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Post by James on May 1, 2015 23:04:25 GMT -5
TOPIC: Flash Fiction
Deadline: Sunday, 10th May
Words are precious. Write us a story that is less than 750 words long. No restrictions beyond that. |
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Post by Kaez on May 10, 2015 21:44:43 GMT -5
When Ellie fell down the man hole in the middle of New York, she’d been expecting muck, disgusting sewage, and cold dankness.
She’d been walking along Main Street, texting, when the accident happened. It was a freezing January morning and the side-walk had iced up. Before she knew it she was down the hole. But there was no crash landing on solid concrete or a puddle of faecal rainwater. She’d landed on cushions, silk ones, accompanied by throws of luxury untold.
Ellie began to question where she had learned what sewer tunnels were supposed to look like, because this was far from it! It was like an Arabian courtier’s room full of exotic paintings and piles of gold. In the centre was what could only be described as a lizard with thick green scales: a real, life dragon.
Scarcely able to breathe, Ellie knew she had to be careful. She knew she'd intruded where she did not belong and had no intentions on finding out if dragons really did eat little girls. Carefully she manoeuvred herself atop the pillows and, wobbling upright, checked her surroundings. There were books on the walls that looked older than dust. The room appeared to be lit from above with a glow where the city's streets ought to be. She glanced down at the gold coins near her feet and noticed that they didn’t look like any currency she’d ever seen before, at least, not like the kind they showed you at school.
Most puzzling of all, from her vantage point, there was no obvious exit point. They only one was a stairwell and it was directly behind the dragon. Even above, from where she fell, she couldn't spot any open manholes. Things were looking dire.
Ellie’s palms started to sweat and cheeks flushed. The dragon was as tall as a skyscraper from tongue to tail. With every gigantic exhale its lizard tongue would whip out and lick the floor. The sound and accompanying heat was like huge bellows working at a furnace.
The room felt like an oven. She had to move.
Carefully and with arms extended, she moved one foot after the other and was soon off of the pillows and onto the piles of coins, plates, and other precious things. Even over the constant thrum of the dragon she was sure her footsteps would be heard. Surely, she thought, somebody from up on the street had seen her disappear. It was a busy street, but where was it now? She glanced up again, blinded by the strange light, her mind racing, trying to figure a way out.
What if the stairs didn’t lead outside? The thought struck her a ton of bricks. She risked another look at the beast. Its nostrils were as large as doors, the tongue as long as the highway, and claws sharper than kitchen knives. (She didn’t want to test this theory!)
During her fretting, Ellie hadn’t realized but she’d knocked over a charger, which fell near her feet with a great 'clang!' Not waiting to find out what would happen she ran for the exit, spinning and skittered over a pile coins and ornaments with a muffled yelp. Ellie didn't really believe in God, but right now she was praying; wishing for the city again and her parents and everything else that was nowhere to be found. Behind her she could hear as the dragon lifted itself and stretched with an ear-ringing yawn. It was awake. Terribly, awfully awake.
And suddenly, there was a door.
It was within her grasp in seconds. It was a huge, wooden door and had the weight of an elephant. She groaned, pushing with all her weight, until it opened enough to squeeze through, then charged through blindly with her eyes closed against whatever horror laid beyond.
When she came to a stop on the other side and turned Ellie realised she was looking at a bus stop. An ordinary, mundane, bus stop covered by a poster about fares increasing. The door wasn’t there any more. Her heart was pounding and she could hardly breathe, but there were no coins, no pillows, no highway-long tongues. The people waiting at the stop cast her odd looks.
She couldn’t help but wonder if it was all a daydream. Was that possible? Even the dragon? It wasn’t until she got her bearings and began walking away that noticed something uncomfortable in her shoe. Her fingers fished out a coin as warmth spread down her back. |
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on May 11, 2015 1:41:28 GMT -5
[Removed per authors request]
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Post by Matteo ((Taed)) on May 16, 2015 23:14:31 GMT -5
Team Kaez: I actually liked that this didn't have a twist or a punny explanation. I mean, I'm sure if you'd had a good twist I would have enjoyed that too, but I think the flash format is capable of supporting disconnected weirdness without an explanation. The short length put a small enough demand on the reader that you can get away with it.
It was definitely generic, which is usually a cardinal sin for me, although again, I think the flash format worked to your advantage in mitigating that problem. When economy of language is so important, cliché can be a very handy tool for compressing the imagery into a smaller package. Having said that, perhaps a hybrid approach would have been more interesting: paint the broad strokes in with standard tropes, but toss one unusual curveball in to differentiate yourself.
Repetition is a pet peeve of mine, so I almost always try to point it out when I see it. This was a particularly rough example, given that it would have been so easy to have just said "exit" and been done with it.
It is also a pet peeve of mine when people say "there was no blank," only to immediately follow it with "except for blank." To say that there's no apparent exit, and then to describe a potential exit in the very next sentence ... it bugs me.
I don't know what this was supposed to say.
This was a good example of the really subtle, slightly awkward turns of phrase that it's easy to fall into if you're not paying attention. Quite simply, there are just a dozen better ways to say this.
Team Zovo: This makes a good contrast to the first entry. It definitely went weirder, something I'm always in favour of, but it still made decent use of established tropes to pack more story into a flash-sized package. The fact that literally everyone knows the Little Mermaid meant that you were able to do away with a lot for clunky exposition that would have otherwise been necessary to explain the premise, and just focus on this one scene instead.
It also made the points where you diverged from the established story very interesting. In particular, I thought the allusions to Merissa being eaten were very well done. You were subtle enough with the hints that, although I definitely caught on before the end reveal, there was still a good arc to my realization. Evoking the image of a sushi restaurant prior to the reveal that Merissa is half fish, and then peppering the references to her friends eating without making anything explicit ... Yeah, it was great. You structured it flawlessly.
Who were her friends? Were these actually people that she knew, or were they surface-dwellers that she's been yearning to join? That was kind of unclear.
Also, as much as I enjoyed the arc leading up to the twist, the actual ending itself was bungled. These things work so much better when there's a clever irony to the negative outcome. A "you should have read the fine print" ending, where the hero accidentally played right into a villainous scheme. This story didn't have that, it just ended with "Don't trust witches, I guess. *stab* You're dead now."
Why "as" maroon? This has no reason to be a simile, you're just naming a colour.
Less obvious than many of the other examples of repetition seen in this contest, since it repeats a few paragraphs down, rather than immediately, but still something to watch out for. You don't need to go full on thesaurus all the time, but you only mention a handful of colours in this whole piece, there's no reason for one of them to be a repeat.
Result: This was tough for me, because I think the first story was much neater, and it was a tad better-written, but I definitely found the second story more interesting. At the finish, when I find them this close to call, I need to go with the one that I think it's more likely I'll remember in the future, and unfortunately for the first entry, it just didn't have enough novelty to stick.
Point - Zovo
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Post by James on May 16, 2015 23:27:17 GMT -5
Team Kaez
Like I said in the main thread, I’m always slightly unsure how to handle giving feedback around flash fiction, so bear with me because my explanations may be long-winded. I can say that on the whole, I liked it. It was a nice, sweet little bit of flash fiction. It wouldn’t have done too badly in the children’s fiction match from last round either.
My biggest concern with this, though, was its pacing. From what I know of flash fiction, from Reffy’s best pieces (who knows, you may be Reffy), to previous competitions, to my own occasional dabbles, it’s all about pacing. You want flash fiction to be smooth. Essentially, the reader shouldn’t notice that you’re racing against a clock. Unfortunately, I got that impression a little bit. She drops down a man hole and boom, suddenly dragon. And then there’s no door. And then the dragon wakes up and suddenly there’s a door. It felt jumpy. It didn’t quite feel smooth enough.
However, there is some stuff I really enjoyed. First, I felt that your first line was excellent. It hinted at a twist and got me interested. Secondly, while they were listed, I really loved how you conveyed the size of the dragon: nostrils as large as doors, tongue as long as the highway, claws sharper than kitchen knives. It was nice work. Just maybe look at trying to flow them together better. Finally, the switch up to the mundane was great. The posters about the fare increasing were an excellent bit of description to ram the scene change home. Well done.
So yeah, on the whole a nice job, but just keep an eye on pacing issues.
Team Zovo
This was deliciously creepy.
I can’t actually say much about this because it felt well done. It’s quite direct, there’s a lot of telling instead of showing, but I think this is actually the kind of story where that’s not necessarily a flaw. The narrative is a bit disjointed, but again I think that’s actually a benefit to the story instead of a hindrance.
The only thing I’d say is that flash fiction relies a lot on flow and a few odd word choices or word repetition just nudged me every now and then (such as: Merissa’s tongue briefly embraces the witch’s tongue). The tongue repetition seems clumsy and I’m sure there’s a better way to handle it. Especially in a form which demands a good flow.
But yeah, I’m kind of at a loss of what to say. The idea was creepy and interesting. You didn’t waste words explaining background information that wasn’t needed. There was some neat turn of phrases. Nicely done.
Result
I’ve got to give the point to Team Zovo here. Both of these stories were good, but I felt that Team Zovo’s entry gave me a more rounded story with slightly better pacing.
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