Thanks for entering Round Two of "Invalid Item" .
This review is not the sole aspect of the judging process and my judging reviews mimic my regular reviews;
so, I try to make these reviews to be helpful and critical as well as a part of my judging assessment.
Thanks again for entering and Good luck!
Do not edit your poem until the winners are announced
Prompt
I leave now...
Please follow the prompt and take the prompt as literally or as abstractly as you would like to take it. You do not have to use the prompt inside your poem or as the title of your poem. The "I" can be a representation of anything you could think of, meaning it does not have to be you or anyone else. You can use the ellipsis if you chose to but you do not have to if you do not want to. I think that is enough nothing for this round. ENJOY!
poem from:
Overall
I thought you did a great job in using one moment in time on stage, describing some very vivid points of this time and how someone on state my relinquish their fear from themselves before the performance starts. Also, I like the use of the typical "I see the light situation" and how you used that to not only extinguish the fear within the poems persona but also as the tool for the poem persona to "look within them self" rather than another higher being for them to get through this situation. It was a well constructed poem from the beginning to end and didn't lose its strength throughout. WELL DONE!
Title
this title was a bit off for me at first but I've grown to like it more and more as I analyze your poem. I like how the "I" persona lifts up and fly's passed the fear that is overcome with the know how and persistence of character. I would have liked a different word than fly maybe even if you used the word "sing" instead so that it means you are singing over everything else even the fear the poem persona once had in mind for the brief moment in time. But other then that suggestion I thought it worked out well with the poem and in adding another level of meaning while also wrapping the poem up in a nice little package.
Structure
I think the poem worked well in the structure how you have it yet I would have done a few things a bit differently with the punctuation and capitalization to add some emphasizes to some words rather than other words. For instance I love how you capitalize the word "Breathe" which gives it so much more power creating that calming internal voice reflection that most people in this situation have but to get this emphasizes even more so you would need to uncapitalize your other words at the beginning of your lines. Basically I would keep: the first line and the fifth line capitalize as well as "Me" at the end of the poem. I think doing this will make those capital words stand out a bit more and make those parts even stronger in your poem.
the other thing I would do with this poem is put a colon after "pause". I think it will make that reflective moment a bit more important and that pause that feels like an eternity on stage feel like an eternity in this poem. Plus it breaks up the fear from the relinquishing part of the fear very nicely with the colon instead of a comma.
Randomness
I love how it seems like the person wants too kill them self but in reality it is only a part of them self that they don't want invading their body at this point in time. It makes the poem persona's will and control of them self much stronger then they know. I also like how you didn't try to over complicate things with your word choices and how the word placement creates a great fluidity from beginning to the end of the poem. Nicely done!
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s). I might post the winner(s) earlier then the close of the third round if I finish the reviews faster than expected.
I like your idea for this 55 word story and I think you did well in writing it but I got a couple of ideas that might strength it further.
The Story Told:
"On the other side, they inflicted unimaginable tortures on my wife."
this is your second sentence and I think you could do a little bit more if you mention what they heard instead of saying what might be happening on the other side of the door. I think it will be a bit more real and have more impact on the reader this way.
the other thing with this 55 word story is that I feel that there are two endings. For me the better ending is not the last sentence but the dialogue before the last sentence. If it ends there you get that nice finished sensation and with the ending how it is now I get that umm ok why did they say this. It seems irrelevant because the telling of the part before hand is the more important part.
I think if you delete those words after that dialogue line and use them in the beginning some more that you could add more in different ways.
Thanks for entering Round One of "Invalid Item" .
This review is not the sole aspect of the judging process and my judging reviews mimic my regular reviews;
so, I try to make these reviews to be helpful and critical as well as a part of my judging assessment.
Thanks again for entering and Good luck!
Do not edit your poem until the winners are announced in the forum
Prompt
Write a Gogyohka poem which is a five line free verse poem.
Overall
this poem is a bit cliche-ish. I'm sorry but it is. One reason it is very clichish to me is that I use to help/guestjudge a poetry contest on WDC called the broken heart poetry contest. It was fun but I got to learn a lot of why using cliches are bad in poetry. Basically, if it is so common to everyone it doesn't seem that great or important even though it is. So what do we do? We make the cliche notion into something new by bending the light of it with our words, the sounds of our words working together, and the images our words make when grouped together. So your feelings of these short are fine to write about and I hope you continue to do so but we need to up the ante and be the first person to make the new cliche.
Title
I like the title a lot. I like how the beginning is already done. but really it is a great title for this emotion and for the assumption that this character is no longer living anymore.
Line Suggestions
now onto the whole how to say things differently. All of your lines are cliche so I'm going to pick one line and try to show you a couple of different ways you can write it without it being a cliche (hopefully).
"Crying with no tears"
this negative tear of over crying is a popular one and I even used it in one of my own poems "Invalid Item" (it is even clichish how I wrote it so it isn't an easy thing to do). Basically, in my poem I was a bit more specific with it and I made it move a bit more since instead of using the actual act of crying I used the act of tasting those tears that have been cried (so it is different but I'm not saying it is the smartest thing in the world).
instead of saying this thing out right you could use a depiction that means or that can represents this feeling like:
"a hot humid day"<--- no rain but the heavy wetness is wrong (VERY WRONG how do people live with 100% humidity)
"the desert in my eyes"<--- cried too much you can't cry type of thing.
I think that's enough to get my point across. Plus, I'm a bit low on ideas right now but if you have any questions feel free to email me.
Randomness
cliches don't make a bad poem but they do make a usual poem.
put on all the usuals
and strip them off
do an interpretive dance
and tackle some body art
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s) or at least I hope I put them there.
Thanks for entering Round One of "Invalid Item" .
This review is not the sole aspect of the judging process and my judging reviews mimic my regular reviews;
so, I try to make these reviews to be helpful and critical as well as a part of my judging assessment.
Thanks again for entering and Good luck!
Do not edit your poem until the winners are announced in the forum
Prompt
Write a Gogyohka poem which is a five line free verse poem.
Overall
I like the simplicity of this poem and it is a very well deserving idea to push along. The thing this needs is a bit more balance and organizing around the vowel sounds of the words you use and I think you could add one thing which would make it flow a bit better. Also I think you could do a little more with the ordering of actions to make this even more intimate as if it was happening right this second.
Title
the title works and I like how you don't use the words from the title in the poem.
Structure
I think you should start this poem with your second line for a couple of different reasons. One is a physical reason that I feel at this moment in time they would be "touching" before "kissing" well they kind of happen at the same time but a kiss is a type of touch but more specific. the other reason is "kissing" where it is breaks up the rhythm a bit more than anything for me and makes it flow better when is isn't the first line.
"touching
he's on top"
I think those lines work very well together as the first and second lines. Another thing you could do is shorten it even more by doing.
"touching
he's
on top"
this pushes the rhythm connection between "touching" and "on top" with the alternating vowel sounds and the [t] sounds. To me how you have it the movement from line to line doesn't have a strong connection which makes the flow not as effective for the poem or that moment in time.
I thought the we're wasn't needed in the poem and if you left it out it would of been a nice ambiguity into whom was having the action that followed. I do like the combination of the words from "he" to "me" to "we" but I think the contraction "we're" is altered too much by the "are" part in the contraction. I think leaving out the we're gives a little more leeway for interpretation and a bit better rhythm overall.
Randomness
I thought that it was a very good idea and your word choice was good but I think the placement of these words could have been more effective in a different manner to help the effectiveness of the moment and of the emotion of that moment.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s) or at least I hope I put them there.
Thanks for entering Round One of "Invalid Item" .
This review is not the sole aspect of the judging process and my judging reviews mimic my regular reviews;
so, I try to make these reviews to be helpful and critical as well as a part of my judging assessment.
Thanks again for entering and Good luck!
Do not edit your poem until the winners are announced in the forum
Prompt
Write a Gogyohka poem which is a five line free verse poem.
Overall
to me the simplicity of this poem is great but I also feel it was all too common simplicity. Yes, this my be one of the most baffling statements known to men today but I will try and explain it throughout this review. for me this poem seems to be centered around 'life' which is simple enough to conceive but the last line seems to be confusing everything else. I think it is how it is phrased with the combination of needing some sort of separation of the last line from the top four lines. (I'll explain it more so lower in this review)
Structure
I don't comment much on punctuation and I sometimes poems need it and sometimes it doesn't yours falls in the middle of this situation to me because you can have so much fun in interpreting this poem by moving the phrases. For example:
life
an adventure
in the end
life
is a test
and so on and so forth with more moving around what goes with what. You can make which part is more important to you by using some commas or other punctuation.
Line Suggestions
Remember I mentioned something about the last line well it isn't only the last line and is partly because the last line isn't like any of the other lines. What do I mean by this? Well... in all the other lines you are talking about "life" and the last line you are talking about "not life" but the continuing problem is the placement of the line and the word I think...
If we change the first line to:
In the end...
I saw life
(In the end)
life saw
from the end
I saw life
I feel that personifying the word life or adding a bit more living to it as looking at it instead of looking at the word life a better meaning comes out as well with have the direction or location of where you are looking from being present.
Please note: in putting "In the end." at the top of the poem this completely adds another layer you might not be intending which I find extremely import. Basically it was a bit bias of me putting it there.
there are some other order things you could do with the lines but the inner line placement for me isn't as important as the presentation or mood setting of the word "life" as well with the intentions of the last line.
Randomness
If you recall the confusing line I started with I think I might explain this now. I wanted a little more from these simply phrases as instead of saying "though short" how about throwing in an image of something short or maybe say this line in a new way like:
"at midget time"
"a nanosecond"
"scaled to you"<--- I'm not sure about this one.
anyway I think you get what I mean or I hope so.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s) or at least I hope I put them there.
Thanks for entering Round Twenty-Two of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: 127 words is less than 200 words. WELL DONE!
small note: I understand in the rules of the contest we mention 200 words or less but we usually suggest to entries to get as close to that 200 word count as possible since it is such a low number you should use most of the words to make a complete story. Your story is complete but I think if you used some more words around your nice and simple plot line it would have worked out even better with a bit more to this story.
Plot:
I thought the plot was straight forward and had great potential to be a scary inherently in this prompt. It was also something very easy to keep under the 200 word limit. Nice job picking out a good idea to fit in this limited space.
The Story Told:
most of your story gets a bit "telly" and I think stories of this length need to be more "showy" than anything else. Why? well in bigger stories you can tell more of the story since you have so much more room and information to give but I feel it is easier to show things when you have a story of this length. I could be complete wrong in these thoughts but that is fine. Let me show you what I mean. This line is very telly:
"Maria wondered who it could be at this time of day."
this is a normal response for such a situation and a perfect thought for the character in your story to have. However, to me I feel the way you wrote this little line had too much intrusion of the writer in the story rather than letting it be the characters story. So how do we fix such a problem? To tell you the truth it isn't that hard, you need to take out the perspective of the writer inflecting on what the character is doing and make it so the character does what you are saying without actually saying:
who could it be at this time of day wondered Maria.
"Who could it be at this time of day?" wondered Maria.
so instead of having the narration saying what she wondered the two ways in which I wrote them above have her doing this herself. It might not seem like that much but it does make a difference in the voice of the readers head when they are reading the story.
along with this thought of having the character have the actions rather than the narration saying the actions you need to be careful how you express certain things. For instant you use "as" in the beginning a few statements which is almost moving a person around like a chess piece rather them making their own choices of movement. instead of saying:
"As she walked..." say this "Shed walked..."
"As Maria turned..." say this "Maria turned..."
when you have the "as" in the beginning of the sentence it feels like we are standing at a campfire and you are telling a group of kids the story. This is fine for a vocal story where the speaker can interact and communicate the story with their expressions and changing the volume of their voice. In writing we don't have this tool to help create the story so we need to make these stories feel like they are happening to the characters that the reader is reading about.
this also happens with the "He then stepped..." you need to get ride of these directional links and let the characters move themselves. "He stepped..."
In other words for most of your story you need to write the story and not speak it out to the audience.
Grammar and Dialogue:
"... 5 year old daughter,..." - you should spell out numbers when writing specially in stories like this. Their are a few reasons why not to spell out numbers but I can't remember them. SORRY! Most of the time you want to write the word and not the number itself.
Nightmare Factor:
this was sort of scary but I feel that you needed to add some more things about this story to create some more intensity between the events. some smaller details like the guys breath moving slow before attacking or the five year old frozen in her tracks. Or what happens if she said, "Daddy?" and then the mom said, "No Run!" to create a bit more life into these figures. I'm not going to lie, I like dialogue a lot. Does every story need dialogue? No not really but I feel if the characters are speaking then they seem more real and if they are more real then the story is more real.
Randomness:
this was a good skeleton and I think if you add some little tension details and a bit more character life into the story then it would be one to wet peoples pants. Not the laughing wet but the scary wet. HEE HEE HEE.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Twenty of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: 200 words on the dot. WELL DONE!
Plot:
This was a very interesting plot because it could happen easily which makes it a bit more scary then the what constitutes a normally scary story with a monster of some sort. I also think it was a plot that was easy to maneuver within the 200 word limitation specially with your use of dialogue.
The Story Told:
before talking about the story let me explain something about formatting and space. I like space because it helps me read, you didn't give me the space I would of liked to have to read this. Basically, I'm saying you need to have a space between your paragraphs even more so when most of your story is dialogue it makes it less jumbled together. Or you could use the newish writingMLtag {linespace:2.5} {/linespace} to make more space in between the lines of your story or poem so it is easier to read.
Your story is pretty good but of course I have some nit picky things that I would do to tighten things up a little more.
Plot line wise I wouldn't of had the husband in the room so that it would be easier for the mid-wife to take the baby. I love that you have the question there of "where is jack?" but I think if you have the mid-wife saying something about him on the phone or something or not being allowed to be in the room or stopped from coming here it would of taken out this distraction that I thought was a bit empty to the story.
sometimes you like to add friends to your dialogue lines and we all like friends except for me in this case. what do I mean?
“Beth, I need you to push harder now” said the midwife, from the bottom of the bed.
In the first part of this story you do very well with the dialogue telling what is going on and I even like your "said the midwife" since it gives important information to the reader. What I dislike is this friendly helper of "... , from the bottom of the bed." we know what the mid-wife is doing already since you have her saying PUSH HARDER which puts her at the end of the bed and not that friendly helper of a phrase. Basically I feel you are saying this twice and the first time is so good that the second time isn't needed.
later on in the story you have a lot of "jack said" whatnot and in brief stories like these I would limit your use of things of this sort because they only eat up words. Also this part of the story doesn't make sense in why jack doesn't see the baby that isn't there. I think you need a better way of doing this for the disappearance of the baby. Maybe have the real midwife come into the room. That would be scary but you would have to explain in the beginning that the other midwife wasn't coming in and she was the replacement then have the real one come in saying "sorry... I just got the call you were in labor"
sorry I put two things into that paragraph and I hope you can sort it out.
other then that I think this worked out well.
Grammar and Dialogue:
“Beth, I need you to push harder now” -you have a lot of dialogue like this? what is wrong with this? You might be thinking nothing but this is wrong because all your dialogue needs to have some form of punctuation before the closing quotation marks. WHy? because the crazy language people say so and it is one rule I actually follow (hee hee hee). The thing that I do to remember is if I'm writing dialogue or whatever I need to have something before closing a quotation mark which is rather simple. It doesn't matter what well sometimes it does depending what is following the dialogue or before it but it is better to think about having something first before knowing the right thing to put there.
Nightmare Factor:
as I said before this story was scary because this could happen in real life but it wasn't extremely scary for me because I wanted more reaction from the husband either one way or the other as if he was defiantly in on it or hysterical like his wife was.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Eighteen of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used:199 words is under 200 words. Thank you for following the rules. Well done!
Plot:
I understand that you are taking a non-traditional approach to telling a story but as we talked about this before I need some elements of this to be a story and the one bit that you don't have is the most critical part. Whom is this monologue speaking too. Is it a report to the commander? is it the alien being to the people of earth? is it only to the leaders of earth so they can cover up the people that will be taken for further research (OHHH I LIKE THAT IDEA)? SO I think if this story had a direction towards who the audience is then I think it would have a purpose as well as a stronger and scarier feel to the story.
The Story Told:
You might argue a monologue is a story in the first person and shouldn't be subjected to such talk. I agree it is but on the other hand I don't since the telling of the monologue doesn't quite move as much from one thing talking out the events. If you have one or two instances where the commander or another being responding to this report with a "Good... It is all going according to plan." or with a "I can't believe it." or a "Are they really doing that with human bodies?" Or "Squeak (the humans deserve what they get." says an evil mouse.
Basically I like the language you use in the report but I wish I knew the speaker and whom they are speaking to and once that information is present it is a story.
Also it's important connection to make since this is the way I think that will illuminate the scary features of this report so that we know something wrong is happening to the earth people and so forth.
Nightmare Factor:
Right now as is it isn't a scary story. You did a great job in making this report with little emotion attachment to it making it seem like the eradication of mankind is an everyday business for these beings but to really get a sense I think you need another being inside this story to make it come alive and not just there.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Eighteen of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: you have 199 words which is certainly 200 or under thank you for following the rules. WELL DONE!
I noticed afterwords that you edited after the contest closed. I already started the review for this story and judged it but please don't edit after the contest is done with judging and reviews other wise you will be disqualified.
Plot:
something is in the basement and attacks the main character when they are in there as well. The idea is well fitting for this word constriction but a very generic story that has been told over and over again. I think it needs something new so that it seems scarier then how it is presented here.
The Story Told:
there are a couple of things I find that hinders the stories effectiveness of being a scary story. One is the voicing in how it is writing and the other one is how you write it with a series of cliches.
First off the voicing: I'm not saying you shouldn't write in first person and I think first person could be used very effectively in writing a horror or scary story to have the reader relate to the story through the character speaking.However you need to do things correctly when writing in the first person. For instance,"...it caught me unaware." is a bit of an odd statement to say in this story. I'm not saying it couldn't happen like that but I'm saying that this is a statement that happens after the fact and the thing is after the fact of this attack the main character is dead so how could the main character say something if they are dead? So this is a problem. I understand that the persons ghost could be telling the story but there isn't an indication that they are the one that's telling the story.
The second thing but more importantly is the language you use for your story is very cliche. Is this good or bad? Mostly bad since it seems like the same old entry without gaining the judges interest to peek up. The good thing is you know the general mood makers for a scary story so all you need to do is change them so they are less cliche. You might be asking, how the hell can I do that? What I do in my own writing is think of the cliche then add my own way of interpreting it with a different sound or a different look or whatever.
For instance: "The stairs creaked as I stepped down."
Everything creaks in horror stories and it is boring it tells use the silence that is around with the noticing of this small noise. How about: "A mouse squeaked when I stepped on the stairs." This has two purposes one so that the owner of the house has a reason to go into the basement which I forgot to mention in the plot section that you needed. It is a bit weird that the owner of this house is walking into the basement for no reason what so ever and you need some sort of element to get your character there in order to get the ball moving in the story. right now it is like ok that's nice he gets mauled for no reason what so ever. This means the reader isn't connected to the character or care what happens to the character. Basically without the reason it is a senseless killing and senseless killings aren't scary unless there is some another human element to the story. Anyway, the squeak is a bit less of a cliche but not great or anything.
The other things are your reiteration of the darkness and the use of the moonlight and even the claws of the beast and description of the mauling. So try and get out of the usual and wow me with your exploration of language and the images you can create with that language you find.
Your story has a sort of frame work but overall I think you need to dig deeper to really make this scary.
Randomness:
I think you could do a lot more with this story overall to get it out of the generic horror feel and wow the reader. If you need any further explanations of what I mean or have some non-cliche questions feel free to ask me.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: you have 198 words which is under 200 words. NICE JOB!
Plot:
a person gets back at someone for being loud in the library. I like this plot and I think you did a pretty good job moving it along in under two hundred words.
The Story Told:
there are a few things in how you wrote this story. You write it as if you were speaking the whole thing in dialogue or that you are around a campfire trying to scare some little kids. The problem with telling a story like this in that way is that the present of the story teller is needed to help create this scary feelings with emphasizing certain parts of the story and giving the intense looks to scare individuals in the crowd. As a written story I feel that that you intrude too much in the story even though it is in first person. The little utterances like "In fact," are verbal cues and not a great tool to create pace in a written story. Also your usage of "if...then" statements breaks it out of the story element and makes it more of a verbal than a written story.
I think if you change out the utterances I mentioned and made it more of active scenes of the person breaking into the home while saying why they are doing this, the story will seem more complete and work out better overall as a written story.
"It’s so soft and cheerful."<-- in this line you don't really need so. Why? for one thing it is an extra word that you might be able to put somewhere else in your story. Also I would take out this period and continue your sentence in that way instead of how you have it but I think that is more of a style thing.
I understand what you are trying to do with the snow creating cover but it doesn't stop the crunching sound that could alert the dog or the smell your tracks leaves in the snow.
"If I haven’t broken in yet, you’ll bring the dogs inside and I‘ll have to kill them, too."<-- this doesn't make sense since it seems out of place. Why? well why would your breaking in have any affect on the person bringing in the dogs if the owner of the house doesn't know you are in there.
Grammar and Dialogue:
usually when you use contractions in a story you want to stay with this throughout the whole story to be consistent. For instance you use "If I am in the house,..." but in many cases you have "... I‘ll have to kill them,..." but you should stay consistent throughout the whole story.
Nightmare Factor:
I think the notion of a person killing someone else because someone was loud in the library is great and very screwed up. However, I think it lost a lot of the scary factor in the order in which you told this story. You should try mentioning the library scene first then go into the part of the home invasion so that we feel scare the whole time instead of being confused in what is going on in the beginning of this story.
Randomness:
I also thing think this story would be great to expand starting from the library and then have the main character following the person and waiting until night time to break into the house.
It's a good story but needs some revision to really make it shine.
I think you have a good plot for this 55 word story but I think you could strengthen the plot of this story if you're a bit more precise in how you wrote the plot.
You might be wondering what I mean by being precise?
I mean not over explaining as well as cutting down the amount of words you use to say one thing so that it comes out strongly once without any other need to explain it again. For instance:
"Its buzz pierced into my ear and I tried to slap it. My hand curved around my head near the ear."
In your first two sentences you say the same thing in each sentence taking up a lot of words in the story. You might not see what I mean.
Your beginning is perfect: "Its buzz pierced into my ear" however you could make this even stronger saying "Its buzz pierced my eardrum." <-- I my small little change we know exactly what that Buzz is doing and it is one word shorter which is always good in writing 55 word stories because you never know where you are going to need another word.
everything that follows this part of the sentence reiterates itself with the second sentence and I think you might want to revise it a bit. what do I mean? the second sentence only explains the slapping motion of the hand yet you say clearly "I tried to slap it". In writing 55 word stories there isn't enough time to say what you are going to do then do it. You need to do all your motions to be said once so that we have a clear picture and drive of the story going on and like always we don't want to waste words. I would go with explaining the motion of the hand swatting at the ear instead of saying "I tried to slap it" but either one works for me but should only be said once.
"Soon I glimpsed it flying near my face." <--- this sentence is a little awkward for a few reasons. You might want to veer away from the word soon in the beginning of this sentence also the word glimpsed seems like the wrong word choice for this instance. Plus the POV is a bit confusing because the sentence wants to be about the fly and not your eyes. I would right it more like:
"I saw the culprit near my face."
"It flew into view, near my face."
"It flew by my left eye."
"From the corner of my eye I saw it."
these are a bit better because they are more clear. Please notice how I took out "soon" all together. I took it out because it seemed to confuse the tensing as well as make the sentence more complex than it needed to be.
Before I talked about being concise and precise at the same time. This little phrase is neither and a bit clunky. You might want to use a different word then "pulled" think about the motion the body makes if a fly was near you like that. Or think about a bee or a wasp or what ever near you and the movement you would make if it almost hit your eye ball. Use that word that describes it. Also I would describe this without the use "slightly". Why? well you need to be quick or sly and slightly seems to not fit either of those contexts in my eyes.
Also instead of restating the title I would do something else. Usually in such short stories you don't want to use the same words in your story as in the title because there is only so much room to work with. Plus, I think it would be better to have an image of the bug falling down to the ground then saying the title again.
I hope I could help.
Oh yeah... If you change anything in your story always remember to recount your words and after you recount them double check it just to be safe. HEE HEE HEE.
Write a poem or story that uses the following title: Kid Pix.
I liked how you used the prompt in this story (probably because I used it as a name as well Hee Hee Hee). I like how you tied the name and the action together to make it have a bit more meaning behind the name.
Plot:
the perspective of the plot was very interesting and I thought it fit will with how you told the story overall. I also like how you transitioned from one part to the next to make the story as one.
The Story Told:
I understand this contest is more about the uniqueness of using a prompt in a short amount of time and not in the refinement of any one poem or story but I did find some parts of this story to be a bit clunky. for instance in this sentence:
"He wobbled past a wonderfully shelled creature who stared at him with unblinking white eyes."
I would write something like this a bit more concisely with less clunky words:
"He wobbled passed a shelled creature that stared at him with unblinking whites."
It is a little bit of a change of style which I'm sorry about but you don't need to describe everything that is going on because sometimes it gets overwhelming to the reader. Also, you used "past" instead of "passed" which is probably because the contest doesn't give you a lot of time to edit but it is always good to check stuff over a few times.
Also if you use contractions like didn't instead of using did not then you might want to do the same throughout the story to stay consistent.
"So low in fact that the Kid Pix was now much more shaped like a pancake than a potato."
Here is a better example of being clunky:
"So low that Kid Pix was a pancake instead of a potato."
when you can say things in a few words rather than many words it usually comes out better, not always but usually. Also in your original sentence you say "the kid pix" and I think "the" isn't necessary because it is a proper name of it. Like for instance handler is Radler I wouldn't say the Radler in the story because there is only one. I think that's right but I could be wrong it happens quite often.
So I think the best thing for this story is to take out some of the multiple descriptions on some of the elements to tighten it up.
I love most of this poem and think you did a fantastic job with it. You say so much with the motion of the stones without explaining things in between the wonderful rhythm and images you've created with your words. VERY GOOD READ.
Line Suggestions
In saying all that in the introduction let me tell you what is bothering me about this poem. Your second stanza seems to tell everything about the poem flat out as if the information you gave use beforehand wasn't enough for the reader to understand it. I think this reiteration dwindles the poems power more so then help for understanding, which means I would take it out. Not all of it out but at least the first two lines of the second stanza that reiterates the whole poem. I think it diminishes the last two lines which are quite splendid.
This is probably one of the shortest reviews I've done in a while. But I think that's all I got.
Thanks for entering Round Fourteen of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
SORRY FOR BEING LATE ON THE REVIEWS
words used: 197 words is under 200 words. NICE JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Plot:
a person trying to sleep feels the horrors of a shadowy night. This is a great idea for this contest since it is easy to fit under the 200 word limit and is a good plot that already has a scary element to it. NICE JOB.
one of my personal theories on what to write for a contest: This is a good plot idea however a very common one as well. I know for myself it is harder to enter a contest without a prompt to work around, and when this happens I usually look at the previous entries to see what had been done. Once you know what was done you could do something completely different which is usually my option. I'm not saying it is easy or that you should do this, but after judging many entries over many rounds judges get the same themes and sometimes they want something different. However I like old themes with a new outlook as well.
The Story Told:
"that damn"- this makes the situation funny. I LOVE humor but usually it doesn't scare me. I found this quite funny as if the main character is pissed off for the moons existence. Plus this kills the mood that you are trying to go into with the next sentence.
"and I hear noises click and tick and scheme"- I just notice that you use and three times in this one thought. Since I noticed this I did a "and" find to see how many times you used it overall. It was nine times. This isn't a horrible thing but if they become noticeable to the reader then it is. I noticed most of the "ands" are in the first paragraph so you might want to change some longer sentences into shorter ones. For instance this one could be written much more concisely. I would make this its own sentence as well.
"I hear scheming clicks and ticks."-saying hearing and noises is another one of those conceptual redundancies I was talking about. of course you hear noise you do not taste or smell them. Well sometimes but that is in a different context.
"because something is there."-this isn't needed either since it is restating the line beforehand.
the problem thing about this story is that it resides mostly in the persons head. the reader doesn't feel the sounds or the dragging of the character because he is writing very crazy like as if he was imbalance. You did a great job in creating a crazy persona but the person is crazy and it isn't the situation that is making them crazy but their own mind. This limits the ability of being able to scare the person that is reading this because despite what I say as well as others I know (specially my friends that write)people do not presume themselves as crazy and wouldn't what to say they can relate to the crazy person. So instead of making the mind crazy you need to make the situation more crazy to make this situation work out better.
Grammar and Dialogue:
"I am lying in bed now"- two things that will save you two words with this statement. Usually, for this contest because of the word restriction, I would suggest using contractions rather than having both the words written out. This has nothing to do with grammar or style but about contest restrictions and feasibility. Since you don't have many words to work with you want to use the least about you can. Also, you want to take out conceptional redundancies. What is a conceptual redundancy? Well I might be making this term up but it works, so I roll with it, you want to limit saying things twice that are implied in an action or statement that you would usually write out. for instance "now" in this line is restating "I am lying in bed" so you want to get ride of that pesky "now" because it is taking up a word you conceptually said with your action.
Nightmare Factor:
As I said this isn't really scary because of how the information in the story resides in the head of the character without acknowledging to the reader that this is a nightly occurrence to this person.
Randomness:
Your descriptions of the scary being aren't that threatening or scary but very usual. the coldness, the red eyes, the blood are standards to describe however you want to describe these things without these words if you can. What I do is look at my best friend the thesaurus or say it in a different way.
The air grows colder, chilling my spine,... <---instead of this Suddenly my room felt like a meat locker. My skin turned whiter than frozen fat.<---something better than this
Red eyes! I see red eyes <----instead of this Black veins of bulging red eyes wet my pants.<---this is funny so isn't good. SORRY. Well I find it funny cause I'm insane. <---disregard insanity statement it is funny because of what I said before.
Truthfully though I think this little story could use a lot of work in trying to make it your own instead of like every other scared bedroom scene. It isn't easy to do. THANKS FOR ENTERING.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Thirteen of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: 199 words is just below 200 words. NICE JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Title note: its a pretty good title, I like how you incorporate the story in it but also that you don't give it away as well. I would have went with "The Special" or "A Special Evening" or "Dinner" or "A New Restaurant" I like some parts of the "Tomorrow" in your title but I'm also uneasy about it since it feels weird in general. That was hard to explain which I'm sorry about.
Plot:
a special dinner doesn't go according to plan. this was a good plot for this contest since it was simple and easy to create a story around it that fit under 200 words and also easy enough to add a scary element to this story.
The Story Told:
I can tell that you aren't use to writing with such a small word count. It isn't easy and takes some practice to get use to it. The simplest thing to do when writing under a very limiting word restriction is to keep your sentences short. Also, when you can say something with one word instead of a few use a few words. And always go back to edit to see if you can produce a smaller sentence. Lets look at your first sentence.
"Hannah’s husband Tom was to meet her at the restaurant 30 minutes ago and she decided to eat without him." [20 words]
this sentence is far too long for a story that needs to be getting to the point quickly. So how do you shorten it up? well you look for things that can hold the meaning of two issues or that can be insinuated by the reader without actually saying it (I understand this is that how you are suppose to think about when you are writing but you can't write the same way for all instances)
"Hannah decided to order dinner without Tom since he was thirty minutes late." [13 words]
Tom was thirty minutes late. Tired of waiting, Hannah ordered her dinner. {12 words]
Tom was usually late. Worried but hungry, Hannah ordered dinner. [10 words]
"The sound of a blade..." -your second sentence is very confusing for a few reasons. I think it should have been placed in the middle of the first sentence as the waiting aspect before she orders. It would hide it a bit better and I think it would work out better there. this line is a a bit long like your first one as well. "a blade sharpened in the back round instead of music"- something like this, so you use the atmosphere as well as the sound in the restaurant.
"the ugly Goth waitress."-is it important how she looks or her actions themselves. Truthfully, I think this reveals too much of the story. Plus, it is a brevity story and you use two words to describe the girl when one would suffice. Also, grammatically it should have been "an" and not "the" I believe, since it was the first time you mentioned this person.
Your dialogue worked out well. It was well executed and I liked the humor in the word play. However, you use "said" and other tags after dialogue lines excessively. You used 19 words on tags after lines of dialogue. That would have been fine in a longer piece but having only 200 words that many words used for tags is a waste of words. First off these tags are usually used to specify to the reader which character is speaking and so forth. Now since you only have characters in the scene you don't need to tell the reader they are speaking to one another. So these tag lines aren't necessary at this time. It is nice that you had some action or the way they said things to each other but you can pull this off with your dialogue alone since it is strong enough.
I wouldn't have the girl sharpening the knife behind her just say she had a sharpened knife.
One issue here at the end with the eyes in the salad is that she sees the salad before this point, so wouldn't she see the eyes when she got her food? so I think if you reveal this issue right when she gets the food instead of having her eat and then bite into the ring it would make more sense and you could also add some gruesomeness to the end of this story.
the tag line after the dialogue at the end killed the mood of this well crafted ending.
You might wanted to add something about the smell of the place. Does it smell good or bad or what ever.
overall you have a pretty good story but I do think you spent too much time in the beginning and not enough time with the end. Also, I think mentioning her husband again in the middle would make a nice additive to this stories structured so he is part of the beginning middle and end.
Grammar and Dialogue:
"30 minutes"- you should write out numbers instead of displaying them numerically.
Nightmare Factor:
this isn't that scary in my eyes but if you had more worry with the wife as well with more sly remarks about this waitress then it could have been even scarier. It is dark but It needs a little more.
Randomness:
overall good but you need to tighten up a lot of things to get your brevity nice and concise. It isn't easy but with some practice I think you should do fine. Thanks for entering! please join use again.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Twelve of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
SORRY FOR THE DELAY OF MY REVIEWS!!!
words used:200 words on the dot. NICE JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Plot:
a man in a hot dog factory goes postal but without the guns (I meant no disrespect to the postal service, it is merely an expression, I think). This plot is simple enough for the 200 word restriction and works with the overall genre for this contest. But I think there needs to be more. Well not more complex but more conflict to the stories plot. Granted the conflict is this guy running through his factory, but to me, this factory owner seems to be the type that would be running around the factory because some tore the skin improperly making him to overreact. It's because of how you construct this character, and having him like this way makes the conflict not as intense which it needs to be.
The Story Told:
your sequence of events work fine but I think your story overall needed a bigger space to really get your story worked out. You have a tendency in making your stories for this contest in this way. I think overall you start way to early in the scenes. In other words thing about starting a little closer to the end so you can have more end, or try and slim down the middle of your stories (of course for this contest and not for things that use a more gracious word space than here).
"...his plump, round face ablaze with anger."- you know what I'm going to say but I'll say it still. plump has round attached to it conceptually. I was going to say the same thing about ablaze but I like this part too much so I would take out the round part though.
"...his plump face ablaze with anger."- I like this better because you don't have that pesky comma in the way.
"..., following the chute..."- the phrase after the comma is aflutter with clutter because you use more words than you need. It's an easy fix and I'm sure you could fix it up so it doesn't seem so long with words that might be in the way of what is coming up next since they don't need to be said. HEE HEE HEE. Give it succulent brevity with a punch.
"He burst through the door to the exsanguinations room and pushed past more idle workers."- here s an example of too many words being used when one could work out as fine. but before I show the sentence a bit smaller, Word told me you spell the word "exsanguination" with an s at the end of it and you need to change the word "past" to "pass" since the one you use is dealing with time and the one you need is dealing with going through something.
"He burst into the exsanguinations room and pushed pass idle workers." -I mean seriously the door isn't that important, every room has a door, well that's a very wrong statement but you only have so many words to work with so you should get the important ones in there instead of the ones about unimportant doors.
I like the repeating of Nathan. It works well but is a waste in this type of story. SORRY. got to stick to my guns for the purpose of the contest.
You have a universal statement which isn't true so you might want to take out the "All" in the beginning of the sentence. That was a bit patronizing and I'm sorry about that. I was trying to be funny but it ended up being arrogant. Anyway, since you passed all those other workers you can't say "all" of the workers unless you say "all the workers in the room"
Your ending was kind of too fast and we don't know why he went nuts which might give this story a bit more drive to it. It was kind of anti-climactic since you mention all the other workers on the hooks beforehand. I'm not really sure what else you could of done though. Then again you never solved the line at the end of the story. Granted you give us the assumption that he stopped it and what not but you could have done a bit more with this notion.
Grammar and Dialogue:
"study" I love word play and all but this doesn't mesh right now it you said something about the "study of human internal fluids on a white apron" or "a study of abstract art with the human condition." or "the study of blood as a fashion statement" and so forth and so on. Unless you meant to use a different word instead of study (I do this too, and I hate it when I do it).
Nightmare Factor:
this is defiantly dark and cynical but I think there could be a bit more reason for him doing this besides the boss being a pain. were the pigs talking to him? that could be cool. MAYBE?
Randomness:
it was a well done story but I wanted some more out of it. I felt like he was trying to get there the whole time instead of meeting mister pig.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
I love this poem. It is really good and I like how you used the images of other stories to create the images you want to have for your poem. You could probably do a whole series of these things.
Title
I dont get the title for a few reasons. (1) It might be a reference that I don't know. (2) I don't see the nature of the rats being reluctant but more apparent because of their sounds that they create. (3) are they really saying goodbye? that isn't a reason but more or less something to ponder. I do think the title is a great idea to get the readers attention which is probably most important overall but still I think it confuses things as well. So I'm not sure if it is a positive or a negative title but those are my thoughts of the title.
Structure
When I read this the first time I was wondering why you had these two phrases in the same line:
"Why do they choose me? What doom have they prepared?"
I was thinking they shouldn't at first but upon the second look I thought it was fine. Still I thought this first impression was something to note for you as I read it.
Line Suggestions
I do have some minor suggestions (no pun intended, I dislike puns in general)
"Chicken bone for F-flat,"
truthfully this is a brilliant line. I've played the trombone over half of my life and um I don't think I've ever seen an F-flat. HEE HEE HEE. I think the line works better without the "for" in it since F-flat is a note you wouldn't see written. and if you take that for out you should also take the one below out
"Gristle for high C,"
mostly to keep the same expression and rhythm. The other reason to take the for out is because notes are pitches that could be created by anything so in an instrumental terms each one can make these notes so saying for seems odd in my mind.
"Rising in crescendo up my stairs,"
I like music terms since I'm part musician in some sense and find sounds and words great things to interweave each other. Anyway, to me this line is very redundant in a conceptual manner. A crescendo is a raise of sound so I feel that it is saying raising within the word crescendo. SO I'm saying that it could be:
"Crescendo up my stairs,"
to me this is a bit better and is also going along with the rhythm of the stanza as a whole.
Randomness
I dont know much about the market side of writing in general but I think this poem is GREAT! thanks for the read.
Thanks for entering Round Eleven of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
SORRY FOR THE DELAY OF MY REVIEWS!!!
words used: 188 words is under 200 hundred words. GREAT JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Plot:
a guy shows his unique brand of love to a women of her dreams. Very nice stalker type plot, it is easy to fit under two hundred words and has that inherent dark and scary nature to it. WELL DONE.
Title note: the title works in some senses but in another I'm not quite sure. I think you need more to this title to make the story a bit more scary and dark. maybe something like: "The First Time" or "The Last Time I Saw You" "The Joy We Had" To me the title that you have doesn't really drive the plot as it could and makes it a bit too vague in my mind.
The Story Told:
You did a great job showing the affection of this disturbed individual that likes mutilating his victims because he gets excited from it. Also the way that you constructed your sentences in a delicate passion was great. The only thing that I could of wished for more of in this piece is a stronger setup. Mostly the first paragraph feels a lot weaker than what follows in the others. I think It would of worked out better if you have the guy stalking the girl or maybe have the guy be her new husband and this is their honeymoon?
The problem I see is the context of the situation, with they voice of the person reflecting on this action we don't know who this person is which I believe would make this a scarier and darker piece. You need the reader to have some sort of connection to either the girl or the attacker so we can feel whatever to the situation maybe. Without the context, which I believe you have here, it is an amazing descriptive scene that is extremely well written but lacking a driving force to connect to the reader.
Nightmare Factor:
I think I talked about this a few times already and it is a great turn of events but as I said that drive isn't there.
Randomness:
I wish I had more to say about this well written scene. I seriously don't and is baffled myself. GREAT WRITING!
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Eleven of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
SORRY FOR THE DELAY OF MY REVIEWS!!!
words used:200 words on the dot! GREAT JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Title note (I don't remember if I badgered you about titles before but I promise this one won't badger): I like the idea, the concept, of the title but I think you need to make it more about the person coming over. Oh yeah, I understand that social workers call these "Home Visits" took a few social worker classes back in the day and it wasn't for me. Anyway, I think you should of made it something like "Another Visitor" or "They Sent a Social Worker" or "The Social Worker" I like the last one best because it has some misdirection in it.
Plot:
A social worker gets a surprise while visiting a clients house. GREAT PLOT! I actually didn't see that coming at first or I don't remember when I first read it. WELL DONE.
The Story Told:
IT was GREAT that you used everything to push the plot forward as well as use the senses of the characters more specifically the Social Worker forward to examine the surroundings. You can feel this dump of a house as well as smell its awful fragrance. AWESOME!
Oh Yeah! I love how you used the little kid.
the only thing that is a little strange to me is when the social worker mentions the use of witchcraft (seeing the book is fine and some great foreshadowing), since you need an extensive degree to be a Social Worker and with more education usually the more excepting of such things so it seems a bit out of character in my little realm of thought but it is your character and she might be a conservative Christian that doesn't like these things. It would make perfect sense but I just wanted to point that out to you to add a little picky-ness to this review.
Grammar and Dialogue:
oh yeah I don't have that much picky-ness for you but there is this one thing. Have you counted how many times you used the word "and" I didn't but it felt like a lot, so I will count now (I'm a pest I know but you knew this already). Wow, you used "and" nine times. I wouldn't mention it if it is a bigger work since it would of been harder to notice but I just wanted to make it apparent to you that I could feel myself saying and a lot as I read. SO you might want to make two sentences instead of one or some other structural change to have some more variation.
Nightmare Factor:
this had a blissful combination of dark and scary with a bite of evil without the use of vampires (sorry people the vampires are becoming supersaturated in the world today-please don't attack me).
Randomness:
GREAT JOB FROM BEGINNING TO END. CAN'T WAIT TO READ THE NEXT ONE!!!
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Eleven of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
SORRY FOR THE DELAY OF MY REVIEWS!!!
words used: 200 words on the dot! NICE JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Plot:
an evil presence watches a girl as she prays in church. I like this idea because of the evil presence in the most holy of places for the main character which creates a nice duality of good and evil. NICE JOB!
The Story Told:
You did a great job in describing the feelings with in the church and I like your sequence of events, however I feel, many of your sentences get cluttered with too many words. This causes a two issues in your story: first off it makes it harder to get the story going because you are limited to only a few amount of words. The other thing is it gets harder to read with all the words toppled all over each other (I use to do this a lot and learned to simplify my own writing to make it easier to understand, well I still do it but that's besides the point). Let's see some examples!
"A young woman breathed out, half expecting to see small white smoke puffs roll through windless air. Nothing happened."-[19 words]
(this will be a recurring question that I will be asking you since this is a contest with brevity being one of its key challenges) How important is this puff of air? you mention it is cold already in the line before it so the reader understands it is cold but is this air that important? Now, I'm not saying you wrote this sentence badly but I am saying to only elaborate on the importance of your plot to get your story rolling and in the readers mind. This air puff does not work with the plot but continues to set the stage for the scene (if this story was longer it would be perfect but we cant waste words in this type of story telling)
"A young woman exhales, expecting her breath to linger in the air. Nothing happened." [14 words]
"A girl exhales, expecting her breath to linger in the air but nothing."[13 words]
"In those few brief moments of silent prayer she let her mind wander while observing an elderly man sit behind her."
This sentence has the same type of issue but instead of being too descriptive it has a bunch of redundancies. It isn't that you are putting the same meaning words next to each other but that some of the words don't need the helper and in fact without the helper, the sentence becomes clearer. Simple is good most of the time and with concerning brevity it is the best.
"In those few brief moments of silent prayer she let her mind wander while observing an elderly man sit behind her."
I made the parts in bold to show the conceptual redundancies. The first you only need "moments" and in the second one you only need "prayer" to complete the thought. Why? A moment is inherently brief, you could say "few moments" but I think it is stronger with the one word and you could use the words at some other point in your story. You don't need silent pray because with your description we know this pray is silent with out using the word.
this sentence has an issue of direction as well. How can she be observing a man that sits behind her? I mean see can do it but it is a bit odd for some one to look behind yourself for no reason and look at someone. Now if you had a noise to bring the characters attention behind her then it would have been fine but this didn't happen. SO make sure you are looking through the eyes of the character at certain points of action to move your story around.
You might be thinking why I'm being so picky and taking out your words and being a tyrant with your story? Well the main reason is that the plot of your story isn't that prevalent in your story. You've paced some nice sentences but without plot making this evil presence pop out of nowhere and then gone again. You needed more of this then the feelings of the worship hall as well with the choir. The choir isn't relevant at all unless you are presuming that it is the thing that scares the evil presence. So most of all when construction a story in so few words make sure the idea is in place before adding the extras to it and every extra should add to the story.
Grammar and Dialogue:
Loud to, as if the owner thought themselves bigger than the Lord himself.- this should have been in italics since it is in her head. If you don't know how to use the writingML for WDC please ask and I will help you in some way. But for now here is the link.
there are times when your extra words seem to get in the way of the meaning of the sentences. It is best to be simply most of the time. HEE HEE HEE!
Nightmare Factor:
This really didn't scare me or seem that dark because nothing much is happening. He is there than gone without another thought. Without something happening there needs to be a bigger sense of danger to produce this story into a scarier story.
Randomness:
You have some great descriptions but sometime you go overboard like my reviews. I have that broken record syndrome.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: 200 words on the dot! GREAT JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Plot:
A guy picks up his victims phone to hear her mothers nightmare happening. WOW! Great little plot line you got here. It is a little complicated for a story that is two hundred words or less but I think you justified it with being able to write this dark story in a complete manner. WELL DONE!
The Story Told:
first off, I would like to say thank you for entering a very well written piece into the contest. Seriously! The more fine tuned a story is the more fine tune my reviews are taking away all the board issues of writing and letting me be ultra-picky. I like being ultra-pick because it is fun and challenging.
the one thing that could help this little story that isn't a picky element is formatting. Even though your story is written very well you still need to make some sort of conceptual distinction between scenes with in the story. What do I mean by conceptual scenes? well parts where there is a different them of information.
I would either make a second paragraph after this line:
"She woke up groggy and confused as she glanced at the clock. 3:00 am."
or when the mother starts talking to her on the phone.
these two points are changing conceptual scenes because of the information going on. You can split it up how every you like it to be since it is your story but you do need a paragraph somewhere. Even more so you have more than one person talking in this story. When you have someone new speaking you need to have a new paragraph. truthfully, if you separate the ending of your story it will be clearer in what you are trying to say. It's okay, trust me, try it out.
You write very well which I stated already, however I can tell you aren't use to writing such short stories. How do I know this? besides being psychotic (woops I meant psychic), it is easy to tell in how you write your sentences. Even though it doesn't look it from my lengthy reviews of rambling I write stories with very short and concise sentences. So it is easy for me to pic out the difference. So to show you I'm not crazy let me show you.
"Next to me was a small table with a phone placed on top. I stared emotionless at my victim as the phone began to ring."- these two sentence are fine but since it is only to get the phone and to make it ring it needs to be shorter. Why? well you only have so many words to work with and you need to be able to shave off words were you can (remember: this contest indirectly assess a persons ability to write effectively and creatively with brevity). so if you break these sentences down into each other you can save words.
[you use 25 words]
"I stare emotionless at my victim as her phone rings on top of her nightstand." [15 words: saving 10 words]
"I stare emotionless at her as a phone rings on top of her nightstand." [14 words: saving 11 words]
"I stare emotionless at my victim as her nightstand phone rings." [11 words: saving 14 words]
"I stare emotionless at my victim as her phone rings."[10 words: saving 15 words]
"I stare emotionless at her as a phone rings." [9 words: saving 16 words]
You might think I'm wrong in destroying the table since you need it there for the story. This is the thing about brevity which most longer writers have problems with and what I have the opposite problem with. In brevity writing you need to take leaps of conceptual faith in order to fit a story in a limited space. As long as the leaps aren't absurd or that you don't through pieces in awkwardly then you will do fine. So you need to trust in your reader at times to make this connections.
"Without taking my eyes off of her I picked up the phone and held it out to her, this was the first time she noticed me." GREAT DIRECTION, GREAT MOTION, GREAT SENTENCE, but make it smaller. One of my things with brevity is that every action is not needed. I do this so I can describe something that is more notable or that can add more to the plot like why this guy is doing this or how the girl is going to die or make the things in the mothers dream HORRIBLE so we think (we being the readers) believe that this dream is coming true and the conversation is what is going to happen to Jess (HINT: you might want to expand this story into a larger story I think you would be able to make it GREAT!).
There are many other points you could cut down and I think I made my point so I'm moving on.
Grammar and Dialogue:
On the other end was her mother.- how does the guy that is telling this story know it is her mom at this point? Besides this point, I'm not a big one for having tag lines for dialogue of who it is and what not. I like to have the dialogue to speak for itself with the language you use in the interaction between the characters (plus it saves words, HEE HEE HEE).
oh yeah! think to yourself, is the time really relevant? if yes can you write it differently? If you don't know how, then keep reading this review.
I would have the mom say, "Sorry for calling so late Jess but I had the worst dream."
Even with the things I picked out I liked your dialogue. WELL DONE!
Nightmare Factor:
GREAT JOB WITH MAKING THIS DARK AND SCARY! The best part of it was having the story within (aka the moms dream about her daughters danger) it makes it very dark and scary. I like how you didn't have the guy speak until the end and that it was only one word. NICE TOUCH!
Randomness:
you use the eyes/staring/and gazing in this story. These are awesome variations of sight. However, using only sight you limit the reality of the scene you might want some other type of body language for the communication between the guy and jess for a change of pace.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: you said 200 words and I say 199 words but it is all good. I wanted to let you know I'm checking. NICE JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Plot:
a young person tries to get away from a scary being. This plot works fine for the genre of this contest as well with being simple enough to work within the 200 word restriction. WELL DONE!
The Story Told:
I've read your story a few times which is what I do before reviewing the entries for this contest. Truthfully, I'm having problems starting the review for your story because I didn't know what to start with. Is this bad? Yes and no. Yes, because I see many issues concerning your story. No, because I think with the right help your story can have a huge improvement. With all that said I want to explain some general concern about stories to help this story and future ones you write. What are these concerns? Sequencing and leaps of conceptual faith.
to me the biggest problem of this story is your sequence of thoughts. They aren't bad thoughts or written badly, it is more that they are not written in a story manner that the reader can follow. For instance in your first paragraph that is very confusing:
"I crouched underneath my bed. It was bad – that thing in my room. I could feel the essence of centuries of filth, disease, and evil emanating from it. I had been asleep when it rudely interrupted me with its hideous laugh. It was ugly. It had flesh that smelt and looked like rotting meat."
the way in how you wrote this information feels to me that you are remembering bits and parts after writing a sentence down and instead of rearranging the sentences you left them as is. How do we fix these things, well when we write stories we need to communicate the scene to others. this is how I would rearrange this.
"I crouched underneath my bed. I had been asleep when I first heard its hideous laugh. I could feel the essence of centuries of filth, disease, and evil emanating from it. It was ugly. It was bad – that thing in my room. It smelt like rotting meat."
or (with a slightly different arrangement)
"I had been asleep when I first heard its hideous laugh. I could feel the essence of centuries of filth, disease, and evil emanating from it. It was ugly. It was bad – that thing in my room. It smelt like rotting meat. I crouched underneath my bed."
It about painting the scene so that the reader feels like they are their. If you noticed I took out a few sentences and also added a small little part to it as well (which is the bold font). I took out the "it rudely interrupted me with" because this makes me think of a five year old stopping on the ground with a cute pouting face. You need the character to be scared at this point and saying that the being is rude means you are a bit angry with it and not scared of it. I also took out "and looked" from this line "It had flesh that smelt and looked like rotting meat." for two reasons. (1)you are under the bed so how can you see it. (2)the title of your story says the evil laugh and I think that you should stay with the description of the laugh, in other words, sometimes it is scarier to not see the things making the sounds. You might be thinking, why keep "It was ugly." Mr. smarty-pants-jerk-face? well in that PERFECT SENTENCE it is a reiteration of the sound being ugly like the dissonance of conflicting notes.
Your second paragraph is very telly rather than showy. You want the information to be read by the reader and not told to the reader. This makes a story thrilling to read. so these things, in the second paragraph need to be internal thoughts which they are but aren't. They should be in italics if they are the inner mind at work. Also, you need the person under the bed to show their fear to the audience. Are they crying, shaking, or wetting their pants?
the third paragraph also is very telly and you need to have the internal thoughts in italics again. You also have bits of information coming out of nowhere about the room. This isn't necessary for the story and you should be more concerned with reiterating the scary sound coming to get the young person under the bed as well with the feelings of being frighten.
the ending of your story is very confusing on for a multitude of reasons. First off it is a huge leap from the fourth paragraph to the last sentence because you say "just before fainting". this line causes a lot of confusion in my eyes and should be cut away. Also, when you open the door you see the creature in your chair. Is this in another room or something? and you also say, "and my room just as I had left it behind me." this is another problem because nothing happened to the room in the first place. So you need something to happen in the room or take this part out. You need to make sure that you present conclusions about things you've talked about already in the story otherwise the reader will be confused.
I think It would have been better if you ended this story without seeing the thing in the chair and instead hearing the laugh one more time so that the terror is still with the reader after they finish the story.
Nightmare Factor:
This wasn't scary but could of been scary. I feel the order of the story and the confusion of events made it in a way to dwindle the scary nature of this story.
Randomness:
remember that writing is a communicative tool as well as an expressive tool but you need to unlock the whole story onto the paper for the reader to understand what is on your mind. I think if you do some of my suggestions this story will improve drastically and your writing within it will shine.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: 200 words on the dot! NICE JOB!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
Plot:
a couple of girls are ruining in the words from "her." This is a nice simple plot of discovering an evil in the woods. It is easy to involve a scary/dark point within the story and easy to keep under the contest limitation.
The Story Told:
I like the description in this story. It is very vivid bring the horrible beings in view. The only thing is that this is a description and not really a story. You describe the movements of the girls, you describe the night, and the scary being in the woods. Then the girls run some more. You need something else in this story besides the description to make this scary. Why are they running if "she" didn't do anything? Why is the "I" in this story chasing the other two girls? are the other two girls running from the "I" in this story? I'm guessing that they don't think this being is real and the slower girl sees the being that isn't suppose to be real? The problem with this is that the reader doesn't have any plot to work from this so its hard to understand this aspect of the story if this is an aspect to this story.
I understand this is a description to a dream but in telling such a story to an audience there needs to be a drive to it. Usually the drive in a story is the plot, some sort of conflict or problem that needs to be solved or situation. This story seems to be not having a strong fix on this plot element. We understand that this being is scary looking but it doesn't seem like it is going after these girls or anything besides looking scary in the middle of the words.
Grammar and Dialogue:
"I try to chase after them, but my heavy legs seem to be weighed down with bricks; I was in slow motion. I watch them disappear into the dark forest trees."- I think for this limited length of a story you should cut down on over explaining. I may not seem like over explaining but you need to explain where it is only necessary. Thing to yourself when writing with a word limitation, how important are her heavy legs slowing her down? she isn't being chased, in fact she sees the monster and then runs away from it with easy, yet she is slow.
"I see her. The black of the forest is blinding, but I know she’s there; she’s always there.
She stumbles toward me."- also you need to be aware of the order of your events. Yes, I understand that not everything should be in order and there is an artistic element to these points. However, you have in this little piece a bit of a problem. In the beginning of this you see the beast and at the end of it you say you know she is out there. this is rather confusing to the reader as if we don't know if she sees her or not. this is an easy fix though with some minor moves.
"The black of the forest is blinding, but I know she’s there; she’s always there. I see her. She stumbles toward me."
all I did to this little section is move "I see her." to a more logical spot. I makes more sense seeing her after the description of the forest than before it. Also with the "She stumbles toward me." and then in the next sentence you have "...,bloody feet toward where I stand." I think you could cut "toward where I stand." You might be asking why? It is because I'm evil, well not really, mostly because there are so many words that you my use so each word counts and restating something already said isn't good when in this low of a word limit. This is a hard thing to grasp if you are use to written longer stories and it takes time to get use to it but it will come.
"She comes into full view."- why do you say this after describing "blood-shot eyes and a sunken face."? this is another logical order thing. They are in full view if you are saying this description already so it seems a bit redundant to say that it is in full view.
SO it isn't really grammar but more of sequence of actions that should be before other actions. Also, if you described it well why say something about it again? Use those words for something else, you would be surprised how many words you could cut from this story by taking out the things that you reiterate.
Nightmare Factor:
The description of the being in the woods is semi scary but this story isn't really scary or dark at all because nothing really happens. I mean EWW yes she looks nasty and probably not someone I would want to date. But just running in the woods at night doesnt cut it for scariness unless you can feel the creepiness of the words and so forth.
Randomness:
you repeat this title/dialogue line a few times in this story. It takes up 12 words total inside your story and "she" never meets up with the friends saying it. So in my most polite manner which at times seems very rude (sorry about that I don't mean to be) Why is this in the story? What is it's purpose? and most of all who is SHE? this is the most interesting part of this story and is not mentioned in the least. so umm what now. WRITE THE STORY ABOUT HER! I want to read it! is it done yet? it should be done soon. HEE HEE HEE.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Nine of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: 177 words is under 200 words by about 23 words, but who is counting the words? don't answer that (it was ME). WELL DONE!
content rating meter: [13+] [18+] [GC] [XGC]
as my judging partner said quite well (even though she isn't judging this week), you should have your genres set to something so your item will be seen more on WDC. It only helps ya get noticed and read more which is always a good thing.
Plot:
a military person has a gruesome realization. I think that is the plot but the ending was a bit vague which I will talk about in various points of this review. I think this idea works for this contest and is able to be done within the confines of this contests restrictions.
The Story Told:
I understand this is your first time writing a short micro fiction story so I will be easy on you and not be really picky. HAHAHAHA. I made myself laugh, I know you pretty well so that means I will be harder on you because I expect more from the people I know (I'm such a pain).
I understand you aren't use to writing in a small confined space so I'm going to go through some things about brevity writing in your story that could vastly improve your story.
You can not connected every thing nicely from sentence to sentence in brevity written and trying to do so only waste words. Remember every word counts and every word should be part of the stories plot. You did a splendid job writing what you wrote. SERIOUSLY! I like it a lot. However, you don't have much here for brevity. Why? well you stay inside the characters head the whole story which doesn't illuminate much of the story. Brevity stories arent about the development of the character they ate about a moment in time and in that moment you need to have action, the setting, and the plot. Who is in this setting isn't as important but the situation itself is. Since you stay inside the main characters head we (meaning the readers) don't get a sense of what is going on but more so that this character is very distressed.
so how do we make this situation come alive? easy answer is we get out of the characters head or at least have the character describe his situation inside his head so the reader knows what is going on.
"I could hear them circling me, whispering accusations in my ear."- have the people say the whisperings? how did they circle? how many circled? where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? what does he smell?
Avoid 'meaning' redundancy:
"..., my ribs protruded were visible where they tore through my shirt."
what do I mean? well you have "my ribs protruded" now this means they are "visible" which you say in this same line and that they tore through your short. This is length and could be shorted to safe space as well as limit confusion.
"..., my ribs protruded through my shirt."
"..., my protruding ribs tore through my shirt."
"..., my ribs tore through my shirt to free my wounds."
If you noticed I added a bit of gory zest to this description to help illuminate the whole scene.
Truthfully, this is what your story needs. I only see thoughts of tension and confusion but feel nothing which is why I didn't get the ending to well. you needed to say something about the surroundings and maybe the people that found him had the same uniform or something so we can make that grand ending assumption.
the moral of this I want you to get out of this review is that you can't write a micro story like you would a long story. You need to use the same tools but more concise and you must chose what you use wisely so that you don't repeat and so that one word tells more in that one moment that three words for that one word.
that's confusing. SORRY.
BE CONCISE but illuminate active and descriptive MEANING.
Nightmare Factor:
this story should have been more scary and dark but being stuck in the characters head I have no idea what happened. the feelings of this person didn't come through enough that they did something wrong which was right in Americans eyes. Why? well you didn't mention it but in the end and it didn't create a strong enough association to be dark/scary. so what do you do to help this? you have what he did, was he bombing people and his plane got shot down? I'm guessing that is what happened but truthfully I don't get this from your story at all. you need to bring these things into the for ground stronger so it doesnt feel so vague. Then it would be scary. Yes, I know I ask to much I'm a pain.
Randomness:
in the beginning of this review I pointed out 23 words weren't being used. usually in this contest you want to use all the words because you only have so few. Is it required? no not at all, but it is in your best interested and as I said before you have some holes that need filling to make this story more complete.
I think this was a good try and that you try some more brevity in the future. The thing I noticed most about this story is that it stead where you started it inside the head of the character which is telling me that you know this whole scene this whole situation but you didn't show the reader it. I would love to know this whole scenario because I find it very interesting. So, please don't leave the story in your head but on the page before you so I can enjoy the story with you.
Thanks again for entering and please check "Invalid Item" to see the winner(s).
Thanks for entering Round Eight of "Invalid Item" .
When I judge a contest, I look for the best story that is within the rules of the contest. However, my reviews while judging mimics my regular reviewing style, which means (or at least I hope it does) I will have suggestions and comments to help improve this story as well as other stories. In other words, please do not be discouraged by my reviews in regards with the contest outcome because the review is supposed to be helpful and critical rather than a sole judging assessment.
words used: 196 words which is under 200 words. GREAT JOB!
content rating: [18+] very appropriate and thankyou for following the rules.
Plot:
a happy couple isn't blessed with a new baby. I liked the plot a lot. I think it was simple enough to work in the space limitation and the way that you wrote this story made it seem like you had too much space (if you couldn't tell that was a complement, I couldn't tell myself, hence these words).
The Story Told:
This was great! I've judged this contest for the past few rounds and this is one of the only entries that used mostly dialogue. This is the easiest way to keep within the word limit since speaking doesn't have to be perfectly grammatical you have a bit more leeway with the words.
the only odd part is after the wife has something done to her and the part will they tell the husband the bad news. I would put a scene break or have someone go up to the husband and say that there is something wrong with your wife. I understand you don't have much room which is why you took something out but this leap seems awkward. maybe have one person say, "Hurry, your wife..." then have the "We're sorry sir..."
If you noticed you could of saved three more words with dialogue contractions which means you would of had seven left over words which could be used to make this transition a bit more smoother.
Also, in the line where you have "...ferocious and crimson." I would take out the crimson for a few reasons. One it isn't needed and then you could take out the "and" as well and that is 9 words open instead of the 7 I said before. also, if the baby is read does that mean he turned back to regular color before his dad takes him home? this leaves out this ambiguity and as I said it isn't needed because "ferocious" works good enough alone.
Grammar and Dialogue:
“I am so happy, darling.”- I like contractions in dialogue. Oh no! does this mean you are wrong? Nope. I find more people use contractions when they talk. It doesn't matter but if you use them for one character make sure that character use them all the time. However, if you make it a contraction then you have an extra word (I like extra words).
“I know, honey. For ten years the doctors gave us no hope. He is our miracle baby,”- this line is a bit awkward to say and it might need some revision.
“You had it bitch!”- this is a bit confusing also. I know what you mean but in saying it like this it isn't getting through the right way.
“You're gonna get it bitch, not me!”
"I want something more than milk, bitch!"
"You're done, bitch!"
"You're mine, bitch!"
and so on and so on. As I said I get what you mean but I think you could make it a bit more apparent here.
...Your wife suffered a massive stroke."- instead of stroke I would say something else to help the transition a bit more.
Nightmare Factor:
this was a well done dark and scary story and thought the dialogue type of story was a perfect choice for telling. If you had more room then I would of added some more setting but I don't think this story needs it to be scary since that act itself was scary in itself and quite dark. I LOVED THE HANGING ENDING. WELL DONE!
Randomness:
I think you made a nice point that description isn't everything and that have less narration isn't a bad thing when the dialpgue pushes forth the plot.
Thanks again for entering and good luck!
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