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A Word of Warning · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
Show rules for this event
Homemade
"A word of warning, two words of caution, half a word of love." I glanced at the recipe. It had taken me half an year to collect the ingredients. The caution alone needed five weeks to mature. I still felt bad sawing the seeds in my best friend. We had been through a lot together, even if he was as normal as they come.

I placed the words of caution into the vial. They swirled around, leaving a trail of light blue smoke. Then I added the word of warning. Instantly the cautions moved away, as if afraid of the warning's glowing red. The started circling it at equal distances at each other, like a pair of kittens walking around a cucumber—curious about it, yet far to scared to approach. I smiled. It was always amusing to watch words interact. The first time it happened, I had been mesmerized for hours.

Back to work, I urged myself. Time was growing short, and I had barely begun with my preparations.

"Two words of advice, a pinch-full of adventure," I went on, inadvertently cringing at the latter. Why couldn't people use proper measurements? It had taken me an year to figure out the exact quality of a "pinch" and even then it was mostly a matter of interpretation. A lot of the old recipes still used this absurd and obsolete measuring system. I preferred clarity.

The advice plopped into the vial, letting off a series of golden bubbles. In pure form, they were inert, not reaction with anything else. That's what the love was for, although I was going to add that at the very end. Love was weird like that—it dissolved quickly, avoiding almost every other word. It was also extremely tricky to get right. Add too much and it would overpower any other sensations, add too little and it would shy away like a scared child, leaving no affect whatsoever.

"Three fourths of melancholy..." Originally the reception called for half, but I liked adding a bit more. It added a certain softness, or so I found. Not that anyone would admit, my girlfriend included. She would always complain about melancholy, yet only when she knew it was present. On a second anniversary I had secretly added a quarter word of melancholy and she had loved it, not suspecting one bit that the so dreaded ingredient had "contaminated her senses."

"Three words of mystery, one word of expectation..." expectation had been another tricky one to get. It used to be much more common, now I could only find it on Fridays. Thank heavens that my neighbour—a nice middle aged school teacher—still had hopes for his students. Each time there was a test, expectations were oozing out of him, in the hopes that someone had actually paid attention during his classes. I had to pick them quickly, though, for those expectations began shriveling away during during grading.

One by one, I kept adding the ingredients. Words of various shapes and colours moved around the vial. Some would stick to one another, while others would try to move away, almost sticking to the glass walls.

"A single word of sorrow..." I quickened the pace. "Four words of acceptance, one word of mischief, and one word of forgiveness." I liked to mix sorrow and forgiveness; they added a specific bittersweet aroma to things, after several attempts I had finally found the right proportion. Of course, my mentor would grumble at me for using whole world. In his view I was being sloppy and slothful, using one word when I should have zero-point-seven. He was right, of course—whole words rarely won contests, but for homemade i still felt they were the better choice.

I added the half word of love to the mixture, then quickly stirred. A bouquet of colours exploded, bubbling out of the vial in scary speed. In a few seconds they would be gone, reduced to a grey stale substance. Until then, however, they were most beautiful thing in the world.

With a stern hand I poured the mixture on a piece of paper. Technically it was supposed to be parchment, but those were expensive, so I saved them only for contests and special occasions. Besides, this was a casual get together.

"Jenny," I called out from the kitchen, as letters—still steaming with colour—moved together forming words. "The sonnet's ready. Come before it gets cold."

I smiled, admiring my creation. Nothing could beat a good homemade sonnet.
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#1 · 3
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Relevant

This has a weirdly meta feel to me. Like, it's clearly about someone making fiction, and there's even 'winning a contest' involved.

However, while the idea is interesting and the writing is engaging, I wasn't really seeing how it tied into the real world. I dunno if I should say I wanted meta. However, for a while there I was sorta expecting it?

Moreover, while this is a clever idea, we're really just getting a straightforwards narrative. No real twists, no real drama. It's all very... calm and straightforwards.

I mean, sure, it's a minific, what can you do. But still, I'd like a little more story to the story.

Love the idea, but the execution isn't super exciting.
#2 ·
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A cute premise, well executed, but I'd hesitate to really call this a story. More like a world building exercise in 750 words.

Still, the premise is interesting, and the language is well done, so props where it's due.
#3 ·
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As usual, got to agree with the previous comments.

Interesting premise, but not really a story, unless it is some meta connection.
#4 ·
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Some typos to begin with :( (half an year, ‘sawing’ instead of sowing, ‘reception’ instead of recipe? whole world instead of ‘word’, I presume) and missing words and ‘begin begin grading’. I've omitted others, but it looks a bit rushed.

Otherwise the concept is amusing. But
It
Lacks
‘Rhyme’

For what is a sonnet without rhyme?

But it's a nice try at an original alchemy combination! And yeah, poetry is better when consumed fresh. Don't let the words rust.
#5 ·
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I'll agree with the others that this is a cool premise, but not a story (though I'm not sure it absolutely needs to be a story, sometimes a clever idea is enough). If you wanted to make it into a story, you could try starting with characters. Who is the poet? What he is he writing, and who is he writing it for? What does he want and what does he fear?

I also think you really need to show us a sonnet. A lot of build up here for no reveal.
#6 · 2
· · >>AndrewRogue
I still felt bad sawing the seeds …


Sowing.

Which brings me to a larger plea, aimed not at you but at the Writeoff in general: Even if you don't have time to edit, for all stars' love re-read your first paragraph! First impressions are so massively important. If the first paragraph has errors, that primes me as a reader to brace myself for a lower-quality story — rather than suspending my disbelief and getting engaged, I put on my copy-editing armor and right from the start I'm reading critically to see how the story could best be improved. You don't want me to do this! I'll suggest improvements no matter what, because Writeoffs, but if I enjoy a story it goes way the hell higher on my slate.

It's not uncommon for me to drop into "editing mode" midway through a story regardless of how it starts, and I've certainly read stories which stumble out of the gate but pick me back up later on … but the impact of that first paragraph is massive. Back when I was giving HITEC and/or HORSE scores, H for Hook had its own full category.

*ahem* Anyway.

Still on that first paragraph: This is completely a nitpick, but "half a word" of love jarred — how does one divide a metaphysical concept like a "word" in half? You might want to double all of the numbers, or else use "syllable" (which provokes its own weird existential questions).

I went on, inadvertently cringing at the latter. Why couldn't people use proper measurements? It had taken me an year to figure out the exact quality of a "pinch" and even then it was mostly a matter of interpretation.


… On the other hand, you earn most of your points back for explicitly lampshading that later on. (I'd still avoid the "half a word" bit until after you've done that lampshading.)

And to be fair, this is one of those stories that (after the initial stumbling) I was able to settle into as it went on. The frequent typos appear to be another case of autocorrect-itis, but otherwise the prose seemed pretty clean. I enjoyed the worldbuilding, and the descriptions and digressions are entertaining enough that I don't mind that it's taking its time doing whatever it's doing.

Then … the ending. Mmm.

While this is "not really a story", I've gotta strongly disagree with previous commenters that that is in itself a problem. With only 750 words, sometimes we get scenes that just want to be scenes — sort of tone sketches or character sketches that illustrate a moment in time rather than an arc. (I do criticize stories for being incomplete when they feel like they do not work as self-contained pieces — see e.g. >>horizon — but that's a different thing from whether they are stories or scenes. If a moment in time without any plot progression makes the point that the author wants to make, and feels comfortably self-contained, I'm happy to score it favorably. And it's not just me — see e.g. The Red Forest, which is no more a complete story than this is, but which medaled several rounds back.)

What I do take issue with here is that all of this explicitly magical construction was used to write a sonnet. In a world in which it's explicitly lampshaded that non-magical writing exists, because you have teachers grading papers. Which leads me to a fundamental question: Why? What's going on here that poetry either can't be written the traditional way, or isn't as good when written the traditional way? This might just be me, but I feel like that cheapens the act of writing — turning it from the sweat and agony we all undergo, the scrambling for individual words and the bloodletting of editing, into a sort of magical "black box" where you push button and receive words. I mean, yes yes, there's the lengthy work of collecting the components … but 1) the components are words themselves, making the process weirdly self-referential; and 2) what's the benefit of doing it magically if it takes that much more effort? I mean, if it took me a year to write a single sonnet, it had better be one that the angels are going to sing about for decades, except that the spell is apparently common enough that there's a recipe for it, and the mage/author certainly doesn't think much of the product if they're not even bothering to commit it to parchment! So this stumbles hard for me as a metaphor for writing. I would have rather seen the ending reveal, well, almost literally anything else.

Rant over. As much as I hated the ending, the rest of this, I feel, delivers pretty well.

Tier: Strong
#7 · 1
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The Great

Cute concept. The metaphor works well and the overall tone is quite sweet.

The Rough

Definitely needs another pass. There are a lot of random technical issues throughout (including a few weird word misuses - kinda makes me think this was written on a phone).

The similes you use really stand out, which also draws attention to the fact that you're using them. It really takes me out of the writing. Either flood the thing with them or cut them, I think.

I'm kinda neutral on the "not a story" thing (vignettes are rad sometimes), but between that and >>horizon's criticism regarding the ending, I might suggest tuning this piece ever so slightly to have the alchemist be struggling to find the right mixture, rather than know it rote. That both creates conflict and reduces the (now that I'm thinking about) somewhat frustrating metaphorical result being so -easy- for the main character.
#8 ·
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There a few technical hiccups here and there, but I was able to overlook them, which means they weren't dhow-stopping for me.

I'm in the "Doesn't need to be a story" camp, so the lack of development didn't detract much from it.

I generally got the impression that the Narrator's Art wasn't common knowledge. The MC speaks from his master and from old recipes, details which hint to a more classical esoteric education than what we got today, which makes me suspect that not many know about aside from Jenny and other practitioners.

I agree with my esteemed colleagues (don't tell them we are colleagues, I don't think they know and we shall better let them live in blessed ignorance) that the result of all the work was kind of a let-down. I'm not sure if it is me who didn't understand it fully and all the exercise is simply a metaphorical description for the act of writing (as in the words gathered from others are simply experiences born from interaction which find their way in the work of the Narrator) or if they should be taken almost literally, in which case it would be better probably to expand on why all the word chemistry was done to obtain what seems to be a normal sonnet.

Anyway, nicely written and it made me think about it for a while, which is a quite positive trait.
#9 ·
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I think what I enjoy most about this story is the creative ways that the main character portions the ingredients. Just the idea that he has to work out how much of “melancholy” or “advice” to put into a bowl is entertaining to watch. I also liked the idea that you had to add the emotions and other aspects in just the right threshold; throwing in just equal amounts wouldn’t make for a good sonnet. There had to be a certain balance.

That being said, I have to file in with the other commenters about this feeling like more of an ‘exercise’ than a story. Normally, I wouldn't really mind this; I don't demand that a work has to be a strictly plot or character driven piece. Doing a piece more focused on an emotional experience can really work out if the right tactics are used. But this story doesn't quite manage to use them quite right, particularly when it comes to character.

Despite all the details we get about the ingredients, we don’t really know anything about the narrator or his girlfriend in terms of character. I get that the focus is supposed to just be on the creation of the sonnet, but it can be hard to really care about the successful mixing when we don’t really know who it’s being made for (and why). Again, I wouldn't really mind this aspect, but the fact that the narrator constantly mentions his girlfriend so often makes the piece feel like it's being driven by his desire to give her this sonnet. Once that happens, it feels rather frustrating to not know anything about these people and why they're worth baking sonnets for.

A very pretty piece, but it doesn’t feel like it entirely justifies itself by the end.