Round II: And suddenly I was back

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"And suddenly I was back" Use this as your very first sentence.

Another round to go by.

Author A: Identity
Author B: And Suddenly

Reposting my previous comments:

Multiple personality disorder, or a second lease on life?

Author A embellished his formatting with word text animation (which I'm not honestly a fan of, and which Microsoft removed in Office 2007.) Bold italics would convey the same meaning, methinks, but I suppose you wanted to portray the schizophrenia in a more tangible form.

Still, I've said before that this isn't a formatting competition, and the stories are to be evaluated solely on the content.

Spoilers abound, but you must have already known that. Read the stories first before continuing on.

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"The World's Smile" (I assume it's the true title, as "And Suddenly I Was Back" was the prompt) flowed nicely, maintained suspense all the way to the end, and ended in a very satisfactory manner, all within 2100 words (Author A, in contrast, used 2600.) It works well, whether spun as a "time travel", a "lucid dream", or even a "it's a wonderful life" type of situation. Using the 9/11 tragedy to frame a very introspective tale earns you brownie points in my book. Finally, the character's thoughts felt natural, and did not seem manufactured at all. Were you relating from personal experience? Nice read.

"Identity" was offputting to read. The author tries a bold experiment in portraying the thought process of Victor Pryde cum Walter Ironside. I applaud the attempt, but I thought it was too disjointed. It might have been intentional, to jar the reader. You've succeeded to well to my liking, unfortunately.

Don't get me wrong: you didn't fail at all. I just prefer Author B more.

Author A: I generally liked the tone and style of the piece; you created a good sense of character using first-person narration and penned convincing descriptions; I felt that this was the strongest part of the piece.

The real weakness I see is in the structure; everything comes together and finishes in a hurry, which seems a bit of a letdown considering the buildup. While the framing story provides a good introduction, it also completely spoils the "twist". The small, crossed out text doesn't help; rather, it muddies the waters. Are we looking at a written text, or an internal monologue? If the character's psyche is as fractured as you'd have us beleive, why does the minitext vanish later?

Author B: Another first-person story; this one develops less of a compelling character but portrays him in a more consistent light. The descriptions are good, especially the ones in italics at the beginning and end.

At the same time, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the time-loop theme and the use of 9/11. The former skirts close to cliche and the latter flirts with exploitation. As early as 2002 I recall people in my writing class trying to use 9/11 in their pieces to gain emotional resonance, and it never works in my estimation. Better to have an original disaster than to piggyback.

Both pieces were well-written and interesting; both had significant flaws that need to be addressed in future drafts. In the end, it's a very close decision; I narrowly prefer B. Though I'm not entirely comfortable with all of it as mentioned above, it felt the more complete tale.

I need to start by saying that both pieces were more interesting to read than the majority of pieces that get workshopped in my real-life writing class. Good for you guys.

Author A? B? I don't know. Author of "The World's Smile".

I'm very impressed by the depiction of a coma victim, as I'm sure - I hope - you yourself have never been through that experience. As well, your character's actions seem natural for someone in his situation.

Issues I had were with the very opening - the first few lines of "oh God, let me die" and such-like. "To whom it may concern…

God, Satan, whoever is peering down at my broken and useless body from above. If you are still watching my unmoving form with interest, then I have a request for you.

Let me die...."

And so forth. I really don't dig this - I felt, when reading it, like I was reading either angst poetry or a mockery of the same. Even when I later found out that your character had a perfectly reasonable reason to issue such a request, I still felt... I don't know. That feeling you get after you read a 16 year-old's "I hate life" poetry. Dirty. And unfortunately,good as your actual writing was, that first impression just persisted throughout.

Additionally, on a personal level I'm just not really down with using ecent disasters as premises for a story. Mind you, this has nothing to do with moral standing; I really couldn't care less about 9/11 or Katrina exploitation. But when I read about these events in stories, I can't help but feel like the author, instead of bothering to try and write up a good story, has just copped out and used a recent disaster to elicit a pre-defined set of emotional responses out of the reader; why bother making a fictitious event seem disastrous if I just drop this name and they're required to feel bad, you know? Bullshit to that. Try harder.


Author... A? B? Author Other.
So down with this story. Maybe I'm just tired, and I was really in the mood for a trip? I dunno. But the skitzo disjointed down-the-rabbit-hole style really did it for me.

Lose the animated text. Neat idea, not so hot in its execution.

I really like your transitions - both the crazed transitions from madness into more madness, and the more mundane transitions between, say, some guys talking to a flashback.

Some of the opening - mostly his descriptions of his material belongings and the nagging little voice that disagrees - seems a little too much like "Fight Club." Additionally, I would like to have seen a little more of the alter "father" personality, and what would cause it to have developed the narrator as an alternate personality.



Vote went to Author Other.

I had a little bit of trouble following Author A's story. It wasn't bad, just a little rushed what with the main character constantly sleeping, then waking, then killing, then showering, then sleeping again. I liked the concept a lot, but something about this story just didn't suck me in. I had to make myself read it, whereas Author B's story drew me in from the very beginning. Reading that story was effortless. I especially liked the beginning, where you describe him praying for death.

There were a couple of grammar issues in both stories, but more so in Author A's story. Again, nothing major, but grammar and punctuation errors always detract from a story for me and make it less enjoyable.

I voted for Author B's story.

Since the polls are closed, I'll make some comments.

Here's what I said to orion via PM earlier:

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Anyhoo, I penned "Identity", which had been a story I had been playing around with for the last few months. The prompt applied to it nicely. My original idea, however, has it start without the bookends, but given the criteria for the prompt I thought it might be a bit more logical to start that way.

I appreciate the comments about the first person and descriptions though, thanks.

There was a bit more of the small text in the first draft, but given the word limit, I had to cut that (as well as about 400 other words) out. It wasn't as constant in the end though, as the small text is Walter talking to him, and Walter talks to him directly as the story goes on. After I saw it printed I would have taken out the flashing and just left it small and strikethoughed, but I had already submitted it to Dekoa though. I didn't have a great deal of time to edit this time due to various circumstances in real life.

It definitely comes together in a hurry, I'll admit that. It's a first draft, and it's also significantly restrained by the rules (word limit) of the contest. My intent with this contest it more to make stories I want to do, to get more work done than make something that is tailor fit to the contest criteria. A lot of events are glossed over with black outs, and things were cut out, but mostly first person comments and observations. There was much more planned in that respect and I'm probably going to expand on this basis for my own purposes in the future, and I'm also planning to do a short film next year of this (I'm a film student fyi).

Besides this, within the word limit there is only so much space one can use to balance description/plot/characterization. With cutting out much of the description, it leaves mostly Victor, who is quite boring without his surroundings. These last two stories have been different for me in that I have intentionally written protagonists who I don't really like (or I mean, the kind of person I wouldn't like, not that I don't like my character) or relate with.

Again, I would have loved to expand on parts of the story but just wasn't really afforded to do so by the limit. If I remove the descriptions, I remove the mood and so on. It's really just meant to be a longer piece. I was never really that great with constraints.

Anyway, thanks for just bothering to even read it and comment anyway.

Alice, once I read Soldier's I pretty much knew you'd end up voting for his.

Moth, thanks for the kind words as well. I agree with what you said about your writing class, I had a creative writing workshop style class last year and most of the submissions were pretty miserable. There were about 4-5 consistently good students.

I guess it can get a little "Fight-Clubby", it's one of my bigger influences in film. I'm a big fan of psychological dramas/thrillers.

As I mentioned earlier, the pacing is a bit weird due to there being more content that I can't quite fit in.

Though a big point of it is that it's supposed to be really disjointed and nonlinear. One of my primary interests in film is editing, and I'm a fan of disorientating editing, stylistic jump cuts and the kind of jumping around through time that puts you into the character's mindset, sort of like Nolan's Memento, and a lot of his films in general. Same goes for Fight Club, or The Machinist. I like playing with time.

A lot of people I did or didn't know that well really liked this when they read it, a friend of mine's friend who's an English major, neus, and another friend of mine at my school, who will probably end up playing Victor next year. But given some of these people's similar interests to me and the style I chose to do in the story, I pretty much figured once I submitted the story that Soldier would write something more palatable and easier to swallow on a more basic level. Though interesting both stories had that kind of same playing with time concept. I guess the prompt kind of dictates it though. There's a lot of imagery already planned for this that doesn't really appear in the story too - there's a heavy focus on red and violets, but that was something planned for a set design class. It is more of a visual kind of story, I suppose.

As far as any grammar issues, I realized most of them after I submitted when other people got to read it. I barely even got to write the story the week it was due (band played a pretty big show and it was pretty breakneck preparing for it) and consequently had little time to edit it.


And on a general aside, I'm sorry I wasn't really able to be overly active in this round. I've been pretty busy and a bit stressed over various things. I don't even know when I'll be getting my internet back after mid-May so I'm not sure if I would've even been able to be around for the next round at all. Congratulations to Soldier, anyway.

I'll add my thoughts as well, as Author B.

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Finally, the character's thoughts felt natural, and did not seem manufactured at all. Were you relating from personal experience? Nice read.

Most of my inspiration came from the Evangelion: Retake doujin (which is a wonderful read if you're a fan of the series, and I can provide you a hentai-free version if you request it).

The rest came from my desire to write a story involving someone in constant pain that yearns for freedom from his torment. From personal experience, I have a constant ache on my left foot, due to spraining my ankle about four years ago. The pain resurfaces in a bad way whenever I stand or walk for 2 or more hours. It's depressed me quite a bit, but recent therapy have helped ease the pain, giving me hope that I'll eventually be able to run, jump, and even do martial arts again. While I don't have it nearly as bad as most people, I can still imagine what it's like to have that same kind of immobilizing pain throughout your body.

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At the same time, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the time-loop theme and the use of 9/11. The former skirts close to cliche and the latter flirts with exploitation. As early as 2002 I recall people in my writing class trying to use 9/11 in their pieces to gain emotional resonance, and it never works in my estimation. Better to have an original disaster than to piggyback.

You're claiming that my inclusion of 9/11 as the source for my character's predicament was a cheap and easy way out.

It was.

But that was due to the word limit, which I have a habit of exceeding. If I had created an original disaster, it would take too much time and words to explain how he wound up that way, and that wasn't the point of the story. I was half-tempted to just say he had "some accident" and leave it at that, but that felt like a cheaper excuse. Using 9/11 saves me from any unnecessary exposition, since we've read enough to know what those people went through. I expanded on that and described how my character got the short end of the stick with that famous tragedy, unable to die in peace like so many other brave souls, and remains broken and forgotten by everyone but his loved ones. Again, how he got that way wasn't the focus on the story.

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And so forth. I really don't dig this - I felt, when reading it, like I was reading either angst poetry or a mockery of the same. Even when I later found out that your character had a perfectly reasonable reason to issue such a request, I still felt... I don't know. That feeling you get after you read a 16 year-old's "I hate life" poetry. Dirty. And unfortunately,good as your actual writing was, that first impression just persisted throughout.

If you're worried that my writing reflects my own self-destructive personality, don't. I've never been in a coma, nor do I desire to be in one, and I certainly don't dream of a peaceful death. I do, however, occasionally dream of restarting my life, getting a second chance to do things right, or do things I didn't do the first time around. I'm sure many people here feel the same way. This story wasn't embracing suicide, far from it; my character chose life over death, even if it was an illusion (or not).

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There were a couple of grammar issues in both stories,

Really? I spent extra time double-checking for any errors. Could you point out a few for me?

Anyway, I'm pleased by the warm reception to my story, but I'm still disappointed by the lack of readers overall. I know there may have been outside factors that resulted from this, such as the long downtime or perhaps the busy school season, but I really wish more members here took the time to read our works. My writing confidence has grown and remains strong, which I'm thankful for, and I'm looking forward to the next theme to write, but it doesn't feel like I actually won. I just got a couple more readers.