4/3 Djarskublar Flash Fiction v2

[Djarskublar]

As stated in the email, the first two pieces are fine and the third is LV.

I am mostly interested in knowing if my edits on the first two pieces accurately fixed the issues there were before, or if I was off the mark. For the third piece, I didn't know how to end it for sure, so the ending is more a placeholder than anything I'm attached to. I want to know if the core story works for you, or if it was completely off base as something interesting.

[neongrey]

1

The first paragraph is too long by half, I think; it's mostly wordy point-blank explanation.

The middle two-- this has a good feel in terms of the feel of the movement but you're really muddy in terms of saying who's doing what. Are there two people acting here, or three? When one person is closing a gap between two people, that suggets three people, as does that 'the man' in para 3.

That said, this is a nicely-drawn scene, but I don't see this as a piece of flash fiction-- I don't think this stands on its own as a story. Flash still needs a plot, and you don't really have one here. This is definitely the best of the set, though-- with some more clarity of purpose in your writing, this could be really nice.

2

Again, you're expositing clumsily at the start-- other than that this is all right. The tone is actually really fairy-tale, and the repetition works okay with that for me, though I'm not in love with the Middle School section. The ending just fizzles for me; it leaves me feeling that there wasn't a particular point to the rest of the piece.

3

This is way, way too much explanation for flash, and this concept is downright hackneyed to begin with. This ground is really well-trodden and you don't really have anything interesting to say about, basically, yet another trolley problem. This has been done, nearly verbatim, countless times, and it's really tiresome. especially given the handling of the POV character's wife, which is beyond tacky. I don't think this one is worth reworking; I would toss it.

Edited April 5, 2017 by neongrey
oops, typo, lol

[Mandamon]

Some similar thoughts to @neongrey. You may have broken parts of these more once you started changing things. Flash fiction is hard to get right--I find it harder than short and medium-sized stories.

"The man quickly"
--This popped me out of the story, wondering if you were still talking about George.

"Combat" - There's still not an arc to this story. It's one scene, when an a action happens. Does this change a setting, idea, character, or event in any way? If not, this is more a transcript of a sports recording than a story.

"Food Chain" - So I actually liked the other version better. The adult killing the King of High School at least gave a sense of finality to the story, even if killing was too much. This version takes away from the story, making it more of a "scene" like the first entry. There's a sense of a resolution missing.

"Who Wants to be Super" - The first paragraph is an infodump, which is even more of a turn off in flash fiction that in longer fiction.

"You know we’ll get you soon" - We who? Who else is there but Johnathan?

This one had a better arc than the first two, but suffers a bit from the melodrama and cliche between superhero and villain. Twister gives his surprise, but we don't get to see how this affects Johnathan. What does he think about this?

[kais]

Combat

- redundancy on 'back' in that first line, redundancy on 'match' in lines two and three

- the sentence that begins with 'the man' is awkward and I think also a run-on

- wait... that's it? I know we discussed this last sub. This short has no plot, no arc, no motivation. There is nothing in here to make me care about any of the people, there is no growth, there is no real start nor end. 

 

Food Chain

- more redundancy at the start of this. Watch those reused words!

- the interplay with the first bullying incident is unclear now. I only know what happened because I read it before, I think

- hah! The end made me chuckle, but it does fall flat. I'll agree with @Mandamon that I liked the previous version better. This one is also missing a lot of the 'feels' I got from the first one.

 

Who Wants To Be Super

- wife being used as bait/motivation/character growth... ehhhhh. Skirting around fridge town, here. Don't make me reset the counter.

- this one is very 'telly'. There are also a fair number of typos in this one you'll want to address

-  eh? The ending falls flat again. Everyone is just expositing, there is no actual emotion, and the villain is... confusing. Lacking motivations all around, so this 'surprise' doesn't work. I agree with @neongrey that this is the weakest of your pieces. 

 

Glad to see you sub again!

[Robinski]

Combat

I think this is better than first time around. It feels a bit more personal, and that means there’s more at stake. The point of view seems to jump around a bit. I’m not that familiar with flash fiction so I don’t know if that’s a thing, but I felt it somewhat disorienting. The last line worked for me, but overall, I don’t really feel like I've learned anything, or been surprised or shocked.

Food Chain

Lol, now you’re talking. I got a nice laugh out of the ending of this story. That was nicely done; a heavy dollop of irony goes a long way. I still think it would chime nicely to have escalating stakes in the beatings. I would swap tar and crap. Seems to me going from Snot to Tar to Crap is better than going to crap in the middle. Tar seems out of place and weak as a swear for the King of the High School.

Who Wants to be Super?

Ooh, fresh material – excellent.

Ha-ha, intriguing opening. I like the premise and it’s quickly summarised at the beginning.

Also, an interesting moral quandary. Not exactly original, but because it is so basic, the concept of the needs of the many, etc., it remains effective. This story did make me think more than the other two, and I would not object to reading the reunion scene between the super and his wife. That would not be as satisfying as a narrative arc, but it would be a challenge to write for sure.

Nice job with these. I still enjoy Food Chain, and I liked the new one too. Combat still leaves me rather cold. I’m just not sure what the point of it is. The other two have either a message or a punchline, but Combat, while it has a cliff-hanger, lacks the satisfaction of having any kind of resolution.

I hope that these thoughts are helpful

<R>

[rdpulfer]

- Combat is a good start. I like the action, but like the other commeters, I feel like it's incomplete. I would love to see it expanded though.

- Would you call a bully "poop face" when you are being attacked? Seems like that would make things worse. The ending works better than the last time I read it, but it's still not quite there yet. There's a little irony at work, but I feel like it would be expanded more. 

- "Who Wants to Be Super?" is interesting. As a comic nerd, I like what the villain does in the end - but I'd like to see it played out a bit more. Also, it needs to end in something other than a monologue from the bad guy - even if he does "win". 

[industrialistDragon]

 

Hello! sorry about the late response. It's great that you edited and re-submitted! Here are my takes:

1. This is much improved over the first one! The intro sentence and some of the first few sentences after that do not really grab the reader, however.  I agree with the others, that this seems to lack a real plot, moreso now than it did previously since you've removed a lot of the repetition.  There's a beginning (intro to the characters) and a middle (fight-to-tie), but there's no resolution.  Are you aiming for a sort of lady-or-the-tiger ambiguous end? That's a tricky thing to do, and for it to work, we really need a lot more setup so we can clearly see what choices are available and why they would make sense for the protagonist to choose them.

2. This one... had more of a lateral shift.  Moving away from the repetition in dialogue and description hurts it, since repetition is what it is built on, and cutting the end off removes the twist that finished the story.  It hangs now, at the end, and lacks resolution.  The bits about what each boy does with the money don't resonate with each other like they did, and thus they seem superfluous to the story.  It has benefited from an editing pass and the dialogue seems more natural and the other writing has been tightened up a bit.  But, with flash fiction, and extra-especially with repetition, every single little word matters -- the choice, the spelling, even its placement on the page: it all matters so much.

3. Again, this story could use some trimming. There's a lot of excess verbiage and run-on sentences, especially in the beginning, where it's especially important to be succinct and catch a reader's interest. From these three stories it looks like you have a tendency to try to get the entire backstory and scenario out as fast and completely as possible.  This is not necessarily a good thing, especially in flash.  We really only need enough information to get the reader through the story at hand in flash fiction.  Do we need to know he's filling in for his brother, or just that he doesn't want to be there? It can be hard to be brutal to info like this, because it is important background... HOWEVER, I don't know that it matters to this story, right here, right now.  Secondly, pouring the entire shape out in the first couple sentences leads to unneeded info-dumping, the core parts of which could be better incorporated into the body of the story.  Offhand remarks and dialogue tags can and should do double duty, both forwarding the plot and expanding our knowledge of the character.

I'm going to suggest to you a free worksheet and instruction from another author (sorry mods, I hope that's all right; I don't think the Sanderson offerings have a similar flash-centric free version?) that's designed specifically for making the sort of flash fiction you seem to be wanting: it's Holly Lisle's How to Write Flash Fiction That Doesn't SUCK!  course. It's free, and even if you don't use her methods or do her exercises, it's good info and food for thought regarding flash.

Keep at it!