The Farm 2013. Flash Fiction and Snippets Critique Hub (<1000 Words)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Farm 2013. Flash Fiction and Snippets Critique Hub (<1000 Words)

Guiness13: Feb 17, 2007; The best angel of all.

Yue posted:

The stomping. That's what he missed most. His mother, his roommates, his mother again, when someone's walking, Gordon's used to hearing each footstep resound with the force of a car hitting your local variety of woodland creature. There is a lot going on with this sentence. First, you have a weird coma splice going on. Second, you switch tenses. I'd go with Gordon grew up with the sound of plates clattering in the cupboard as his mother walked through the house. Here, he has to listen to hear someone coming. Again, this is present tense. For a moment, the test subject What? found himself missing it, and then there was relief of a sort. The clacking footsteps of someone in heels on the hallway's tile floor could be heard easily from his new office.

"His office..." This shouldn't be in quotes. When I think about my own office, I don't think, "Guiness13's office..." the thought repeated itself in his mind. ~~He has an office.~~ We get it, he has an office. He has a proper job. His guidance counselor was wrong!! Ok, just see below.

"Suck on that, Mrs. Schechterly!" Gordon nodded firmly to himself, assured that right now, he was an absolute badass.

"...What?"

That was someone else in the room! Those footsteps were coming for him! Someone heard it! That moment of coolness evaporated as he scrambled to sit upright and get his papers in order. When he admitted defeat at acting like the sort of person who ought to have his own office, he took notice of the visitor. A woman in a black suit, black tie, with heels and sunglasses.

There are two things that are difficult to describe without risking someone, quite rightly, taking offense: A beautiful woman and a character whose race needs to be noted. For the former, your words have to be chosen carefully, to get across her appeal without seeming perverted, or single-minded. The pitfalls of describing one's race are doubly frightening. Failure in this department could mean accusations of racism. With that in mind, let us simply say that Makoto Shiranui is Japanese, and move on to the first challenge.

One could, of course, simply say "beautiful" and leave it at that, maybe check a thesaurus if you're feeling flowery. The problem is you don't get across why the character is so stunning, why Gordon was left frozen for a moment upon meeting his partner. Something could be said about the perfect symmetry of her face, the dark, reflective eyes, the perfectly styled, yet short and utilitarian chestnut hair, or perhaps something about her body? The toned build that doesn't yet reach 'muscular'? The flawless skin radiating warmth? Something in her attidude, a daring smirk, staring down her counterpart with the previously-stated eyes? Or maybe she just has a fantastic pair of tits. Gordon Martel is, if nothing else, a shallow man.

There is a certain line from a certain popular stealth video game from the nineties that sprung to poor Gordon's mind. I dare not repeat it, both for fears of copyright infringement and fears that repeating it may imply I somehow support his thoughts regarding Ms. Shiranui's first impression. Those of you that have played this game know exactly what I refer to, and are presently cringing. For those of you left confused, rest assured those in the other category are deeply jealous of the fact that you missed the joke.

I have absolutely no idea what's going on with this and why I should care about any of it. Is it supposed to be funny? You spend more time talking about describing this woman than you actually spend describing her. The tense and point of view are all over the place.

The whole thing feels like a joke that went sailing over my head.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2014 19:51

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 05:31

Guiness13: Feb 17, 2007; The best angel of all.

I have to agree. I could tell there was supposed to be something going on between the three articles, but there was way too much information missing to piece things together. For instance, I, being completely unaware of the various aspects of raising chickens, was wondering what the hell the first farmer's broilers were. Also, there's nothing beyond that to say anything about these farms being chicken farms. Even the third headline mentions Fowl instead of poultry.

Basically, the framing device is confusing as hell and I had no idea there was an actual story there until it was explained in spoilers. If someone is just reading that story, they're not going to have the explanation handy and I have no idea how they would figure it out from what's there.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2014 01:13

Guiness13: Feb 17, 2007; The best angel of all.

newtestleper posted:

Crits for Pham Nuwen and Guiness13

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VoK9CNegZvemdAwi_wWMZcu8LBLCTvjCBXEGdH7gKFk/edit

I'm happy to take another look at your stories once you've edited them, too. We have heaps of time - subs close on November 16

Rather than clutter up the Dome, I thought I'd post my edit here. I'd be grateful for any thoughts, and would be happy to take a look at your own if you want to post it.

Flicker 242 words

Removed for sub. Final version is here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xwHva3lhqfJy19pvzuTMPpYV21ZHKGi8C7dGvoMS3nA/edit?usp=sharing

Guiness13 fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Nov 5, 2015

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 03:59

Guiness13: Feb 17, 2007; The best angel of all.

Thanks! Glad you liked it!

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 05:29

Guiness13: Feb 17, 2007; The best angel of all.

So, I have some questions.

Why, if she's scouting out the dragon's lair, does she stop and rest when she gets there? And then confront the dragon? And then go ahead and warn the dragon and tell him who's in charge? Or was the whole story made up and she just stumbled upon the dragon and started bullshitting?

Also, this doesn't really feel like a complete story. At least, not a satisfying one. We have the world's worst forward scout screwing up and dying, and at the end, I don't care.

There's a kernel of a good idea here, a woman hurrying ahead of the army to try to convince the dragon to leave. We just need a compelling reason why she wants to do that and why we should care.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 21:27

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