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

any review?

 

ohh, lot of votes today

 

Challenge Accepted

Scalenex Bestows his "Wisdom" via critiques.

Story One “The Dinosaur”: Excellent pacing and evocative scene setting and a funny payoff at the end. The piece took a big risk with the comedic style, I’m not 100% sure the risk was a good idea, but it clearly wasn’t a bad idea.

Generally, I like short word counts as it demonstrates an efficient writer, but I would have liked this piece to be longer. I would have liked a little more action. Roland accomplished a lot of mighty feats but it didn’t really go into details on any of it. Probably don’t need to expand on every one of his great deeds but narrative tradition demands you narrate one of his early fights (to establish show-don’t-tell badass credentials) and expand on the fight against the Chaos Dwarves because it will make Nightbringer happy (or not because they were losing), and also because it is the supposed climax before the comedic fake-out.


Story Two “A Day to Be Grateful For”: I really like how this story made a piece about dinosaurs eating humans seem wholesome. I also have a fondness for “Slice of Life” stories where Skinks, Sauri, or Kroxigor are doing something routine like herding llama or fetching items, yet character and lore is revealed.


Generally, I like short word counts as it demonstrates an efficient writer, but I would have liked this piece to be longer. Therizinosaurs: more please. Since this is the basis of the story, I want more. What do they look like? What do they sound like? What do they smell like? How do they move? How do their pack dynamics works? How big are they? What do techniques and natural weapons to they slay evil humans with? What kind of food is in the Skink’s bag? The Skinks didn’t seem the least bit threatened by the Therizinosaurs. Why? Do the Therizinosaurs recognize that the Skinks bring food with some kind of eager Pavlovian response?


Story Three “This Story Has Chaos Dwarves in It”: I expected a Jurassic Park parody but this was way more clever than anything I could have come up with. Excellent premise and a funny end joke.

Generally, I like short word counts as it demonstrates an efficient writer, but I would have liked this piece to be longer. Since this was a comedy piece it could have used more jokes and Jurassic Park Easter eggs. Maybe deeper character descriptions to match the dinosaurs to the actors/human characters they are parodying. What dinosaur would Newman be? A short story has introduction, conflict and resolution, and this piece was 90% introduction. In my opinion, the piece needed more narrative stakes, even if it’s played for laughs. Maybe reenact an iconic scene or two. “Wait, he’s not eating the goat? He’s milking it and making cheese? Horrifying!”


Story Four “Goring Horns”: War elephants versus Stegadons is a cool mental image, but it still only counts as one! Great battle narration all around. Good pacing.

Generally, I like short word counts as it demonstrates an efficient writer, but I would have liked this piece to be longer. Actually no, this piece was about 2000 words which in my mind is usually ideal. Maybe it could have trimmed 100-200 words of battle narrative, but I would want to add another 100-200 words of exposition added in it's place. I'm not sure how I feel about a short story starting in medias res. I myself am not sure what the rules are for when it is best to use medias res. I suspect medias res is not a great fit in short stories, but there is a school of thought that in the 21st century when your audience has a reduced attention span relative to the readers of yesteryear that media res is better than ever. I do also know that writers and artists in general can and should break the rules...carefully. Remember Picasso's early work was pretty ordinary. He himself said an artist has to learn the rules thoroughly before breaking them. Maybe media res is worthy of it's own thread or at least a mention in the Writers Wretreat.

But anyway, back to my critique on this piece. Short stories need conflict and stakes. I think this piece could have used a short exposition at beginning or if you want to stick with media res, insert a "How did I get here?" flashback in the middle. I want to know who the narrator is, how and why he got in a life or death fight with the Southlands Lizardmen, and overall I want to know why should I care if he lives or dies. If hypothetically, the writer does not want to explain why I should care about this character, than the battle should be less one-sided. In this story the humans fought bravely and competently, but nothing they did really mattered under the unrelenting assault of the Lizardmen, it was never in doubt who would win. If you are not going to make me invested in the narrator's life or death, then I would at least want the battle outcome to be uncertain.


Story Five: "Lustria Park": Two Jurassic Park stories, so I'm going to do a bit of apples-to-apples comparison with Story Three.

I thought Story Three had a better twist ending and a funnier premise, I thought "Lustria Park" was better at everything else.

Again, keep in mind that I agree literary rules can and should be broken from time to time but I believe in general, a short story name should very clearly tell you what's going on and I don't agree with Story Three author's decision to make a misleading title just to get a rise out of Nightbringer.

More importantly, "Lustria Park" was better constructed. The characters felt more alive and it seemed to follow the main story beats of Jurassic Park much more closely but deviated enough to maintain my interest. The pacing was slightly better and this piece had a better defined beginning, middle, and end (though the ending was not perfect as my next paragraph attests). Story Three had one great joke but "Lustria Park" had several good jokes, and I'd say "Lustria Park" won the humor award overall in my opinion. Also, it had huagerdons in it. I feel warm and fuzzy whenever an author other than me writes huagerdons in something.

My main misgiving is that this short story is written as a teaser or introduction to a larger story. 19 times out of 20 we never get the larger story finished. 49 times out of 50, the larger story is never as captivated. I've been running these short story contests a very long time. Introduction stories almost never win. I put the almost in for padding. Maybe if I looked over all 32 previous contests very carefully, I can find one exception that proves the rules, but that still only counts as one! Maybe I'm a nerd or a rules stickler, but I generally believe short stories should contain short stories that are well contained to specific things. There is a general rule that because space is at a premium in a short story, I had an English teacher say every sentence must advance the plot or establish characterization, anything else is wasted space. I'm not sure I would go that absolute (especially for the fantasy genre), but certain stories work better as short stories, some as novelettes, some as novelas, and maybe some as novels. It is not like we disallow writing outside the short story contests.

 

TWO reviews at once?
What a lucky day is this.

 

To be fair, I like Chaos Dwarfs too. I thought about collecting them, but I have enough unfinished models as is, three armies is enough.

But more than that, they were my favorite part of the Tamurkahn fluff. The Chaos Dwarves are almost unique among WHF bad guys. They are competent schemers that make careful plans.

When the big Chaos coalition was planning for their big assault, the Warriors of Chaos and Beastmen and Ogres were all like "Yeah let's get 'em! We can't lose!"

Meanwhile, the Chaos Dwarves made sure to set up a line of retreat just in case. They also made a contingency plan that if they needed to withdraw early, they would withdraw with captured slaves and loot in tow so as not to return home empty handed.

In my opinion, to do Chaos Dwarves vs. Lizardmen justice, it would be difficult to fit a complete story in 2400 words or less. It almost requires a novelette. Whereas, almost every other group of potential enemies the Lizardmen might fight, don't need nearly as much backstory to explain why they are fighting. No one is going to bat an eye if a herd of Beastmen just shows up out of nowhere because that's what they do. No one is going to question if Skaven and Lizardmen are trying to kill each other, that is just what they do.

I did like the short story a while back where a Chaos Dwarf, Dark Elf, and Skaven had a short lived team-up against the Lizardmen, so it's not impossible to write a good Chaos Dwarf vs. LM story in under 2400 it's just hard.

Much like I have hundreds of unpainted models, I have many unfinished story ideas. No promises, but I would like to include Chaos dwarves if possible and I will definitely let you know if I write something along those lines.

Anyway, I did write a story with Chaos Dwarves a while back. Sort of. Some dumb morons excavated a site where Chaos Dwarves battled High Elves and resurrected a steam punk monster the CD's built.

 

The tie-breaker thread link is here.

The final winner's announcement will still be on this thread.