Short Story Competition 2 (Jude) - VOTE HERE!

af_thefragile

I really like 1.
It holds good amount of tension and mystery right till the very end. Really well written. Had no clue where it was all going right to the end.

Though not gonna vote till I've read them all.

looksee

Version 13

The stories were all good, and the writing style was excellent, all of them were very readable.

I thought the style of number 1 was very good, but there seemed to be some gaps in the story, or maybe I just wasn't picking up hints? I didn't get the whole thing about the paper and also about Ellen going home.

Number 7 was intriguing, with a nice twist, but I don't believe you could break a man's neck in an aeroplane seat 'without breaking stride'. And I really doubt that an ex member of the Taliban would be employed as an air marshall.

My favourite though was number 12, a human story of rape of a teenager by a 'step-father' (step-boyfriend?). The victim has to deal with the consequences forced on her by a mother too concerned about her own emotions, and social consequences, to worry about her daughter. And the 'bully' of the piece turning out to be the one sympathetic character in the story. Beautifully and sympathetically written without overdoing it, I would love to know what happened next.

--amadeus--

Version 13

I just voted for the one, number 12. In a space that short there isn't room for much plot so the characters have to be quickly but well drawn and that one really stood out as authentic.

Very surprised at how many stories ran along the turbulence / terrorist / death lines, I suppose that was another reason #12 stood out for me.

pickarooney

Version 11

Just a reminder to everyone voting to please leave a comment in the thread with some feedback, even if minimal. Thanks.

Michellenman

Version 8

I voted for number 7 too. In such a short space there was real plot and development of character. Even though a lot of the entries went with the terrorism idea, the twist in the story really made No. 7 stand out. There was an easy flow to the story and no unnecessary added detail to complicate things. Kudos to the author, thoroughly enjoyable.

DingosAteMyBaby

Version 2

I voted for number one. I felt it very well written and we really got to know the character in the short space of time. It just left me wanting more:)

Walls

Version 8

Hi

I voted for No. 7. I clicked on the link when I was stressed as hell and that was the one story that grabbed my attention and kept it. I really did like the idea of the countdown (three minutes, two minutes, etc) as it kept the writing tight and within a structure. And the twist was not too obvious and well done. Good for you.

Dublin141

Version 13

I voted for 7 and 12 - on reflection I think I preferred 12 overall. They were the two stories that engaged my attention until the end. 12 managed to include a lot of emotion in a few words so I think that's why it was my favourite. 7 was interesting and well paced. I like twists.

I also enjoyed 3, 10 and 11. Honestly, I enjoyed reading pretty much all of the stories. But three was amusing and I liked the way 10 and 11 took the stories although I was getting a bit fed up of people dying by time I'd read all of the stories.

JimiTime

Version 8

I'm far from a literary critic. I read history and biography rather than fiction, but I used to love writing stories in School. Having read the stories here, 7 definately did it for me. Hooked me in, and I fell for the twist. Very clever. 12 was vivid, in that I could really picture it, but the story didn't really appeal. In my 'fairly uneducated in these matters' opinion, 7 was simply the best story.

Antilles

Version 8

Can't wait to find out who wrote #7. Really great piece!

flahavaj

Version 8

No great expert in such matters but 7 stood out to me. Well written, felt to me to be the closest to reading a published work and intriguing throughout. The last line was brilliant, so simple but yet chilling.

Fair play to everyone involved though, great efforts all round.

pauline fayne

Version 13

I voted for number 12 as it stood out for me as the best written , - I read them all and afterwards this was the one that stayed with me and drew me back to re-read it . Well done to the author .

Antilles

Version 8

Pickarooney is the winner being revealed at 10?

pickarooney

Version 11

The poll is closed, the outstanding votes have been added and we have a clear winner, with or without the postless votes.

And that winner is....

a mystery

Congratulations!

Mr E

Version 13

Mystery? Mr E? Oh I see what you did there.

Thanks to everyone who voted for the mile high adventures of Omar and Ted. It has given me a big confidence boost after getting no votes for my Kim story in the first competition, and I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into Cinderella (metaphorically, not vampirically).

Thanks again.

pickarooney

Version 11

Special request (feel free to ignore): would the writer of story 5 mind telling us exactly what was going on? I think most people were confused by the ending and that probably cost it a few votes.

If anyone wants any more in-depth or specific feedback from their stories, now is the time.

Oryx

Version 11

Well done Mr E, that was a decisive win. Cant wait for your middle eastern vampiric cinderella.
I was the second horse in the race, #12. Thanks to all who voted for the really positive feedback.

Mr E

Version 13

Bravo Oryx.... that was my favourite.

pickarooney

Version 11

Cinderella is going ahead then... thread will be up presently.

Antilles

Version 8

Well done, Mr. E! That was a fantastic story. Also, your comment above made me feel better about my own poor showing this time round.

My story was #2, and I guess I tried to be too clever for my own good. For those who missed it, and ironically enough, considering the eventual winner, it was written entirely without the letter 'E'.

Mr E

Version 13

Antilles wrote: »

it was written entirely without the letter 'E'.

Umm.... an imprssive achivmnt. Can I ask why?

ToasterSparks

Version 13

Well done Mr. E!

My entry was number 10 with the twisted terrorist - came third and I'm delighted. All the entries were interesting in their own way, and the standard was great!

Can't wait to start brainstorming for Cinderella.

angelll

Congratulations Mr E and Oryx too. Mine was number 13 . I did only write it on sat evening but even so,the grammer was appalling as pointed out,sorry! I loved the feedback though,it was very helpful. Maybe the next time we should have to leave comments on EACH piece,regardless of who we voted for?

Antilles

Version 8

Because I wanted to see how difficult it would be.

Very difficult, as it turned out I think that embargo got in the way of the storytelling, unfortunately.

--amadeus--

Version 13

I wrote 6 and teh lesson learned was that no matter how polished the piece might be in your head you need to allow more than 70mins to actually write it, re-read it and edit it before submission :rolleyes: My own fault but a few small tweaks would have made the story a lot easier to understand.

FWIW the events were sequential and the papers were lottery tickets. I wanted to catch the idea of a man who has a great relationship with his child but is in the process of losing that (and what's left of his relationship with his wife) because he's spending all his time day dreaming abput what might be; thinking of the riches of his hoped for lottery win rather than enjoying the family he has (cliche, cliche!)

Well done to MrE and to Oryx on a couple of superb (and very different) stories!

davyjose

Version 11

Well done Mr E, excellent job. Great to see you turn it around so well from the last time.

Mine was #11 which unfortunately didn't fare too well. I suppose I needed another 500 words to make it work, but certainly the standard was immense. You certainly have to be on your game to win this.

Also Starring LeVar Burton

Version 13

Well done Mr. E, a deserved win... Oryx a deserved first runner up... and Toaster Sparks a deserved second runner up...

Looks like I was the third runner up, even though I was miles behind the other three... My story was #3 - the crazy one where everyone worships Batman - and I didn't think I'd get as much positive feedback on it as I did, so thanks... I wrote it in about a half hour and since I'm not a fan of editing or re-writing sent it in as was - for the next competition I'm gonna spend a little more time on my story, see what I can improve and whatnot...

If anyone has anymore feedback for me, that'd be awesome, cheers...

ToasterSparks

Version 13

Yeah, that goes for me too. If anyone wants to bring me down a peg or two with constructive criticism, please go right ahead!

pickarooney

Version 11

CaptainNegative wrote:

If anyone has anymore feedback for me, that'd be awesome, cheers...

I did a really nit-picky second critique, much of which is very subjective.

I checked my jacket pocket once again, to make sure it was still there. It was of course. Not even an idiot would lose a cheque worth 600 billion dollars. I still had no idea how I’d spend all that money – the endless possibilities.

After an excellent opening, the next line throws the paragraph out of shape

I always wanted to live in a castle though, so I guess that’s number one on the list.

The tense is inconsistent and this line contradicts what you've just said about having 'no idea' what to do with it.

I was so engrossed in thoughts of my new fortune that I barely noticed when the pilot announced that we were about to hit turbulence.

Throw out a couple of words to make the sentence more snappy. Also, can you really 'barely notice' an announcement? It could 'barely register' maybe. Just an example:

...fortune that the announcement barely regsitered. Turbulence schmurbulence. But then people started screaming.

I didn’t even care – only a bit of turbulence, completely normal, but when it hit people started screaming. I hardly had a chance to react when I was lunged forward into the seat in front of me. Darkness...

you can't 'be lunged'; you can lunge (voluntarily) or be thrust/thrown/pitched

I opened my eyes, but didn’t know where the hell I was. It took me a few minutes to get a hold of my bearings.

Minor point, but you're essentially telling us twice that you didn't know where you were.

Hospital – how did I end up here? I was trying to piece together events in my head when a young doctor walked in. Her draw dropped in shock when she saw me awake – obviously she wasn’t expecting that.

typo

How long had I been here? It took awhile for me to get answers, but eventually I had been told everything I needed to know.

"A while" is two words in this case. Use simple past and maybe active rather than passive voice for the second bolded bit.

My plane had crashed. Everyone had died. Yes everyone – even me. Four days dead to be precise, but it seems when you’re worth 600 billion, death is merely a minor obstacle...

Nice

Bringing someone who had been dead for four days back to life was not an easy procedure though, especially when they had been decapitated.

It sounds a bit odd when you refer to yourself in the third person plural. You can get around it by using 'especially given the decaptiation...' or something.

However, they managed to get most of my vital organs working. The brain was not quite as responsive as everything else though and needed more time to heal.

You're using too many "thoughs" and "howevers" I feel.

A lot more time – just about 500 years actually, biologically frozen to prevent aging – thawed once every five years for necessary tests.

This sentence is fragmented. Assuming 'biologically frozen' refers to the brain, this needs to be explicit.

It was during one of these tests that I had woken. The doctors were beginning to think that I would never wake up, but it looks like they were wrong. It wasn’t long before I was given a clean bill of health and thus began the first day of my new life.

Tenses jump around a bit. "It looks like they were wrong" is you speaking now, a long time after the fact.

A lot can change in 500 years though – from what I’ve been told has happened, I’m quite glad I was unconscious through certain events, such as the melting of the polar ice caps and the zombie apocalypse.

"Though" again - it serves no purpose here. nor does "has happened" which cludges up the sentence.

Only about a million humans are left on the planet these days. The fact that even that many managed to survive through such events is astonishing. Although there’s not only humans left – once the zombies evolved they learned to live peacefully among us.

And again.

They smell bad and are as thick as sh*t, but ultimately they’re mostly harmless. There are vampires too, but apparently they’ve always walked amongst us – humans just weren’t aware of them until about a hundred years ago. Lovely beings actually – not like the horror movies made them out to be. They don’t even like blood – they get mad cravings for cranberry juice though. The vampires were apparently a great asset during the rebuilding of society and the evolution of the zombies – knew exactly what needed to be done.

The use of dashes here makes it hard to know what bits of what sentences belong together.

Another big change during the time that had passed since the plane crash was in the world of religion... Apparently sometime during the 23d Century, the heads of all the major religions came together and decided to join forces by announcing all of their Gods were false and revealing that there was only one true God. And believe it or not, absolutely everyone believes in this God – whether they are human, vampire or zombie. When I first found out who the ultimate God was, I thought it was a wind up, but of course it wasn’t. Batman... Yes, the same Batman I worshipped as a child is now worshipped by every living and unliving being on the planet. All praise Batman...

Hard to pick faults in a paragraph like this

The worst thing about being 526 years old though, is that everyone you know is dead, and that’s not an easy thing to come to terms with. Well, I say everyone, but that’s not actually true. It turns out one of my best friends from college, Stephen, is a vampire. I really should have guessed back in the day – he hated sunlight and was unnaturally strong for his physique. These days he was going by the name Balthazar, which had come back into fashion during the 2480’s.

The name had come back into fashion or 'going by the name Balthazar' had come back into fashion. The answer is obvious, but not from the way the sentence is written.

As well as Balthazar, my dog, Arnold, had been zombified during that whole apocalypse thing and Balthazar had trained him to be a domesticated zombie pet, so that was another link to my old past, even if he was stupider than before.
Balthazar had been informed of my recovery, after I woke up at the hospital, and he was the one who integrated me into this new and exciting society – and he lives in a castle these days, so now that I live there too, at least my dream of being a castle dweller came through.

This whole paragraph rambles a bit and lacks punch because of it.

The idea of dating worried me – I thought it was weird, considering I was over 500 years old, but as Balthazar kept reminding me, I was still technically only 26. When I met Alannah though, I didn’t have to worry about dating too much, because I knew from the moment I laid eyes on her that we were soul mates. Apparently, she knew it too, because tomorrow is our wedding day – or as it’s now called, our Holy Batrimony...

Holy dreadful puns!

You wouldn’t usually ever hear anyone say that a plane crash was the best thing that ever happened to them, but in my case it’s true – I’m happier than I’ve ever been. If I didn’t die 500 years ago, I would never have been brought back to life and frozen in a lab for centuries, therefore never meeting Alannah. These days, when I look in the mirror, I can’t help but think, Jude, you are one lucky f*cker...

Daemos

Version 8

Well done Mr E, thoroughly deserved

I wrote Version 4, so I'm just going to clarify some of my ideas that I thought were clear in the story but obviously weren't as apparent as I thought they were

Antilles wrote: »

Jude's motivation makes no sense, and the ending is obvious a mile away. Linking it to 9/11 is just lazy. I mean, does the father actually work in the WTC or is she just randomly hoping he's in there? And the hijackers didn't know where the target was, even though its known that they trained for the mission for weeks? Unrealistic at best

In Jude's mind, she thought that money had corrupted the world, and that nobody was 100% innocent so they needed to be knocked down a peg. A bit tacked-on I know, but fitting a terrorist's motivation into a <1000-word piece isn't easy

In a way the obvious ending was intentional; I was trying to make the mystery in my story about what the number meant, but admittedly it wasn't very successful because of the nature of the skeleton itself.

She is just hoping he's there, because she doesn't really know anything about him

My spin on it was that they had trained to crash into a building somewhere, but for security they didn't tell them where in case they were discovered, that way if they were found out it could still be done at a later date

Mr E wrote: »

going to the flight deck to collect a raffle prize didn't sit right with me

Again maybe a lack of clarity on my part? At this point the Middle-Eastern man had already taken the pilot hostage, so he was only announcing what he was told to, as an excuse for Jude to get up to the cockpit and hand over the coordinates without suspicion.

I would welcome any more constructive criticism, and hopefully I'll be able to clarify any problems you had with it as well