the strain of your story affecting the way you wrote. Basic errors such as missing words or weird descriptions threw me off at the last one third of your story. Brianna mentioning her neck was like a spring without having to stretch her neck, or her having to shoot earlier when you mentioned that the crowd had to part away from the shooter before she could get a shot in. The scene with Cesar And this is just to point out a few. It felt like the author may have been starting to run on fumes at a certain point and in turn affected me. This is not a major issue but is an issue. I wanted to point it out as you should be calm and collected for your story. Take your time plan it out and try not to worry much about words. Your story did fantastic on it’s own. Don’t ever kill yourself for your own content. The amount of effort you placed in your story is great. I normally never mention spelling or grammar, as they are such basic means of improvement and eventually get fixed on their own over time. Please understand I just needed to find another trait of the story to point out. That is the only reason it’s in here now. With just a few errors to note and mention I still say! Well done on an excellent piece.

-Flair
Now this took several readings to even catch. The writer does very well keeping your head on the current threat endangering the lives of this city, that you seem to forget the minor events taking place within the multitude of lives being featured. When a character was feeling something I just didn’t care. I wanted to see more of the end result of the warning in the sky, besides knowing what a horny teenager wanted or a firefight between a thief and a cop. It was hidden quite well, but could have been better to light things up within the story. I didn’t feel Brianna shaking in her car seat, but she was nevertheless. I didn’t seem to follow Cesar’s pain or how he ended up toppling over a bookshelf on it’s side and not get hurt. Worst of all I couldn’t follow Matthew’s record-skipping like mind as his thoughts rewinded in turn again and again and again until nothing. The anticipation of the other things in this story was hindered by the real conflict of the plot(HAH! I said PLOT!). While we may not have cared about it, it could have been more of a highlight adding to the supposed drama of a character’s life. These points should have made more of a bang in the minds of it’s readers, thought it read and felt like it was tacked on. Even with the main ending being the real reason to read on, these events could have easily made the ending better if they were emphasised more.

This read was impressive. A different style for a great read. While I say it often, this one took me by surprise with how little I knew about each character and still ended up feeling satisfied with it. The high points of the story did bother me and ended up breaking my thought process, but was overlooked with how well the story flowed out on it’s own. Giving me something to think about in many many perspectives. From how a teenager would think, to an official of the law, or a brilliant professor. Though I was rooting for the Philosophers (WOOT WOOT TO MY HOMEBOYS!). The story read well enough to keep me on edge for the end. Though the main problems were the climaxes for each character branch being bland and then that ending. (Probably because I’ve had personal experiences with each of those conflicts in my own life that I just didn’t agree with it in my head.) So I found myself flopping back on the backrest of my chair to this one. In an economical point of view, the author did well to focus on points of the story to always give you something new to think about. From innocence to the responsible authorities, this is a good read for those interested in politics to slice of life genres.

>>Remedyfortheheart
Jeez. Your reviews are not reviews, they are stories of their own! ;)

Shia Labeouf. Nike. I can dig it! While many would place these memes on this one story, I for one loved what it was all about. A simple concept of turning your life around while remaining realistic. Coupled with the inner struggle of life and morals. The world is a cruel cruel place. And we always see the bad. I for one actually loved seeing something, as rare as it is, come together in true harmony. Now enough with the intro, let’s get on to the review without spoiling it here, yes?

NEGATIVES
-Plotline
Hee hee, PLOT! Ahem! Excuse me. While I may laugh at this little joke all too often, this story reminds us that we ourselves have to aim for our own happiness. Realistically we can only do so much in our own lives. Therefore it’s reasonable to state that a prosperous life means “sacrifice”. This is portrayed in the first scene where Tim has to face certain struggles in his job. From being the frontline man for a company that is only seeking to grow it’s income. While it is natural for a business only wishing to succeed in it’s own avenue, we find ourselves taking the perspective of a man who is tired of the latter and wants something simpler. Now why is this a negative? Because it could have been explored more. What we read is a small example of what Tim has been experiencing for years on end. What we don’t see, is what made him stay in the first place. That Kayla never seems to be there until the right moment. When it’s pointed out that she’s been there long since he’s been working for this airline wifi company. This aspect could have been explored more to where it would hit readers harder upon their own reading. Instead of coming to a halt between Tim and Kayla’s relationship. Develop more of a backdrop for Tim and Kayla. Show that it was a growing need to leave this job. Truthfully though it did look highly irresponsible to up and go, granted we must give the author his due in what he intended it to look like.

-Transitioning
This story was lacking much of it. We do not see much of Kayla’s thoughts, nor does Tim’s motives come out clearly. Everything is set in mystery as the author tries to dabble in both these characters at the same time. This is tricky to do and can actually turn off some readers. By not focusing on one thing at a time, the story does this sort of ping pong ball resonance that leaves the audience trying to keep their eyes glues to the real focus of the story. It was either on Tim’s side or Kayla’s side. I know I had to rethink every time Kayla reacted or Tim reacted to something. A bit of transitioning from Tim’s view in the first scene to Kayla’s in the bedroom scene would have done wonders to bring your story to life. Not only would it mix things up(LOL BEDROOM JOKE!) it would provide a nice light onto your characters making them more relatable. Other than that you did good on switching up scenes and showing the progression of the story. Though you could have made it even more exciting (OMG! I’m a dirty one!).

-Word Usage
Dear lord. What is half of the things you’re using in here? The phrases go out of control, as I swear the author here is using what sounds and reads like English slang found in Britain. Then there’s the strange use of wording for a couple of things that I had noticed. Such as the wording of “dope” used several times in a sentence. Or how a saucer was used as an ashtray, Is that what British call ashtrays nowadays? What’s a merry hob? Keep in mind your audience author and we will forever be grateful. I sense that you placed effort into changing your sentences quite a bit to make them interesting. Thus the use of phrases and the like of different terminologies used in an effort to keep your reader captivated. I appreciate it, but it sometimes get confusing. It’s alright to use the same wordings twice or a third time. After that we’ll want to see something different for an effect change. What makes reading not only fun in imagining things it’s learning new words and how to use them. Hopefully that’s not just for me right?! Right?! I read to learn thingies too! Either way it’s part of the entertainment, but you shouldn’t have to kill over trying to get a plethora of different words. It’ll come in time.

POSITIVES
-Villain
This took me some time to think. As this is a story where you need to sit down after the ending and think about your own morals and choices in life. To a philosophical sense. The way our minds struggle internally within itself is almost a shame. Though highly unnoticed. This story highlights this point of our mental views. Showing that the real villain in this story was not the job, but was Tim and Kayla themselves. They chose to keep their job all for monetary insurance and social stability. They at first chose this adult way of life and made the sacrifice to their dreams and wishes. Pushing aside their own desires and making their own hurtful environment. Than suddenly choosing happiness over everything else. That when you have enough money, a nice house, and a good job, that if you’re still unhappy. Its because only you choose to do so. The writer even hints at it giving Kayla and Tim very unhealthy habits such as smoking and skipping out on work to show that they want to be happy, but hold themselves back giving them these excuses to continue on with life. In the end it took each other to make them happy. Which there’s nothing wrong at all with it. In fact that’s what is mostly encouraged through your lifetime partner. Notice how I didn’t say wife or husband. It’s because it doesn’t take marriage or some type of graduation to go out and just be happy. It took Tim becoming Kayla’s Prince and Kayla becoming Tim’s Princess to bring out the best out of each other. This type of support is so hard to come by, but it does happen. Let’s not take it out of context that they’re living a dream. Hell no! If I was living my dream I’d be rich beyond my wildest dreams with a ton of bestselling books under my belt. No! Kayla and Tim had realistic manageable goals. And they achieved them through time.

-Relativity
Maybe this is on me, but I have got to say this is highly relatable. I have seen a lot of people go through what Kayla and Tim experience at another level. Two people who only want what’s best for others and have no devious or malicious intent in their lives. Go down on their luck due to circumstances with their job. They found their previous position in such bad terms that they quit and are much happier now in their lives once they left. From what I’m getting from Tim and Kayla is that a job will always suck, but shouldn’t be so depressing that it forces you to smoke. Isolate yourself talking to angry people all the time for pointless things, only to speak the same excuses. So depressed that you endlessly drone out on every passing day. Which is hinted at Tim and Kayla mentioning how long they’ve worked the job but never really saw each other. Jobs suck, but life shouldn’t. Even the romance where everything is lovey dovey and you can just cuddle up with your man, or wo-man, and forget about the day. To me everyone deserves this. Hell, this group writes and reviews stories for the same reason. To get away from life and continue on living. They found it in one another. Which makes this sweet and reminds me of my own relationships. Of my first kiss, my first time, and even just simple gazes of blurry partners up close. Far sighted is weird like that! Through goals, experiences, problems, and relationships. This story hides more lessons in it's words than most.

Overall I had a real connection with this story. It sums up my career to a tee. And reminded me why I’m much happier. The author did an amazing job on the smoking semantics (I smoke too so I could really see and imagine the smoke wisp away into the breeze.) and the more sensual pieces. As innocent as they were, it made me think about those first times. Strange but sweet. Even the job. I hated my life a couple years ago and now I’m so much better without it. Getting paid more doing what I intended to do in the first place in peace and now have time for a hobby. Btw hint hint at my previous job as a government lackey under the USMC. Now that job is bad. I digress. Besides all that smucka telly stuff! This story did well to carry me through it. It hints at the thought of becoming something more just for the personal benefit of waking up with a smile in the mirror. It teaches others not to fear the obstacles in the way, but to find a way to just go out and be what you wanna be. This story reminded me so much of CMC. Trying to get to goal that they just couldn’t seem to get at until they realized it together.

>>Monokeras
I write to write. Strangely enough, I don't plan em. I just write em right after the read. Telling my piece is nothing special. these are really fun to do though. I just did two!

>>Remedyfortheheart
Well I hope you do enjoy writing your reviews, otherwise it'd be really an ordeal given their length. But okay, I mean, that's so nice for the authors to get such detailed feedback! I, on the other hand, can barely write more than a few bland paragraphs.

Anyway. Keep up the good work! 💙

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

17 – Encounter at dusk

There's a lot of good stuff going on in the opening here, but it could use a heavy tightening pass. You hook my interest in where the story is headed, but I'm actually going to do something a little weird here and really dig into the first paragraph, because based on content, I suspect the best advice I can give you here is going to be some precise prose targetting. So here's that paragraph:

I try to bury the metal splinters strewn all over the ground around me under a layer of dead leaves. This might be superfluous, though, as I run no great risk: even if a hunter or a stray farmer found them, they wouldn’t catch their attention for more than a few seconds. To the naked eye, they are just polished shards of some grey metal. Only the microscope could reveal them for what they really are.

First sentence: you're adding a lot of extra words, mostly in prepositional phrases, that don't add any meaning. Generally clunky, though the real flag for me here is that you don't fully concretize your hypothetical, which mostly wastes space (a small case could be made that having both hunter and farmer in ther adds setting info, but I think you can do better adding more novel setting info elsewhere). Second sentence also has a they/their pair where those two pronouns refer to different things. General tightening in sentences three and four. Also, drop the low-information cliche in the end of sentence four. If I were going to pare this down without making major changes, it'd probably look something like:

I try to bury the metal splinters strewn over the ground beneath a layer of dead leaves. This might be unnecessary, though, as I run no great risk: even if a hunter found them, they wouldn't catch his attention for more than a few seconds. To the naked eye, they are just polished shards of grey metal. Only a microscope could reveal their true nature.

If this were me, I'd go even farther and do some rewording, and I might end up with:

I bury the metal splinters under a layer of dead leaves. Perhaps I am being too cautious. Even if a hunter found them, to the naked eye they are no more than polished shards of grey metal. Only a microscope could reveal their true nature.

That's a 40% reduction in word count, and the only pieces of information you've lost are that there were many splinters scattered around the perspective character, and that farmers are a common part of this setting. I think it's likely that both of these are acceptable casualties. Anyway, let's drop the workshopping and get back to the story.

There's some occasional usage oddity here (which makes me wonder if I might have hit Monokeras's story finally, after all his exhuberant protestations). Author, if the issues here are stemming from EFL, I'd get a native speaker's eyes on this for some proofreading. If the issues are simply a lack of editing time, I'd go with the read-aloud trick to try catching them. Either way, they seem pretty minor—but consistent enough to be worth a quick mention.

It's a story about Joan of Arc? Okay, thinking Monokeras even more strongly now...

I hope I'm not being led astray by my authorial suspicions, but really a lot of the problems I'm flagging with this story are very small things like word choices that carry weird information, like using "giggle" for the perspective character, which sounds very strange in the context of the way this character has been acting in the story. A laugh would be perfectly reasonable, a giggle carries some very different character information for me. Anyway, I'm going to skip out of text-edit mode now, read some more, and move on to larger issues.

I'm enjoying the pace and the scene selection here. The story moves at a pretty good clip, and there's usually something fun to read ever couple hundred words. I think the area I'm seeing the most trouble is in the characterization, primarily through the dialogue. You've got two very different characters here, but both speak in a way that feels modern and colloquial, and belies their fundamental differences. I feel like you've definitely begun working on giving the characters' dialogue content that makes sense for their situation and personalities (e.g. the way they both approach theological matters), but it's important to get the tone of their dialogue to match as well. Is one more serious than the other? Is one able to make better logical arguments than the other? Is one more prone to angry outbursts, or to trying for humor? Thinking about the tone adopted by your characters in dialogue will help make them more real and better separated to the reader. (Also, you've got a lot of colloquial phrases running around, both in and out of dialogue. Clichés are usually best avoided in writing, and I personally feel like your writing would be improved pretty much every time you're using one if you'd avoided the cliché and gone for something more direct.)

I was wondering exactly where this was heading. I do think I like that as a stopping point.

Okay, upsides here: The pacing of the story keeps me moving along well, and I never felt like it really dragged. There are a number of sections where I actually quite enjoyed the prose. I'm pretty happy with the scene selection inasmuch as there's usually something interesting happening, even if it's just a boar fight.

Downsides: I definitely would have liked better foreshadowing of the reveal in the second-to-last section. I know there was a little, about what would happen if England won this war, but it turns out that this is as much of a key thread in the story as all the Joan of Arc stuff, and so it definitely feels a little undercooked. Word choice issues, as mentioned. Characterization issues, as mentioned. We get to spend a good amount of time with John and Joan, but I don't feel like they ever have to confront issues that really make us come to understand them well as characters. Joan has a crisis of faith at one point, which is probably the right type of thing to do, but which felt a little overblown to me since it seemed to mostly come out of the blue. And finally, overall plot structure. There's really never a clear conflict that needs resolving here. John is trying to get Joan to Chinon, and they interact along the way, but there's never a clear indication that Joan's destiny at Chinon might be threatened in any way, through her inability to get there, or through the wrong events unfolding once she did. The only real spot where it seems like there might be conflict around preventing this is when John kills his counterpart, and this happens suddenly and without much foreshadowing, so there isn't really any tension or release tied to this since it's all so sudden.

My advice for future stories would be to work on building a stronger framework in terms of plot and character. Do some hard-core outlining before you get into the writing—even if it's for the write-off. A shorter story with a strong outline on the plot/character front is going to serve you better in the long run. The English issues are troublesome, but they're also the sorts of things you should be able to iron out through your own editing, or with the help of some editors/friends who have an easier time with some of that stuff than you may. At this point I'd say the larger, structural issues are where you should be concentrating most of your attention.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Flawed but Fun

There's a lot of "me too"ing I'm going to skip here. I do think the central premise is executed well; the biggest thing I feel this needs to address in editing is that weird birth scene thing and how hard it makes it to settle into the story.

Let's look at that in the context of the story overall. You've got a title, "Spectrum," that declares that Kitty's visual sensations (and the color/grey distinction) are a major theme of the piece. Indeed, you've got some solid description that brings that out. But it's kind of lost in the wash of imagery in general. Consider trimming that first section way back, not just to hurry your readers into the meatof your story without the confusion of the starting scene, but also because slimming that down would let you focus in on the visual sensations and really bring that core theme to the foreground. Then you could nudge the rest of your story around to refocus on that spectrum, as well, tying it together a little more coherently. (Right now, the bookendy birth-like scenes feel different in tone from the Calvin and Hobbes-esque play scenes. That's not necessarily a fault -- you might be going for contrast there -- but it didn't feel particularly satisfying.)

My overall reaction here was that this nailed its tone in the middle, and hasn't quite congealed as a cohesive whole. I don't think it'll be too hard to get it pulling all in the same direction, though.

Tier: Almost There

Alright, I've just read every eligible story as of now, and I have to ask, what is it this round with stories that have no ending? Also, stories that have people being revived or resurrected after many years?

Like >>Not_A_Hat, I found myself hooked by this one from the beginning, and found it smooth reading marred by a few details that should be easy to address in editing. I agree that the wolves were the first thing that broke me out of the story, but for a different reason: it wasn't until later on, when John lifted the boar and didn't eat, that I realized he had to be a robot. Up until then, I assumed he was a human time-traveler, and the fact that he singlehandedly wiped out an entire wolfpack with a bow broke me out of the story. (That should be easy to address, by lampshading it as he kills them, or by dropping more clues to John's real identity earlier on.) Other notable moments breaking my suspension of disbelief: the odd ignorance over magnetism when they're discussing the compass (especially when John earlier narrates "The shrill notes that spring from the wooden stick act a magnet to every creature around"); "former leper"; and the robot having an apparent nudity taboo and describing sex as "fun".

On the whole, though, the setup and introduction felt strong. The high technology introduced throughout fit into the story naturally. I also thought the peeing scene was an excellent inclusion, illustrating the sort of culture shock this premise makes inevitable.

The middle of this story is where it faced the most challenges. I agree with >>Bradel that this could benefit from outlining before you start your writing -- but don't just plan what happens in each scene, but how each scene moves your story forward. Even though there's a whole lot of interaction between John and Joan, and a lot of little minor problems solved, I never felt like there was an arc for either character, showing them growing or changing as they overcame challenges and got to know each other better. They very much feel like the same people at the end as they do when they first meet each other, and some of their concerns seem to go in circles -- for one egregious example, Joan deciding based on the dream that John was sent by God, and then being suspicious of his motives when she has her crisis of faith and he comforts her (despite the fact that he's been aiding her for weeks and asking for nothing in return). With the amount of time we spend traveling with these characters, we really should watch them both grow.

I do like the end, but agree with the other reviewers that it brings up some questions about why -- if there was an opposing time-traveling force -- there wasn't more opposition during the story itself. The only thing we ever see either of them fight (except for the king at the end) is a pack of wolves! It also seems odd that she would need to see John's face beforehand, given that 1) he speaks right before the blindfold is taken off, and she's had a month to recognize his voice; and 2) if he's pretending to be a king, shouldn't he have a crown on and be on a throne, or something? How is the room set up that they would expect her not to recognize the king?

Don't get discouraged, though, author: I cite a lot of individual little problems here, but those are nitpicks easily addressed by editing single scenes. The only big structural problem I see is the meandering middle, and adding some specific character arcs will go a very long way toward fixing that.

Tier: Almost There

16 – Hollow Man

I don't feel like the first paragraph is carrying a whole lot of information content, and I'm worried that the biggest piece of content ("raise morale", implying Mattello is a military man) may be unintentional. It's not clear to me how much the weak first paragraph matters, though, because you're doing a pretty good job dropping information slowly across the first few. I usually like a faster hook, just to get me immersed in the story, but this is probably one of the better slow hooks I've read in a writeoff. It's like a persistent pull rather than a yank.

And then there's that fourth paragraph. Hoo-boy, does that change things up. Okay, now I'm finally a bit curious.

He asked him what it was, and after an awkward hesitation, his caretaker had left without telling him.

Want to flag this because it's particularly bad. You just introduced a character on a pronoun that matches your perspective character's gender. I literally cannot imagine a good reason for this.

The description of the visitor is... distinctly unhelpful to me. It starts out by comparing him to a class of animals that's sufficiently broad to not give much information on appearance, and then proceeds through metaphor to hint at morphological changes and limb additions. Based on the description given, this seems like it could be anything from a six-legged centaur with a bull head to a humanized pony with a weird skirt of legs, to a goat-spider with a human-looking thorax. (After spending far too much time looking at this paragraph, I'm thinking that this is supposed to be like a centaur but with the animal's original head—though I still have no clue whether the original animal was a horse, an ox, a water buffalo, or one of the weirder draft animals like a goat, an elephant, or a reindeer.)

There are a few cliches floating around in here, and a few pieces of what feel like odd written construction to me. I don't know how much to bother talking about these things, because it seems like some of it can be written off as an authorial voice that I don't particularly like at times. I guess my advice would be to sit down with this at some point and read it out loud to yourself, and see if there are any places where you feel like the language sounds a bit unnatural. Those places definitely exist for me, but if they genuinely don't bother you on a close read, author, then it's probably fair to just ignore my discomfort.

I will say, though, that there are definitely some spots where you keep your language loose and unconcretized. These are places where I think you'd uniformly improve the story by doing some further concretization. Let me give an example:

"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.

This looks awfully concrete, with a lot of proper nouns thrown in—but there's no detail on the proper nouns, and "some new species", "think pretty much the same as you", and "[t]hey" are very nebulous things for Frøy to be talking about. This passage winds up feeling like an infodump, except without much info. One of the big reasons for that is that it doesn't feel like it's carrying much information about who Frøy is. He probably doesn't think in terms of "some new species", he thinks in terms of his race and the major races his race interacts with for good or ill. He might well mention the Dragonbond Empire since that's contextually expected to be a shared point of information for him and Mattello here, but "there was this thing we call the Descension" is unhelpful from both his perspective and Mattello's, since the name is going to mean nothing to Mattello and it dodges giving any real details on what happened. You want to be working inside the framework of "What is Frøy thinking about, and how will he try to communicate it to this outsider who lacks much of his cultural context?" Even though it looks like you've got some solid concretization here with "Dragonbond Empire", "Descension", and "First Race", one of those terms isn't really carrying any in-character information. (The first is carrying some about Mattello and the third is carrying some about Frøy, though. Not as much as I'd like, but some.)

The switch from Frøy to Rhos really bothers me, because it's so fourth-wall-breaking. It's not the only place you're making some odd intrusive choices—another example is when Mattello almost seems to act as author-hope-for-audience-surrogate and thinks that the conversation is interesting now that proper nouns are getting name-dropped—but it's the one that bothers me most. It raises a major question to me of where the perspective is sitting. It can't be sitting with Mattello, because we're explicitly seeing Frøy's internal reaction to the change in name choice. But it also can't be siting with Frøy, because he's not going to change how he thinks of himself based on how a third party is naming him (not unless Frøy is considerably more alien and interesting than he appears, which you're not doing any groundwork to suggest). So is this an omniscient perspective? But then, as with Frøy, why is a character suddenly changing his name in response to another character's attitude. It's all very irregular.

Frøy's reactions once Mattello starts telling his story seem pretty bizarre. The "Oh no" paragraph in particular makes me expect that Frøy has just realized some critical piece of information about Mattello. I mean, it doesn't seem like he can really be shocked that Mattello was suicidal, because it would be stupid if he didn't know Mattello is currently suicidal—so the implication is that he's shocked about some heretofore unknown fact about the eggs that I'm desperate to hear about. Except I don't, and it doesn't seem like Frøy really figured anything out. His "fall on his ass" bit seems similarly over-dramatic. Mattello seems to have a right to some strong reactions as this scene moves forward, but Frøy not so much.

Done now. In the end, there's a lot I like here. The setting and backstory are both fun, and much of the prose is smooth and engaging (with the caveats above). I genuinely find both Frøy and Mattello interesting, and I wouldn't mind knowing more about them. There's a bit of resolution by the end, though I think there's never quite enough conflict here to make the payoff all that worthwhile—this is mostly a setting story. The perspective and prose issues that exist, though, bother me a fair amount, and I feel like you're papering over a lot of actual backstory with the Proper Noun Trick. And while I enjoy Frøy and Mattello, I feel like they could both use some more serious characterization. They're interesting frames to build off of, but as with the backstory I want more actual substance and fewer shadows and ghosts. The overall effect is oddly on-point with the title: I like this story, but what's here seems uncannily hollow.

HORSE: Decline to rate (primarily because the Proper Noun Trick sort of breaks the meaning of the Originality scale—originality is both the strong point and the weak point in much of this story).
TIER: Flawed but Fun

>>horizon
Oh. Um. Yes. Horizon raises a good point. That whole thing at the end with the king makes a lot less sense if you don't already know the story of Joan of Arc. (Bax, the idea is that there was a fake king in the room and she ignores him and goes for the real king hanging out on the side, looking like any old courtier. This gets screwed up a little by the fact that in the story, it's John who orders her brought in and she hears his voice, though, so the "king" she's supposed to be tricked by is never really mentioned or clearly alluded to here.)

Also I actually think the magnet thing is fine. The author makes a point of mentioning that the compass is period-appropriate technology, but when Joan doesn't know what it is, he has to come up with an explanation that doesn't out him too far. John totally understands magnetics, and I had no difficulty reading his response to Joan as a way of trying to not blow his cover.

Otherwise, unsurprisingly, general agreement.

I loved, loved, loved the writing in this one! It was clean and crisp; it did a great job of conveying character and setting; Tim and Kayla’s dialogue was incredibly fun to read, and their chemistry was fantastic.

As for the actual story itself, I’m not sure I can say I enjoyed it so much. Which is a shame, because I really, really wanted to.

I mean, there’s no conflict. They decide to do something, and then it works out perfectly with no trouble at all. It makes the whole piece feel weightless, since without that sense of struggle and sacrifice, Tim and Kayla achieving their dreams doesn’t mean anything. It’s like… what have they learnt? That getting your dream job is as easy as just walking into a building and simply asking for it. There’s no possibility of failure, and everything will be wonderful forever and ever. The end.

Sorry, I don’t mean to sound so cynical, plus I appreciate the effect that I think you were going for – follow your passions, don’t let self-doubt get in the way. Those are great messages to have in a story! Yet you need something to ground them, or you run the risk of having readers react exactly the way that they’ve reacted by here. By accusing your work of being shallow and schmaltzy. And for the record, I like schmaltz – heck, my entire fanfiction career is practically built off it! But there’s a limit to how much you can get away with before it turns people off.

Your characters need to struggle for their goals. They need to face setbacks. The struggles don’t need to be big. The hardships don’t need to be huge. But they do need to be there.

I also had some issues with the depiction of Tim’s customer service role, though I hesitate to go too much into it since I’m having trouble deciding if my problems stem from the actual story itself, or from having worked behind a refund desk for the past four years. What I will say is that whilst this piece is one thousand percent successful in getting across the worst extremes of what it’s like to deal with the general public, at the same time, for me personally, it didn’t ring true that all his phone queries were bad to the point where ‘a humble request’ gives him pause for thought.

Now, obviously, I can only speak for myself in this regard (although Bradel’s comments makes me feel confident that my experiences aren’t unique). But I find that whilst awful customers are an unfortunate daily reality, most people are just… fine. Just fine. And whilst I also concede that possibly there are customer service roles which are as terrible as you’re making out here, that possibility alone doesn’t stop this story from feeling like it tries too hard to wring our sympathy for Tim. It makes the story feel too manipulative for its own good, and again, it can be a turn-off for some readers.

(Also I actually thought that Kayla made a good point about the widow but-I’m-just-a-horrible-awful-person-who’s-totes-going-to-hell-arrrggg -_-).

FINAL THOUGHTS: Problematic, but again, LOVED the actual writing itself. Despite my issues, this author is clearly very talented, and I would totally read more stuff by them.

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

23 – The Necromancer's Wife

Somewhat nitpicky, but I'd smosh the first and second paragraphs together. That first sentence is hanging out there like it's supposed to be important, but it's really not very attention-catching. Peter has a dead wife, and he's visiting her at the graveyard. Yay, mundanity! "Maybe it was a necromancer thing." is an awesome hook, and everything you write before that point should be working toward making that line pop as much as possible, because that's where you're going to catch your reader. It already pops plenty, but the fact that it looks like you've got a dynamic line at the start detracts a bit, especially since that first line is in no way dynamic.

That "Brains" line is fantastic.

The writing here is just consistently excellent. I'm... I don't know how far in, I just got to "the old stew-and-chew". Only one real editorial comment thus far: it feels like there's a lot of disconnect between Peter and Sabriel's romance, and the zombifier story. You've made a point of connecting them up through the argument between Peter and Sabriel, and that's good—but I think this would work better if there were a more natural connection than Peter thinking the authorities are unprepared, and so he should probably go help. There's really no tie-in to motivate his need to do this thing, so the stakes are pretty low. The zombie plague is threatening a lot of characters we don't care about, but the two we do care about seem like they can pretty much resolve the plot to our satisfaction by just walking away.

That's continuing to be the big problem I see in this story. The dialogue scene with Peter, Sabriel, and Cynthia is all fun, but it also feels pretty undirected. It's three enjoyable characters standing around talking, but they don't seem to be doing enough plot advancement, character development, or world-building to really justify the scene they're in. I know that's a high bar to set for a Writeoff story, but when you're up against the sheer, calculated density of something like "The Name Upon His Forehead", it's important.

"Haha!" Peter laughed.

This feels like a really weird bit of unnecessary double-use. Aside from the fact that it gives me pretty bad Shy Ronnie flashbacks.

"…hmm." Cynthia frowned, considering. Peter maintained his smile. He had sworn on his power, which wasn't an oath for a mage to take lightly; if broken, his power would shatter, and the backlash would destroy his body.

This is awfully intrusive, explaining the dialogue through narration. I'm not a huge fan of this.

"Aleister Crowley." Peter's smile grew. "The evilest man in the world. Granddaddy of necromancy. You didn't seriously think he was dead, did you?"

This is getting a laugh from me. I'm not sure how intentional that is. I just find it farcical, a bit like watching a fairly serious Las Vegas heist movie and having Elvis be the revealed as the villain at the end.

Through to the end now. It's a fun read, with nice prose and some cool details. I was a bit weirded out by the poetry, but then seeing that Crowley used much more character-appropriate incantations made me enjoy the worldbuilding you were doing there quite a bit. I think I might actually push that reveal back a bit and make it less subtextual: Cynthia could show some surprise at necromancers using poetic incantations and give Peter a chance to exposit a bit. (I mention this largely because I think some readers might completely miss the juxtaposition you're doing with Crowley; I don't know how obvious the difference is unless you have a little background in the history of magic.) My problems here haven't changed—and if anything have probably gotten a little worse with the Crowley thing. But there's no denying that I really enjoyed reading this story, and even though it's not going to get that close to the top of my slate, that's less a comment on this story's quality and more a comment on the quality of the field as a whole. This is absolutely a piece of work you should feel good about, Author, even if it could use some revision.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Solid

Kayla stared at him for a pair of heartbeats

This is a lovely line. Stealing it. #SorryNotSorry

“I just told you we basically stole three hundred dollars from a poor, grieving widow, and your first response was to blame her.”

Kayla’s eyes widened. “I…” Her gaze fell to the ground. “Jesus Christ.”

This realization feels hella fast to me. I can't imagine anyone having that sort of dramatic 'what monster have I become' revelation so quickly after it being pointed out—especially not a character as strong willed as Kayla. She's not just gonna let Tim accuse her of being a corporate drone without defending herself.

What's the point of them just leaving? Why don't they quit? It'd certainly look a lot better on a resume than just up and leaving, and if they're really looking to get hired within a month in this job market...
Of course, they're also kinda cold and crazy and stupid. So maybe it works. :P

Tim shook his head. “You don’t need one. I had a cousin who spent the summer after high school working for his local radio station - he just waltzed in the front door, said he wanted to work there. When they said they didn’t have any positions open, he said he’d be willing to work for free. They hired him on the spot.” Tim took one last drag, then put out his butt on the saucer. “By the end of the summer, he was cutting promos, writing ad copy, editing songs to be radio friendly, the works. Probably would have let him on the air, had he stuck around longer.”

As someone who works with radio: this ain't how radio works D:

The romance feels superfluous, like it's there just to be there. I don't see how them getting together adds anything to their relationship. It doesn't change their interactions, doesn't raise any stakes...

I definitely agree with everyone saying that this wraps itself up too nicely, too quickly.

A couple points for >>Monokeras:

"Wrought iron" isn't the author using fancy language, it's an actual thing. You might recognize it from, ohh, the Eiffel Tower.


"Pinkie promise" actually predates My Little Pony, and is traditionally a promise made between two people while linking their hands by their pinkie fingers (the last finger on the hand). Traditionally, it doesn't involve any cupcakes.

---

On the fight scene, I'd sort of decided where my problems with this story were before that point, but I'll echo what a lot of other readers seem to be saying. My problem is less that it was janky, as >>Icenrose described it (though I think there's some fair criticism there). It's more that the fight is always a fait accompli without a whole lot of back and forth.

I could give some detailed discussion on this, but I think I'm just going to take the easy way out and link to one of my old Fimfiction blog posts where I talked about writing fight scenes. I know, it's lazy and a little lame to go posting links to my Fimfic account on someone else's story, but I'm not going to be able to do a better job talking about them here than I did there, so I feel like this is really the optimal way to go.

The first thing I'm noticing here is that the first two scenes both feature a character eating something so hot that it burns them. I'm choosing to believe this is important.

Silence was an easy, familiar thing between them, cultivated from countless hours of patrols like this.

Very nice line.

Man, this fic is straight-up straddling the M line.
...I know what I said.

This is nitpicking, but if you ever look to market this to a more general audience, I might change the university to something other than Mizzou. Not that Mizzou isn't a lovely place, but considering recent events, it's going to have some distracting connotations in the minds of readers.

...Well that was an abrupt ending. It's not even a Lady and the Tiger type thing. It's just building tension then stopping short. In the words of a great Irishman: It "felt a bit like calling the safe word before the golden shower. Just disappointing."
EDIT: see later comment

Cesar's arc was the most interesting, and it took me a little while to understand the point of Brianna's. Compared to those two, Matthew both felt like a very bland character, and had a lackluster story arc. Matthew never seemed to have much of a personality. He was just kinda going along with the plot.

Man, this fic started so well. Your descriptions were great, I was hella interested in why he couldn't cut his beard. I loved the detail about him not being able to touch anything.

This fic was going well... but everything changed when the Fire Nation Dragonbond Empire attacked.

Once the intergalactic empire and races sci-fi stuff came in, you lost me completely. There are so many names, so many terms to remember... and half of them just get dropped in with no explanation nor context to define them. I'm hella lost.

He stepped back, looking like he'd been doused in ice water.

Great description. Stealing again. #SorryNotSorry #PlagarismIsForWinners

It didn't help that at the end, the most pressing question in my mind was whether Rhos and Froy were the same character.

Sorry, author. This fic didn't work for me at all.

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

24 – Landscape Photography

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of plot hook here, but the prose is really catching me. Author, you're doing a very good job painting a scene with words. Which, I suppose, is maybe appropriate here, given the title. Some nice use of simile and multisensory imagery, and a lot of little concrete details.

Despite what you may have heard, I'm not a misanthrope.

Not a fan of this line. The sudden second-person inclusion really throws me out of the text, probably for the first time. I know there's this whole thing about first-person perspective meaning the perspective character is actually narrating to the reader, but this just feels jarring to me. Otherwise, though, I'm kind of digging the protagonist's voice. He might be a little full of himself, but I feel like he (or she, I guess) is delivering a pretty clear perspective. Word choice is a bit... do I want to call it purple? I'm not sure. It's detailed, but in a way that seems to kind of be carrying that voicing. The Willem Kalf thing I especially like. I had to look him up, but the line is delivered in a way that feels natural to the narrator.

Aaagh! Some of this language, I have to admit, I'm just loving. "The summer sun is a blazing ingot laid across the anvil of the sky"? Come on. I want to write metaphors like that. I like the Calvino reference, too; though I think the overall imagery is starting to drop off. That first section had some serious multi-sensory depth. This third section has a lot of visual detail and some auditory detail, but there's a lot more you could be doing here, author. The photographer is in the African desert, in the daytime, during summer. I'm guessing it's probably hot there? I feel like you're missing some easy lay-ups here.

Humanity was in retreat long before the fertility collapse.

Well, that's a change of pace. This line doesn't take me completely by surprise. All of the last three sections have been about places without people. Still, this is so abrupt that it takes me aback, when juxtaposed with the style this story is employing elsewhere. Really, this whole section is a little weird. I hate using show vs. tell language, but this is very telly. The other introspective section had a clearer character voice behind it. There are some nice details here, but it still feels very expository without doing a whole lot of multitasking with the text. Get some character building in here, to go along with the world-building. Or... well, this story doesn't really seem to be going in for plot. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm not feeling like there's a great lack here in not having a major plot focus. It's a bit like "To Make a Choice"—this story isn't going for a traditional narrative; it just wants to take an idea and put it up on the screen.

I'm getting the sense I must have missed a subtle time-skip in here. I'm guessing the author intended to use the word "old" to convey that in the last section, but it's too sparse for me to really buy what it's selling, especially since we didn't know the photographer's age in the earlier scenes. The photographer is pretty clear about being out of film now, despite thinking he/she had a lot more available in that first scene, so clearly there's been a lot going on between those points.

I like the change-up at the end, with other people finally in the mix. I also like the photographer's re-evaluation at the end. I think there are some points in here, though, where you're probably being overly subtle to the story's detriment. The prose is really nice throughout, and this is another breezy read, but I want some more depth to the photographer's character—especially if the plot (such as it is) turns on the photographer finally having a late-in-life change of heart to stop being so avoidant where other people are concerned. That's an attitude that's stated pretty clearly, but then never really challenged until it's directly overthrown by the story.

The prose is a strong point here and I don't think you need to worry about that (other than the aforementioned suggestion that you might be able to get some more bang out of adding a bit more mult-sensory work after the first section). The plot... there's really not much of one, and I think I'm okay with that. This is more theme-focused, and although the theme is sort of open-ended, I think you're doing a good job resolving that toward the end. The places I'd work on this, then, are in that section on the fertility collapse which just kind of sticks out relative to the rest of this story, in building more solid characterization for the photographer (you were doing a really good job with this early on, I thought), and in maybe easing back on the subtlety in a few places to make the timeline you're looking at clearer, and possibly foreshadow the whole "humanity in retreat" thing earlier. It barely touches that first section at all, and even by the time you hit it full-on in the fourth section, it comes as a bit of a surprise, at least for me.

All that said, though, I definitely enjoyed this and I'm inclined to give it a Solid on the strength of what you've got going right. This could definitely be improved, but even though it's not my usual thing, I enjoyed it quite a bit the way it is right now.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Solid

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but although I don't have a story of my own in the running, I wanted to leave some reviews anyway. Let's get going.

I like the way the point of view zoomed in, and the "Witches" came at just the right spot to deliver some sort of hook, even without an immediate conflict in sight.

There are a few hiccups like:

As it happened, Bernice, the year’s top gymnast, was sat to Sophie’s right and dashing off her answers with confident ease.

... where you stumbled into the passive voice (just shifting the 'was' to infront of 'dashing' would get rid of that), or

Sophie breathed deeply in and deeply out

... but other than that, the writing was evocative and enjoyable to read.

The close POV to the protagonist was a great tool to make this angsty teenager relatable, but there was at least one instance where you stumbled out of this by adding some 'without her noticing'. I'd personally have avoided POV shifts like that throughout the piece.

I agree with Bradel that the justification-after-the-fact with the fire was a detriment to the story. It seemed forced and the lengthy explanation robbed the scene of much of its momentum.

As for the stories message, I like the anti-authoritarian vibe, but I fear I can't really agree with the "Power of Passion" as it is portrayed. In the story, getting in touch with her passion for performance magic turns her into some kind of savant and gives her superior powers -- I've seen this happen more than once in stories, and what it does is lead people to believe that when they find their passion in live, they're going to be good at it, and that if they're not good from the get-go, it can't be their passion.

The more my life advances and the more things I try, the more I've come to think that passion is the only thing that can keep one from throwing in the towel, and putting in the necessary work to get good, but there's nothing truly magical about it.

This was a smooth read, and I really love the concept. I also liked the gradual reveal that the protagonist was a robot.

I'd like to agree with previous reviewers that the dialogue was a bit... meh. Sometimes, it felt generically stilted to me, other times just unfitting. If I learn Joan has a rustic accent and grew up on a farm, I expect to see that reflected in her dialogue to some extent. Also, the robot could've done with a more unique voice, both in dialogue and in closer POV narration (a thing this story could've used more IMHO).

I felt a bit uncomfortable with the wolf pack scene, as this behaviour is highly improbable in wolves. Also, this is one of the rather rare actions scenes, and describing the headshot of the first wolf, and then just stating "yeah, killed the other 11, too," killed most of the immersion.

The lack of emotional POV makes part of the story read more like a travel log, which would seem plausible if this android was in some kind incapaccitated in feeling emotions, yet during some dialogue scenes he shows a lot of these, even the bad ones, like obviously gloating despite stating that he's not programmed for it.

This overall lack of emotional involvement made me also go 'wut' when Joan had her emotional meltdown. Never saw that coming, and I see little justification for it even in hindsight.

I'd like to say the ending saved it, but it didn't. At no point in the story did it look even remotely as though this mission could fail, so the payoff of it all working out fall flat for me, also because I don't know why I should favour a French rule over an English one, or why I should empathize with any of the people and non-people involved.

7 – The Precession of the Goddamn Equinoxes

I absolutely adore this opening. Okay, Author, you have my attention.

I know I've seen some incidental commenting on the use of "Goddamn" in this story, and my initial reaction was to disagree on its overuse because that first barrage did a huge amount to establish Mauli's character and it had me laughing. Moving on, though, I do think you're running into diminishing returns with this—and it doesn't help that some of the later "Goddamn"s really don't feel as natural to the flow of the dialogue or narrative. To wit, "Goddamn" can be a very effective adjective, but it usually sucks as an adverb a verb modifier (it actually looks like it can work okay as an adjective modifier, c.f. "Goddamn sticky").

I'm not finding much to talk about on the character, plot, or setting fronts because I'm just thoroughly enjoying this story. The insect blocking in particular is just kind of wonderful. Teb's four-armed sanctimonious pose is so easy to visualize.

"Mummy! Daddy! There's butterflies! May I please go in a little ways and look for more?"

This may just be me, but I feel like this line is a little off. That last sentence makes it sound like Alice is mature enough to be very good with rules and action planning (e.g. she's going to have to wander into the woods to look for more butterflies); but to me, that feels at odds with the wonder she seems to be feeling towards the butterflies themselves. Maybe I just had a depressingly rational childhood, but I don't usually find that passion couples well with good planning in kids.

Through to the end, and I really don't know what to say on this one. It's easily one of the best stories in the competition, almost certainly going in my top three, and I'm going to have to think hard about where to put it. The characters are rich and interesting, there's a whole range of conflicts going on in the background, the story is very goal-directed, it's funny, the world it creates is fun to live in... No, screw it, this is my new Number One. Lose or move a couple of Mauli's signature words (especially the ones modifying verbs), and this'll be all but Goddamn perfect.

HORSE: Decline to rate
TIER: Top Contender

Wow….just wow. Talk about the cast of Bambi characters turned sitcom. About several paragraphs in I had to stop and laugh, as I had figured out that I was reading about a vulgar butterfly. Three insects in fact, that seem to be doing some sort of job. At first I figured it would be pollination of the various flowers, but it was, oh, so much more than that. We dive into the mind of an angel, literally. Who is sent out to do a job of turning events into something unforgettable. You know the various scenes where something present’s itself and something epic comes flying out to encentuate the situation. Those moments in movies where something stands out from the norm with an epic presentation coming out from behind them. From a lion roaring, to birds and bats flying about, or just something cute. That’s what the creatures in this story were tasked to do. Finding this bit out in the story just hit on so many points. Religion, business and work ethics, ecology and economics. I only point this out because the characters behaviors are very appropriate for their roles in this grand plan of civil duty.

POSITIVES
-Scheme
The plotline of this story wasn’t hinted at first, but ended up making sense within the story as supervisors argued and shotcalled at one another. Mauli and Kiola hint at their real boss. The one in charge of doing all of this. And me being Catholic knew where this was going immediately. Taking bits from the bible on the plants, land, and animal life being made for man specifically. The author shows this side of the holy word and brings it into life by showing us one side of a character’s mentality. As they pour effort after effort into the big man’s plan. Time and again to create a world to experience and a life to enjoy for a human. Through some proper planning and all. While it was confusing at first how these creatures didn’t care about anything else instead of making a show out of it, Mauli also mentions how they maintain and keep up the ecological side of nature. Continuing the cycle for pretty much the same reason.I found it strange that only one supervisor was manning a whole division of insects, small mammals, carnivores, birds, and the like. A machine this big would require much more effort and more oversight to do this properly. It only adds to the realism of how a business works. Rather than the fantasy of “everything happens for a reason.”.

-Character Development
Mauli was just a delightful thing to read. She is a vulgar beautiful monarch butterfly who’s job is to oversee the insectoid side of things in a mulberry tree patch. She is joined with Teb, a new angel to the job and seeks guidance from Mauli. Bix a lazy worker under the insect division and Kiola who is the supervisor of small mammals. Each character was memorable. They all had a different view on things and just were such a joy to read about. They constantly argued with one another giving me more material to read and enjoy, as conversations flowed in and out from one another to the next. Mauli’s attitude was great as well. I just wanted to also point out that the author wasn’t using the term “Goddamn” himself. It was Mauli’s bad habit of using it all the time. So in fact it’s not the writer, but the character herself overusing the word. Mauli must have created this bad habit as she’s busy cursing while trying to do her job. After all she is one of the best in that business, to be the best takes a lot of stress on one’s self. Also doing a bit of research that insects themselves could be in the millions in just one forest alone, leaving Mauli’s job a lot harder. I thought it was a grand choice and explained a lot. Rather than a care-free character we get one filled to the brim with dedication and frustration. Which makes her stand out so much more alone than with other characters.

NEGATIVES
-Realism
I could have imagined this story in a cartoonish sense. The writer himself chose to make this more realistic with details on a butterfly’s anatomy. I first would like to point out that you’re writing a story about talking critters and insects. Not only is that impossible, it’s downright cartoony. The way the characters act and talk are indications that it’s very unrealistic. Animals do not plan or argue in real life. While I already had a set scene and character portraits in my mind, it was broken with how much I needed to focus on how a butterfly’s eyes and thorax looked like. If you’ve seen a butterfly up close you’d see how ugly they are. I could not see something like a real butterfly communicating with another being let alone being able to kick at cocoons. Now on a disney sense I could see these characters come to life easily. Remember you’re painting a portrait in every reader’s mind. Once the paint goes on, there’s no taking back the stroke itself. Once you have something going, keep it going in it’s same nature. I agree with other reviews and say this didn’t feel like it was trying to connect with me with much. It did it’s own thing. It was entertaining, but I would have loved how the writer made it to where we could connect through this piece of work. By switching your styles around you also switch the audience’s’ own attention.

-Intentions
The background and reasoning behind this creatures’ jobs were rather vague. I understand that it’s complex as hell. Why would simple things want to influence just the human race by just making a scene breathtaking? Or why would we care if these things continued the cycle of life or not? The justification is almost completely not there. I feel as if these beings have no real reason going for them other than that God said to do it. While as powerful as his word is. You need to show us more of what these insects and mammals’ reasons are. It needs to be broadened to where we can understand it better. Why do we need insects? Why do we need mammals? Why do they care about one simple moment in a child’s life? What is their intent as a whole in the grand scheme of things? From what I could guess is that they’re angels with the task of providing a good world for humankind. We should see more of a connection through the heavens themselves or maybe a reincarnation. The reincarnation wouldn’t break the type of viewpoint you wanna keep and it would still accomplish this task. However, I do love that you simplified all aspect of reason through conversation and small detail explanation. There’s a not a lot going on behind these events as sweet as they are. The author does provide means of slowly showing the goal each member provides. Granted it just didn’t feel powerful enough to show why it was so important. Helping one little girl and her parents is one thing but what about major outbreaks? Are these guys suppose to be spending their entire lives dying and tending to humankind? And care to explain how deadly carnivores get away with the chaos they can ensue? These questions eat at the brain and can break your story.

-Maturity
“Bix, you magnificent bastard!” “That over sized fat squirrel, Kiola, should mind his own business and suck a nut!” “Teb stop being a goddamn moron and help me!” I’m sorry. I enjoyed this way too much. It was like reading a redubbed version of the Lion King or The Little Mermaid. With all the little animals shouting out like mature adults. This was refreshing and very welcomed on my end. I’ve seen too many things in life to just enjoy everything nice and cuddly. Mauli’s attitude fit her well. Kiola acting like a fat rabbit snob just added to the mix. Bix being lazy and refusing to work. It all fit the personas of different people working in a job. It had the tone of a real business and what a person goes through being just a supervisor and dealing with things on a daily basis. No job is a rose garden, so to speak. So I thought it was highly appropriate for Mauli to act out the way she does. Cursing the boss under her breath while at the same time loving what she does in her um….eternal life span? Although this is a negative as you’re taking a fairy tale imagine and dumping on it to create a type of twisted mature version of it. When in reality it would have impacted us more if you chose one single style. Either the fantasy version of why this all happens or just a mature “Goddamn” one. I think you were aiming more towards the “Goddamn” tone. When this is literally a whimsical based story for whimsical coincidences. With whimsical like creatures with very vulgar mouths and nasty attitudes.

The nastiness of the characters was just too entertaining. And I hate Sitcoms. It made way for events that would shape into something that should be beautiful but felt wrecked by what it took to be able for it happen. Snapping at an intern and a lazy worker constantly. Arguing with another department’s supervisor, because you didn’t like his advice. Insulting other animals in the Mulberry patch just to get things ready. All within just the span of a day, for little Mauli. All the little nasty things, yes even the Goddamns, seemed to darken the plotline so thick that I just didn’t feel reaction in the little girl. Grant she’s suppose to be naive to the fact that it was all a setup, but it was indeed a setup. What is genuine in life anymore?! The content of this story made me laugh, smile, ponder, think, and sigh out in awe. But the one thing that it could have easily done was touch my heart. I didn’t even sympathy for the characters’ hard work. Maybe if you added a scene where everything goes wrong first. The audience would appreciate more of the little girl’s scene and expression at the end. Instead we’re left thinking that these guys do everything perfect. Probably since they’ve been working on it for a long long time. Besides the point add some bad to make the good even better. Vulgarity and stress over a schedule is not a satisfying bad to a story. This one was really fun to read and by the end I thanked the little story for doing a good job in what it was intended for. To give me something entertaining to read, that your intended audience. Us.

What did I just read? And will it be on the test, teacher? Awww, man! This bunks. Another history lesson and I’m gonna fail it! This one just wasn’t a story. It was merely an article meant for entertainment purposes. Truthfully though, I feel like I can’t give this one a proper review “Remi-style”. Stories hold a more illogical sense, rather than making it logical. They’re set in an imaginary world and meant for pretend and insight. Articles seem to hold fact from fiction. Giving a reader the information they desire to read about. Used mostly for educational purposes or gossiping. This story tried mixing it together and ended up bland and not really inspiring from the get go. Which is a odd thing to do, since both are really different means of writing. Nonetheless the author, or correspondent, wrote and so shall it be reviewed. My main question is, if this person is looking for improvements or not.

NEGATIVES
-Article
Never thought I’d see this as a trait of a story. Okay! So...yeah. What am I suppose to say here? Um, yeah! Magazines and newspapers are alright, but I prefer settling down and actually reading something. Every once in awhile I’ll read from the newspaper, mostly for the cartoons. If a magazine is interesting enough, I’ll do the same. Skim through some pages until I get to a piece I found interesting and read it. The format and content through majority of the story feel like something straight out of a textbook. It was well written with a lot of thought placed into it. The intro and ending with Cherish Fields felt nice, but was under a heap of information that just made me confused. I don’t follow politics and I ain’t no history buff. Past is past to me. One thing is for sure though, your strengths show in the creativity of these made up events and the hidden jokes. I’m gonna call it hidden because I have no idea what majority of what they were or what they meant.

-Sustenance
So, quick question! What are you providing in your work to keep your readers in your story *COUGH* AR-ticle?No plotline? No jokes to follow? I missed them? Where were they?! I got the sex one, but the article was so seirous! How was I suppose to laugh at-?….Sigh….Alright, alright! I get it, I missed out. Being one that has spent majority of his life studying, which I’m sure all of us are. I can’t seem to appreciate the textbook like mentality taken on with this story. It almost challenges my intelligence. Which is just really off putting, since the fact remains I really don’t know any of this stuff. There are a lot of reasons to place this story down, while at the same time much different reasons to pick it up and read it. Though just like most articles I will not pick this one up again to read. I’m sorry, but it’s just not my style. One way to keep this read interesting was to focus more on the character you’ve developed. We get her background and what she acts like thanks to the interviewer. Though we’re given barely anything as she shows up only in the intro and ending. Feed your audience something to get their minds focused on what you placed effort into.

-Variety
Okay raise your pitchforks and torches at me now. I’m about to state what ever brony was thinking during this whole “unicorns only” story. I myself think of myself more of an Earth pony, but why didn’t I get included in this one? I would have loved to see more Pegasi or Earth ponies, but didn’t get that. If MLP really is starring in this universe why aren’t they there? Shouldn’t we see more about magical ponies helping in life here. With Earth ponies working as farmers or construction workers and Pegasi being used as mail carriers and such? This piece sticks with just Unicorns, leaving little to imagine for the universe we all know and love. I would have liked knowing there’s more in this world besides unicorns and humans. It is an article that is focused on unicorn relationships and history. I’ll give you that, but I feel as if this would have gotten a lot more love having what it doesn’t have. Though this is what articles usually lack as they normally never stray off their topic.

POSITIVES
-Creativity
You can sense how much of it is brimming in this story ,*HACK!* ART-icle. Wow my throat is bad! From the jokes to the character and even the realism in how the piece reads. It makes you feel like you’re really reading a newpaper or a magazine. While the story ,*HUFFFF!* AR-ticle, seems to struggle deciding if it’s an entry for a textbook or a newspaper. It’s interview and longer style of content hints at being more of a magazine entry. It made me think about writing styles and how much effort is placed into such works. The fact that you’ve maintained that professional tone and value shows skill within itself. This is me assuming it’s harder to write a fact riddled piece rather than a made up story piece. From what I got the reader researched, scripted, and placed everything into one place. Well enough in fact, to make a mind boggling read. Which makes this one highly admirable.

-Idea
Now this was the most impressive part of the story *HAA-AAAACCCCHHH ARG!*. Mercy me! My throat! Your idea to turn this piece into something no one expected, made an eye opener for the most part. While it seems out of place, it deserves it’s own praise for just being what it is. A wonderful piece that has detailed history and information. On the world you’ve sought to create and share with us. By choosing to go out of the norm, you’ve opened your mind to think about several different ways of writing and thus have expanded on your ideas. Maybe I’m feeding an ego, but I like different. And this type of different is well written. This is by far the biggest lesson we can provide to your readers. That story telling and such is not linear. It has endless possibilities and I love how you share that with us.

Okay! This was a weird one. No seriously though, when’s the test man!? Okay so we’re not being tested. I’m sorry if this felt like nothing but me offending the author. I just wanna say it wasn’t a story. A good read. A beautiful work. Well thought out and planned.Though this project just didn’t impress me. You did good, but didn’t hit the goal here. Well mostly just for me though. So don’t let yourself down! You were great at making this one.

So it's the first day of spring, and Mauli makes it a Goddamn success!

I didn't think the Goddamn's were too many. It's a mannerism Mauli picked up, and for better or for worse, that's how she talks. Deal with it. :coolphoto:

The characters were perfect, all the mechanics in place... this was one smooth read through-and-through. I can't really think of anything to criticise.

The theme of the story... well, that's pretty open to me, actually. Mauli's words seem to try and forcefeed it to the reader, and I had to think of the ideas from the epoch of german classic (y'know, Goethe & Co, 1786-1832), which had the 'ideal society' in mind, in which people had achieved balance between emotionality/rationality, art/science, etc. Instead of let's say the French revolution, they wanted to improve the individual one by one, by exposing them to art that highlighted the "beautiful, good, and true". To me, that seems exactly what Mauli's trying to achieve.

However, that's not how the animals live themselves... their society, or individuals, don't seem to matter. I read comparisons with corporate world and disney, but that's not at all what I see here: what I see reminds me of communism. The old veteran and the young, over-enthusiastic pioneer, doing something without personal gain, trying to outshine the other group of pioneers, trying to impress the great leader. Be that god, Stalin or Kim Jong Un, no matter.

There's also the thing that these woodland creatures just existing for the purpose of amusing those who would gaze upon them could serve as mirror for the highly arrogant human stance, that nature does not exist for its own benefit but only to serve mankind.

Or I might be overanalysing the Goddamn shit out of this and it's just a well-written story with a rather sappy message. Anyway, this goes to the top of my stack.

It's interesting seeing the range of "interesting, but" responses in earlier reviews. I also see ways in which this story could be improved, but it entertained me throughout, and I think it capitalized on its premise.

Some non-zero amount of my entertainment, I have to admit, came from picturing something the story never directly mentioned: the reaction of the show's fanbase. "Let's not mince words, Space Trek has gone WAY downhill since they hired David Lynch as lead writer." "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS IS THE BEST SPACE OPERA DECONSTRUCTION EVER. FIGHT ME." That last season's renewal must have been half on trainwreck value. I wonder -- and this isn't suggestion, just speculation -- if it would add anything to this story to have Inkindri lampshade the existence of the audience? I mean, she knows about "episodes" and "seasons", and while I don't see a problem with her current genre-blindness, it's a very reasonable assumption to extrapolate from there to being on a television show. I don't think that would be a simple edit -- you'd have to work it in throughout, and it might change some of her reactions and decisions -- but it also might provide some direction (and closure) to the final scene, making that about the relationship between actor and audience rather than its current anticlimax. The way this story folds in on itself at the ending without really resolving anything is probably the one major criticism I do have.

I don't have a problem with Inkindri's name, but it did seem like a bit of a missed opportunity to not have her name be stolen from some bit of Starfleet technobabble ... oh, wait. And now that I say that, I think it is, though it probably isn't signaled well enough. Kin Dri = Kinetic Drive? Might want to have her know what the button does from the start; that would ruin one of your later jokes, about her discovering its purpose, but in exchange would sharpen the joke of why she picked that name. For that matter, you might also want to signal Inkindri as female earlier, since I think most people's mental default of a Star Trek redshirt is going to be male, and I for one had to readjust my mental images when the pronouns dropped near the end.

On a higher level, this has a solid narrative and character arc. (Authors of the other stories I've reviewed this round might want to read it as a contrast.) Inkindri starts out with a little knowledge about the way in which her world is off-kilter, and pokes into it, and keeps digging deeper, and reacts and changes based on each new development. We see her gradually mastering her power over the Focus, and we see how that changes her along the way. At each step her character is informed by her previous decisions. That's the area where I most disagree with previous reviewers -- it never felt meandering or unfocused to me, because there was always clear progression in the character arc. The narrative style never broke me out of the story, but if it felt too telly to other readers, maybe the solution is to have Inkindri talk a little more personally about their reactions to the show's events, make it a little more psychological? I dunno, this worked for me, so I'm just spitballing.

Tier: Solid

This might be something of a nitpick, but I mention it because first impressions of a story have an outsized importance: I appreciate what you're trying to do with the ghost hook of the first sentence, but you're dropping it as a sentence fragment that doesn't cohere with the surrounding context enough to overcome my disorientation at the grammar. Even inserting "It was" at the start would make a difference here, but I think you'd be better served recasting that first paragraph to set up a complete thought terminating with the punch of the ghost reference. (Also, it transitions from a "there" to a "here" without warning; fix that typo, as well as better disambiguating between the town and the mother's house. Which one is Alex living in, and where are they meeting?)

Definitely agreed with the others that this is winding up to something good, but falls apart at the ending. :\ There's already been good advice offered on that.

You still get the chance to –

I have a feeling like I'm missing some crucial context here. Did anyone else understand that? Is it a reference to some other subtle point made earlier in the story?

Tier: Almost There

What previous reviewers said, though I'll add one observation I think might help pull the comedy together.

Some people think that all it takes to write a comedy -- especially a random, whimsical comedy -- is to string jokes together. I don't think that's right, any more than "all it takes to write a good drama is to string dramatic scenes together". This definitely has a lot of jokes strung together, and some of them do hit (I particularly liked the "I appreciate that you appreciate..." bit), so clearly there's potential here. But to me it feels like, when you're trying to crack a different punchline every other paragraph -- and on top of that you're mixing in a straight plot with all the whimsical digressions -- nothing is allowed to build up and compound on other jokes and really escalate the core humor here.

I would dial this back some. Reread the story, figure out which jokes you think are sharpest, and tighten the story around those jokes, finding ways to build your whimsy around those in particular and playing the rest straight (or at least straighter). For example, the king running in in six-inch heels isn't a bad joke, but it might not be this story's joke. If you downplay the king's involvement and keep a tighter focus on the princess, you could use those words to instead double down on the core joke of her loving the dragon -- a couple more descriptions of her sighing dreamily at the lizard, or reading Scale Fantasist's Monthly, or having the knight stumble into her room accidentally to find her little fan obsession shrine.

I also suspect you might be well served dialing back the meta here -- the narrator injecting himself into your story via editorializing and addressing the audience -- but ultimately that's probably a much smaller issue.

Tier: Needs Work

I've got mixed feelings about this one. The prose is tight, and each individual scene is very vivid. I just don't feel like it works as a story quite the way it should.

Take the setting. The protagonist is using a film camera -- which solidly sets this in the 20th Century, or perhaps the Aughts -- and yet we're given background about a worldwide population crisis followed by a fertility crisis, which heavily implies a future setting (unless there's some unexplained AU going on here). There's a family living in Pripyat, which was basically abandoned after Chernobyl, so again that suggests it's been long enough for the radiation to die away. (You don't want to do film photography in a hot zone, anyway, or your film will all end up exposed.) The whole thing feels rather unmoored in time, the more so since at the end he's taking his last shots as an old man. I think having him be an urban explorer -- taking shots of abandoned places in the post-crash ruins of human society -- could have worked well here to reinforce his characterization and slip in exposition about what happened to the world, but instead we're just shown (as others noted) places that are already desolate.

I think the ending would have more impact if we'd seen the photographer's misanthropy more directly earlier in the story. He spends so much time avoiding humanity that when we see him interact with it for the first time, we don't have any baseline to compare it to, and it's hard to tell exactly how his years of solitude and reflection have changed him. You may want to bookend this with a scene at the beginning of him unexpectedly running across someone on his photography trips and doing his best to ignore them, or something.

Tier: Almost There

Podcast from the last competition, for people who are wondering.

starts with a bang!

but that bang fades off gradually. it was enjoyable throughout, but as the story unfolded it seemed like it missed many opportunities to do something inventive or poignant. not a total deal-breaker; I kept reading thanks to the excellent writing quality carrying the story on its back.

Sophie might be coming back, but my imagination won't.

Maybe that sounds too harsh. I liked it, but I won't remember it. but if the story could match the strength of this writing, who knows what might happen.....

You've got a good story here, author. In fact, you've got two good stories, and unfortunately there's something about the way that they collided that ground me to a complete halt. :(

Like >>Bradel I've got to praise the wittiness of the dialogue here -- e.g. the casual in-joke of "Brains" shows a lot about their relationship effectively and economically; and on the whole the death-poetry casting rotes give this a neat and literary flavor -- and this starts out building toward a sweet and sad sort of psychological climax about Peter finally coming to terms with Sabriel's death and making the decision to let her go. And then the story shifts gears so hard it nearly derails, from Frankenstein into Dresden, and this starts ticking off the urban-fantasy adventure checklist, and I just hit a wall. It really didn't help that your first story felt so much stronger than the second -- others have commented on the hasty fight descriptions, and the intrusiveness of the exposition, and the casual volunteering of Peter's information in a you-look-trustworthy-join-us D&D campaign sort of way. If you'd started the story in Dresden mode, those still wouldn't be great, but they'd at least be tonally consistent with an adventure-fantasy setting. But the way you started out had me expecting so much more from this, and I couldn't ride out the transition.

I do hope this gets edited into shape after the competition.

Tier: Almost There

>>Cold in Gardez
Podcast of who/what? The Writeoffs having podcasts is news to me.

>>horizon
This is why we have a group chat, horizon. :admonishing_look:

This is another one that seems to me to be dragged down by a sudden gearshift in the middle of the story. Unlike The Necromancer's Wife, though, it shifts gears down. There's a burst of initial action (and a great hook), followed by some wider context and setting up of conflicts, and then the actions just sorta stops as Brendam and Dav take a walk and Brendam lectures him on mirror-universe theory for a while. That part really dragged for me, but I'm a pretty sci-fi-literate guy and the concept is old hat to me, so for general audiences like the Writeoff you may have been better served giving that explanation anyhow.

Where you unambiguously could have improved it was to thread that exposition together with something else occurring so that the scene served two purposes at once. Right now it feels like the story sort of goes on hold while the premise is explained. What if the walk to the hospital was so short that Dav started getting his fingers fixed while Brendam was telling him how it worked? That actually could kick off an interesting conflict of its own -- suddenly Dav's then confronted with the ethics of having basically just stolen mended fingers from some other Dav in some other universe. (You could do this with the current story, too, by having him face that choice as he reaches the hospital and deciding whether to go in or not -- but that wouldn't give a second purpose to the exposition scene. In fact, that's where I thought this story was going, but it stops before it gets there, so it doesn't really feel like this reaches the end of its story arc to me. Even leaving the answer to that question hanging would have worked to some extent, but you only ever really ask it by implication, so the story feels like it's just introducing an idea that I already knew and asking me to think about consequences I'm already well familiar with.)

So, yeah. Fantastic setup. Bring everything else up to the standards of that first scene or two.

Tier: Almost There

This was good, and was a fun little romp, but I have to admit to getting lost in the descriptions of the spells at times. The action scenes didn’t quite come together for me, and some of the shouting seemed a bit… trite, I guess? I dunno.

That said, I did love the ideas behind this overall. I agree with Baal Bunny (>>Baal Bunny ) WRT: the coincidence of them doing it on the same night; it should either be a night with some significance that would require them both to act at the same time, or Crowley actually be trying to trick them (possibly into getting into a fight with the police?).

The world was bursting at the seams, and some of it was really good, but as noted, some parts didn’t quite end up pulling me along as well.

The central idea behind this – and the two central characters – was a great deal of fun, and the necromancers were very enjoyable to read about as people, but as Horizon ( >>horizon ) noted, the second half with the fight scene just didn’t do it for me.

A story about Kitty the Toy Puppy, and his marvelous adventures with Claire. Except it isn’t – it is actually about his adventure with her growing up, as she gradually moves on from playful things, and then, eventually, passes him on to her own son (or possibly someone else’s, I suppose).

I didn’t get the feeling of pretentiousness that Bradel got, but I do have to admit that, while the story was doing its best to be vivid, and the language was fairly momentous, it didn’t move me.

In the end, I’ve seen this story before, but it did an okay job of it and the vivid writing did a lot to push it upwards. That said, in the end, as Cold in Gardez warned, I didn’t actually end up feeling.

>>Bradel >>Solitair
I think seeing a full spectrum of responses is important. In any case, while the story didn’t bore me as it did Bradel, it did feel like something I’d read before.

I don't think they got "unlucky", really. I mean, every story has people who "miss" it.

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
This might sound like a dumb question, but where can I find this group chat?

>>Solitair
Top of the page, the "Chat" button.

I actually really enjoyed this one – like, really super enjoyed it, and it made me smile throughout. Though at the same time, I can’t argue with any of the criticisms that have been levelled at it. In particular, Joan’s dialogue bothered me in how inconstant it felt, switching from full on countryisms to modern day city talk at the drop of a hat. And I fully agree with everyone who said that the middle section was noticeably weaker – in fact, I felt basically the same way as Ferd Threstle, in that the whole story kind of fell into place early on, and then didn’t offer up much in the way of fresh twists and surprises (although that said, I loved the ending, even if it wasn’t very substantial).

I had other issues as well, but I won’t dwell on them since other reviewers have already covered them. You’ve had some really great feedback on this one :-)

But yeah! Issues aside, the writing flowed smoothly, the pacing was decent, and the concept itself was irresistible. The adventures of a time-travelling robot teaming up with Joan of Arc!! What’s not to love? It's like some sort of strange riff on The Terminator, and I simply adored it.

This round has been incredibly strong, and I’ve absolutely struggling with how I’m going to vote. But I think this’ll end up pretty high on my slate.

...I only just realized what's going on in this ending. Man, I'm stupid.

However, looking at it again, I'm also realizing one new criticism: I loved Cesar's arc, except for his ending. I get what you're trying to do—unknown man embraces him in their final hours—but it feels lackluster. Needs more meat to it.

I agree with >>Lucky_Dreams here, and in particular his analogy to the ticking time bomb. I think that developing her relationship with Alex more would really help, and knowing that there is a bomb (or at least, might be a bomb) would be helpful. In fact, I think it might be better to introduce her differences with Alex, then have her seem to be over them, towards the beginning, and then introduce her previous revenge using the ghost (and her general anger issues), which could set that bomb ticking. In fact, having a bit more of her anger issues in general might help, things she just couldn't let go of.

I do have to say that I liked this story on the whole, but it didn’t quite come together for me. And I agree with Lucky Dreams’ point about the ghost being a natural part of the world working well.

The end also makes me question whether or not she's done it before; if so, making it clearer that the knick-knacks were the remnants of her victims might help (and might also help lend further sinister implications deeper in the story - maybe have Ella die, and some sign that one of her knick-knacks was from her).

This was a very convoluted story. Quite clever in places, but I think it choked on its own convolutions at times. There just wasn’t enough grounding for a lot of it to have its impact, and so while this was a roller coaster ride, I was never really fully engaged because I always felt like I was just a bit too distant to connect.

This was pretty neat in many ways, but I think that it was bursting a bit at the seams to the point where some stuff was leaking out. So, promising ideas, but the sheer level of convolution here made it hard to connect.

Out of my collection, this one topped the list at an A+. One of the marks of a good story is the way it can gallop across the page and entrance you into reading faster and faster until you hit the end like a brick. There may have been technical flaws in it which I missed, but missing them while reading is an indicator of how tight the story held me. Nice play on the POV character being based on 'Sophia' (Greek for 'Wisdom') by the way.

Well-written, but trite, the story’s resolution trips it up badly. I actually thought that the overall idea behind this – the shape – was promising as he realizes just how fucked up his life is and decides to throw caution to the winds and try to win.

But they pretty much just win at the end, as pretty much everyone points out, and it undercuts anything it was building up to.

This one came in second on my slate, because it didn't hold together quite as well as 'Tiny Planets' in the end. The repeated 'Goddam' did not set me back a single step, because I had an uncle who used that particular word just the same way most people breathed. Reminded me of the National Parks commercial where the forest ranger is talking to all of the animals before the tourists arrive. Goddam good. A+

Very nice story that came in third on my list. The depth of the world from which it seems drawn is impressive, but flawed from the sheer number and diversity of details flung at the reader (which oddly enough is one of the strong points of it too). There's a good solid A on this one.

Fourth on my list, and most probably because of my personal preferences rather than story quality (my admitted weakness). I lost track of where the story was going about halfway in, and picked it up again at the end. Stil, very good work and more than a little creepy. Solid B+ from me and most likely A material for people who are more in tune with the subject matter.

Fifth on my list and quite good, just pushed down by some really quality works above it. Tales of sealing wax and whether pigs have wings aside, it is a nice little romp through territory where Pixar has mined hundreds of millions of dollars, and from which others will certainly mine many more. I liked it. It's one of the few stories I felt the need to read a second time. It just did not grab my heart and squeeze out the heartache I thought it had the potential to do. Perhaps it was hobbled by its length or the low grade level of the language (both of which were most likely reasonable decisions). Still, solid B+ from an adult who has set his kitty back on the shelf many years ago. Think I'll go pick it back up again.

Comedy? I'm sorry, this one wins my IDGI award (I Didn't Get It) for comedy. There were little segments of potentially great comedic scenes in there, but tossed into a random order and scrambled around so I was looking for punch lines where there were none. Sorry about that.

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

11 – The Last Burdens of Childhood, Cut Loose

Hook is passable. I'm not bored, but I'm only a little engaged. I guess there's going to be a ghost in this story. I'm not a fan of the doubled-up timing sentences, though—it feels unnecessarily confusing to be discussing two different timeframes back-to-back in the story's hook, the most important place to make sure your reader's attention is totally committed to your story.

I like the quick pace on the prose, not wasting a whole lot of time to get through descriptive details. The scene-setting in the house carries a bit of nice character like the cigarette burns (though I could do with a bit more, and maybe some multisensory work, which should be pretty easy in a smoker's home).

The "last connection to my youth severed" thing mentally registers to me as a direct contradiction with the bit about Alex in the hook. Maybe it'll turn out to not be contradictory, but it sure feels that way on a first read.

Okay, this is getting entertaining in a hurry now. You've got your fable setup—"whatever you do, don't do X"—so it's pretty obvious where this is going. That never stops these stories from building some good tension, though. This is what half of the horror genre is founded on, at least for films. I'm in. Let's see where this goes.

About halfway through, I'm finding some missing-word and doubled-phrase errors. Worth being aware of, but a good editing pass should pick these up. Also, as much as I enjoy the protagonist's characterization, I feel like her voice goes a little wonky every once in a while. "I have nothing against you," isn't a thing I think I'd ever say to someone in real life. The protagonist's narration occasionally gets a bit technical (e.g. gibbous moon), and that feels a little off for what I want her voice to be based on the rest of the piece, though this may just be me—there are good reasons you're establishing why technical language can fit her. Still, perhaps worth knowing that it occasionally feels a little off to me.

Seeing a bunch more of that voicing stuff with simple word choices. I think the disconnect may be coming from how literary she sounds, even while she's narrating being a pretty impulsive (if smart) teenager. It may also be a product of the transition from the short, choppy lists of the introductory section into the longer prose of the later section, which really does feel different.

The protagonist's mother's use of "We" in the scene where Tom's death is announced is a little strange. Who does that "We" refer to? It doesn't seem to get explained, but it really feels like it needs to be, since the mother specifically talks about how "We" know about the ghost, and the lore, and everything else. If it's completely not a secret, why does it have that aura of mystery when the protagonist first learns about it. If it some kind of closely held information, the mother is making a fairly major statement about who holds that information that remains unresolved.

Hmm. Well, it seems making "I have nothing against you" stand out a bit is intentional.

Well, that went where I was expecting from pretty early on. I don't really get why, though. It seems like the implications point at either Alex being responsible for the protagonist's brother's death (which seems pretty damn sketchy, unless I missed something major) or the protagonist just kind of being a murderous psychopath. Obviously something happened that the protagonist blamed Alex for, but I really don't feel like I've got a clear handle on what.

The sad thing is that I don't think the story has done enough work to make me really care, either. There's definitely some good stuff here, and I expect this story is going to look a lot better once it's been spruced up a bit. Plenty of foreshadowing, a bit of tension in a few spots, and it tries to weave everything together into a nice concerted whole. It mostly does a good job with that, though I'm not sure that it really has enough words for so many characters to breathe. I get the impression that you're expecting us to care about the protagonist, her brother, Tom, Ella, and Alex—but all the characters except the protagonist have very limited roles in the story, and hardly extend outside those roles. There's a sense in which this serves the story's tone: this story always feels spare and empty, like the mother's house, like the beach at night, like the protagonist's solitary-seeming life. But it also nerfs some of the tension, since we never have a whole lot of reason to care about anyone here.

Feel like I'm rambling a bit at this point. This was generally a fun read, with a lot of nice bits of tone and setting. Unfortunately, there's nothing especially new or unexpected, and the prose and construction generally feel loose. Normally I'd probably advise just tightening this up until you've got your core story without any distractions, but the distractions are giving you some of the tone, which is one of the highlights here. So (I know this is kind of nebulous advice) instead I'd probably advise fleshing out some of the details and characters here while trying to retain the spare tone, and then going through and trying to prune back everything that's not directly giving you tone, theme, character, setting, or plot.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉ (Yes, I left them balanced.)
TIER: Almost There

I have to echo everyone else saying that this was quite good. Solid writing, solid characterization, solid depiction of a family falling apart because they’re not willing/capable of coping with things and are trying to get in arguments with each other… it even had the excellent “we’re going to get in an argument now” feeling that I see sometimes in real life when people are TRYING to get into an argument.

That said, your ending touched off a long argument on the Writeoff Skype about whether or not the ending actually works. The story is mostly mundane, and then the ending of the story more or less states that the ghost of Claire’s dad is hanging out in a graveyard in upstate New York.

I think the real question is whether or not it resolves the story correctly emotionally. I think it might have worked better if it was ambiguous as to whether or not she had really heard the ghost, because as-is, it seems like the ghost is there to give them emotional closure, but that is sort of a deus ex machina in an otherwise realistic story. If Claire’s behavior had given them a reason to all have a good cry/group hug/finally resolve things amongst them, I think that would have been enough without confirming that ghosts are real after all. It would have left it ambiguous as to whether or not Claire was just imagining things, or if it was real, or if she had been whistling to herself to cheer herself up, or whatever.

Don’t You Cry For Me

Last story on my slate, and one that’s gotten quite a bit of positive comment. I’ll state right up front that this is easily on top of my ballot (though, notably, it’s not competing against some of the other stories being mentioned as top contenders yet).

The writing is uniformly excellent, minus that dratted missing word in the second sentence. The style of writing is beautifully professional. Understated. I could learn a lot from this. The interpersonal conflicts and choice of real, human characters with real, human problems is wonderful.

Okay, now the criticisms.

First, what happened to their father’s body? The story goes out of its way to say that, apparently, it’s still in the smoldering basement of the house fire that killed him. If I’m reading this correctly, that’s… well, it’s very unusual. Except in extraordinary circumstances, bodies are recovered from fires, especially house fires. Reading this was (as I put it in the chat) like reading a perfectly realistic story about a family that suddenly sits down and has raw milkweed pods for dinner. It’s just jarring.

Second, Claire seems unusually self-aware for a nine-year-old. I’m willing to overlook this because the narration is clearly in the past tense, meaning that future-Claire is relating this to us.

Finally, and critically, the ending. The sudden realization that yes, their father’s ghost found them in a graveyard in upstate New York is pretty sweeping. It dramatically changes the story, from a sad but normal look at a broken family struggling to heal, to an encounter with the supernatural. It is, as Bradel mentioned, a sudden deux ex machina, with a ghost showing up to solve the family’s feeling of brokenness.

TD hits these same points in his review, so I’ll just add another question.

What happens right after the ending? This family suddenly realized that their dead father is now haunting the graveyard by their house and luring their youngest daughter out at nights. Do they:

a) Celebrate because daddy is home
b)Call out his name in confusion and eventually convince themselves that they’re hallucinating
c)Run screaming back to the house, abandoning Claire to their ghost father, who raises her as the Forest Crone of Glenwood.

We don’t really know, but when you think about it, it’s a pretty critical question. Certainly more critical than the question of whether their father is a ghost (which, we all assumed until that final line, he wasn’t).

So, I dunno, author. You wrote a beautiful story, and then at the end you flipped the table over. It’s still tops on my slate, but I’m left wondering what it could have been.

Edit: Fridge Logic while I was out running. They never found the father's body because he didn't die. He followed them to upstate New York as part of an elaborate insurance fraud scheme.

Gotta admit I'm slightly disappointed this didn't make the finals, as I really liked it. Oh, well. Sounds like some folks didn't like it for being a... well, sort of pony story in an original fiction round.

The original conception of this story came when people were complaining about there not being enough black people nominated for the Oscars. Clearly that's racism!

So my mind of course immediately went to the plight of the Unicorn-American in Hollywood, and how they seem practically invisible - because they are to non-virgins.

It sort of transmogrified itself into its present form, where it is talking about the history of Unicorn-Americans in general, using the method of a fake magazine article format that I all too often see - a story that starts out with a successful member of some ethnic/religious group, and then goes into how that ethnic/religious group is oppressed.

But of course, with the absurd subject matter of unicorns, and how the fact that unicorns are only visible to virgins would impact their interactions with humans.

The original conception of this story had fewer links to MLP, but I ended up throwing a few more in because I thought that people here would be able to appreciate them.

The story was peppered with little jokes while simultaneously playing the subject matter straight - all of the names were puns (matching with the MLP theme-naming of ponies), the unicorn gamer had the ambiguously sexist/derogatory "N0H0rn" screenname... I feel like I missed an opportunity to have an interview with an actual poor unicorn in there, though on the other hand, it sort of implied a certain sort of discrimination by the article writer which was actually somewhat intentional (we feel sorry for the poor, but we don't actually see them as people).

I had a lot of fun writing this and working out the implications of how unicorns would struggle with modern real-world society, and am probably going to try and edit it a bit and then stick it up somewhere (possibly on FIMFiction, as apparently people's complaints about this being too pony probably means it will pass muster there).

So, I entered under an assumed name, because I really feel my story has deep flaws, and the raging self-doubt that inundates every day of my existence convinced me it would be swiftly swept away at finals. Also, I wanted to try out the alias thing, and this seemed like as good a chance as any.

But... people seemed to like it despite the flaws, which is pretty cool. Also, we had a smallish turnout, and you guys would be able to peg me by elimination now anyways. So, if you're guessing for me, you can guess me as TheSecondMouse.

He's the one who gets the cheese.

Sorry for the confusion. In the future, I'll probably either go Anonymous, or stick to my own account.

God, this should've made the finals. The wording, the descriptions, they're precise and melancholy and they paint two pictures for us at once – the landscapes through which the writer walks, but also the slowly emerging history that led to this point.

Not really reviewing finalists, but I'll leave a few lines on these as I rank them.

I dislike all your characters. That doesn't mean this is a bad story, but it makes it hard for me to enjoy it. Oh, sure, they've all got 'excuses', but this seems pathetic and tragic throughout, including the ending. I have a hard time believing it's a happy one. They haven't changed or solved any of their problems, and I can't see it getting better from here. Not really sure what to make of it.

Oh, and "For a moment I became one of Pavlov’s dogs," really made me wonder about the narrator's attitude to their father. It's one of the coldest and most impersonal comparisons I've read in a paragraph that's ostensibly describing affection.

So I wrote this one. At the 'no prompt' thing, I was in a skype conversation, and got a possible prompt from Jake R, of 'Hindsight is 20/20.' I'm not sure I actually used that prompt, but in thinking about it a couple of things I've been thinking about lately, specifically cryonics and the Star Trek 'transporter problem,' combined in my head to a dark little story about the nature of self and a hidden danger of cryonics—namely that even if everything works out exactly like the cryonicists hope, there's no real guarantee that the person who wakes up in the future is actually you. I approached writing it from an oldschool science fiction perspective and aimed for a narrow, specific focus.

Unfortunately, I seem to have missed the mark on a couple things. The biggest error seems to be in selling that theming. I've been thinking a lot about the transporter problem recently and have a bunch of 'nature of self/what makes a person' philosophical quandaries bouncing around in my head, pretty fully fleshed out, which I'm afraid made the themes rather obvious to me, and at the risk of wielding those themes like a sledgehammer and hitting the pretentious button, I went subtle on them in the conversation at the end. And...got too subtle, it seems, to where the ending was confusing or unsatisfying for people, as there was a lot of 'what's the point?' comments.

Related, I think I misjudged the level of common knowledge that people had for cryonics. I wouldn't consider myself that much of an expert on them, but there do seem to be some points that I assumed were known that were confusing, and I probably should have found a way to explain things better without getting too expository. To answer a few questions (that have been bugging me for days now):

>>Baal Bunny this is in fact one of the great debates surrounding cryonics, and as it's a big debate, doesn't really have any satisfying answers. One can easily assume that as the population gets bigger, even in an otherwise shiny positive future, the likelihood of a it being considered a positive thing to bring a bunch of frozen people back to life would go down. On the other hand, if we as a species get off this rock and start outward expansion, that negative goes vastly down. As for general incentive, there's a rather benign answer: the cryonicists paid the cryonics company a shitload of money to store their 'remains' until such a time as they could be revived, and the cryonics company believed in the ideals of cryonicism. When they could be revived, that's what the company did, because that's what they were paid to do and it's what they felt was the morally correct thing. I didn't really touch on the specifics of the universe of 2268 because it wasn't really relevant to the story, but the implication I had in mind is that the technology level that was reached involved the existence of an atomic printer—a device that could generate matter from a blueprint out of particles. Such a piece of technology abolishes the concept of scarcity, and would theoretically push the world into a post-scarcity economy. The concept of money no longer really needs to exist in that sort of world. The cost of regenerating bodies from the stored remains is the cost of the energy to run the machine, and the particles used, both of which are ostensibly renewable resources.

>>Monokeras To the first bullet, vitrification is just the process of converting a liquid to a solid without forming crystals—glass is a vitrified form of liquid silicate, for example. There's no super-advanced tech that didn't exist in 1992 on display. Cryonics companies have been vitrifying bodies since the cryonics movement took off in the sixties. To the second bullet, and this is where I think I fell down in really explaining things, the corrupted memories were Jessie's memories. Something in the layout or processes of her neurons got messed up and transposed in the printing process, making her personal memories wrong. The company's data was all correct, based on photographic evidence, DNA, and records. Four and five I'm less sure how to answer, because I'm not sure how I alluded to either of those things. Five, I guess is the line 'such a waste'? Which is just a saying, and was referring to the time and effort being a waste, not an actual waste product. He was just lamenting that he had to destroy a pretty normal-seeming person and do the job over again as kinda sucking. As for the phone call being telly, it apparently wasn't telly enough since I biffed the themes so hard.

Anyway, I have a few plans for fixing the themes and making them more apparent (hopefully without going too far in the other direction), and I'm going to rejudge how much base level knowledge I should assume for explaining the cryonics process. Thanks everybody for taking the time to read and share their thoughts on it.

You've got pleasant characters here, Author, but the plot isn't much to speak of. I kept flipping back and forth with how much AU/fantasy was in this fic. Crowley? Really? >.< Anyways, I did enjoy parts of this, but it's rather disjointed and unhinged plot-wise and with some of the descriptions, especially your fight-scene. Your sections are almost running at cross-purposes.

Still, it was fun enough.

This has an excellent opening, and the descriptions are beautiful throughout.

I think this: "December night, all to help remind a girl she scarcely spoke to that she wasn’t alone, and that there was no shame in being a failure." was the core of the story? And it's not a bad one. However, everything here seems to come in very linearly, with little interleaving and callback; it doesn't support itself nearly as well as it might. I don't know if that makes a whole lot of sense, but... I'm not sure I have a better way to say it. A touch of recursion or foreshadowing is what I think would make the most improvement here, I guess.

At the very least, introducing her fears and pressures more strongly before we get to dancing letters would keep me from concluding this is going to be a story about dyslexia in spellcasting.

This story isn't bad, but seems to do very little with an awful lot of words.

Your MC spends much time eating, sleeping, pondering, and technobabbling; I wondered if printing out a paragraph of machine readouts was an indicator of how you were using your space, and that seems to have been the case. I think you'd be best of tightening up your wording and descriptions drastically, first and foremost, and secondly, I think you need to decide what you're trying to convey overall, here, and try to re-assess your ending to see if it's conveying it - because it really doesn't seem to be saying much of anything, to me. It just sort of ends. Kinda like

>>Cold in Gardez
I feel you, man. I mean, I don't usually go for stories like this, and I agree with a lot of the criticisms others left, including from Bradel! But the writing is so strong that I felt for sure this would end up doing better than it did.

I wish I'd rated it higher now. That said, even my lowest rated story was one which I really enjoyed... my slate has been sooo good this round, and some of my placements made me feel very cruel.

>>Lucky_Dreams, >>Cold in Gardez

Agreed, I had it in the upper quartile. Loved the evocative prose on it, and at some points I was half thinking it was a CiG work, as it evoked the same sort of vibe I've gotten from his Lost Cities tales.

I had this up pretty high in my voting, too. I'm kind of sad that it didn't make the cut.

>>Cold in Gardez
Sorry, everyone who liked this. I just wasn't feeling it, and I'm one of those plebeian idiots who puts prose quality near the bottom of his list of things to consider about stories.

Cursory recap

>>Orbiting_kettle
>>Ferd Threstle
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Solitair
>>Bradel
>>horizon
>>Bradel
>>wYvern
>>Lucky_Dreams

Thanks guys for reading this dreck. I was somewhat happy with the basic idea, but as a matter of fact I had no idea of what would happen between the beginning and the end, and that gave birth to this rather lengthy, insubstantial and dragging middle, where I simply juxtaposed ideas after ideas without any cohesion. On top of that I botched the dialogues, and the picture is almost complete. My week-end was bumpy, and I couldn’t really afford more than a few writing spells of half-an-hour or so, so no wonder it sounded so disjointed. And then, as I went ahead and realised I was botching the story, I lost about all momentum, so I really slaved at writing the last thousands of words, and when it was finished, it was rather ‘phew’ than ‘yeah!’.

I’m not really proud of it.

Lucky_Dreams, I’m really glad you enjoyed it despite all its flaws. Ferd Th. I’m honoured you could even consider that this fic could be remotely suitable for publication, which was galaxies away of what I thought. For all the others, your reviews were spot on, and thanks for your valuable advice, as always. At least, I’m more or less happy that—barring the dialogues—the English had only minor scars. And Solitair, thanks for being blunt.

Good luck to all finalists and see you during the next round in ten days or so.

Just Do It - Retrospective

This round was a lesson in hubris.

I thought that I would have enough time to write two stories this time around; I had two decent ideas, and what felt like enough time to write them, even after sacrificing my Friday to work and D&D. The beginning and ending sections of Just Do It were the first things I wrote, and I was pretty pleased with where the story began and (perhaps erroneously) ended. Then, I had a series of ideas for the second story, so I switched to writing that one instead.

Cut to five hours left on the submission clock, and 3500 words into the second story I realized it was pretty terrible. I abandoned ship and wrote the middle section of Just Do It, then spent the remaining hour trying to polish everything to a mirror shine. I (clearly) didn't take the larger context of the story into consideration when I did so; I focused on stitching the endcaps I had together in the most efficient way possible, just to have something worth submitting. I was still making last-second edits during the five-minute grace window when submissions were closed.

That said, I really appreciate everybody who took a look at the story - the message is pretty universal that everything got wrapped up far too neatly and far too quickly. I have several ideas for how to go about improving the story through adding additional conflict, dialing down the rhetoric w/ regards to Tim's job a notch or two for relatability, and also tweaking the actions of Tim and Kayla so they're not quite so reprehensible as human beings (having suffered through walkouts in prior jobs myself, I'm kinda surprised I let that be how things played out - heat of the moment, I guess).

I'm glad that most of you liked the writing, at least. It seems like my writing skills are slowly improving, even if I'm making worse storytelling decisions. If nothing else, I brightened >>Not_A_Hat 's day, and that's something. ^_^

Oh, >>Dubs_Rewatcher - that story about the cousin who got a summer job at the radio station? That's actually what happened to me, the summer after I graduated high school, without exaggeration. Granted, for the first month they had me in the basement alphabetizing files and organizing promotional material, but once I'd proved I wasn't going to flake out, they actually started showing me the ropes of the business - the ins and outs of Cool Edit Pro, how to write ad copy, etc. At the end of the summer they tried to hire me on as a minimum wage part-timer, but I had already committed myself to attending college by that point. But you're right, it does come off as unrealistic - and looking back, most of what I did was unpaid grunt work that nobody else was really keen on doing. /shrug

I'm looking forward to the round when I can finally pull it all together.

Best of luck to all the finalists - I have to say, we have a really good crop of entries this time around. I've been really impressed!