cjhuitt

Scrivener for me as well. If you do NaNoWriMo, they regularly have a special for winners that gets you a discount. I took advantage of it one year, and was using it almost exclusively about 2 months later.

I missed this before, but yes, there are others, though not always "out of the closet" as such. I'm about to edit/redo the piece, and one of the things I'm considering putting in is a couple small hints that another on the crew might be such.

Thanks also, Turos and Trizee. It's good to see comments like this also, to remind me that for any story, there will be some that naturally like it and some that naturally don't. I need to remember not to self-select my way out of potentially good stories based on my own gut feel, because sometimes it is wrong (and sometimes it is right, or at least I can't help but follow it).

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far. I knew there were some things wrong, and you've clarified them for me, though I had hoped I could "smoke and mirrors" a couple aspects of it. Also, there were a couple spots I was worried about where nobody has complained yet, so I'll take that as a good sign for those things.

Another of the stories I wrote last month, though written after my poll on titles, so it wasn't included there. This is Mutiny in the Night, a ~1700 word short story.

I just got done reading this. I'll agree with the others that it is overall very good. The spots where I was snagged from the story while reading were all mentioned above; the names, the "sudden" appearance of the husbands, the importance of the book, and Yang Chengda's impotence in the end, when it seems like there are a number of things he could have done to help salvage the situation. Like, for example, turn off the telephone. I would also have liked it in the final confrontation if, due to her spy training, Tao had some last-resort ability to stop Yang... a poison needle or something. Something she doesn't want to use unless absolutely necessary to save her own life, since killing a diplomat isn't usually a good thing. She can then be desperate for another solution and hit upon the phone thing, meaning she doesn't have to use the other option. It would remove a tiny bit of danger from the situation, but show a lot more competence in her own training and preparation in order to have that along. Given that there is one book that will make it so the Chinese win (if only they have it) or lose (if their opponents have it), I was also surprised that Yang didn't do more to recover it, even at the possibility of getting himself blown up (an honorable atonement in death). I don't know what you can and/or want to do to smooth that over, or if you want to make the writing itself compelling enough that people don't think about that aspect until after the story is done. Finally, although children (and Chun in particular) figures heavily into the motivations of the story, I'm not sure that Tao's and Bao's reflection about changing their mind on having children (and their apparent agreement on the matter) is earned in the story. It especially struck an odd note to me given that they were standing in front of a woman and her daughter that Tao had recently been manipulating via her "revelations" about children. I would think that the super-secret spy training that Tao had received might put the emphasis on making sure the defectors are comfortable and gotten away from the location where they were last known to be, and not risk antagonizing them by basically revealing how they had been manipulated.

I'd like to submit another piece soon. This Monday or next, either works.

Thanks, everyone, for the feedback so far. If I'm not responding to the individual items, don't take that for me rejecting them. I just have nothing in particular to say about them. I guess I've been pronouncing it as "Sci-Ann", but that doesn't mean it's how the name is officially pronounced, if it is indeed an official name. I've forgotten where I came across it. Four to five may be a bit much; I might have to trim it down a touch. Siane with her enhanced abilities could definitely reduce the number needed. However, depending on the size of the hose and the amount of water flowing through it, three or four isn't out of the question. A couple of pictures via google search: http://www.fleminggulf.com/cms/uploads/news/firesafety.jpg http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/wyrk.com/files/2012/10/Highland-Hose-Fire-Company-10-10-12-630x420.jpeg http://www.rffd.org/rffd.org/3onhose.jpg (I don't mean this to be defensive of what I wrote, nor did I take offense; many people may not know how many it takes, and that is a potential sticking point in the narrative. I just think it's kind of fascinating, and wanted to share a couple of details about it.)

As was voted the title most people wanted to read (just based on the title), by a margin of 2 votes, I present Stone Weight of the Survivor. It's a short story of ~2400 words.

I'd like to submit something this coming Monday as well. One of the most-voted titles in my poll below.

Without too many details, both 'Elephantine vs. The Stoat' and 'Birth of the Engineer' are superhero/villain-esque shorts. And funny thing about NaNo... apparently it is not, since I haven't been writing as much as I want lately. That's one part of the challenge. The other part was making myself come up with complete stories, that can be told in a short space. So far, I've only had one where I had to start summarizing with reckless abandon once I got an hour into it, just to finish it during the day. Also, after 15 days of the challenge, I have written 25,273 words in these stories, so just about on NaNo pace.

I've challenged myself to write a short story each day for this month, and so far have written exactly one each day. I thought I'd post one for critique, but as an added exercise I thought I'd see what titles interest people the most. Each of the titles is a complete story that would be one submission. They range from just over 1k words up to nearly 4k, and average a little over 1700, though I left off the word counts so as to not have them influence the voting. I set it so you can vote for multiple titles, but please keep it to your top 5 if you can.

I thought the setting was interesting, though I kind of wanted a bit more, and in particular little bits of more that would change familiar things just slightly. My main thinking that way was that the emphasis on Ichik's drawing, mapping, and account-keeping meant that a lot of attention was focused on pen and paper, which without something else going on seem a bit mundane compared to what might be available in a steampunk setting. There is a paragraph where Ahmakiq glares at Ichik that seems to be from Ahmakiq's POV. I don't recall seeing any other POV switches in the story, so I'm guessing this was an accident. Ahmakiq's casual brutality surprised me for the tone of the beginning of the story, and this theme continued throughout. If that's what you wanted, bravo, but it was so consistently abrupt and jarring to the rest of the tone that I personally kept getting thrown out of the story when it happened. I thought that perhaps a few more details on Ichik's inspiration near the end would be nice. Possibly a brief description of what the stolen crystal thingie does. My final thought is that the end is a change in Ichik's desires to wander, and while I saw some hints toward this through the story, it would probably be nice to find a way to establish that up front, so that his change mirrors that in the end. As it is, the first I could find of this is when Ahmakiq threatens Ichik's job.

I'm obviously late to this, but am catching some older stories between reading the newer ones. I won't cover the previous discussion, but I did know about the poquats from your previous story, so I had at least that much information going in. The first paragraph made me wonder if they change names when they change bodies? I thought it was confusing, but my impression from Nectar was that they continued as the same consciousness in serial bodies, which I took to mean the same name and everything. Combining the name change with the end of the story, it makes me wonder if every body transfer doesn't involve a merging of consciousness? That would be interesting, but raise a lot of background questions that probably don't apply directly to this story. Finishing my previous thought about the first paragraph, I'd like a bit more detail about what in particular of the new body seemed attractive. It's a short story, so it can't go too far, but a little more description could probably work. In the interests of story space, you might want to consider cutting the intermediate approach at mating, with the rude gesture. When she copulates, Sartaqua mentions the experience was unfamiliar due to the number of years. This brings up more interesting questions about the amount of memories that are kept around, etc., which I'm not sure the story has time to go into. I'd like to know more, but at this point in the story perhaps those questions shouldn't be raised. I got slightly confused between patroqs and Quatrop. "Blind" Tarprato stumbles onto the road... was his blindness mentioned before? Is he really blind? If so, how would he be able to communicate when so much is done with signing? For example, the female guard berating him. "On and on the memories flowed, faster and faster until at last all his memories were inside me and all my memories were in my new body." This sentence confused me for a bit. It's an interesting way of expressing what happened, but in the plain text of the story I don't know if it conveys everything properly. If you want to have some fun, considering trying to get your software to place both those sentences in the same line simultaneously. I'm thinking something similar to how the aliens spoke in Embassytown -- or, if you haven't read it, it was formatted kind of like a fraction, only with different but related words or sentences above and below the line.

You'll want to read through the "Welcome to Reading Excuses" near the top of the Readiing Excuses page. In a nutshell, you need to send Silk a Personal Message asking to be put on the mailing list, and then you'll start to receive emails with attachments containing the works to be critiqued. Generally on Mondays, or at least near the beginning of the week.

I'm not convinced we're good at it here, either -- but British TV always seems good. It's probably a case of the best stuff making it elsewhere, and the nonsense staying home.

I have to disagree with Syme a bit here... I didn't think it was pleasant, but that was more due to the nature of the story, and you should take that as a compliment to your writing rather than being critical of it, because I thought the prose was well-done. I just didn't exactly end with warm-fuzzies when the story was done. I would also suggest the genre of urban fantasy, or possibly literary fantasy (which I'm not completely sure is a genre, but it works for me, so...). One of the small problems I had with the story was that I didn't know when in time to place it, nor what genre to place it in, so I was confused on the overall picture at the start of the story. References to mirrors (very large historical scope), lacerations (a modern-sounding word, but is that intended?), sledgehammers (kind of modern), and bronze gongs (makes me think of older china, not modern-day) had me kind of inclined to think the setting was modern, but I really didn't know until the gun at his temple was mentioned. A few other hints would probably firm it up... things like the type of clothing he's wearing, or how he's bound, or even where he is (if Rick knows). The gap between the first sentence ("Any last words?") and the next spoken words ("Better say them quick...") is large enough, and filled with description not directly related to that concept, that I had to double-back and see what he had to say quick. In fact, in combination with the description of what appeared to be the results of torture, I switched over to thinking that he was being tortured to get some information, and really had to do a mental adjust back to last-words instead. Rick seems preternaturally self-aware and philosophical, in particular his thoughts about not mourning the monster's death, but the death of Rick that it represents, and his final words. I don't know that you can remove that and still have the story you do, though, so it may be something to be aware of rather than actually change anything about. His last words are interesting, but as the story progressed, I found it hard to see quite how they could be distorted the way his mother does. I don't know if you could make them a touch more ambiguous or something, but it might be worth thinking about. The POV from the murderer's perspective is disturbing, and thankfully short, but even so this is where I'd expect to see some more description. Especially since the murderer appears (to me) to be a serial killer who enjoys all the details of those last moments. His focus should be on the details at that point, and so his POV should focus there also. Normally I would suggest avoiding extra names when you don't have to, but perhaps a few extra words and a couple of named relatives when all the aunts and uncles come to help with the grief, along with one or two concrete details about those named? The reason I suggest this is that it would allow for the "introduction" of Aunt Anja ("the witch") then, so her later appearance isn't quite so sudden and transitory. I didn't start to get a feel for the fact that there might be fantastic elements of the story until about 950 words in (or about halfway). For me, that's a little late to see without any other clues... which is another reason why mentioning the aunt earlier might be beneficial. Like the time-period I mentioned earlier, the sooner this can be established (in general), the better. I thought the last section, while necessary to give the story the closure it needs, was a little-bit off. I think part of it was that I didn't know how much time had passed. Obviously Sarah and Bob are coping with Rick being gone via the birthday celebration, but I would expect more of a feeling of melancholy, of something lost that can never be entirely regained despite the setting, and I don't get that from the section. Instead, Sarah is grinning and thinks the cake is delicious, and Bob is inciting the kids to sing loudly... and I get no sense of their internal feelings, which is where I'd expect the melancholy to come from, or even how they feel about it at all. Finally, a note about formatting (or possibly about computer document translations), there were a couple of times that I would have expected italics or underlines to denote current thoughts. Like hinted at, I didn't open this in word, so perhaps the formatting is there in the original, but when I read it I saw at least one "I" and one "me" in the text, formatted just like the rest of the text, and it threw me off.

I'd agree with the others that the betrayal wasn't really a surprise. I would have been more surprised had Marina not betrayed him, given the setup... but the urging to make this shorter may be a good one, for the very reason Mandamon gave. Either way, however, I would expect the narrator to at least contemplate the possibility that she may betray him, even if he continues in his course of action. The beginning is a bit distant, though I don't know how close I'd want it given the nature of the proceedings. I think a lot of this feeling comes from the second paragraph, where the various parts of his mind are noticing things. I personally feel like it would be stronger if he couldn't think about anything like that while the pain was tormenting him. Another aspect that may help draw the reader in a bit more is to touch more of the senses. I'm guessing that the lack of any sensory detail beyond sight is just a coincidence and not actually a plan, but there is plenty of opportunity to add others in -- the hot smell of the branding iron, the charred smell of his own burnt flesh, the general environs... and that's just smell. What does he hear? (Do his screams echo? Are tools clanking together?) What does he taste? (Blood in his mouth from biting his tongue, or lip? Or from a split lip? What does the cloth that got shoved in his mouth taste like?) I think this could be especially important once the MC is completely blinded, because then it's all he'll have -- and they'll probably be both more prominent and more confusing without sight to help sort things out. I found "the Torturer" always presented as a name to be annoying. We don't need a real name, because that doesn't matter beyond what his role is, but it snagged my eye every time. I also thought the declaration at the end of the first section ("...and I've sworn not to...") is a bit blunt, but it effectively conveys why he is being tortured. I personally think you might be able to cut off the actual action of blinding him (burning the second eye), and have it implied by the torturer's preparation. I think it would be stronger that way, and also give you a chance to linger on the last sight the MC will ever have in his life (so he thinks), and how horrible it is. This would be another time for a bit of description of who is doing what. I suggest not losing this in the revisions... I quite liked it. I'm generally a fan of snarky MCs. Finally, the ending. I was somewhat dissatisfied with how it ended, and I think it was because, once he had gotten the stone and been betrayed, all thoughts of protecting the stone or keeping it safe from others are completely absent. All that's present is the drive to kill the person who has killed him in turn... not a bad thing, but not what he started the story desiring. I would assume that being First Wizard of his order means that he is fairly accomplished, and he seems to indicate such as he fights off all the other sorcerers, so I wonder if he'd be able to do something with the stone, still, perhaps even replacing it in its vault, before completely succumbing. Alternately, and maybe even more effective for the story, have him torn between protecting the stone and having his revenge. If he can only have one, which does he choose? At that point, I think you could still have a strong ending with the same actual plot points as what is written now--it's just that some of the thought and context would have to change around them. Either way (or your own way), I do think some reference to the purpose of protecting the stone is called for at the end of the story.

This is an intro to (what was going to be a) short story, written largely to practice my descriptions. It's only about 1k words long, so the part I've sent should hopefully make for a quick read. In particular, I'd appreciate feedback on a) the descriptions (effectiveness and/or amounts), and speculation as to where you think the story is eventually going.

It's been a while, especially since I've submitted, but I have a small something to have critiqued if there's room.

I imagine a lot of you follow @TheDanWells (or @robisonwells) on twitter, so you may already know about this, but Dan, Rob, Marion Jensen, and others have a kickstarter going to create a large shared world filled with background information, settings, characters, and even story starter ideas (and first chapters), all free for anyone to use (to help learn how to write). The link explains the reasons well, so check it out, and hopefully we can help them get this going. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marionjensen/massive-fiction-project-three-novellas-and-story-s

I'm kind of still around... just really busy procrastinating. Its amazing what I can find to do when I'm procrastinating on other things.

I forgot to mention, as I was typing all that out, one other thing that caught my attention: Sence is prominent enough, and has enough money, that she should have her own guards escorting her to and from the palace, if not hanging around closer. This was brought home to me when the poquats did that function in the second half of the story, but they should have been there protecting her from the beginnings of the riot in the first half as well.

While all the parts of the second half were done as well as the first, IMO, I also felt a little disappointed by the second half. On reflection, I think it is because it's suffering from the two-halves problem -- that is, you have a good first half to a story, and a good second half, but the two halves don't quite go together. From what I've been taught and experienced myself, this is often a problem of making the ending match the beginning, so I'm going to go back to the beginning and analyze that. The chosen tool for this analysis is the MICE quotient. I know they've discussed it at least a couple of times on Writing Excuses. The first paragraph of the story has a wizard appearing that defies expectations -- so is this a Milieu, Idea, Character, or Event story? Milieu would the wizard appearing, taking in the sights, and leaving in the end. Idea would be why is the wizard not as expected?, and of course that would have to be resolved at the end of the story. Character would be someone unhappy with things as they are, and since in the first three paragraphs all we've got is a description of the wizard that has appeared, I'll eliminate that. Event would be something that disturbs the status quo, and is resolved at the end of the story by reestablishing the status quo, or accepting the new one. Here, the apparent disturbance is the unexpected nature of the wizard. Since we have the wrong POV for a proper Milieu and this is a slightly stronger thread than the Idea, IMO, I would start with that and expect the end of the story to be when the narrator either is convinced that the person in front of her is reformed, is not actually a wizard, or is actually in an acceptable state for a wizard to be. Of course, analyzed that way, the actual resolution of the story comes just a few paragraphs later when we learn that Lady Alina was summoned urgently, and didn't have time to clean up, or else (the unspoken hit is) she would have. Problem solved, status quo restored, hurrah. Another way to analyze the beginning would be that the wizard appearing is itself the disturbance to the status quo, despite all the talk about missed expectations. By this interpretation, the story is done when the wizard is either accepted, or leaves. By this interpretation, the end of the story almost hits the mark, because Alina leaves (via death). Unfortunately, that wasn't actually the end of the story, and there were another few paragraphs of story beyond that with other stuff being resolved. After all of this, I would generally conclude that you probably didn't mean any of these to be the main thrust of the story, so I think that the beginning is probably starting in the wrong place. A quick scan over the next few paragraphs gives the following possibilities for starting a story (note that they don't all have to be a start, just that they are possible interpretations for a start): * Lady Alina talks improperly to the Marquis. That could be an Event, resolved with her being punished. (Kind of happens.) * Alina learns that the portal is gone. Another Event, resolved with her either accepting it is gone, or a new one being put in place (The latter kind of happens). * Alina insults Grendel the founder. Another Event, resolved with either her recanting, being punished, or everyone accepting that she was correct (the middle kind of happens). * Alina doesn't know who Sence is, a potential Character story (if Sence was concerned about her own renown or reputation). I'll let you work out the details on this one, because I don't think this is anywhere close to the story you want to tell. * Alina insults Vasco's wife, same as above. * Alina bargains for how much she'll get for her help. This one could be interesting, and again resolve with her either being paid or not at the end. * etc., etc., etc. None of these seem to quite match up with the end as written, so let's go to the end and see what is being resolved. Starting from the last sentence and working backwards, we have acceptance of changed circumstances (good, but not a resolution per se), an acknowledgement of a heavy conscious, a reference to a new state (actually resolved earlier), an acceptance (the good cause), a reference to a new state (those who had died), and Sence setting out into a new world. Two of those could be resolutions, the acknowledgement of a heavy conscious could be acceptance of a new status quo (Event), or acceptance of current state of life (character). Starting out into an unknown world could only be resolution to a Milieu, and not a very good one at that, since it appears to be starting a Milieu story instead of ending it. Oh, did you see what is happening there? Your last paragraph is starting a new story. I didn't catch that before until I actually was typing the words out. For the other possible resolutions, to resolve Event it would have to be the instigating event that causes Sence to have a heavy conscious, which doesn't match the story. For Character, she would have to have started with dissatisfaction over her heavy conscious or lack thereof, which also doesn't match the beginning. In the paragraphs before, again going backwards, we have: * Sence leaving behind an old friend * The poquats saving Sence from soldiers (with an assist from Sence, in the form of fleeing into the other homeworld) * Sence leaving her own city * Sence being accused * Sence discovering Alina dead (note we don't actually see her die, so her death itself shouldn't be a resolution point). * The portal being restored. I tried to only hit the things that seemed like they were resolutions to something, with the exception of Sence being accused -- that's a new item, not a resolution to one. All of the resolutions here, or at least most of them with the others being minimized, should tie to something in the beginning, and as Mary points on in WE, they need to be resolved in opposite order as they were created. Of this, we could say that Sence leaving and the poquats saving her are the resolution to her being accused, which seems reasonable. That leaves her heavy conscious as the outermost story idea, her leaving behind an old friend (which could be part of the same story idea), her discovering Alina dead, and the portal being restored. To properly mirror, that means the beginning needs to start with something to cause Sence a heavy conscious, something disturbing with Alina that needs to be resolved by Alina changing or leaving, and the portal problem. After going through all this, the beginning introduced problems that might be resolved with Alina being killed (though they might need to be played up a bit more), and the problem with the portal, in that order. One drawback to this is that, while the problem with the portal is introduced to the reader (and Alina) in that order, Sence already knows about it, which removes a good piece of the balance between beginning and end. The solution to this could be to have Vasco spring the portal problem on both Alina and Sence at the same time, which also has the benefit of making Sence think on her feet and act under pressure, making the measures she takes more understandable. The other problem is that she has a heavy conscious at the end, as a resolution that doesn't really match to any problem at the beginning. While I have a couple ideas about that, I'll leave you to work through this and see what you think, because I think this feels like I turned into a lecture, and I don't want to tell you what to do as much as suggest ways it could be looked at for improvement.

Yes, the speech has improved. When Origon explains his thoughts to Aditit after failing to make a portal, she claims she's never heard of such a thing. That is probably in reference to the drain, but given the talk of the earthquake in the previous paragraph, I felt she was referring to that, and it seemed odd that someone Origon's equal, at least, would never have come across such a thing. I felt the worry about Aridori came out of the blue, but since Origon isn't thinking about it, perhaps that can be forgiven. Actually, come to think of it, the part I didn't like was more that he seemed accepting of it by the end of the chapter, not that he heard and dismissed it right away. I felt like he'd need some more convincing. OK, I just reread the last few paragraphs, and I see now that Origon was more agreeing about a change coming, not the Aridori stuff in particular. Still, I felt like this should have been a point of resistance for him -- things will be the same as they have been, and BTW do you know who designed the capsule? I'd like to have some tea with them some afternoon. Other than that, I think it reads well, though I'm slightly concerned about switching POVs after 4 chapters (give or take) in the same one to start the book.