Don't be mean to the person, but feel free to be strict to the writing. If you don't know the difference, just don't be mean at all =). No leisure entries this week!
Note: If the Entry isn't on the document its on the top left as its title.
I didn't submit a story this time, in case anyone wanted to try to find it. I will submit stories in later weeks but I have written enough about cookies for a life time.
Judging will be open for 10 days. This is longer than usual because I won't be around much next weekend. So Judge away!
in that case if I may humbly put forth a suggestions you should make the guidelines more condensed and enforce them more strictly so that the stories are of more uniform length. I wouldn't care if the minimum was increased, although personally I think the max should be decreased by quite a bit. some of the stories being 2 pages and others being 15 is just nuts.
From: Achromatic | #011 Oh wait. Haha. The document edited badly, Maria. His story pasted twice.
No wonder you were upset.
okay's that's not SO bad. if the length of the stories only ranges from 2-6 pages that's a bit more acceptable (although I'd still suggest in the future making the guidelines more condensed. 2-4 pages or 4-6 pages are two massively different ranges for how much of a story you can and should reasonably tell)
Entry 1 - I'm guessing no one ever told you that in writing more is rarely ever better? Use as few words as possible for more effective, tight writing in the future that can hold the interest of your audience. This created issues not just in overall length (which was absurdly too long) but, really, every paragraph seemed like it went on forever without getting anywhere. I got about 20% of the way through before I had to drop it, it's the only story I couldn't complete. I had already spotted multiple weird inconsistencies up to that point. Had he met the girl before or something? There were two different instances in just the first few paragraph that seemed to suggest either could have been the case.
Entry 2 - I think you were a bit too subtle with whatever message you were trying to convey. It's easy to tell what's going on but nearly impossible to care since without knowing what the relationships between any of the characters are, I have no idea why anything that happened between them or to them should matter to one another.
Entry 3 - One of the most inspirational pieces I've ever read in my life. Has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Establishes the characters and the relationship between them quickly, giving you a reason to care about what is happening, and ends with a satisfying resolution that makes the reader feel good. Doesn't ever use more words than is needed to explain what is going on in any particular scene or sentence. A beautiful and effective short story above love, loss, regret, and the power of friendship.
Entry 4 - Another case of being much longer than it needed to be. Poor use of adjectives throughout. Main character seems kind of crazy and too fantastical to relate to (which is kind of a problem in a realistic setting). The story itself is sort of confusing. I barely know who Emma is and then she dies. Am I supposed to care? Death doesn't automatically equal drama. . . especially when you know nothing about the character. I'm still confused as to whether she was the main guy's sister or not like ten paragraphs after she died (and that's a long time considering how much you drag each paragraph out). How did she die, anyway? Poor pacing overall. Some stuff, like the beginning, should have taken up more of the story if you wanted us to care about Emma or her death at all. Almost everything else in the story went into way too much detail about whatever unimportant thing was happening, causing it to drag. Ending felt inconclusive and rushed, unless it was supposed to leave me feeling confused as to what the point of this story was.
Entry 5 - I'm not going to take points off for the one random indentation since, well, whatever. It's clearly an error. However, I feel like this story could have benefited greatly from some proofreading and minor editing. Manages to escape the awful pacing issues some of the other stories had, at the expense of not telling a story at all. The entire thing is made up of one long exposition phase. Also, am I really going to have to deal with the 'they were the best cookies ever but I'm the only one who thought so' triggering the death flag trope in every one of these stories or something? If so, just shoot me now and get it over with. People who are dead didn't automatically make better cookies when they were alive. Normal cookies are fine for whatever emotion you're trying to tie to them, the cookies don't have to taste godlike for them to have an impact on the reader (especially if you don't go into detail as to what made them so special. . . they're like the Mary Sue of cookies or something).
6 through 9 incoming soon. I know these seem kind of harsh, but, well, to be blunt I don't think I really enjoyed any of the stories this week. Maybe the cookie prompt was too hard for some people. Since there is only critiques and no compliments, the less I wrote about your story is probably better. With the exception of Entry 1 which is pretty much locked into the bottom place on my ranking.
Entry 6 - Aside from poor formatting and sentence structure, this one was honestly not totally awful. Main suffering points were complete ineffectiveness of the main character(s) and of course the really bad sentence structure and frequent errors. But seriously, in a story there should be a protagonist who has some sort of impact on what is happening in the story. There are some exceptions, but this is not an example of what one of those exceptions should be. The main characters literally just sat in a hole and were unable to accomplish anything, completely at the mercy of the plot to resolve the conflict on its own. Uninteresting but not unreadable.
Entry 7 - I really am unsure how I should even respond to this story. If there was something I was supposed to get, it missed me by about 10 miles. No offense but this is probably one of the worst ideas for a story ever that constantly gets overdone. Nobody wants to read about a writer trying to come up with a story. You should have picked one of the stories and told it. Actually, I take that back. All of the sub-stories were very weird and offputting as well. What you should have done was come up with an idea that was more accessible, exciting, and complete and then written that story instead. Also, as a result of doing whatever the hell you were trying to do, this one is another that was WAY TOO LONG, only with the additional penalty of not accomplishing anything. This is the only story for this week that rivaled 1 for me in terms of 'quality'.
Entry 8 - This whole story felt like a massive injoke except the only person who was really in on it was the author. The title kind of got me excited for the idea of cookies + Gundam but the story did not live up to those expectations. Okay, I feel like I'm a broken record here but WAY TOO LONG. The only amusing line was this one "Anyway, a bunch of other stuff happened and to be perfectly honest with you it was largely inconsequential to the here and now. I could regale you with intricate (read: convoluted) stories of heroism and debauchery but I think I'll pass." and it was amusing solely for the fact that you then proceeded to do exactly what you had just promised not to do in a tongue-in-cheek manner. I almost sort of feel like this entire story was some kind of meta troll that promises not to kick you in the teeth and then proceeds to smash them out with a lead pipe.
Entry 9 - I feel like the author of this entry was like 'hey I want to write about something that I think would be really cool' and didn't put a second thought toward actually telling a story. It's like I'm glimpsing into your own personal imagination play world but there isn't anything of particular interest going on there. Unless I also think that what you think is cool, in which case I'd be like 'oh, that's cool' but still not really be enthralled by it. Not as bad as some of the others. I can't believe I got through this without making a furry joke.
if yours is in the bottom four, it's really not much better than Entry 1 (if at all). people who write way too much when they don't need to is one of my biggest pet peeves, though, so I had to rank accordingly. 5 and 9 are both 'not totally awful' and 2 and 6 are both 'acceptable' in that they are misguided attempts at telling a good story.
saveus_Maria makes us all feel a bit better about ourselves
Entry 1 - well at the very least you clearly enjoy writing very much Entry 2 - you clearly know how to write a good story, even if this one didn't turn out so great Entry 3 - it's not perfect, you can do better Entry 4 - there are KEY visual novels that have worse forced drama Entry 5 - aside from lacking direction, this was one of the better ones Entry 6 - aside from lacking protagonist momentum, this was one of the better ones Entry 7 - where most of us could only come up with one story, you were creative enough to come up with multiple Entry 8 - I like Gundam. while I didn't enjoy this one I probably would have hated it less if it wasn't so long and toward the very end (after I'd been forced to read a bunch of stuff I didn't want to). consider yourself a victim of circumstance if that makes you feel better! Entry 9 - you actually told a story in only 3 pages. congrats!
I hate anything that doesn't use as few words as possible
qualifying statement being 'as possible'
something being long doesn't bother me if the length of the story is a necessity. for example, I like the book 'And Then There Were None' even though it has a good 200+ pages on Entry 1 of this contest. what Entry 1 did, did not require as much as text as was used, and therein lays the problem. it was just senseless padding.
3- fun story, with the cookie possessing a pivotal role without it taking the focus. 2- I strongly dislike your first person style but this was technically solid. 5 9- Concise and I have to admit I was taken aback by the plot twist. 6- Decent story, lacked... I dunno something. Definitely felt empty. 8- Fun premise, but the jokes lacked a referential frame that he could share with the audience and it ambled where it didn't have to. 4- Pretty tragic but ambled and lacked real focus. The characters were presented very shallowly, but then you presented us with what you it looks like you wanted to be a hard-hitting gut wrenching moment. needed to either be longer or else the idea needed to be more efficiently presented. 7- I almost feel bad for saying 4 lacked focus because you make him look like a homing missile. You needed to have it all tie together much better or you needed to simply narrow in on one of your presented ideas 1- Wow this was really unnecessarily long. Which couldve been fine but you didnt use that length to like... DO anything. it sounds like you could've greatly benefited from outlining your story beforehand and determining what details were essential for making your point and driving home your premise and plot.
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http://img.imgcake.com/nio/81edpngej.png The one and only Underdog Millionaire and UCA CORPORATE Champion
yeah I did mine really fast too, so I'm actually aware of a lot of the criticism it's gotten, but just didn't have enough time to really think anything about my entry out
-- Chrono1219 The beautiful genius who graduated from Harvard as a child and has an IQ of 1.3^googolplex.