Contest April-May 2020 Short Story Contest Reading and Voting Thread

Awiak was an auto-vote for me because it made me laugh. I also voted for the other winner this time, which is very rare for me, but The Ritual had a cool time-jump gimmick that tickled my scifi bone. Delightful stories all round. I'm happy to give the next contest theme to Lizards as last time I had the chance I made the theme a specific glyph on a specific tablet and no one knew what to do. Here's my shortlist for future themes:

• The life cycle of the Lustrian lily
• Cold-blooded politics in the age of post-truth discourse
• What to pack for a holiday to the Piranha Swamps
• Greeting customs of various Temple Cities
• Resource and logistics management among kroxigors
• Oxyotl and Hegelian dialectics

 

Typically this is resolved with a fight to a death with sharpened bamboo sticks while a bunch of pandas cheer and jeer them on from the stands.

Or it's possible both winners can submit a contest theme to Scalenex and he can do an and/or contest theme like he's done many times before.

Either way is good.

 

A four way tie for 3rd is not bad.

Grats to the winners! Looking forward to the next one.

 

Wowee guys. What an incredible contest! Particularly in the last week or so of voting I was trying to peer pressure my brother and Dad into reading even a handful. You could randomly select any of these stories and they'd be a wonderful read.

Although I wasn't particularly happy with mine, I'm still glad I submitted it, and this 'give it a go' attitude has always brought out some really good content from everyone here in the past. It's strange seeing how these competitions change and develop over time. I was genuinely surprised to see a lot less reviews, but after thinking about it, 14 rather hefty stories, all unique and well written, would be hard to review given the time.

A big congratulations to the winners and to everyone who contributed and I look forward to the next comp!

 

I organized an underground bamboo fight club to resolve the matter. I named it "Bamboo Battlers".

The first rule of Bamboo Battlers is.... you don't talk about bamboo battlers... but @thedarkfourth has lifted the rules just this once for me to relate to you the story.

Just before the fight was about to commence, just as @thedarkfourth and I were circling each other, a gargantuan meteorite impacted in the town.

The panda's fled, their magically induced blood-lust dissapated and we realized that to escape we would need to work together as the town was now a bizarre combination of Shaun of the Dead and Mordheim.

Taking our inspiration from McGuyver, we fashioned automatic rifles and grenades from bamboo, used toilet roll cardboard and hand santizer and fought our way clear of the town.

We figured that after our experience, there was only one contest theme to use "technological advances"

 

Congratulations to all winners! And thank you all for your stories, I really enjoyed reading them!

 

Ha! Awesome! I did think about getting my wife to read and vote but I’d already told her about my story, so wouldn’t have been fair.

Listen, you’re right on point. By far the best thing about this contest (all kudos to @Scalenex as the organiser) is that it gets people WRITING. If you read famous authors texts on how to write, one for one you will see that they all wrote A LOT. The only way you’re going to get better is practice. LO is a great place to do so as the environment is one of validation rather than criticism.

I definitely would not judge your own stories also on a limited cross-section. Take any advice or critiques and see if they help you. If they do, great. If they don’t, throw the, out. BUT KEEP WRITING!!!

 

Ha! Whoops!



It's true, I said I'd do that and I TOTALLY forgot. I'll do it over the next couple of days, capo.

 

Okay, @Killer Angel , here we go matey...

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GENERAL LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I have divided each of my reviews into two sections (“Technical” and “Personal”) as I want it to be clear what I consider to be suggestions/help on how the story could have been written and then my opinion on the story. To me these are two distinctly different things.

In the “Technical” section, I will only be giving those things that pulled me out of enjoying the story. I’m not some experienced editor, so technical just means those things that detracted from the experience of immersing myself in the story.

I also want to be clear that both are still my opinion. What I mean by this is what I said to @Infinity Turtle , if it helps you then use it. If it doesn’t help, then discard it. A survey of one is not a very useful survey. I personally am interested in what people think of my stories, but (at least for the time being) I will continue to write as I have been doing, which is to visualize a storyline and then try as best I can to use the right words and format to communicate my concept.

My purpose in doing these reviews is to give what I feel would be help and assistance to the author to do a better version of their story.

They should feel free to ignore the “Personal” part as this is simply my own liking of the story or not. I wanted it separate from the advice section, but I also wanted to say the points of the story that I appreciated as in ingenuity, twists, or novel ideas (forgive the pun).

 

Story 1 – Bowl of Blood

TECHNICAL: First off, I feel this piece was written well. This means that when I read it, I could see that the author had planned this out well, done research and the writing itself was well lettered (meaning I didn’t feel like at any point it was childish writing or repetitive which tends to distract me from any story).

The points that “pulled me out of the story” were as follows:

The actual ground floor of the stadium was not described and this affected my ability to fully visualize this. There was not a good description of the opposing Skink priest of the cult of Sotek so this also impaired me being able to fully visualize the scene.

How the game was played was also not particularly described. I had to stop and think to myself what could be happening. A little more attention to describing what was happening with the sport, or something like this would have gone a long way.

I liked the detail of the things that the supporters were holding, color schemes of the players, etc. I particularly liked the attention to detail on translating the chant into Lustrian as this definitely added to the feel of this event, which did in actual fact really feel more of a ritual than a sporting event. The details were also done well with the players.

Overall, I think that more work should have been done on how the actual game floor of the stadium looked, how the game was played and probably a bit more on the players. I had to strain to visualize this, rather than being drawn into the story by enough detail.

PERSONAL: I loved the idea. Blood Bowl in Lustria. Brilliant! As soon as I read it, I thought “Well played my friend, this should be pretty good.” Even the name of the sport was great (Pok Tok I think?). I also liked the idea of using the event like this to rally the people to a new cause (utilizing the timing(?) of an eclipse or magically inducing one) and furthering the cult of Sotek. Overall, I thought it was a very bright plot theme and a good use of the lore / special character to bring in Tehenhauin.

I didn’t like the fact that the game itself wasn’t described. I would really have enjoyed that. Even just a vignette of what it consisted of. Maybe one play of the game, with the ball(?) flying around would have given some idea of it. Possibly the author is relying on the fact that all readers know the Blood Bowl rules. I have no idea personally.

For me, the idea that captives would come in and play a game that they had never played before, against their will, was not realistic. Language would have been a barrier to teaching them it and, most importantly, willingness. I don't think any of them could have been persuaded or threatened into playing a coordinated game as a team. Maybe this could have been done as gladitorial contests between the lizardmen and the warm-bloods. The simile was in Ancient Rome with prisoners (barbarians, Christians, etc.) being killed by gladiators, wild beasts, etc. However, they would just be acting in self-defence and forced by circumstance to do so, so no training required. Even those people sentenced to be gladiators were fighting for their lives so they were forced into protecting themselves.

I ended up not voting for this piece mainly for the end. To me, the idea that Tehenhauin would order the deaths of fellow Lizardmen was not real as (at least from what I have read) the Cult of Sotek was mainly targetting Skaven.

Again, and I can't stress this enough, these are my opinions. The author has a full poetic license to do what he wishes in his story, I just would have ended this with some kind of use of the defeat to convert more of the Water God supporters to Sotek.

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I'm starting to regret telling @Killer Angel that I'd do this. Hopefully @Warden doesn't curse me off the site... I liked the story! Honest Guv!

 

Story 2 – Abomination

TECHNICAL: To be honest, and with all due credit to @thedarkfourth , there wasn’t anything technically that pulled me out of reading the story. I felt like it had sufficient explanations of environment, what was happening and the sequence of events. I can definitely see why this ended up a winner.

If anything, I would say that the Biomancer himself could have been given more depth. Some kind of characterization or background that would lead to why he was following this deviant line.

I would also say that the reaction to killing a Skink priest seemed a little cold. He did act horrified but seems to recover instantly and is then onto where he could go afterwards. That seems a little inconsistent.

PERSONAL: Funnily enough, even though I thought the story was a good idea and, like I said above, there wasn’t anything technically that pulled me out of the story, I didn’t vote for this entry.

I had a think about this. For me, I’m looking for a story that is at least technically good (not perfect, but at least good) and that moves me in some way. This story was good, there wasn’t anything detracting from me reading the story but it didn’t seem dramatic enough.

I read it again, because I reminded myself that the Biomancer dissolves a bloody Skink Priest!!! That’s pretty dramatic! After going over it a bit, I think that basically because I don’t have anything to identify with the character, no back story or other depth to him, it therefore doesn’t really make any difference to me that he’s about to get mahrlect’ed by the Temple Guard waiting outside.

So, a great story, but it didn’t get me to connect so didn’t get a vote.

(As an aside, I found it very amusing that while reading the story, my reaction to the Biomancer making his own spawning pool was very similar to the Skink Priest… “HERESY!!!”)

 

Story 3 – Awiak

First off, why did Games Workshop never make a cat race to oppose the skaven? I guess they would be worried about it turning into a rip-off of the intellectual property of whoever came up with the Thundercats, but still. D&D has a race like that. Ah well. Kudos to @DeathBringer125 for coming up with the story.

TECHNICAL: The story comes across as rushed as there is not enough description into each “scene” or “sequence” to give the reader an orientation to what is happening, both where they are and what actions are occurring. I would, as an extreme example, suggest reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Book 1 (The Eye of the World) and look at some examples of the descriptions that he used. Even just read the prologue. Taking a bit more time to fill in the details of colors or smells or tactile really makes a difference to the reader being able to follow along.

In the descriptions that the author does use, I would suggest a bit more wordage. It’s key at this point when you’re trying to put your own thoughts down on paper to look it over and see if someone (who didn’t know anything about it previously) by reading your words would get the same concept as you had for this. It might mean going back to your idea and asking yourself “What is this forest like? Is it hot? Dense? Wet? Are there any wildlife sounds around you can here?” You could even try watching some Blue Planet or some other nature program by David Attenborough and listen to some of the descriptions he uses, but more importantly LOOK at the areas themselves. How would you describe it? What words do you think would get across that idea?

Then go back to your own idea. It’s your story, so what is your forest like? You don’t have to get “deep” or “complicated” about it, just decide what your forest is like and then use a dictionary or thesaurus as needed to get the words you need to describe it.

Like I said at the outset, I’m not professional author or editor so please feel free to ignore the above. It’s simply friendly advice. If it helps, great, use it. If it doesn’t, then ignore it matey.

Like I said above. It’s YOUR story. You decide how you want to write it.

PERSONAL: I love the idea of introducing cats to the Warhammer world as a weapon of mass destruction. My personal opinion is that this story is in the middle of being comedic and action style. I think I would have preferred it done more in either direction and that IMO would have made it a better story.

 

Story 4 – Lost and Found

TECHNICAL: Overall, I thought this was quite good and fantastic for a first time entry @Lizerd. The author makes a good effort on descriptions of surroundings, keeps you tracking with the actions that are happening and on emotional content. There are definitely points where I would have spent more time, for instance when the Aelves have been captured, you don’t really get an idea of where they are: what does it look like? Materials being used? Etc. I am not familiar with AoS locations, so possibly for someone else the Ghur and other place immediately gives them the idea. A better story telling would be to lay this out anyways, at least to some degree so that someone does not have to depend on something else to understand your story.

Technically, the main problem is a lack of goal or direction. The story is more of a “happening”. The story starts with the protagonists being chased by Undead. Why? Why are they there? Why are they being chased by the Undead? Then the Aelves are abducted by the Seraphon. Again, why? Then the sacrifices. Why? Admittedly, sacrificing hated foes already makes some sense but from the limited knowledge I have of the Seraphon they are supposed to be protectors of order. Why are they sacrificing Aelves? It doesn’t actually matter whether this agrees with reference texts and other lore as this is your OWN story, but there has to be some direction to the story even if it is only a snapshot of an overall journey and goal. Otherwise, you are (as a reader) are left a bit lost as to what is happening.

A good orientation would have handled this. Possibly these Aelves have committed some crime or blasphemy which would require them being hunted down by the seraphon. Again, it’s your story so you can decide. Technically this didn’t really have somewhere for the story to go. A purpose.

PERSONAL: I didn’t vote for this mainly for the technical reason above. I didn’t really get what the point of the story was. Admittedly, it was already a step back when it started talking about AoS as I’m not a fan. But I persisted with the story as I wanted to give it a good read before judging it by it’s cover (if you get what I mean ).

But like I've said in earlier posts, to me the main value of the competition is some inspiration to write and a platform where you can show your story without being shot down in flames. LO is perfect for this and I'm really glad you posted your story. Please keep writing!

 

Yep lol that has always been my issue. I tend to rush things.....lol you should have seen the first draft lol it was rushed WAAAY more. Luckily @Scalenex helped me flesh it out. And I couldn't resist having a Floofy little kitten scare off and entire Skaven army lol

 

Fair enough. I know very little about AoS lore.

 

@Lizards of Renown the fact that you enjoyed the technical descriptions of it is a huge thing for me. School never really gave me the opportunity to do creative writing (and I got banned from the little free writing there was for writing about rabbits torching the school). Hopefully for my next entry i will be able to write a story with better direction