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I wound up having some things to do today so I only got partway through my crits but wanted to share what I had thus far. Video Timestamps 0:00 Introduction 1:26: An Otter Predicament 4:15: Bluff 9:00 We Will Not Be Okay 12:53: The Base of the Bluffs 17:10: Bluff 23:10: Drop 27:00: The Bluffalo 30:00: Mustang Sally 36:00 Comings and Goings 42:40: The Bluff 47:20: The Edge of Everything 51:45: Black Sunflower 55:56: Maybe It Is 1:00:35: Mover 1:08:14: Last Call 1:13:05: A Character is Lost 1:18:29: Nothing Is Ever Truly Lost 1:26:50: Rakiura 1:34:33: Resistance 1:42:00: Judging Crits - Part I An Otter Predicament What we have in effect is a small story of a card game between a talking otter and a man called the Admiral. Concept is cute. I’m ready to buy into the premise and the story itself is functional for its first half, albeit a little awkward and stilted, laden with confusing imagery (otters “looming around” a table”). Serious problems begin to manifest in the latter half when the writer seems to realize they have failed to characterize any of the people in the story or explain what the broader context of this story is about. We get some exposition-heavy dialogue that still doesn’t provide many answers and a bunch of card-based technobabble that leaves me feeling empty. Bluff This is a cute premise, playing on both the conventions of romance and Westerns to depict an loving, antagonistic relationship between two people. Unlike my other judges, I didn’t have too much difficulty swallowing the absurdity of the central dynamic and found a lot to like about the pair, even though the comedy the writer relies on is a little monochromatic and would benefit from a little shading in a subsequent edit. Three basic problems that I ran into while reading this are: 1. the entire first third of this story is basically exposition that could have easily been cut out (there’s little here that couldn’t have been shown via action and dialogue); 2. The dialogue goes on a little long in parts and I feel less like I’m watching a fight than a performance of one (which might be intentional); 3. The ending with the vulture solving everything is Looney Tunes as gently caress and doesn’t really address the pair’s underlying problem without some earlier suggestion that this was a performance piece more than an actual fight. We Will Not Be Okay As I mentioned in the recording, I am a big fan of stories that take a sudden turn for the weird and so was primed to enjoy this. Prose is pretty alright (though please put line breaks between paragraphs). Much of the surreal comedy hits its mark. Characters are not well-defined but they don’t need to be as my overwhelming impression was that of a Welcome to Night Vale-style vignette that doesn’t need to justify itself or its characters. Where this falters instead, I think, is in the latter half where we have a bunch of strange things happening just for the sake of strange imagery. That allows for some interesting descriptions but I was really looking for some unifying idea to make sense of it all. The suggestion of this being some kind of trick of scheme by the old man gets forgotten in the last section, which is a bit of a shame. The Base of the Bluff One of the strongest submissions for this week, both narratively and in terms of prose. We have a character with clearly defined fears and motivations. We have some very nice sharp sentence fragments that give this piece a percussive quality. While the specifics of what they are doing is not immediately clear at the outset (I was pretty deep into this before I realized they were climbing and jumping off mountains), the piece does a good job of capturing a very relatable mood. Like a lot of pieces this week, however, the characterizations are a little broad. That’s understandable given the time constraints but Emily is a little one-note and deaf to her brother’s concerns while Arthur veers dangerously close to grating. In a subsequent draft, I might give more dimension to these people and their relationship, toning down their primary personality traits. Bluff (Bluff story 2) This is a remarkably long and well-composed story for two hours. Individual sentences are clear and direct. The writer has a clear understanding of dialogue that helps the piece flow. The first segment of this is exposition heavy but it isn’t gratingly so, in part because it’s delivered through a discussion between two characters who would have an actual reason to discuss these issues. I also quite enjoyed Jokasta as a character and found her irritable air of authority consistent throughout. The problem, though, is the length. These characters talk and talk and talk. That in and of itself is not a bad thing (indeed, some of the strongest stories I’ve read are dialogue-heavy) but these discussions don’t seem to reveal much about the characters, produce conflict, or engender any change. They seem to serve primarily to hype up the strange interstellar object and the actual confrontation with it without advancing the characters toward that goal. The overall effect is that the conversations seem circular and frustrating. For the future, I would recommend thinking both about pacing (how big is my build to the thing relative to the thing itself) and what I’m trying to accomplish with my writing (what function do these discussions serve? Do they reveal anything new about the characters or advance their motivations?). If you cut this down to the juicy bits, I think you have the bones of a really interesting piece. Drop This is clearly a piece by a talented writer, overflowing with evocative imagery that stuck with me long after I read it. I love the idea of this magic mountain that causes all these fantastic things to happen. I love the narrator’s excitement about it all, their awed reaction to suddenly gaining sight. The strangeness of it all was deeply compelling, even though I found myself confused by the specifics of what was happening. However, this latter quality is what prevented me from rating this piece higher. I often found myself confused by the blocking, unable to understand what our narrator Sarah was and was not doing, and the relationship between Taryn and her. I don’t want you to justify this magic mountain but, I think a stronger second draft would provide some specificity to who these pair are, why Taryn brings her to this place, and why Sarah has such a negative conception of him. The Bluffalo This is a cute little piece. It’s not a story in any sense of the word but it’s understandable and gave me a few sensible chuckles. As someone who has, professionally, had to both read and write a lot of form letters like this, there were aspects of this piece that I appreciated. The writer seemed to know what they were parodying. As said on the recap, though, there’s not much of a there there. I might have considered introducing some kind of character for the reader to follow, even if you kept the epistolary format. Mustang Sally I have to assume this story is not about the real, historical figure Sally Ride, right? I spent the first bit of this story wondering whether you were going for wacky historical fiction, but I think the name is supposed to be paying homage to the astronaut Sally Ride. That confusion aside, there’s some interesting elements to this piece. I do like the classic “Lost in Space” vibe as well as the subsequent disappointments back on Earth. While some of the prose veers into sterile and technical, I have a clear sense of what is happening. My problem with this piece, as I said on the recap, can be chalked up to the alien who is a little overly zany and random for my tastes. He is just aggressively in the reader’s face. I would recommend toning him down a little bit on a subsequent edit.
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Oct 10, 2021 04:18
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Critis - Part II Comings and Goings This is a fairly standard piece of apocalyptic fiction, or at least something adjacent to it. We have two characters in a setting with scarce resources and only one another to depend on. One character’s death proves catastrophic to the other, but they make a promise to themselves to keep moving forward. Within those confines, this is a nicely written piece. The reader gets a few hints at the relationship between Elisa and her mother. There is an implication that there is much being left unsaid and many complex feelings between the two that I find compelling. The ending with the bird is well-handled and reminds me of the old sailors’ belief that seagulls contain the souls of people who died at sea. My problems with this piece are largely a result of the constraints under which this piece was written. Namely, we don’t actually get much real interaction between Eliza and her mother and, instead, their dynamic is only alluded to generally. The failure to depict the depth of their relationship before the mother’s untimely death undermines the impact of the mother’s death and the ending. I also find the lack of context on the underlying situation here to be a little distracting. It’s fine to be vague on the cause of the apocalypse, a la The Road, but having the mother talk about dangers and her desire to keep her daughter safe raises questions about what those dangers actually are. The Bluff (Bluff Story 3) Part of me appreciates this true-to-life depiction of my #NewYork lifestyle where I am deeply aware of my neighbors and the various noises they make (as I write this, the children in the apartment above me are screaming at their father). This familiarity primes me to enjoy this piece and, indeed, I find some comedy in the gripping that you depict here. While there’s a few sentences that are malformed (likely a result of the rush) and broad (some of these jokes will be familiar to literally anyone who has been in any city anywhere), you still mostly hit your mark. However, I found myself a little frustrated when reading this piece when I realized there would be no actual confrontation, no real action taken. What you have written is an entirely internal monologue and the longer it goes on, the more aware the reader becomes that nothing will actually happen. I would encourage you to think a little more about what is interesting to read. While not doing anything is realistic (just in the way I’m not going to do anything about the children upstairs from my apartment), fiction is littered with people doing strange or unusual things. This piece could have been much improved by having the narrator actually get up and gripe, testing their conception against what is happening with the reality of it. Edge of Everything I have a soft spot for stories about children and, specifically, about children doing child-like things. It is a delight to read about a young person unself-consciously enjoying themselves, running wild with their imagination. On a macro level, I feel like you do a great job of capturing this with the various games that your narrator plays while with their family and by themselves. That said, your prose is often a little awkward, a little stilted. While endearing in places, your sentences often seem to run overlong, use unnecessarily complicated words (I remember “abscond” featuring at one point), and typos. This is a problem that can thankfully be addressed with more practice and I would encourage you to take more opportunities to read and write, as your prose will become more natural and flowing the more you practice. My other problem with this piece is that it is occasionally hard to tell what is happening in the narrator’s head and reality. Some of this might be intentional but the transitions between fantasy and the real world could be better indicated so that the reader doesn’t think you’ve suddenly gone for magical realism or something. Black Sunflower On a sentence by sentence level, this is a truly splendid poetic piece. Each of your descriptions are bright and vivid, full of extremely evocative and compelling imagery. I found myself thinking for a long time about the pseudo-Biblical styling you’ve provided here and the cadence of individual phrases. However, this piece falls into a trap that I think afflicts a lot of fantasy writing: There’s no foundation on which these poetic images can stand. I found myself struggling to understand what was happening throughout this piece, not just in terms of the setting or stakes but in terms of who the characters were themselves and whether what I was reading was actual, metaphorical, or something else entirely. The writer needs to provide something familiar for the reader to grasp onto or to be extremely explicit about what is literally happening. If the writer can balance these foundational descriptions with the longer, more poetic elements, this piece could be something truly splendid. maybe it is In my notes for this piece, I wrote the phrase, “Thunderdome Classic approach: mumblecore rumination on trauma told through the lens of a fantastical world (in this case one with ghosts and magic and stuff).” I feel like that sentence, written at 1:00 AM while I was in a semi-delirious state, holds true. This piece does a great job of using fantastical elements to provide an entry point into more complex, familiar topics. I really enjoy the conversation that opens this piece and the dynamic between Nia and the narrator. Piece is mostly well-written. Where this loses me a little bit is in the second half where both the writer and the characters seem confused by what their overall goals are. There is some fumbling conversation between the narrator and Channing in which going out for McDonald’s and looking at therapy seems to absolve the narrator of their sins. The dynamic between the two characters seems under-developed and under-realized and, in a better piece, I think the writer would spend more time developing this and exploring it. Mover I really enjoy stories that take a sudden turn for the weird and this one did just that. I quite enjoy your narrator, trapped in a dead-end job that leaves them with bubbling anger and resentment. I enjoy the playful way in which you present the premise but hide important aspects of it for the big reveal. I like the absurdity and bafflement of the other characters living on the Bluff as they realize the situation they find themselves in. Piece is overall competently written and leans well into the surrealness of the situation. Like a lot of pieces this week, the problems begin to manifest in the latter half. The conversation with Rothfuss just seems to hit the same point over and over without introducing anything new and the actual conclusion seems to yearn for a more satisfying ending than was provided. Partly, I think this is a consequence of the story confusing the premise with the actual conflict. We, the reader, are more invested in a change in the narrator than in the situation of the Bluff (which seems to be trapped by a larger institutional failure). In this vein, I would have focused on the narrator’s change of heart, introducing more fractures in their psyche at the outset and doing more to show them himming and hawing over their role in a patently exploitative system. Make the resolution the character changing their attitude more than them magically solving the crisis. Last Call This was a fine traditional Western. I thought the narrator had a nice voice and a strong personality. They fit into a pre-existing archetype but I left this piece with a clear understanding of who they were and what their motivations were. Prose was otherwise functional. The gambling was mostly comprehensible and the ending seemed earned. My problem with this piece, and this is more my problem than anything else, is that I truly do not enjoy stories about card games. I am fine with it as a plot device but I do not enjoy having to read long sentences about the nuances and dynamics of the game. I want to emphasize that this is a problem with me, the reader, and not you, the writer, but I thought the game itself went on too long. Would have preferred getting to the point sooner.
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Oct 10, 2021 17:09
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This should be everyone. If I missed your piece or if you would like me to expand on anything I have here, ping me in the Discord. Crits - Part III A Character is Lost This piece is a long piece of dialogue between several characters arguing. There is potential here, both with the arctic theme and the clear frustration. The penguins, while not the most compelling hook, have the potential for comedy if used well. There are some formatting and grammatical errors but the piece overall is mostly clear. As I said on the video recap, though, this piece has some serious problems as it relates to its characters. In such a dialogue-heavy piece, it is important for characters to be clear, distinct. What we have instead is a piece in which every character seems to be playing as coy and wacky. It is as though I am watching an improv scene where every character wants to be outlandish and, instead of “yes, and”-ing, they are all trying to do their own separate thing. My advice would be to think critically about what each character in a scene wants, how they can convey those desires, and how they can best achieve their goals. Realize this is hard for a two-hour competition but I feel like it will benefit you in the future. Nothing is ever truly lost This is quite an interesting little ditty about an astronaut thinking about his dads as he faces almost certain doom on an alien planet. The central story is sweet and compelling, despite some weirder details that come out of left field (the vigilante bit feels like a loose strand). I enjoy your narrator’s voice. While the framing device does not work entirely for me (it feels a bit like an afterthought disconnected to the central story), I can get generally what you were going for. To improve this piece, I think I was looking for two things. First, I really think you needed to provide more detail on the central relationship. The broad strokes we get of Pop and Dad is cute but a little broad and fails to give us hints of the fissures in their relationship that seem to manifest later on. Second, I think we need the narrator to be a bigger character in his own recollection of the event. As it stands now, he serves largely as a dispassionate narrator which makes for a clear, impartial read but doesn’t really tell us much about this dude dying on an alien planet. Rakiura I really thought this was a splendid piece, perhaps my favorite of the week. You capture a really familiar feeling of burn-out in an age of crisis and the desperate, influencer-inspired “escape to nature” approach to resolving that. As expected, this ploy provides no restoration, no metanoia. Far from being an idyllic trip, the narrator finds themselves cold and miserable. The writer does an excellent job both painting these scenes and providing a window into the protagonist’s psyche. The decision to do something the reader wants (relax in the hotel) instead of the masochistic march through nature is a satisfying conclusion. I don’t have many comments here in terms of improvements. This is a very cozy piece handled well. I suppose, if you wanted, you could provide additional scenes about the protagonist before setting off and expand on their time in Rakiura. That would turn this more into a short story than a flash fiction piece, but one that could probably work well. Resistance When I read this piece, I was reminded of an exhibit I saw by the concept artist Jenny Holzer titled “Lack of Charisma Can Be Fatal.” The collection, displayed in the Brooklyn Central Library, depicted various people caught up in the prison-industrial complex and their appeals for release. The overarching idea was that many of these people don’t conform well to the simple narratives people like to tell themselves about the people who “deserve” to be free; that many of these people do not get to be the face of their own movement because they are not traditionally attractive or eloquent. I find many of these same ideas present in this piece, which introduces interesting ideas about the kinds of people who get to lead large protest movements and those forced to play supporting roles. From the first protest scene, the writer provides a series of evocative images that will be familiar to anyone who has been to a protest in the last few years. I was impressed by the ways in which this piece plays with the voice of the crowd and the ways that social media has affected how we think about movements. The narrator is understandably bitter and, while we don’t get much time with her, her self-awareness makes for a fascinating part of this piece. While all these ideas have merit, the actual implementation seems a little off in places and frequently under-developed. Outside the very specific scenes at the rally, it is often unclear why certain things are happening or what motivates certain characters. In particular, the keylogger detail comes out of left field and, while it provides a cool examination of social media interactions, I am unclear whether this is meant to be a good or bad thing. I frankly do not understand the ending, which could be a problem with my literacy or the piece itself. All said, there’s a lot I wanted to like about this piece and I think it has potential. It just needs more work than two hours can provide. Would be interested in seeing a subsequent draft of this if the writer wanted to expand it further.
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Oct 11, 2021 19:18
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