Congratulations to the finalist stories!

And to the finalist authors!

Well done folks!

4808350
Calling this as your streakbreaker, eh?

You're just trying to lull me into a false sense of complacency. I know your game.

4808350

Eat your words.

4823752

*Cough*

Ah, you missed... you missed a name...

Namely, my name. Hi.

Also, arrrrghhhhhh- I'm reading the list of revealed names and screaming "That was you!" repeatedly.

EDIT: OH, AH, SO, FUNNY STORY, I SAW THAT THE ANONYMOUS BOX HAD ANONYMOUS IN IT AND NOT KNOWING WHAT TO DO -- THINKING YOU WERE MEANT TO TYPE IN A PSEUDONYM BECAUSE ANONYMOUS STORY -- I TYPED "THISFIELDINTENTIONALLYLEFTBLANK" AS A JOKE.

HA HA.

HA.

AHHH.

SHIT.

4823772

Don't worry, you can ask Roger to fix it later. Except I'll probably ask Roger not to fix it, because I find it rather humorous. So I guess we're at an impasse.

Also congrats to our finalists! Best of luck!

Edit: Also we're supposed to talk about ponies from time to time, to maintain our relevancy. So, have some ponies!

My reaction when trying to judge my prelim slate:

And to the finalist authors!
Baal Bunny
Bachiavellian
bats
Bradel
Cold in Gardez
Fahrenheit
FrontSevens
HoofBitingActionOverload
horizon
Not_A_Hat
Oroboro
Pearple_Prose
ThisFieldIntentionallyLeftBlank
TitaniumDragon

Hey, hey!

4823788
'course you're in the finals. Your story was really good!

<innocent look>

4823788
4823772
Looks like you two are on the line for that 20$ first-timer prize! Good luck!

4823792

Man, you don't know. Or maybe you do. Maybe you've read it already, maybe you haven't, you don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody.

4823779

<image>

Seems legit.

4823797

More interesting than that, there's a genuine chance either of us could win on our first attempt.

Which would just be awful.

Which would mean I'd win my first time out under the wrong name. Because CiG's got a point; I just made it to the finals and I technically couldn't even spell my own name right. I'm an idiot savant it seems.

And if it's bats... well, that'd drive everyone batshit, right?

4823779

I was going to say something pithy, maybe make a joke about being hoist by my own petard, but then you had to make that pony edit. So instead I'm going to say; This is what I imagine you looking like as you typed that.

4823804

Speak for yourself, if I won it would all go straight to my gigantic head, and that'd be good for everybody.

4823808

You were planning on buying a new hat with your prize money too?

4823167
For the record, four of the finalist stories were in my first slate of six.

As were bookplayer's Blueberry Pie story and the Derpy Deception story.

4823772
4823779
I used to know someone who went by Leaving A Comment for similar reasons. I've also known folks whose names were complaints about not being able to pick original names.

4823756

Eat your words.

... but seriously, I really want to talk about why I said that.

But anonymity. So the explanation I typed up is going to have to wait another four days.

4823840
FYI, none of us are actually upset at you. Just amused that this happened.

You know, again.

4823840

Three more days. Three more days and we can talk about what we wrote. And then talk to the other authors about what they wrote.

I am literally counting the hours.

I am going to discuss the minutiae and execution of "A Phone Call Late at Night" with its author if it kills me.

I cannot italicize this enough.

EDIT: Sorry for all the repeat posting. Making the finals in my first ever write-off may have had the effect of way too much sugar on me.

4823883

The English was flagitious, mainly because I had no time to edit, but fear not: the French version would have had the grammar and spelling horrors in less, but would’ve been as bland. This was a project way beyond my abilities: I have no delusion on how mediocre a writer I am.

The English wasn't actually that bad, it just had that sort of aura of being written by a non-English speaker. Elsa wasn't in last place on my slate, either.

I think you mostly captured its issues otherwise, though. Good luck!

I wrote Looking at the Sky for this round and it maintains the schema I've observed with my entries in the Write-Off (bad-good-bad-good...)
It didn't go very well, so that certainly means next time will be great, right?

Misusing of inferred schema aside, I did a few good things with this story, and a lot more plunders.

Thanks to all the reviewers, and lets now dissect the criticism.

4813186 (Baal Bunny)

I can't see why the fantasy element is here at all: it doesn't inform the characters, the plot, or the setting. Either make the magic real and effective, or just set the story during our regular ol' WWI.

I had three reasons for using WWI with magic as a setting:
1)I like the aesthetics of it.
2)I wanted to point the limelight on the senseless meat-grinder that was trench-warfare. On the waste of human lives that comes form the commanders not understanding the battlefield and from a system where you have to follow orders, even if you know perfectly well that they are sensless and will only end in tragedy.
3)Adding a fantastic element helps to defuse that part of the brain of experts that automatically sees the little inconsistencies. While I'm decently informed on the historical setting, I would have put some minor anachronism in the story, and when someone is an expert it's easy to note them and feel a bit of bafflement. It also abstracts the story a bit.

Now, I should have undoubtedly enhanced the differences with our world. I had a few ideas but never put them on paper, which with hindsight was an error that I may fix in a rewrite of this.

The plot, too, is pretty much standard--I think it's the movie "Dawn Patrol" where Errol Flynn hits Basil Rathbone in the back of the head with a wrench and takes his place on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines.

Never seen the movie but yeah, it's a pretty standard war story.

And I have to wonder how Albert is going to convince a gung-ho sort like Margaret's little brother to go along with the deception. Unless Albert hits the kid in the back of the head with a wrench to knock him out before shooting him in the leg.

I should have added that a few months on the front-line had cured any heroic tendencies out of Jasper. But having that in my head and communicating that to others are two different things.

So the standard "thank you for your submission, but it does not fulfill our needs at the present time" sort of thing for this one.

I will show you all! You shall regret this rejection! Once my doomsday device will be ready you shall all pay!

4810696 (bats)

This really wants to be longer than it is. Not much happens, but there's a large implication of a bigger world that gets left undefined.

I tried to go for a more intimate story, but you are right, without context and a larger picture this falls a bit flat.

Pacing-wise, there is a decent amount of time devoted to revealing the depth of the stakes in the battle by way of the act of treason planned, but then the actual battle itself is a harried and barely defined affair that leaves very little impact.

The idea was that the battle is chaotic, confusing and quite short, exactly as the characters knew it would be. It needs to hit harder although, to give leave the intended impression on the reader and not, as it is now, a few paragraphs of almost disjointed events.

The prose is also in need of a once-over for grammar and spelling.

I know.

4808771 (Caliaponia)

Third paragraph. "He..." "He..." "He..." it helps to mix it up a bit. This could be rewritten like, "Closing his eyes, he pulled off a leather glove and massaged his forehead, before drawing a deep breath and looking up."

I think there are a few more point where I fell for that. I have passed the last weeks on cutting down the length of my sentences, and obviously exaggerated in the other direction.

As much as I like the description, there are a few places where dialog and description are mixed such that the dialog gets overshadowed, and I think would benefit from restructuring. Cold in Gardez has a good article that discusses this (among other issues) that I'd recommend considering.

Goes in my reading list. I understand the problem (as always, with hindsight) and shall try to fix it, as it happens to me quite often.

Mechanically, there were a few glitches; I noticed a handful of tense errors and misused words. A decent proofreader could sort that out.

Will do.

Interesting world-building; it reads like WWI with magic.

It was.

My biggest problem with the plot was the brother in law. There was a lot of buildup with the treason and the summoning and shooting of legs, and then it seems to skips right over it? I kept expecting something to happen, and it doesn't (or if it did, I missed it).

I thought that the treason itself was a given and did work. I wanted to focus on the build-up, where it is discussed, and on the aftermath, where the protagonist knows he will die and hence doesn't care for ti anymore. Considering the use of magic I can add higher stakes, through the sotry there are hints that death is not necessarily the end of your service to your country, even if it stops being a "willing" service.

There is a lot of potential here. As I said before, the detail is excellent and you just need to work on structure, and refine the overall narrative to bring out the most of it.

Thanks.

4822623 (HofoBtiingAcoitnOveolrad)

This is another story that frustrates me with a lack of context. I feel like there’s a lot of outside information about the world and characters that I’m being purposefully kept away from, information that can’t be inferred or puzzled out anywhere in the text, and without that information I can’t fully appreciate what’s happening in the scene or understand why it matters.

This is the other effect of the faux pas I've committed in making the setting WWI with magic without going all the way into weirdness. If I had done that I would have considered a lot less context as a given, which would have helped in rooting the characters into the world.

I suspect I’m supposed to feel sad at the end, but I know so little of Albert and the larger reasons for his sacrifice that I don’t feel much of anything. I did, however, find the discussion of getting the brother off the front line genuinely creative and interesting. I think I wish that would have been more the focus of the story.

As said above, missing context. Albert didn't sacrifice himself, he was bound by duty in doing so, knowing it was useless. I have to really frame the conflict (already decided at this point in the story) between what is his culturally determined (and slightly misplaced according to our modern standards which frown upon senseless bloodshed) duty to his country and the duty to his family and wife. I should also add tot the discussion the effects this will have to the perception of self of Jasper, but for whatever stupid reason I can't remember I was confinced I should do a short story as compressed as possible.

So thanks again for the reviews, they help a lot and I may have some ideas for fixing this story. I'm also open to more suggestions and proofreaders once I have done what is necessary here.

Whaaaaaaaat? My entry made the finals? Whaaaaat the fuuuuuuck

My stories have never made the finals before :O Since last night, I've had my after-the-fact thing half-typed up and everything, almost ready to go.

Well. Definitely not anticipating a medal, but. This could be interesting. :P

(super pumped, though. I'm getting better at writing! :O :D )

I wrote "The King in Yellow-Green." I honestly don't remember typing most of it, because I hadn't slept very much that weekend.

Apart from that, thanks to everyone who reviewed it (and BlazzingInferno, sorry you couldn't read it, buddy). I don't really have much to give you in way of an explanation, simply that I felt like this story needed to be told.

Congrats to all the finalists! :3

Well, I didn't make it to the finals, but considering I didn't start on them until three hours before the deadline, I'm proud that mine didn't get horrific reviews, just mediocre ones. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta. And a big congrats to the fellas that made it that far

Congratulations to the finalists!

I still maintain that I did better than I expected I would. I've never written this many words in less than two months time, so I was very surprised by all the positive(?) reviews Dead City got.

The gist I got in general was that I really need to work on my plotting, narration, and dialogue skills. And my originality.

Congratulations to the finalists!

4824035
Thanks for understanding all the same. I was worried that I'd upset somebody.

So, I wrote Siren. I don't have anything special to say about it. It was just a quick attempt to write horror, which isn't something I normally do. I could polish it up, but at least for now I don't have a great desire to spend more time on it, not when I have more pressing tales to tell (both on the pony and non-pony front). Thanks, everyone, for your comments!

I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.

14 – IDDP

I've been hearing a lot about this one, so let's start out the finals wrong with the putative Fictional in Gardez story. (I honestly have no idea if this is going to be CiG or not. Maybe I'll have a better idea after I've read it. My interest is definitely piqued from what I know so far, though.)

I can already see how this may go. Watch me get all Elsa on this story, except based on way less background knowledge.

That first sentence is excellent, containing three critical pieces of information, a strong simile, and a strong metaphor. The next two provide some nice setting detail, but I'm going to nitpick them a bit.

<nitpick>First, based on my own commercial air travel, I'm not sure how much anybody can really see at 13,000 feet. (That makes me think we're talking about a drone, and a couple paragraphs later that seems to pay off, but it still causes a mild disconnect here, suggesting that we can see much anything about this guy.) Also—and here's me knowing way less about Afghanistan than I should, but speaking on the subject nonetheless—I find it really surprising that a tan kameez would actually differentiate someone. The kameez isn't that uncommon, is it? Which means the thing that makes it distinctive would have to be that it's tan—which I thought would have been a pretty common color.</nitpick>

Prose is good, though occasionally misleading in this stretch. (I've decided I'm going to basically line-edit the first screen and then just batch read, because (1) I'm ruining my own enjoyment of what looks like a fun story here and (2) past the first screen, these issues start to matter much less.) From the end of Paragraph 1, I'm assuming the guy I'm going to dub Insurgent is riding through an area with a lot of people—or at least high-by-Afghan-standards population density—so I get thrown slightly by the detail in Paragraph 2 that Insurgent sees himself as the only person for miles around. Paragraph 3 is then about how it's good that he thinks that, and much safer that way. This felt like a throw-away comment until I realized that what it probably meant was that making a drone strike on Insurgent would be much safer with no one around—but my original reading was that the situation for the narrator was much safer because Insurgent thought there was no one around, which really has nothing to do with the thing that's probably the real "safety" concern here, whether civilians might be at risk.

I am so effing done with the nitpicking. This story looks like a lot of fun from what little I've seen, and I'm not ruining it for myself any longer.

Well, larger nitpicks only I guess. I didn't clue in that this wasn't happening in real time until the analyst suggested that something would be clearer further along in the recording. Mild disconnect over that. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much it matters vis-a-vis the extra immediacy in the opening of the story (for immediacy, see: "A Phone Call Late at Night").

Two issues with the first section. One, I don't have any sense of why the drone's camera starts shifting violently as soon as the single-family compound appears. Is the remote pilot trying to redirect the Hellfire somewhere where it won't cause civilian damage? Did something happen to the drone? I'd appreciate some more explanation here. Two, I don't know that I really buy into the premise that somebody would have approved a Hellfire strike on Insurgent—not based on the detail we're given in the story. The analyst says we know nothing about him except that he's an associate of Blue Plaza, and speculates that he's a low-level fighter (the D&D parallel here just hit me, and is kind of amusing). Again, this may just be me betraying my lack of knowledge, but given how many insurgents I assume there are in Afghanistan and the fact that the only thing that's known about this guy is that he associates with a Big Fish, deploying ordnance as expensive as a Hellfire missle surprises me. If I thought he was carrying some sort of important information (which is possibly implicit from his association, but definitely not explicit), this would be easier to buy. But if he's just Zabul Joe with a gun, I'm surprised by the notion that we might risk the scenario that happens and blow a $110,000 missle just to kill him when we see him. (Though the more I think about this, the more I wonder what the expected costs of not killing him would be, if he were to remain active. It's a disturbingly interesting actuarial question, and one that would require putting in a lot of prices on things people don't normally like to attach prices to. Maybe $110,000 and a risk of civilian casualties isn't as big a cost as I was first thinking.)

Doxycycline

Well thank God it's not Mefloquine at least.

When the colonel says it doesn't look like anyone was hurt, that takes me by surprise, too. There wasn't a whole lot of detail to the description of the strike as Joe was viewing it—though there was some description of how big an explosion a Hellfire makes. Still, to an outsider (who doesn't know what a one-family compound would look like), it's hard to reconcile that detail to the point where I feel like the strike wouldn't have had casualties. I think I need to read something about the house being undamaged. I was assuming up until that line from the colonel that Insurgent's family had probably all been killed, but that he'd gotten away.

I see the third section is addressing some of my early questions about the scenario like what happened to the drone; I do still think it'd be nice to have some sense of what happened when we first see it, though, even if it's just a moment of speculaton on Maj. Martin's part. And it addresses my question about the rationale for launching a hellfire at Insurgent. And it addresses my uncertainty about whether anyone died. That's nice, but I think I'd still like a bit clearer path through the story on these things—a bit more of a view inside Joe's head so we can see his uncertainty, maybe.

The scene where Rafael leaves for Zabul, I had a small bit of trouble keeping the speaker straight for the last three lines. This may be a nothing comment, though, and worth ignoring. This section is going to be a little tricky no matter what because you've got one character with full information and another with partial information, and as a reader, it's a bit awkward to keep that straight in the scene. There's no reason Rafael would ask Joe what he thinks (third-to-last line), but I want that to be a question from Rafael structurally, because the two proceeding paragraphs are all Joe. I suspect a short blocking sentence (maybe something involving the coffee again?) in front of the question would clear it up for me, but again, I'm not sure how likely other readers are to share my confusion in that spot.

Oh, also worth mentioning that I'm spotting a number of copy errors. Should be easy to clean up, but this does definitely want an editing pass or two.

IDDP.

I want more lead on this. I want Joe questioning this strike right upfront. It doesn't need to be a full-on, "This is stupid, why did it happen?" But this is the crux of the story, and it's a really good place for this story to go. I clued into it because I'm way too nitpicky, though, and I don't think you're doing enough to sell the weirdness of this early. I think you're doing plenty in the middle, but... How to explain...

My theory is that writing is a bit like stage magic. It's all about pointing the reader's attention toward things you want them focused on. Sometimes that's so you can misdirect them, but just as often it's because you want to focus them on the themes you want to explore with your story. You've got strong themes here, but you're not using your narrative perspective to focus the reader's attention on them as much as they deserve. There's a lot more going on here than that central thread, but the rest of this story all stands on its own, creating a world and characters that I want to spend more time with. There's a plot here, absolutely, but there's not as much direction as I want.

Other than that, this is fantastic. Best thing I've read in this competition, hands down. I guess I'm still looking for a Writeoff where I've got a shot at gold.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Top Contender

IDDP
4819066

It might help to do what the Associated Press does and spell the acronym out on first reference (ideally following it with the acronym itself to reinforce/signal that you'll be shortening it in later references).

I would not do this. Maybe spell it out once before using the acronym afterward, but I wouldn't do the parenthetical thing. To me, it'd be a big intrusion into the narrative voice here. Joe thinks in terms of the acronyms, and this isn't structured as an "I'm telling you guys a story" story, so it doesn't really fit for him to be explaining things. For my part, I had trouble with JOC, S3, and... was one of the weapons called a PKG or something? I think I was good on everything else. I looked up JOC because I thought it'd be good to know. I just ignored the other two as flavor it wasn't really necessary for me to get. But I don't think I'd agree with the recommendations to get away from acronyms, personally. I think they're too natural a part of Joe's voice.

4824667
For the record, I didn't mean something like "We went to the Joint Operations Center (JOC)". What I was suggesting, albeit unclearly, was something more like: "We went to the Joint Operations Center, and the sergeant tried the door. 'Why is the JOC locked?' he asked."

4824710
Ah, okay, I totally agree with that.

Not_A_Review

Where I put down one or two lines on how I felt about your story! These are in the order they appear in the gallery, with the one story I've already reviewed excerpted. Hopefully someone will find this helpful.

Spreadsheet

YouTube Celebrity
Tightly written and well voiced, with excellent recursion and characters. I'm not sure I can add anything to what's already been said here.

The Girl and Her Robot
Excellently written and structured, with a few odd points - the mechanisms behind the robots seemed odd with the whirring and clicking and the volatile memory. The scene on the way to school is important, but felt too long for what it accomplishes. Wonderful depth of emotion.

I Would Like to Speak With The Director
Bleh, dystopia. You've got some good jokes in here, but tragedy isn't my cup of tea, and I find the pointlessness of the whole thing boring.

Of Thomas Hobbes and Frontal Lobe Trauma
Very nice, especially with tying the stones back in. Your armies felt a bit one-dimensional, but I liked this overall. You've got one sentence with an 'is' in it at the beginning that jumped out to me as being too coherent for the character voice.

IDDP
Didn't find much to interest me here until about halfway through, when it was hinted some people might not be on the level. The feeling-as-theme is done well, but I kept expecting a more concrete moral. Very well written, but there's a touch of near repetition and a few places where sentences could be shortened for more impact.

Aside: I've never had odd dreams from doxycycline. It did clear up my zits something wonderful, though. I thought you needed to be on two types of prophylaxis if you want to be sure of avoiding malaria (which is no fun at all) but perhaps in a low risk area one is enough.

Debts to Settle
Excellent lore and mythology, but I never got a good grasp on who the archetypes were. The bits with his wife were definitely connected, but I was never clear how. Very good, but left me with some unanswered questions.

Pleasure in the Job Puts Perfection in the Work
This felt mostly empty to me. I was entertained on a paragraph level - the writing is very solid - but it never really hooked me on a scene level. Buuuut… not really a fan of shipping. Sorry.

A Dinner Guest at Midnight
Loved the close third-person narrative style and the folk-tale here, but the story seemed meaningless to the MC in light of that ending. I'd have liked a more powerful conclusion.

A Phone Call Late at Night
This felt weighty with meaning, but didn't deliver any solid impact to me. Shorter might have helped. As it was, it felt like it was trying to reach farther than it could grasp, going for a 'sense' of importance without actually reaching it.

The Skies in Their Fury
Was that a suicide pact at the end? Having two characters with short 'C' nicknames gave me problems, but I'm lazy like that. The intro could use a bit of work to make who's who clearer as well. I thought the MC was a boy until the second scene.

Vehemence
A bit long in the buildup, a bit short in the climax, and bit loose in the payoff. I loved your worldbuilding, and your characters caught me, but going a bit deeper would be nice. Alas, poor Yorrick...

Maelstrom
You either tipped your hand too soon, or your ending is much too long for what it does. Excellent concept and execution. No real resolution here, but it works well without it - if that's what you're going for.

Bud, Blossom, Bloom
Nice hook, but too fast in the middle. The characters need more and deeper motivation here. Add some feeling for more oomph.

4824078
Cat face.

On: Borrowed Power

I will confess to be disappointed and slightly surprised that this one didn't make it into the finals. Much like my experimental short "In Tunnels," which takes the minimalist/immersive style to even greater extremes, I think this was too subtle for its own good.

As a prelude, 4823734 hazeyhooves got it right:

[T]he idea of this girl piloting her robot suit to and from school because it's more convenient than transporting it [is] a great vivid image.

This was the fun idea that I built everything else around. It has been bouncing in my head for a while, and I was itching to put a story to it. The plot you see here actually came after I digressed into two other core ideas: one of a city in the clouds as a kind of 'buoy' to ferry people to and from space stations, the other the result of a tvtropes trawl resulting in a gravity tether on the Moon where the gold-haired residents of the orbiting station and the Blue-haired tunnel residents hated each other's guts; as I was about to sleep before the last day, the idea ofEarn Your Happy Ending -- not the actual trope name, as I cannot find/remember it -- clicked, and I set to work. Jed actually came from Too Dumb To Live and Clueless Chick Magnet in my tropes trawl.

The 'Eye of the Storm' prompt was intended to refer to the suit: a terrible force surrounding a vulnerable pilot, but that was largely lost as the story and style unfolded. I can argue that it applies to Cal's perspective, by and large being passive about the things around her (until the final paragraphs, anyway), but even I don't really buy that.

My intent for this story, even more than a Robot Olympics or Highschool Crushing, was that of self-realization. The story features the first two elements in spades, but, in my mind, it is the third that it is actually about: through the story, Cal more or less is simply taking things as they come and only after reflecting for the reporter does she internalize her power, which to that point has been 'borrowed' from circumstance, her suit, and her friends and family. I admit this isn't as refined or integral as I would like, but I argue that it is strongly present.

I am disappointed that people got hung up on what 'Flexie' was; easy enough to correct, but its exact nature is really unimportant to the story and the characters' attention; the lack of expository elaboration was very intentional. (For the record, it is basically a tablet/screen with a bendy, indestructible body; he usually has it wrapped around his arm.) Similarly, the omission of details regarding the suit(s) is deliberate. I wanted the reader to imagine them without many constraints. Those familiar with Appleseed (or GITS) have an easter-egg to extrapolate from, but calling that aside a 'cop-out' for description struck me as unfair. What they look like is not the point here, and I will defend my choice.

Regarding other elements of world-building (sorry to harp on hazeyhooves again), the names of other references (Appleseed, Iron Man, Star {Struggle|Wars}) was more up to whimsy at the time of writing; it can be argued -- however weakly -- that the first two are unaltered because they are comics first and films/anime second, whereas Star Wars is a movie. With the colloquialisms, all I can say is, 'okay.' I doubt people of the 1900s would have ever expected 'far out' to be a term that we know today -- albeit not as well as the 70s or 80s -- and don't even get me started on "lol." Harping on the point that a speculative element 'doesn't sound very convincing or exotic' is useless to me.

For the story arc itself, I agree that it is not exactly original. Plotting is by far my weakest skill as an author, and that deficiency is an order of magnitude more apparent in 'Short Stories' than in 'Microfics.' That said, "shaking things up a bit" is not feedback that I can use in this regard.

The B-arc of the romance/crush and Jed in general… the point is that there is no chemistry through the work. Jed is quite actually a general oaf who floats between everyone with no particular attention paid to anyone (or anything). Cal just likes him for reasons even I don't really understand. Put in that context, the impact of her final actions in the work should be more apparent.

Unfortunately, as might be evident in my more defensive approach above, there wasn't much feedback I think I can use to improve. Dial back my immersive style, describe things more directly, and 'diversify' the plot. The first two are choices well within my capacity and the latter excessively vague.

4813016 (Aragon)
Thank you for your response.

4813489 (Georg)
It pleases me that you enjoyed it. Thank you for the higher (and perceptive) marks.

4821656 (Scramblers and Shadows)
In summary response: I appreciate that you provided feedback at all, but you are not my target audience. If and when I revise this piece, some more contextual explanations will be sprinkled in, but even then perhaps not enough for your liking.

4823734 (hazeyhooves)
I am glad that you could use subtext and physical actions to draw more characterization. Your other feedback is appreciated, even as I have largely rejected it above. Thank you for your time.

4824078
4825067

(Gotta help fill the pony quota.)

4825073 I gotta say, I'm very surprised this one didn't make it into finals. I had it on my initial ballot, and I didn't review it right off because 1.) I was certain it was going to make the cut, and 2.) I felt I couldn't point out any real flaws in it.

I really enjoyed reading it, though. Thanks for writing.

4825073

I will confess to be disappointed and slightly surprised that this one didn't make it into the finals.

Same here, man. I really liked your story, in case I didn't make that clear with all my gushing. The fact that it didn't make it to the finals was a big surprise.

Confession time: I'm the author of both The Stormwarden and We Are Five, both of which were ideas that I've had for quite some time (decades, even) that I've never gotten 'out there' to develop. They're both first chapters of prospective novels (which explains some of the failure-to-explain items as bait to encourage reading further).

Five is a coming of age story about a young girl who grows up in a bean and olive farming area, discovers she is destined for greatness, and collects a number of companions on her quest to stop a war (a standard trope). The five characters in the first chapter are all unbound familiars for mages: bat, lizard, snake, toad, and cat, with the snake having sided with the Bad Guys. The story is at a rough stage, and not much has been sketched.

The Stormwarden is a setup for a *much* more developed story, based around Tanya/Blaze. In short, the Stormwarden is dying, his only son Rette is a raving power-mad loon, the Staff of Storms is too powerful to pass to anybody who is not a former Atlantian. Tanya as the granddaughter of the Stormwarden would seem to be the natural inheritor of the staff upon the Stormwarden's death, except she is too young and inexperienced to stand against him, and if she were to be trained, she would become a threat and therefore a target. At the end of the first chapter (as posted), Rette has placed an unbreakable curse on her that will corrupt and eventually kill anybody in her vicinity who loves her (as bait to kill his father and claim the staff). I plan on developing this during my free time in NaWriMo, subject to my work on Royal Exam, Letters, Buggy and the Beast, and Seven Brides for Seven Changelings.

Thanks to the people who reviewed my stories, and onward to the next phase of the writeoff!

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4815439 Thanks, Bats. I'll remember to drop you a line when I start publishing.
4820538 4808385 And thanks, Not_A_Hat. I'll admit this was not my smoothest writing, and about half got thrown away when I rebuilt part of it. There still needs to be an amnesia effect when the Stormwarden does his spell in order to make the rest of the story flow, but I got clobbered by the real world before I could smooth that out.

Five:
4810696 Bats is right when he says the ending doesn't feel like an ending (because it's a beginning)
4819841 4809496 (Marks down another person to tell when I finally publish. At least I'll have two readers)
4821620 Keeping the descriptions of the characters vague was intentional. I had even tried to mask the genders, but ran straight into he/she issues. I did it to focus attention on the dialogue instead of the characters.

I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.

3 – The Girl and Her Robot

"What felt like" is an unnecessary weakening phrase here. A good chunk of weakening phrases here, really, and one glaring conjugation error—which isn't helping the inactive intro. Dorothy throwing her book against the wall is the first moment of real interest in this story, but it doesn't come for ten lines.

I'm finding very, very little to latch onto in the beginning of this story. Dorothy's father being in space is a nice touch, and it's unexpected enough to catch my interest, but with the exception of the book-throwing, so far Dorothy hasn't shown much sign of characterization, motivation, or dynamism—the three elements that tend to make me latch onto characters.

This picks up considerably when Dorothy's mother and father get into the scene; the relationship dynamics there finally give me a bit to latch onto. I like the drip-drip of hints about what's going on in this world, too: the space travel, the robot, Dorothy saving the trees, goggles and mask, possibly even darkness being dangerous. The world-building here is getting done in a way that makes me want to see more. Get me more interested in Dorothy early, and the two threads would pair very nicely.

I guess I'm just in "Let's read it and then comment" mode tonight. I'm about halfway done right now—Dorothy has just asked Nemo if he'd like to learn to paint. Mars is the real selling point to this story, like it was at the beginning. The Dorothy and Nemo stuff is somewhat cute, but not all that engaging, and there doesn't seem to be a clear sense of conflict anywhere in this story. The obvious possibility (Dorothy acclimatizing to Nemo) already looks shot since she seems to be enjoying his company just fine. So basically, I'm reading for Mars. Which, come to think of it, you haven't explicitly identified yet. That's... I don't know. I honestly don't really care. It's so obvious to me that I don't need it said, so I don't really feel let down by the fact that it hasn't been said.

I saw a tense error or two earlier in here, but there's a whole set of them when Dorothy's watching for Nemo to come home in the storm.

The ending to this is sweet, and by the end I actually do care about the characters enough to get some emotional impact out of what happens. This is a nice piece, and definitely a fitting finalist, though I feel like the early lack of activity and the overall lack of direction/conflict until the end hamper its impact. I think this is going to make it about halfway up my finalists ballot.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Solid

First off, congratulations to all you finalists. Well done.

And to my four reviewers, Caliaponia, Baal Bunny, Not A Hat, and Titanium Dragon:

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Thank you.

Now, moving on:

A big question arises: Why, when presented with all the vast playgrounds of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and whatever other irrealism, did I choose to write a story in a perfectly ordinary real-world setting? Especially considering that I find most speculative fiction to be too mundane and unimaginative.

The answer is the primacy of character. Aside from a very few exceptions, I think all good stories rely first and foremost on their human aspect. That's why I so often call out stories that I think are lacking in that area. Now, I'm not a fast writer. There's no way I could get past 3K words in the allotted time. In that space, I figured I could only dig deep into one thing and do it well, so I went for character.

As some of you noted, the character arc doesn't really go anywhere. Or, at best, it cycles back in on itself, as Baal Bunny said. Part of that's because of the prompt. And part is because of the space problem. With everything dedicate to understanding Sharon, there's not much space for a growth arc.

Which, honestly, is kind of a shame. I've grown to quite like Sharon and Alice. The agonies and joys that might spring out of their asymmetric and nearly-broken relationship could be worth exploring.

There's a second big question. And this is an actual question – one that I'm asking you readers.

All the reviews were complimentary of the execution, especially when it came to theme and character. (Thank you again, by the way.) But the story still didn't make the finals. Why is that? Well, Baal and Not-A-Hat, despite the compliments, still didn't care for it.

Is that my take-away here? The lesson of message-to-market match? That's a bit of a downer.

Still, the writeoff was a lot of fun. I doubt I'll be playing again, but I did enjoy it.

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To be honest, I'm a little surprised that you didn't make the finals. I imagine that when the results come out, we'll find that you didn't miss by much. Unfortunately the competition was pretty stiff this round, so even minor disadvantages can sometimes be enough to tilt the scales.

4826252 Even with what I said, your story was easily in the top third or so of my ballot. I can appreciate good execution independent of the message, and I'm also somewhat surprised it didn't make finals - but I think part of that was simply because finals this round just weren't big enough for all the stories that I would have considered 'finals worthy'.

Market-to-message will never stop being a thing. I bet you know that, though, and I don't think it's worth a take-away, especially since there's at least one story in the finals with an even more bleak ending than yours. We do have a somewhat diverse readership.

If I had to point to one thing which I feel separates the finalists this round from the non-finalists, it wouldn't be simple execution or structure, but rather 'depth of emotion'. Your arc doesn't end on an up note, but on the other hand, it doesn't really end on a very far down note, either. I don't know if this makes a whole lot of sense, but I feel like 'coming on more strongly' might be slightly preferred? Try for a higher high or a lower low, perhaps? You had 'bittersweet' there, I think, but maybe it could be both more bitter, and also more sweet?

Well, I feel supremely unqualified to offer advice at this level of workmanship; I'm still throwing things at the wall myself. But I feel sharper, deeper stories will evoke stronger reactions, (whatever direction they go) and that might be enough to tip against excellent craftsmanship on some level.

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S&S,

Normally I tell people who are waffling about their participation after an event to stick with it, because the extra practice will only make them better. In your case, I'm going to hold off on that particular comment because you're manifestly a good writer already, just based on what I read in Do Better Next Time. The pacing, voice, air of melancholy and especially the characterization you managed in a very short 3,000 words is impressive, and stands with the best of what the Writeoff has produced in the past.

So why is your story on the outside looking in? I suspect you already know, but in the interest of (hopeful) affirmation I'll share my thoughts.

A good portion of the writers/judges in this contest are quite competent. They understand the objective features that distinguish quality stories from their lesser brethren. They understand the subtleties of pacing, technical construction, narrative arc, theme, conflict, tension, character development, etcetera. And, on those counts, it seems they judged your story rather highly. I like to think I know a little bit about those matters, and looking through Do Better Next Time, there were only a few tiny things I would have tried to fix, and all of them were minor (for example, I thought your second scene was a much better hook than the first, but wise authors may disagree).

But...

The most well constructed, vividly realized story if it doesn't engage the reader. If it doesn't give them characters they can invest in, conflict that hooks them, and questions that they demand answers for. A thoughtful character study about an artist in a disintegrating relationship with another artist while battling an alcohol addiction is always going to have a harder time entertaining readers than something with a faster pace, a riveting external conflict, and a spectacularly drawn world.

Is the Writeoff about who creates the more entertaining story, or the story that's a better example of the art of writing? Arguments have been made for both sides, and if you look at the results for the past few contests, the results are mixed as well. A year ago I won the "Over the Horizon" minific contest with a story about Apple Bloom talking with Applejack on the porch during a rainstorm. A few months ago, horizon won "Closing Time" with The Iridescent Iron Rat, which was a spectacular caper fic. So both styles of story can and do win.

But you're always going to have a harder time if you take the character-piece route, especially in the prelims when many judges are just looking for the one or two stories that stuck in their mind. War stories or speculative fiction tend to stick in people's brains. Character studies, regretfully, do not.

Edit: Do Better Next Time was not on my ballot. If it had been, it probably would have been the top or second story (none of the stories on my prelim ballot advanced to the finals).

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All the reviews were complimentary of the execution, especially when it came to theme and character. (Thank you again, by the way.) But the story still didn't make the finals. Why is that? Well, Baal and Not-A-Hat, despite the compliments, still didn't care for it.

Is that my take-away here? The lesson of message-to-market match? That's a bit of a downer.

For the record, it was 7/16 on my ballots, behind four stories that made the finals and two strong contenders that didn't. "I liked it" is a good sign, but in this case there were six stories I read that I liked more. Given less than a third of the stories made the final cut (14/46), 7/16 wasn't in finalist cut territory on my ballot. That's how it goes; it isn't about being liked, it's about being liked more than the other stories.

For me, it wound up where it did because the stories above it were either more ambitious or better executed.

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Is the Writeoff about who creates the more entertaining story, or the story that's a better example of the art of writing?

To me, these two things are not actually all that distinct from one another. The fundamental goal of most prose fiction is to engage the reader - to have something worth writing about. If a story isn't doing that, it isn't actually a better example of the art of writing.

If you write a beautiful piece of prose describing a video game controller, but don't have any purpose in describing it, what's the point? Why should anyone care?

Hmm. While I don't have a lot to say about my story (I believe the writing was good enough, or at least serviceable; the bad points were all about the content and I don't think I have an issue with that, I sent it with the most frugal of editings so it was bound to happen), there's one little point that I'd like to address, as more than once it's been brought up.

I'm the author of The Subtle Art of Robot Psychology, or Innocuous Cheese, by the way.

Anyhow, while the main criticisms are valid (perhaps it's too long, the footnotes were annoying -- I tried to use a new system that didn't pay off, never again -- and so on) there's one that bothers me. I'm quoting Horizon because his is the last review and it's easier to find:

It was also rather weird to see Jack dating Samantha after spending so long using pet-names on Antonio like they were a couple.

Maybe this is a cultural thing. I'm a Spaniard, and the differences between my country and the USA are enormous in some regards, but... this is actually rather offensive? At least in here. While I wrote Jack as a somewhat flamboyant-ish character (he overuses terms like "dear" and "darling"), this is actually how a lot of people talk in here. Maybe it's an American thing, but having pet names for your friends/coworkers and being overly affectionate on a verbal level is kind of, well. Not the norm per se, but nobody is going to look weird at you if you do that.

At first I was actually surprised by this, and I suspected that the fault might be mine -- after all, if almost everybody who reads it feels the characters act like a couple, then probably they do act like a couple. But just to try, I showed the story to some friends and my sister, all of them from here, and not a single one got even close to picturing them as lovers. When questioned, some said that maybe Antonio is gay because he invites Jeff for a drink later, but that "they kinda saw that as a token thank you more than anything." Jack, they said, is shown to be heterosexual almost immediately, as the first glimpse we get from his thoughts are about asking Samantha from Accounting out for a date.

So dunno. Not really a critique of the reviews, more like me pointing out that cultures are weird.

I personally didn't really think about their sexualities while writing, aside from the whole Samantha thing. Never really minded that tkind of stuff, to be honest (if the story has no romance, then who cares?) It just weirded me out, hence this commet.

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So dunno. Not really a critique of the reviews, more like me pointing out that cultures are weird.

Maybe we're just all shameless shippers.

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(Disclaimer: I haven't actually read your story.)
To be fair, it's not completely unheard of in America for people to call friends "dear" or "darling." But it's definitely not common, and there are really only a few types of people who do it. Rarity, for example, has been known to use names like that for everyone else on the show, and I don't think that anyone finds it odd. But you definitely don't ever hear males use names like that for people they aren't romantically involved with. I suppose that an exceptionally flamboyant guy might do it, but I'm not even completely sure about that.

This is definitely an interesting insight into differences between cultures though.

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For The Wicked Queen of the North:

Other than my commendable job at writing a completely new language, were there any other things that were noticeable in which could see more improvement? Throughout, I got four reviews saying basically the same thing, so is there any other minor notion that you guys would add to your previous comments in which you left out?

I knew that the ending was going to feel as if it were a deus ex machina, and I would have written about two scenes worth more if it weren't for the 8k word limit. Some elements were accidentally left in the story because of the deletion of those scenes, but is there anything else?

Really appreaciate it though that you guys were willing to take a look at my story, even if some of you weren't even capable of reading it.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, my native language is English.

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I've actually been thinking of expanding it as well, but I knew that if I did, the story would be bigger by an exponentially larger factor, by my estimations, than what it is at currently. I'm nowhere near capable of writing on a larger factor when the current level of my writing is confusing as it is, but maybe I can do something like it in the future. Also, funnily enough, those two deleted scenes I mentioned before would've answered your first two questions you had for my story. Maybe if I had done what horizon had said previously, lowering the overall word usage, I could've probably included those two scenes and kept it under 8k words. Answering that last question you had with Victor making his way through the town, however, would've probably had to be included in an expanded version, as I know an explanation for that couldn't be included in an 8k version of the story.

PS: Here's the link to the Luna. I don't know why the artist doesn't show it in his gallery. Also, thanks.

I haven't been participating this round due to time issues. Can anyone give me a summary of the highs and lows? How have the fics compared to previous writeoffs? I heard there were pony fics; did none of them pass the cut due to being downvoted for missing the point? Anything unusual? That sort of thing.

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Thank you for the vote of confidence. I was, despite knowing I shouldn't be, a bit put out by the result, so it really is appreciated.

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As above, thank you for the vote of confidence. And I appreciate your willingness to reward a story even if it wasn't for you personally. Your point about intense bittersweet is well made. It's something more to think about.

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And again, thank you! Especially for taking the time to read a story that wasn't on your ballot.

I also realise there was an unintentional implication in my previous post which I should clear up. I'm not leaving because I missed the finals. On the whole, I think the writeoff is ace cool. It's just that it writeoff takes up time and energy that I want to use on other writing projects.