Contest April-May 2016 Short Story Contest Voting Thread

I haven't read them all yet, but have enjoyed the ones I have read so far. Great contest! I enjoyed the images in my head of the dwarf on a magic carpet from the story "Coward" and the back-stabbing Saurus from "Fireblade." Lots more reading to do before I can cast a vote, but great job everyone!

 

I had a disagreement with Son of Bob today about "Watching Things Burn" - I say Chief Gartol smothered Huaraz to death with the square pillow. Son of Bob says the old conservative peacefully died of old age, and then Gartol conveniently put warmongering words into his mouth.

What say you?

I say - kudos to me for teaching the lad to see the good in people.

 

Oh I forgot about that one, I made my last post without looking at my posts. When I finished it the first time I had to re-read the end of that story, and had it marked to read again to try and see any foreshadowing earlier in the piece.

I agree with your interpretation. It definitely looks like the apprentice killed off his master in order to either gain power because a) he wanted to kill all the non-lizards or b) he was a greedy lizard and wanted the power for himself and his power base was being a warmonger to kill all the non-lizards.

 

So the younger kills the elder for his own gain and... excuse me, I need to go and hide all of the pillows!

 

I say Killer Angel authored "Watching Things Burn" ;p

I love how people are already discussing the stories in this thread. I mean SPOILERS would be nice for those of us nibbling through the entries rather than chugging them, but I think the chatter speaks of the quality of writing we have here. Thus I'm taking allllll the credit for providing the theme! You can try and take it back but it'll be from my cold, dead hands.

 

Aren't you already coldblooded anyway?

 

Yeah but I'll be cold *and* dead. Essentially I'll be @Scalenex.

Next comes my cute yet terrifying bamboo-glutton cousin

 

Wow.

The quality (and more importantly, the consistency) has reached the highest yet, really spectacular. Now we come to the traditional point in this great seasonal ritual honouring the Old One of Stories (does he have a name? I'm going to call him Shoad N'tezl) where you all have to suffer through a long and boring catalogue of everything I loved. To hopefully make this whole thing a little more bearable and - *shudders* - entertaining, I have decided to review each story in the voice of a different old world race. The ones in bold were my favourite and the ones I voted for (as ever I wish I had more votes to give) - I would tell you to vote for the same ones, but then you wouldn't be voting for mine, so... don't vote for the best ones?? Spoilers follow.

Watching Things Burn

A review by Gnar Clawtooth, beastman ungor

People say we man-beasts do not appreciate fine literature. It is true we cannot read. Or hold books in our hooves. Or speak anything other than grunts. But that doesn't mean we don't enjoy being spun a good yarn as much as the next mutated servant of chaos. And when it comes to yarn-spinning, Watching Things Burn is the tuskgor's knees as far as this reviewer is concerned.

Like many of the best entries in this competition, the story does really well at thematic resonance. The themes of destruction and rebirth, of action vs contemplation, obedience vs rebellion for the greater good - these are all close to a beastman's heart and, indeed to the heart of any great storywriter. Bur more important is the way the author uses the themes in the structure of the story - the way they gain resonance through the actions of the protagonist. In using his mentor's death to create something new and wonderful, we a) see that he has learned from the lessons of the theme-establishing ritual at the start and b) crucially, we feel satisfied that an important conflict has been resolved, both in the mind of the character and the issue he is attempting to grapple with (the elven problem). To start with, I couldn't work out how the old priest had died, and it felt like it was missing something. But when I re-read the line about the pillow, I recognised the vital moment of action came at the hands of protagonist and the whole structure suddenly worked. Plus beastmen are just suckers for murder (sorry, son of Bob, it's definitely murder).

Speaking of action and violent death, we beasts have little patience for drawn-out sections of dialogue. Most of the middle, especially the exposition about the elven problem, could be massively cut back, just as me and my pals cut back the armies of pathetic human creatures. The dialogue is great for setting up the faultlines of thematic tension, but - as my esteemed colleague thedarkfourth likes to say - fundamentally, conflict must be dramatised, not debated.


The King of Lustria

A review by Xifguhs Slkjgh, daemon of Nurgle

Mrraawh! Excuse me, just blowing my noses. The King of Lustria is super cooooooool!!! The great lord Nurgle heartily endorses its contagious coolness and hopes it spreads like the plague. Who does not love uber-dinosaurs? Yet the God of Decay would like to make it clear at the same time that coolness alone does not a great story make. If Jurassic World taught us anything, it's that making the dinosaurs bigger and cooler and more unstoppable does not necessarily lead us to like those dinosaurs more than the smaller, regular sort who were better written back in the day. Far be it from us, the hellspawn of pure pestilence, to suggest that coolness is unimportant (check out my pustules!); rather, what we would like to submit is that while we had a great romp with this story, in particularly enjoying watching Khorne get his red behind kicked at the end, this finale also illustrates an important lesson that was vouchsafed to Nurgle by the god Shoad N'tezl in the divine dimension: literal fighting is not the same as dramatic story conflict.

This is a common error among many writers, including successful ones - just consider the oeuvre of Michael Bay (who worships Slaanesh, by the way, nothing to do with us). Story conflict is about characters who want different things. Military conflict is about having more physical power than the opponent. The first is human and dramatic. The second is just a case of practicalities. Occasionally a fight scene can be compelling when it acts as a metaphor for the real struggle at a deeper level, like the final act of Captain America: Civil War, or when it shows us something illuminating about the characters in question, like the airport fight in Captain America: Civil War (Nurgle is a big Marvel fan - the other three like DC). But fighting just for the sake of it tends to be dramatically boring. We need to know why the fight really matters to the participants - in this case, the King is basically unchanged by his experience and so the fight serves little dramatic purpose. That doesn't make it not cool though!


Eyes on the Sun

A review by Irihirad of the Druchii

Someone has been watching game of thrones. That show is all the rage in Naggaroth, and [SPOILERS] while we all think it was horribly unfair that Arya got blinded for the so-called "sin" of wanting to butcher those who had wronged her, I do have to admit it was an awesome and unexpected development for an anti-hero character like her. Similarly Ezhno Niyol Jao, who is on his own hero's journey of sorts, has been suddenly and unexpectedly blinded - a surprising twist that will hopefully lead the character to learn more about himself. Unfortunately, much like this author's previous competition entry, the story is not complete here! The pay-off from the blinding has been held back for a later chapter. We have a great set up, but no resolution. Again - I understand it's because this forms part of a longer saga - a saga which this elf happens to love - but I'd really like to see a future competition entry which acts as a self-contained story with a proper ending!

Also we prefer it in our stories if the high elves are all dead at the end

Even with the unsatisfactory ending, there's lots to love about this piece - in particular the tribulations of the desert in the first half were wonderfully harrowing and visceral. But if the hero is undergoing a trial by fire, we need to know why success really matters to him - and to him personally, not just the survival of his people. Things like "saving the world" actually turn out to be quite boring motivations for dramatic purposes - something mundane like "wanting the girl next door to notice me" is often much more effective. We Druchii may take pleasure in the slaughter of the innocent, but we still like our characters to be relatable.


Pirates of the Dragon Isles

A review by dwarf Thane Ikelssen

Ach. I remember one time when I spent 14 days slowly beating a gigantic dragon to death with nothing but my head. Was is it entirely epic? Yes. Did all the guys back in the great halls sing of it for years to come? Of course. But did it make me feel good about myself? Well...yes, it made me feel fantastic! And yet at the same time, it left me curiously unfulfilled.

I felt a similar way after reading Pirates of the Dragon Isles. On the one hand, the concept and description is among the most awesome things I can imagine, other than an ale barrel made of solid gold. On the other, I sort of didn't see the point of it. A bit like King of Lustria, this piece illustrates the difference between a story and just a series of events in chronological order. Despite the intense coolness, no one really achieves anything of significance, changes as a result of self-defining choices, or even does anything that matters to them personally.

After I killed the dragon, I became a renowned warrior who enjoyed a great reputation and many fine adventures. I realised that the dragon episode was just the set-up. Similarly, this story feels like the prologue to an epic film, in which the main character's badass credentials are firmly established. The fact that the humans all die at the end just confirms that they are irrelevant to the real story - but unfortunately the "real story" only arrives on the scene towards the end - and what an arrival it is. But the main effect for me is making me look forward to what happens next. For a stand-alone story competition that's somewhat irritating - and as a dwarf I know a thing or two about irritation.


Snow Saga

A review by Battlemage Stiglitz of the Imperial Witch Hunter Corps

I realise that it is my duty to declare this story heretical for advocating the setting of werewolves loose on undefended populations. But the truth is, this was a gripping and evocative tale that owes much of its effectiveness to its very simplicity. Almost all of the stories this time round are really good at showing and not telling, but Snow Saga is the very best of them in this regard.

Personally, when my inquisitorial victims suspects go on and on about how they're "completely innocent" and will "do anything to not be tortured any more", I get rapidly bored. I like my confessions short and to the point - the same is true of stories. This one gets lots of points for brevity - it does what it needs to do and no more. The sentences are clear and concise, only saying exactly what's going on with no excess waffle. The straightforward "Then did the wind change and the wanderer felt the smell of blood" is a billion times more powerful than a list of adjectives and emotions. Hemmingway (and I) would be proud.

Since Sigmar tends to favour exceptionally one-dimensional, black and white heroes, I probably shouldn't say this: I thought we could do with a little more depth to the main character. I really love the hinting at a deep inner conflict for him - the one line about how he can't go back to the city any more coupled with the reveal of his bloodlust works wonderfully to spice my interest. But I could have done with just a tad greater exploration of this inner struggle and its significance. Just a small complaint - not enough to consign you to my dungeons.


The Fireblade’s Challenge

A review by Earileas Fireyes, reporter for the Ulthuan Times

Among my people, it is considered dishonourable to either show or tell any of our emotions. Yet Times investigations have revealed the existence of secretive elven cults on our homeland that worship the foreign god Shoad N'tezl. The cultists are reportedly drawn to this god's injunction to write stories with inner thoughts and emotions revealed only through showing, not telling. I believe this is one of the few stories in the competition whose author could benefit from conversion to this belief. Too much of the key character development in The Fireblade's Challenge is simply told directly to the reader - a shame, because that which is shown is really powerful.

Other than this, I loved the story in general. Faustian pacts are easy to conceive but hard to execute convincingly; but here the conflicting inner emotions are perfectly played off each other and the descent into murderous rebellion is well structured. My one complaint is that it feels as though the story is lacking an ending - we have a descent but we don't have a true downfall. The protagonist isn't forced to pay the inevitable price of doing a deal with the devil. Again - a great set up for a second half, but this elf would rather see a self-contained story with both a beginning and end in one!


The Coward

A review by Kharzhak Stonefinger, chaos dwarf centaur

Conflict needs to be dramatised, not debated. Conflict needs to be glorious, savage and merciless, and result in carnage and slave-taking for the glory of Hashut! The enemy must be crushed and humiliated utterly!

But story-writing is different. As an enraged, megalomaniacal half horse, I have little patience for conversations at the best of times. The Coward spends too much time talking about its issues, but if you cut out much of this dialogue in the first half, you would be left with something really quite brilliant. Pragmatism in the face of a culture that prizes irrational concepts like honour above all else - an interesting theme and one that is skilfully explored not just in the events of the story but in the heart and soul of its protagonist. This character has to face tough decisions and define himself by them, which leads to the best kind of high drama - it makes the deus ex machina more of an earned result than an empty crutch. I particularly liked how the fighting was kept brief and mostly at a distance rather than endless descriptions of duels and so forth. I do enough mindless slaughter in my real life that I don't need any more in my fiction.

The ending was interesting - for all his struggles, the dwarf is left with a curiously half-hearted sense of validation. I'm not sure if I like this subtlety or would have preferred a more clear-cut resolution. Obviously as someone who has been tainted by chaos, the ideal result would be for all the prissy "good" dwarves to have been extinguished or enslaved by the vermin, but I can suspend my disbehatred for a well-written story like this.


Harvest

A review by Antoine de Bleurgh, Bretonnian squire

In Bretonnia we have a saying: "The honourable knight finds the grail in the place where it was left." It means that often the best course of action is the simplest and most predictable. The same goes for stories: Harvest is a superb example of how a direct and simple, if tongue-in-cheek, approach to constructing a story can be enormously satisfying.

It's also the first of a number of first-person stories in this competition, the traditional medium for anti-heroics. In this instance it is perfectly deployed, revealing exactly the right amount about the protagonist's pride to set us up for the predictable but definitely still glorious fall. Character has had difficult life; character has chip on shoulder. Character allows self to be driven by arrogance and ambition; character gets comeuppance. It's been done a million times, but as long as it's done well, a guy like me with simple tastes will never not enjoy it. Plus there's the added satisfaction that both the protagonist and the antagonists (the lizards) are anti-heroes, believing they're doing the right thing more or less but not caring about anyone else. Nihilism is often the best spice for good drama (but don't tell my knight I said that!)


A Memory?

A review by Thug Spineblaster, ogre maneater

For ogres, most stories consist of success against great odds and then a feast. A Memory? has opened my eyes to a world of new possibilities. Like putting question marks in the title to make me wonder if the whole thing is even real...

I enjoyed the noir character voice and the dark world he inhabits. Most of all the theme of life and reality, of questioning what one truly is, was really powerful. However I'm not convinced that the story itself explored this theme as well as it could have. I like that the inner struggle to determine the nature of his life is enacted in the outer struggle to bring death to his target, but this second struggle is a bit ...unexciting. The fight at the end is fairly dull I'm afraid. The choice he faces afterwards, to trust the assassin or not, feels like it's supposed to be a choice that says something about the question of him being "really" alive...but I can't tell what. Regardless, he doesn't actually make the choice ("I smiled" leaves it ambiguous) so we don't really resolve anything about the central theme. Reminds me of the disappointment I felt that time when I killed a vampire only to find it had turned to dust before I could eat it....


The Forgotten Slann

A review by Silug the orc

The Forgotten Slann not story. The Forgotten Slann beautiful poetic myth. Rich, thematic text. Silug appreciate ultra-alliteration. Good work, boss.


The Bounty

A review by Aneae Oakenvale, Guardian of the Wood

We wood elves like to laugh, usually while we pull body parts off trespassers, but sometimes also when a story has strong comic timing! The Bounty feels like a Tarantino script on drugs (tautology?), with its crazy reversals, blazé attitude towards violence and simplistic approach to character development. I can totally see Samuel L. Skinkson playing the role of the gunslinging bounty hunter (Steve Buscemi as a daemon?). While it may not be the most deep or moving story in the competition (I'd like to see the main character struggle a lot more than he does), it clearly gets my vote for reasons of chaotic hilarity - exactly how other species should be depicted in the opinion of us elves.


Trinity

A review by Seer Beigehide of Clan Mors

This story is gloriously quick off the mark and it only gets better from there. One time I spent ages preparing a great ritual sacrifice of a rival clan leader. Just before I was about to plunge the knife into his throat, his minions arrived and cast me out. If I'd only gotten to the, ahem, point quicker, rather than dawdling around with candles and hoods and magical mutterings, I would now rule the eastern mountains. What I'm saying is, follow the example of this author: if the premise of the story is someone having a magic sword that slowly corrupts him, then let him find the sword in the first sentence! Don't have a whole scene of pointless set-up. Work out where the real drama and conflict of the story lies, and start in media res with that.

This is another piece that really benefits from its first-person telling. It's one of my favourite and most riveting kinds of story, where you see someone gradually becoming crazy from within - something that's harder than you might think to do right, and the author of Trinity has completely nailed it! The key is to not be over the top: The character can never be allowed to notice his own madness; he still has to make dramatic decisions despite or because of it. Traditionally skaven employ similarly insidious methods for invading civilised realms - lots of gradual burrowing and then suddenly we're everywhere and you've just stabbed yourself out of paranoia! Plus a twist ending always helps, and this one is perfect. This story makes me one stabby happy rat.


Serpent’s Brew

A review by Seshethis, Necrotect of the Tomb Kings

We who lie for eternity doing not much of anything in a pitch black chamber under a pyramid are big fans of this author. And Serpent's Brew is perhaps his strongest offering (no pun intended) yet. The undead have long memories and it is great to see that the things we objected to in the previous competition have been almost entirely purged. This is a tight and focused story, bristling with sinister tension but this time driven by clear goals and urgency all leading towards that perfect kind of ending - the kind you totally don't see coming when you first read it but which subsequently was completely obvious all along! (bit like the enveloping sands' unstoppable spread across the earth)

This almost feels like a work of Borges or even Lovecraft (although far better written than the latter), with a cyclical structure revealing a hideous insanity beneath. Even the inevitable chunk of dialogue exposition was engaging enough, dramatised via the protagonist's desperation to get away. The feeling here in the tomb is that the ending could perhaps have been further enhanced with a suggestion that the priest truly is mad - that there is no such ritual that involves covering oneself with baby goo. We would have preferred to see another skink walk in on a cackling and drooling Nahualli, covered in blood, rocking back and forth in the corner of the room, but we still love it even as it is.


Chosen

A review by Alfred von Edelweiss, vampire

It's a long'un, but it's worth it. That's what I tell people who ask if they should really go through the ritual torture of becoming a vampire. But it also applies to Chosen, a story that really focuses on a specific element associated with anti-heroes: fatherhood. My own father was a monster, who left the crypt when I was just 800 years old, so I completely relate to the issues at stake (aha) here.

I enjoyed the cunning backwards telling of the story - if you analyse the structure, you'll notice that the real story is basically just parts 5 and 0, with a nice break after the set-up to introduce a bunch of flashbacks (4, 3, 2 and 1) that inform the nature of the key decision at the end. My only question is whether all the flashbacks are needed...it's always better to suck out the excess, which is a little joke I like to make during "dinner parties", by the way.


Paranoia

A review by Malnath Skullverber, Chosen Knight of Chaos

In the frozen wastes of the north, we tend to see stories as worthy only of puny mortals. And yet we still love to gather round to hear about Archaeon or Valkia. We like the bit about how when she flies, whole lands are drenched in blood. And we like the bit in Paranoia when the rat did everything to try and stop himself getting killed, and then he still got killed. Although I think it could have been made more engaging with some more direct character development or, you know, skulls.

Also, this story probably contains the funniest single moment in the competition, where the skink priest sees the drawing. That was a piece of Pratchettian genius (Pratchett is the fifth god of the Warriors, we just keep him mostly to ourselves).

 

Cool - well I have finished and voted, my awards for 3,2,1 go:
(yes i am aware this isn't how the voting works but this is how i am doing my review)

1 Vote: Serpent's Brew
An interesting story that really captured my eye. Nothing that will stick with a reader like the ol' slaughtering of a newborn. And who doesn't root for the lizardmen in these situations? The main criticism that I will give this story also goes with all other stories, apart from mine as I spotted it straight away and got scalenex to fix it. I think all the paragraphing is fuXXored. It makes it very hard to read the dialogue. This is probably the fault of HTML auto putting double paragraph spacing in, but am I really the only author who asked to get it fixed? This is all just a guess though, maybe people wanted it like that. Anyhoo, a good read.

2 Votes: The Harvest
Creepy! But I like what is going on here. I like a combination of the reverence for the serephon and the desire for fame/authority is what drives the central character. I think the author (my cryptic guess is that he is an oldblooded ghost) has captured the theme the best. It was also a twist that I didn't see coming, although in retrospect was obvious - which are the best kind of story twists. I have yet again voted for a story in the "Age of Copyright" universe, that is how good it was.

3 Votes: The Coward
This story was a ripper, and I think my favourite. Who doesn't love dwarves and all their 'honour above common sense' shenanigans. And when the theme is anti-hero, you can get a normal hero doing some very anti-dwarven-hero things. It wasn't as a polished story like "the harvest" was. I think the author could have spent some time on the style here, too many page breaks (not even counting the wretched double spacing in everyone's story). But overall, it was my favourite story, as it was one that I think will stick in my mind a year from now.

 

Ah yes! One of the best parts of these compa is the reviews and critiques! I will have to give my own sometime this week! But keep them coming!

 

Ha! No, double spacing is correct! A new line of dialogue gets a new paragraph - if your regular paragraphs are double spaced, then your dialogue should be too. This is hilarious because in all my time on the forum I've been secretly annoyed by some people's tendency to single-space the dialogue, thinking it was just poor formatting, and holding myself back from mentioning it. Now I see that apparently some people actually like the freakish blocks of undifferentiated, orgiastic quote marks rather than a nice, readable layout where it's clear when dialogue moves between characters.

 

Thank you for your amazing reviews @thedarkfourth and @discomute !

This is something I struggle with, in particular formatting for dialogue, please expound upon this! What is the correct way? And can you show a quick example??

 

There are a few different ways that are correct. Despite what thedarkfourth said, seperating by a blank like is definitely not correct. Unless it is supposed to be a new paragraph.

The best advice I can give (from my iPhone) is to grab a few books and read the dialogue. Just copy it straight if you want. Soon it will become second nature.