Contest April-May 2016 Short Story Contest Voting Thread

Maybe we could combine the ideas and have a democratic bloodbath (with T & Cs, of course)

I confess that my abdication speech was written before the third contender planted his flag in your neck, Slanputin.

 

Jokes on you - I'm a Slann I don't have a neck.

 

Is it too late to claim Ahem false Ahem *clears throat* ownership of one of the top 3?

 

Well said.

Not well said. I don't believe you. Crowsfoot you dominated our very first short story contest.and then never wrote for us again. You do have the talent the others have.

EDIT: lordkingcrow My bad

 

If anyone wants to hear more from my entry head over: here.

 

Lets hope the winner choses the theme "Pat's day at the beach"..

 

Just out of question, how obvious was my entry?

I doubt many of you cross the void to the Skaven tunnels to know Ironfur is a (surprisingly) regular villain, and the Skavenblight Inquisition was quite a big UE thing for a while...though originally the Skaven ally at the end was going to be one of the rats that gave a comment-thing in my final reviews.

 

Evening all.

I can't believe I'm even being considered for winning this stupendous thing, what with the insane quality and quantity of entries (and last time I checked I was like 3 votes behind). Huge thanks to the 52% who believed in me - everyone else, the chameleon assassins have been despatched to your homes.

Not to get too cringingly "nice", but I'd like to underline the point bob usually makes about how voting doesn't really matter - my preference would be not to decide a winner (and not just because obviously it would be Watching Things Burn). I'd be happy for the three of us to form a triumvirate to rule this forum with an iron fist to decide the next theme together....in conclave if you will. Or Bob can just do it, I don't mind too much.

@Y'ttar Scaletail - I did guess yours, also Bowser's, Slanputin and Tlac I thought were fairly obvious, Otzi and Warden I also guessed but was less sure. I was torn between Harvest and Coward for Bob. Speaking of which Bob it's time for you to explain you to explain your cryptic clues, which is the highlight of the whole thing for me.

Once again - HUGE congrats to everyone for an insanely awesome comp!

 

Excuse me. How in the Green Hell was my flowery prose, laboured environmental description, and earnest topic obvious?

I jest. Slightly. I like to think I'm meta-cognitive enough to know my own writing style, but I'm eager to hear what highlighted my piece as...well...my piece. Pls.

 

'Putin, mate - there's a simple answer to that. It's the best. I adore your style and aspire to be able to write that well. When you combine it with a story that's got a decent structure to it, then you've got (what should be) a winner!

 

I thought mine might have been the easiest to spot, but then, it seems everyone thought that about theirs.

I'll open a thread soon and address all the very generous people who took the time to comment on it

 

• Big congrats to the first time entrants - you can hold your heads high. One day you can explain how and why you came to the forum with the intent of conquering all. And the reason had better not be the same one as Y'ttar's. I'm saying this because understanding how we promote good content like this will keep our forum fresh and growing.

• I will say it every time even if TDF wants to one up me - votes are a bad way of recognising good writing. My perspective is that half of the voters liked mine enough to put it in their top third, which makes victory quite hollow, especially given that I must share it with the two undead things.
• Slanputin - I didn't pick you on first read. TDF spilled the beans before I started trying to work out who was who.

Now to phase 3 for me.

I’ll write more about what was in my mind as I wrote harvest with my usual author commentary in my short story collection thread. Which means I will be using this space to write about what ever the heck was going through your heads as you read it. I’ll start with my own review.

Part of my false trail laying was to write a long review (“Bob’s self reviews are always short”) Like usual I was honest, and generally I would pick out the things about the story that annoyed me (because I couldn’t fix them). This time I mostly explored the communication mechanic. When I came back and looked at it again in the context of the whole comp (particularly A Memory?) I was tickled by the namelessness of the Seraphon – which was pure laziness at the time of writing. For the record, I hated that kid.

TDF has accused me of being a simpleton before. (actually he said my last story was clear, but that is very similar). Most of my 2nd and 3rd draft rewritings are to get things clear (geography, motivation, communication) and a lot of the repetition that bugged other readers (Scalenex) was because the story is linear and each interaction with a new character needs to follow a formula dictated by the rat kid’s relationship with them or the dictates of the plot (eg - he was meant to be on watch tower duty – why?).

TDF mentioned a time honoured formula – it just happened, honest. I didn’t have much of a plan beyond “write a really unpleasant character – that should meet the dictates of the theme”. TDF predicted the downfall based on an assumption that I had a plan. Boy, was he wrong.

Scalenex got it from the point of view that the kid was a rat. It seems he didn’t get it that actually the reader wasn’t meant to identify with and like him. I wrote him to be a throw away – I wanted to kill him without feeling remorse. In the process, I found writing him to be an unpleasant experience. At least Scalenex and I were seeing eye to eye by the end - will somebody please kill that rotten kid?

Worth pointing out now, all of the humans were named after trees – Ash, little brother Rowan, Old Alder, Blacksmith Birch. The boy’s names came after the basic story structure was written and hence the “are you a seer?” thing was a late, lucky find. Then the others got tree names to smoke screen the hint about their final fate. The tree name thing made me speculate about which one of the mortal realms the farm was on, but not to the extent of doing research or anything.

Scalenex predicted the ending based on clues in the story.

No Bowser, no! You weren’t meant to root for this underdog. I made him as sneaky, untrustworthy, spiteful and mean as I could in 2500 words.

As it happened, Seraphon Legend by Bowser himself was the biggest influence on the idea for the story – star lizards whose motivations are guessed at based on incomplete and contradictory “knowledge”.

Twist? What twist. Bowser had no freakin’ idea what was going on.

Thanks Killer Angel, I liked your thematically paired reviews. It reminded me of Warden winning the Art Comp and me coming nowhere because mine was the second-best space frog.

You said my seraphon were a touch of class. I thought I ran a risk by not physically describing them at all. I did try to differentiate them by their actions, relationships and attitudes, and I hope someone spotted the kroxigors trying to stand the crushed oat shoots back up again after they were ordered out of the field.

Thank you for acknowledging the McGuffphone. Without it I don’t think I could have built the ambiguity needed to conceal the plot twist – the lizards could have said exactly the same words in English or whatever but why believe them? I got Ash to say they couldn’t lie through him because of the psychic link, and I even wrote a section showing him testing this (I think he was gong to get Alder to try to lie through him) but it broke the pacing and didn’t add enough to be useful. Take it on faith that you can’t lie with the collar – otherwise the story falls over.

Killer Angel is acting cool about whether he was caught by the twist or not.

Thanks Slannta. I’m not sure if that puts me on the nice list or not, but I’ll keep trying.

You weren’t the only one who mentioned underlying humour. My initial response was to go “wait, how did that get in there?” because I found this a dark and unpleasant thing to write. But yes, the young character actually has a redeeming quality which is a quick wit, hence some of his observations being humorous.

It is often the case that things folk comment unfavourably about my writings are actually plot points which I have put a lot of thought into – what this probably means is that they are tricky bits where I need to make a choice, or hammer a point that may not make sense at the time, or that I am trying to preach some grand thematic message. That is to say screw you guys I never read your critiques anyway these things do stick out to me as well, and it is easy for me to justify why it had to happen my way, suckers.

Hence and therefore I acknowledge the bits that people choke on, and usually I am at a loss how to make them go down smoother. Since you brought it up – I needed to quickly get the concepts out that Ash had been grabbed by the neck, Alpha was in trouble for damaging his voice, he was useless to the seraphon if he had no voice, when they realised he had a voice their attitude to him changed, and they had this thing they could make him talk with. All this by showing, not telling and in 400 words. I took a shortcut with him speaking at a really dumb time. A possible enhancement would have been to have him think “I will stay alive by NOT cussing, for once in my life.” – instead of simply being quiet. I think I’ll use that for the director’s cut.

Are you saying you got a problem with my Seraphon buddies? My deliberate choice was to use completely impossible patterns of speech for the context (a fantasy realm). Reason one was because I wanted to hide my hand, having recently been told that all my characters sound awesome sound like me. Reason two was that I wanted the whole set up to be crystal clear to human readers – a small farming community with low levels of education but not a lack of general wisdom and in a realm where refugees were taken in just because life was valued, even if the orphan kids said “buddy” a lot.

There are phrases in there which can only have meaning in the context of 20th century American culture. I came that close to writing “it was completely out of left field” more than once. I think I managed to stop myself from writing “OK”. Hence I am startled that “buddies” was the worst thing for you. It took me three severe edits a week apart to completely expunge my usual style of writing dialogue, and I am sure there are still things which are more “classic fantasy” than I would have meant to leave in.

Which is all irrelevant. Did anyone guess I wrote it?

Just to get a bit philosophical. AoS is the future of WHFB. That doesn’t mean it isn’t also the future of post-apocalyptic baseball loving 20th century America. The realms drift through space and good ol’ society scratches the soil which buries the skeletal remains of Yankee Stadium. There are cultural echoes in the words that the future humans use when they speak to their buddies pals.

As for the twist... Slannta, there was no ruse. Daemons were coming. I don’t know if it was going to be in an hour or in a century but, by internal story logic, Starpriest couldn’t have lied about it. For me the scarier part was Ash’s knowledge of the savagery of daemons being based on stories of whole towns being burned to the ground with no survivors. It’s possible that the entire realm is slated for scorched earth according to the Slann’s agenda.

Which makes you completely correct. The Seraphon are no one’s buddies.

Ermagherd! I herv nerver rerd a Gersebermps berk! But I will take that as praise, even if it is from a dirty rat.

First person. Another deliberate choice from me trying to hide my authorship. I was going to say that I never write first person / past tense, but actually a lot of dialogue ends up that way. (General – “Scout, report.” Scout – “Yes sir. I got up this morning and discovered I was a dirty rat. It made me wonder if the cheese I had eaten last night was okay. It was green, furry and softly glowing...”)

The first person thing allows a much closer view of the character’s perceptions – which also means it is easier to manipulate the reader’s perceptions. In this case, the character’s assumptions about seraphon were wrong.

If you want to see me mess up, then wait till I try to write something in present tense. I tentatively reach for the keyboard, feeling the hollows of the familiar glyphs under the tips of my claws. No inspiration flows. No inspiration continues to flow. “This will probably be no different to the usual process,” I think to myself with a sigh of relief.

And I have once again written a story in the Age of Copyright. This can’t be a coincidence. I am constantly bugged by how much easier it is for me to write short stories in AoS, which is probably because there is a lot of meaning that hasn’t been explored yet. But I couldn’t write a longer piece there because I don’t have a sense of which direction history is heading, therefore any individual’s actions have no meaning in the broader context of the universe.

I’m glad the twist had an impact on you and made you reinterpret what you thought you knew – that was the intent of a lot of elaborate setting up and carefully crafted dialogue.



Thanks again to the critiquers, readers, voters and of course authors who provide so much impetus and inspiration, and thanks especially to Scalenex who has given so much more than an almost winning entry.



Now for the cryptic guesses:

Served at blood temperature – correct but so cryptic I forgot what this meant. Slanputin wrote serpent’s brew. He is English. They serve warm brews. Get it? Me neither.

The goats we have need to be beaten out – this was a red herring – I was pretending to guess that Oldblood Itzahuan had written the Harvest, and that there were goats in the burning barn.

Graymar is toasty – Wrong – Graymaris is a god used by Discomute (and Scalenex) and the toasty was from watching things burn. I could claim that I meant Scalenex but that would be a lie. After the reveal I can see his fingerprints all over it, but beforehand I had no idea that he had even entered.

The castle keep is in another province- wrong – I had Bowser as the author of The Coward, because he writes a good dwarf.

That’s not how orbs work, son – correct but I did a proof read, so I’m not that clever – Tlacnatai (sounds a bit like “that’s not how” a bit.) wrote Eyes on the Sun. The orbs were meant to be eyes. Maybe. I can’t remember what I was thinking.

Gatekeeper of the dread – wrong – I picked Warden (the guardian) as the author of the King of Lustria (the Dread).

Now, sag! – Correct – I spotted Essmir’s well concealed hand in Snow Saga. “Now Sag” is how you would spell the title if you left bits out. That would never happen on L-O. The Old Ones don’t make mistakes.

Draw and quarter the mutineer! – Wrong – I picked TDF as the author of the Bounty (hence the mutiny). So Bowser, what the hell good is the memory of a memory if you remember it silly?


Only three correct guesses. I should go back to my day job of tormenting Crowsfoot.