With the close of the poll, the SDMB Short Fiction Contest, Late 2012/early 2013 edition, has come to an end. First of all, a warm round of applause and my heartiest congratulations to our writers - Savannah
Maggenpye
Stealth Potato
The Mighty Boosh
Le Ministre de l’au-delà
Hrududu
GIGObuster
Sunspace
irritant
chrisk
jackdavinci
DMark and puddleglum
Take a well deserved bow, everyone!
And it’s my special privilege to congratulate the writer of the favourite story, **Stealth Potato **, whose story Tahafut al-Himar earned the most votes. Well done! A warm round of applause, everybody!
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Mods for their ongoing support. They went above and beyond the call of duty on this one, and I really appreciate it.
I would also like to thank all those who took the time to read, vote and comment on the stories - on behalf of all the writers, we really appreciate your respectful and thoughtful advice.
I hope to run another of the Short Fiction Contests around the end of February, 2013. In the meantime, if anyone is interested, I want to do another Poetry Sweatshop sometime soon.
Meanwhile, please continue to discuss the stories and comment on them - it is very helpful for all of the writers to see how people reacted to their writing.
Congrats to **Savannah **on a lovely story (and one that I voted for!).
Thanks again to Le Ministre de l’au-delà for running these. Would it be possible to set up a PM notification or add me to any existing one?
Final notes (and I’m sorry mine have been rushed) Most of the points I wanted to make have already been expressed better by others. One thing I noticed overall was that I preferred those stories where there was a balance of action and dialogue and didn’t like those that were ‘unpleasant people doing unpleasant things’.
Fear Is Humor A well set up world, instantly recognisable. Well paced and written until the end where the bad guy’s demise seemed a little too easy. I wasn’t sure about the name Gary as it seemed too modern for the sword’n’sorcery setting. Overall it could be the intro to a novel. Secret Samadhi Another favourite. I loved the opening, the double meaning of emptiness. When you rewrite this (and please do), it would help to have just a couple more for the ‘basket tasks’ explained (even briefly) as it goes from a detailed explanation of the first, then jumps to the end. I was very happy to find Gan had sent the letter.
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Grave Secrets** Another very clever idea. This suffered from a lack of dialogue until near the end. You have a ‘good ear’ for it and I felt I learned more about the main character in those four spoken lines than in the rest of the story. The ending felt a bit clunky, but it was the ‘right’ ending and I don’t know how I’d improve it.
Well, and I just noticed that I didn’t post a link to this thread in the old thread before it got closed. Coulda sworn I did that; I know I had the idea, and thought ‘What a good idea!’.
I hope this isn’t an omen of how the rest of 2013 is going to go for me…
Shouldn’t you be congratulating Stealth Potato? Congrats, you sneaky tuber!
And, I’m tempted to nominate “May you be uplifted by your burdens” for a Consistent Voice award, if we’ve got one. It was the only one that made me think I knew who had written it before I checked, and I think I’ve been able to pick out Le Min’s entries before. Is that an honor or a booby prize, for writers?
Thanks for everyone’s comments on A Finer Miner?. You are quite right, of course; I’ve got a great little setting going there, but the story kind of petered out. Simply, I ran out of time. I knew it had problems, so afterwards, I started rereading my story-design books, and next time will be better. I hope.
Aw shucks, thanks for the votes, guys. That kinda took me by surprise, since there were several stories I thought were better put together than mine!
And thank you, Ministre, for running such a fabulous show yet again. I’ll be sure to stick around for the future ones this time. And I’d love to see a Poetry Sweatshop; I don’t think I’ve participated in one of those before, but my versification muscles could definitely use some exercise!
Heh, one can see how there’s a lot of room for interpretation. The ending was actually my favorite part of this story; as I mentioned I thought it was such a neat and surprising yet inevitable way for the villain to meet his end. Perhaps it would have been stronger with more foreshadowing, and better establishment of the antagonist and his power (his chief weapon, of course).
Yeah, it’s surprising how many of the stories had that effect. Reading through all the comments, many of them contradict each other. My writing group has an informal rule that any criticism you only hear from one source doesn’t have to be taken seriously (though I figure there’s usually somehing to be learned).
I read and enjoyed all the stories. Once again, the vividness of setting and imagination of the stories really struck me. You took us to exotic locales and interesting situations.
Thank you to the posters that took the time to give us some feedback. It’s so very helpful.
I have to admit my effort this time around might have been a bit more of an exercise in catharsis than literature!
