Contest January-February 2023 Short Story Contest (voting closed)

Here' my turn for some short reviews:

Spoiler: Story one: The Dinosaur

well well well... a meta story that shatters the 4th wall.

Pros: a story with a strong grasp in the Old World, with some discontinued armies (Bretonnia, Chaos Dwarfs...). The style was odd... at first it seemed like a childish tale, but on a second thought i think it fits well with the ending. Speaking of which, the story lives and dies by the (funny) final joke, so i find that the author did well by presenting a short piece, without dragging too much the story.

Cons: I have nothing agains light hearted stories, but this one is not exactly a masterpiece of literature...

Spoiler: Story two: A Day to Appreciate

A mundane story, probably my fav. of the bunch

Pros: a celabration day, lived by the protagonists almost as a routine job. I liked the explanation of why it is necessary to do many apparently nonsense things. The narration gives us enough actions even without any real one. Usually i tend to shun the whole "feeding infos to the reader", but in this case it was functional to the piece, so it works well. And a loveable ending with little Therizinosaurs.

Cons: it's basically like watching a pleasant movie, but with no identification in the protagonists

Spoiler: Story three: This Story Has Chaos Dwarves In It

Ah, we knew there would have been a Jurassic Park story

Pros: fun reading, the exact reversal of the classic scene/s from the movie works great, and the quick resolution of the escape of the warmbloods is what makes the story good. when you are the dinosaur, some human roaming free is not an issue.

Cons: it's the same as the Pros... it's the exact reversal of the classic scene/s from the movie. Parody is fun, but it has its limits when we look at quality. And there are no chaos dwarfs.

Spoiler: Story four: Goring Horn

Finally some REAL action!

Pros: incredibly detailed description of the battle, the reasons and the choices behind it, the various units... it's excellent. And the description of the massive, ustoppable potency of the Stegadon vs war elephants is probably the best take on the theme of the whole competition.

Cons: man, it's looong. Despite the excellent visual images, half way i was almost bored, the story drags itself for too long for my tastes, when the gist of it is concentrated in the end. IMO it lacks internal balance.

Spoiler: Story five: Lustria Park

The second Jurassic Park parody. I bet the writers of this story and n.3 were hoping to be the only one with the idea.

Pros: It's not a complete reversal, it's the new Seraphon that revive old dinosaurs. this makes it for an original PoV and it includes also the right amount of fun.

Cons: as said previously, parody is fun, but not exacly an original story, and when you only have one vote...

 

it seems we have 2 distinct blocks.
And that Jurassic Park parodies suffer from the same fate...

 

It's harder to try to make a review without half-revealing that it's your piece.

 

I'm not being facetious, I did not enter this particular contest as a writer, so there is no point guessing which one is mine, but I do enter most of these contests, so I end writing reviews for my own pieces a lot.

If you are curious, all of my previous short story contests entries are here and in most cases I re-post all the critiques made on it along with my own critiques and responses to the various critiques.

I cannot speak for @Imrahil and @Killer Angel , but I have discussed this with @Y'ttar Scaletail a few times.

Note, that y'ttar ran the short story contests on the Under-Empire forum (which I entered a couple times), and I took the contest setup from him and y'ttar followed me back.

We both have a tendency to savage our own work after it's done, and you might be able to tell which piece we wrote by which piece we were harshest on.

Y'ttar's strategy has always been to hold off on posting reviews till later when the activity on the thread starts to peter out and use that to drum up late period interests. I tend to follow suit and post my reviews fairly late even if I write them early and then sit on them.

This time, I haven't even started writing my reviews yet. I haven't read the other reviews yet because I don't want the other reviews to shape mine.

 

My main goal is to review my piece, as i believe i know some of its points of strenght and its weaknesses (of course, i may be blind to weak points that are visible to other readers).
The second goal is to do the review without exposing myself.

 

I will not see it coming and be very surprised when and if you submit a short story contest entry. What difference would it make if I was shocked on February 28th when the authors are revealed or I was shocked on January 28th when I got your submission?

Hypothetically, if you entered and won you could set the next contest theme to Chaos Dwarves as mentioned before. But that takes effort and risk unlike getting 20 Slannhoods.

 

I will back off digging at your Slannhoods. I'm projecting too many of my misgivings of myself on to you unfairly.

When I say "risk" I mean "comfort zone". Posting casual things is in your comfort zone, writing a story is not even if posting 1000 casual posts takes more manual effort .

Myself, I usually write a bunch of setting articles for Scarterra almost every day, averaging about 10,000 words a week, but it takes a lot of effort for me to write a fiction piece that people want to read. I do my job competently, but I am practically on autopilot, but it takes a lot of taxing effort for me to do chores in my own house or force myself to the gym. Things that should take less effort but are not in my comfort zone.

And I also think you would be good at writing stories given how seriously you take your favorite media, and am curious what you would cook up, but I'll stop barking up that tree.

 

Let's not get ridiculous Nightbringer...