GotWoot Story Contest - Preliminaries - Round 4

[Sapphire]

Hi all!

GotWoot members have each written their own original short story.

Vote on your top two favorite stories!

If you participated in the contest, you have to vote, but you can't vote for yourself.
Therefore, you have to vote in every voting bracket but your own.
Please read ALL of the stories before you vote!
If you only vote for one story your vote is automatically discarded.
Pick your FAVORITE two (or at least the best two), trolling the other vote screws the other contestants over. If you do this I will know and hate you forever.

Preliminary rounds 1 - 5 have 4 stories each. The preliminary groups were completely randomly chosen. The top two stories from each bracket of the prelims will move on to semi-finals, then the winners of semi-finals will duke it out in the championships!

Authors will remain anonymous until the final results are declared! If an author wants to respond to a voter, they can do so through me.

Voters should give personal feedback below to our budding or seasoned authors!

The voting period for each round is 72 hours.

ROUND 4 - FIGHT!

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Pastebin Mirrors
Words We Couldn’t Say (http://pastebin.com/abq939QL)
Dandylion (http://pastebin.com/gaYY6Y8r)
Melody of the Past (http://pastebin.com/cDDpjM6S)
Uncharted Territory (http://pastebin.com/cabZ0Nrj)

Readability Mirrors
Words We Couldn’t Say (https://www.readability.com/articles/hnqml6vp)
Dandylion (https://www.readability.com/articles/jbnrbsii)
Melody of the Past (https://www.readability.com/articles/agur8wes)
Uncharted Territory (https://www.readability.com/articles/qwnb7g4p)

[Dark_Sage]

@ Words

This was a great release. I really liked the use of the words and the English. It was pretty good. I liked it. The suspense really got to me and I liked that. Good release.

@ Dandylion

Wow. I liked this one too. I liked this the best of them all because there was a flower. I like flowers and flowers are nice.


“Ai shiteru. Anata wa watashi no tokubetsuna chisana akachan desu.”

really sums up the meaning of the story. The Japanese made it interesting and gave it a great style.

Good job and release. Good release.

@ Melody

Stories about music are always moving and get into the depths of human emotions and our interests as human beings and human people with human souls. You can tell that the author really was relating with himself with this quote


I could understand Arun's confusion.

and that's something that's hard to do. I was incredibly impressed.

The story was kind of sad. Guns are bad. But guns are emotions too. I vote for emotions. Good release.

@ Uncharted

Wow. Yes. Everything about this story was uncharted and had never been seen before it almost blew my mind.


“Yes he did,” he said with a chuckle.

This was definitely the high-point of the story. After that, it platuaeded. But it was super good anyway.

I like how referencing a SUPER AMAZING GOOD BOOK on the current amazon bestseller makes it even more uncharted. Good release.



Good releases for everyone. You all deserve butterflies and chocolate chip cookies.

[Sapphire]

Who actually uses the Readability plugin?

[Sapphire]

The round 4 authors be needing comments on their stories. *I'll comment later, when I get home from work*

psssssssssssssssssssst Dark_Sage, you killed it.

[Dark_Sage]

psssssssssssssssssssst Dark_Sage, you killed it.

:(

Fine, then. I'll try to be serious here.

@ Words

There's a little something called brevity that would be of exceeding importance to your writing style in the future. You do an excellent job with setting a scene, imagery, etc. But imagery cannot sustain a story by itself. All that I had after 600 words was "A guy goes to Japan and gets on a train where he sees a cute girl." After the next 200 words, the only development was that the guy and the girl left the train. I'm sorry, but I need something more to happen in that timeframe for my attention to be held.

Having the story end right there was cruel as well. As a reader, I felt disappointed that I had read 800 pages all for nothing. No conclusion, just a wispy "And there's more to this story!" That can work. But the situation in which it works best is when the author has his audience hooked, wanting more after having read something that engaged them. Unfortunately, I was not engaged in the first 800 words.

To be honest, I think that if the author had a great idea for the story, this style could go a long way if it was simply longer. Unfortunately, that was not the case and I left the story without much of an understanding of where the author was going.


@ Dandylion

I really, really loved this story and I'm being 100% serious. The mood is instantly set. The author gets into the subject matter quickly. A guy is obsessed with a girl - perfect recipe for drama. The next paragraph only thickens the tension - dude is obsessing over a 16-year-old girl. It literally just keeps adding and adding and building and building.

You never see the plot twist until you finally get to it, and when you read back over what you just read, the hints seems obvious. That is just good writing. The constant prodding at otaku/nerd culture/life is just so irreverantly delicious.

The story was self-contained with a complete ending, yet it could absolutely be expanded on and made even better. It really is the best goddamn thing I've read in the contest and I find it a shame that at this point it is not winning.

Yes, I really fucking loved it.


@ Melody

Technically good. Great imagery. Concise, intelligent story (an army soldier who was raised as a child happens upon his biological mother in the forest and then moves away from SUPER DEEP ANALYSIS he totally leaves his childhood behind with his mother and continues upon the path of a soldier, no matter how hard it may be. Be still, my beating heart.)

The author is smart, the author is literate. The author did this extremely well. But I didn't like the story - it was too familiar.

Oh well. Question for the author - the setting is Africa, right? If not, where is it? Don't puss out by telling me it's everywhere and anywhere. I just wanna know.


@ Uncharted Territory

I liked this one the least. I'm sorry.

This is one of those "let me tell you a story" stories. And if you know anything about those, they all end the same. This had literally nothing new, nothing innovative. It was so cookie-cutter, I could practically taste it.

The story told within the story had no relevance to anything and then the author ended it with "Go the fuck to sleep", an excerpt from a shitty book that's popular right now.

I don't know what to say. I tried to keep my criticism positive, but I can't properly articulate that without focusing on what a waste this story was. Well, 3/4 is okay, I guess.

[DeadlyOats]

I voted for "Melody of the Past", as my first choice. That was a very well written story. The battle the story starts out with made me think of two U.S. soldiers running from a surprise attack, but the reference to the penalty for running made me change my mind. Not U.S. soldiers. If you can't hold, running is a viable tactic to regroup and counter attack. Then the mention of the jungle, AK-47, and the outgrown pants made me think of the Vietcong and the Vietnam war. So I thought it was a scene from that point of view. But then their height, six feet tall or more? Finally when he started to describe how children were captured and trained as soldiers. I realized it was a story of the wars in some parts of Africa. It felt as if was happening "everywhere and anywhere." That was one level on which the story hooked me good. I liked that!

As for the story itself, as a whole, was very laid out, The way the story flowed, was all smooth, well put together. I was seriously hooked by this tale. Well done!

I voted for "Uncharted Territory", as my second choice. It started off cute, but got weirder as the story grandpa told went along. I thought, 'what a strange story to tell a very young grand daughter'. You'd think the story should have been about fairies and unicorns, but it was more like bad gossip and bad-mouthing, and that made the story - not cute, but funny. Then the strange and pointless interruption by grandma, and the "go the f**k to sleep comment at the end of the story ruined it all. All of the effort to build up the "cuteness"; all of the "comedy" that was being built up with anticipation for the "big funny", was unmitigatingly, absolutely, and otherwise completely demolished at the end of the story. An opportunity to say more, and do more with the setting and the setup, wasted.

Otherwise, as far as setting the technical stuff, grammar, spelling, continuity, etc. It was competent. I liked the story - before I got to the ending.

If it weren't for my total dissatisfaction with the first two stories, I would not have voted for it. If it weren't for the "you-must-vote-for-two-stories-or-your-vote-won't-count" rule, I wouldn't have voted for it.

As for "Words We Couldn't Say". You ran out of 500-word-limit space, and I guess that's why you couldn't say them words....

As for Dandylion..... I was creeped out by that story. It was like from the point of view of an Internet child stalker.... The "punchline", was so unexpected, that it didn't feel like I was reading the same story. I didn't like it.

Edit:

I re-read Dandylion, and I SO wish I could change my vote. I totally mis-read that story. The joke was on me for not getting it. I had it right, my gut was right. It was something like an Internet child stalker, but..... I just googled "miku hatsune." I've been had. lol

(I thought the punch line was him not saying the words he wanted, but just saying FFFFUUU....., and that thing about his life being over, but after reading Dark Sage's comments, I re-read it, and googled "miku hatsune". That's when I got the true punch line.)

If I could, I'd make Dandylion my second choice. Only because I seriously liked Melody much better.

[Keeper]

Disclaimer. I give critique, I don't criticise. All stories have merit in their own form. Whether I agree or disagree with a story does not matter. If I sound overly critical, I probably don't mean it. If I really hated the story, I'd simply say so =-)

Words:
While written well, the story asumes a great deal of knowledge regarding travelling in/to Japan. The two main facilitators of the story are the JTB and Hirodens. Two concepts which many, I'm sure, have never heard of (I sure hadn't). So having to google something at the very beginning of a story was a bit of a put-off.
Good use of descriptions though. The story unfolds quite well in the minds eye. Vote number one.

Dandylion:
Could use a bit more editing. Some of the sentences were a bit muddled and I never really got a sense of "why". I guess the size limitation puts a stopper to alot of bigger descriptions, but I can't relate at all as to why he'd spend 27 years inside, why he was so infatuated with Hatsune Miku, and why he wanted to go outside because of her. I simply cannot relate to this story... And why Dandylion? And is it purposefully misspelt? In which case, why? So many questions...

Melody:
I'd say it's was very nice, but it wasn't really "nice", was it? It was good though. Quite good, actually. Hard to find much fault in it. got my vote.

Uncharted Territory:
This didn't really hook me much at all. Once the 7-ish (that's what I'm imagining) girl started talking about sorority girls and prostitutes, I had lost all interest...
Swearing at the end? Really? You set up this almost christmassy-lovey-dovey setting and then throw "fuck" in at the end? Why?!

[twofacedkitsune]

Words We Couldn’t Say - I think it could work better if a lot was cut out. Many of the sentences/descriptions aren't really adding to the story, and could be taken out to no ill effect. I feel like good writing isn't so much an overload of detail, but rather picking out the few details that fill in the rest of the picture. I'd work on figuring out what the most important sentences are, and cutting out anything that doesn't really add to the story

*Dandylion - I liked the idea of this. I felt the execution could've been better, though. I can't pinpoint what it is, but certain juxtapositions sorta threw me off. Like "It’s been five days. I know it sounds silly that I've been keeping track for such a long time." I think I understand the intentions, I guess it might be a bit too overemphasized for my taste. Maybe I would've preferred to get into the head of this otaku guy a lot more, but the satire sorta got in the way. I liked the concept, nonetheless

Melody of the Past - I couldn't get into this one at all. It felt pretty cliche, was filled with grandiose statements, and had a habit of reducing the concept of the story to 'taglines.'


were two of the fastest boys in the army camp, which was the only thing that saved us.

the insurgents came at us in the middle of the night with greater numbers and greater ferocity than anyone had ever guessed

Faced with certain death in the slaughter happening all around us, we fled into the jungle instead. We had no destination in mind. The penalty for deserting was execution. So we kept running.

Our circumstances had changed, but the only thing which remained was the only thing we'd ever had: survival.
etc..
^examples of cliche statements and/or taglines

I also felt like I was missing a lot of sensory detail. Like, what it 'feels' like to be in the boys' situation. Part of this was a result of minor details-


Our ever-present stalkers, the mosquitoes, caught up and engulfed us in a hungry buzzing cloud. Truth be told, I barely noticed them anymore. And the blood they took from me was small enough compared to how much I'd already lost that day.
From personal experience, getting eaten up by mosquitoes really really sucks haha. It's not the buzzing cloud or blood they suck out that makes them a pain- it's the fact that your mosquito bites become itchy as hell, and you end up scratching them like crazy, which makes them itchier, creates scabs, etc.


The wound on my scalp ached. I cupped some water in my hands and dumped it over my head in an attempt to wash away the encrusted blood matted into my hair.
How big is this wound on his head? The first time I read it, it sounded pretty intense. Not something you'd just be able to take care of with a bit of water.

Another comment- way too many adjectives! Stuff like "single leaky water bottle," "Arun gingerly rested his AK-47 on his knee while he knelt down in the reeds to collect the murky water."

Same as with Words We Couldn't Say, I feel like these adjectives aren't really adding anything to the story. You could take them all out, imo.

As the story progressed, I was having more and more trouble understanding the character's motivations. It's like the main boy was bouncing between two sets of ideologies/motivations like a bouncy ball or something. It just feels like his position is meandering around a lot, and, at times, his words/actions contradict a statement made right before:


I despised his weakness and I loathed myself for the acute jealousy I felt.


She had a song of her own composing for every occasion. My favourite was the one about the tiger who used too much soap while washing his fur so that the bubbles lifted him into the air like a cloud.


I shook my head to clear it from the unbidden distraction of these old memories. Arun was losing his confidence in the face of my continued hostility.


"These people have no food here," I stated flatly. "We need to move on." Arun's face showed disappointment as he struggled to come up with a response.

Hm, and personally I'm not a fan of the "song" thing. I feel like the whole "mother used to sing a song all the time, boy hears it after being separated from her for a long time, realizes that the woman in front of him is his mother, he starts crying" setup is done way too much.

In terms of what could be improved, imo, especially since it's a war story, I feel like the author could zero in on a lot of the sensory stuff. Like, get into the really gritty details about what it's like to be standing there, taking a breath after running all day. What it's like when you try to clean your blood-encrusted scalp injury. What it's like to have your legs, neck, arms, etc. all bitten up by mosquitoes, etc. As a reader, I felt like the story/plot, as well as the mentioned back-story was just an attempt at manipulating emotions/trying to work in some sentimentality. If you tell the story straight up & zero in on what these boys are going through at the immediate moment, I feel like that would pack a bigger punch than the cliche, sentimental stuff. One detail I particularly liked, though, was: "My favourite was the one about the tiger who used too much soap while washing his fur so that the bubbles lifted him into the air like a cloud." Keep using details/specifics like this- they help the story feel way more 'real' and way less contrived/manipulative

*Uncharted Territory - I kinda liked the story. I felt the last line was a bit forced and unnecessary.

------------------------------
I wrote way more than I thought I would, considering how lazy I was feeling. I hope it didn't come off like I thought any of these stories were 'bad.' I thought they were all really good. As a result, it was a lot easier to be critical. With a really bad story, the only thing you can do is sorta smile and encourage the writer. But that wasn't the case with this round. (All of the short comments were a result of my laziness). By far the best written round.

[Sapphire]

Words We Couldn't Say - This is reminiscent of Natsume Soseki's Sanshiro. The main character was totally perverted, I quite liked it. I could visualize the setting very well, and I felt as if I could tell what sort of person he was with his thoughts. The only problem is, this is a very novelesque way to write, instead of short story. With a short story, you have to bang out events a bit faster. It seems as if you didn't have enough time/space to write. Thus, I would try to condense the details a bit in order to move on with the plot. However I'm voting for it because I like it the best and I see the most potential for it.

--TO BE CONTINUED--

[Sapphire]

Round 4 is supposed to end tonight, but a lot of the members of the story contest haven't voted yet, so I may extend it for an additional 24 hours.

Please vote, guys!!!!

(And comments are really helpful, too)

[Nadouku]

I liked Melody of the Past and Uncharted Territory.

Melody of the Past told a story of two soldiers who have been through a recent attack and are striving to survive in the jungle, separated from their allies. Through their every sentences, I could feel their emotions, their pain. The highlight of the story was when Shien met his mother again. It was really good on how the author portrayed the event to the audience. Very good imagery, indeed.

Uncharted Territory was really cute. I like stories based on a person's past events. The grandfather would tell the story of his life and the girl would jump in every once in a while. However, the ending wasn't what I expected, and probably unnecessary. Still, I liked it.

[kokujin-kun]

Words we couldn't say

The story was unbelievable, nobody would sit next to a gaijin. In any case, it's a nice little story of a chance not taken and I guess I so await the continuation. One criticism is the stuff about the email in the beginning, it seems out of place.

Dandylion

Wow, this is the best story in the bunch, well-constructed stream-of-thought narrative with a hilarious twist at the end. If there are to be improvements in this story, I'd leave it up to the author.

Melody of the Past

Yes, it's a story deliberately set up to tug at your heartstrings and make you weepy. But it kinda, sorta worked.

Uncharted Territory,

Once again nice set-up, some pretty mild humor and a good punchline. Makes it very hard to choose between all of them actually.

[Xelbair]

OK so here i go:
1) Words We Couldn't Say
your style is so horrible that i got bored in middle of first paragraph. if i would read a biology textbook(most boring subject ever) I would be less bored. Try to use shorter sentences, don't describe things like Tolkien - it was the worst part of his writing, try to achieve balance in this.
2) Dandylion
It was weird, way better than the first story, but it lost to the next two. you were as close to the second place as lim(x->2) f(x) is to f(2).
3) Melody of the Past
Nice style and good topic of story. At beginning it kept tension of them being chased, but you could expand it a bit more to create a better atmosphere. use short sentences for quick actions, and elaborate ones for longer - you can use this to achieve better immersion into the story. for example 'twig broke.' is way better than 'the sound of broken twig has alarmed everyone about danger' if you want to drawn the reader in. second place.
4) Uncharted Territory,
Great set-up, nice pacing, good humor and great ending, totally unpredictable. 1st place.

[RedneckNoob]

Words we couldn't say:

You always have to begin assuming that the reader is ignorant of what you're writing about. I have no clue what JTB is so I was lost for a while. I can guess afterwards that it might be something like Japanese Travel Bureau, but during the story it confused me. The way you started sentences with words like "and" and "but" threw me off. It sounded more like you were speaking than writing, which doesn't work. I don't need to read your speech. When you put a period, that means the end of a specific thought and makes me pause. If you're going to continue that thought, use a comma, a semicolon, or a hyphen. Use punctuation to force my thought flow to follow yours. The way you had talked about deleting the emails was a little ambiguous, and I didn't realize you had deleted that specific email until the end of the paragraph. You said you saw interest in it, but you deleted it? Two conflicting ideas presented almost simultaneous.

You did a great job explaining why Miyajima was important, but then left me wondering what the details were. I mentioned the JTB earlier, but the hiroden is something I was confused about as well. You can call it a hiroden, but explain what a hiroden is at the same time. The UNESCO detail felt a little like you were writing an academic paper. You could have left out the organization while still talking about the importance of the site. Remember that the reader should be assumed ignorant. What if they didn't know what UNESCO was? They would've been lost on another detail.

It hurts the flow of the story when you refer back a couple of seconds. Mention that you saw the girl standing there, take in the details, and then sit down. Don't sit down and recall details from seconds before. That's a waste of a flashback. You say she wasn't just any girl, that she was a "decently" (another dialogue word, which is bad for description) attractive girl. Why was she special for more than the fact that she was pretty? The way that you worded it made me think there was some import to the girl, but was it nothing more superficial in that she was pretty and looked innocent? You present most of the story in past tense, but when you describe how she sat down you suddenly shift the tense. I stumbled a couple of times transitioning in and out of that because of the clumsiness of it.

I was able to relate to the protagonist because I'm very clumsy with new people, and it felt like the protagonist was as well, but at the same time I just kept thinking that this guy was a creep because all he was doing was staring at a sleeping girl on what I think was a train.

You do a good job of building to the climax, but the climax felt very lack luster. Suddenly they get off the train and no word is said again. If you were able to show it had a greater impact somehow, then it might have done the job, but without that it was pretty lame.

Dandylion:

Don't use cliched idioms if you're going to be clumsy with them. "...shy of next to nothing," was very clumsy. It was short of the value closest to 0? So there was a higher chance than the closest value to zero?

Using ellipses to add extra "very" is something that grates on my nerves. If you want to add an extra of a word for emphasis, treat it as an interjected part of the sentence: use hyphens. I give the same advice to you as to the previous story: use punctuation to force my thoughts to flow the same as yours. A period means the end of a thought, but you start the next sentence with a "but" which is telling me that the thought that just ended is now continuing. Punctuation is a very important part of written story telling.

When you first mentioned that she was 16 and that she had been found on YouTube, I knew there was going to be some twist at the end. It was a nice way to foreshadow while not completely giving away the ending. I had thought with the use of nine-thousand that it might have been Boxxy. It wasn't until you got the music part that I had discovered my guess to be wrong. Others more savvy may have been able to shift their guesses with this piece of foreshadowing, but it left me stumped. The "po pi po pi" was another good job at foreshadowing. I had heard that song this morning, but it didn't click with me until I got to the end.

Avoid phrases like "to no end," when you're weaving a narrative. It works fine in dialogue, but when you're trying to bring me into the world you created, it throws me back to reality.

I had no clue what the Japanese meant, and since you didn't explain I had to break the flow of the story telling and go look it up to understand the ending of the story. You must assume that the reader does not know as much as you. Don't think of them as stupid, and don't talk down to them, but make sure you verify all of what they know.

Melody of the Past:

I was surprised by the quality of this plot. This could be something to expand on and maybe even novelize, but a lot of works needs to be done with its presentation.

Did you choose the word insurgents carefully? Not the bullshit definition that the American military uses, but the real definition of an insurgent? Because of misuse of the word, I had a hard time knowing if you were using it properly. Were they just attackers, or were they people who had managed to sneak in and create havoc internally?

When you mention the AK, I believe it would've had greater impact of you described the rifle in detail instead of just saying it's name. Say that he's holding an automatic rifle, and then in another sentence establish it as an AK and describe the gun. Tell us what it looks like. Maybe the rifle has a story to tell that would give us details as to what they had been through. Is it in pristine condition, or does it look like it had survived since the Cold War? Is it caked in mud and slime?

When narrating a story, type out the word and don't just put the number. When switching from letters to numbers, most minds slow down and it ruins the flow of the story. It's acceptable for something like AK-47, but six feet should be spelled out, as should six years old, seventeen years old, etc.

Why is he wounded? It's great to raise questions, but you need to entice them to want the answer. Hint at details that let us know there's a depth to this story that are beyond what we can imagine. If we could rely solely on our imagination, we wouldn't need stories for entertainment.

Despite being filled with a black rage that reached at him suddenly, Shein was able to maintain complete control? It would make more sense for him to have to strain himself to remain in control. I didn't see any strain in the way he handled himself. He just seemed to get lost in thoughts, and then you say that he was straining to control himself.

The ending was absolutely beautiful.

Also I completely disagree with you having used too many adjectives. Your use of adjectives were fine. A story without adjectives is bland. I need you to show me what you're thinking, and you did that. It's not like you chained 5 adjectives to a single noun. You were well within acceptable limits.

Uncharted Territory:

Overall, the plot wasn't that interesting, but the presentation more than made up for it. You did a really good job with setting the scene, giving me enough information to see what's happening while leaving out the right details for my imagination to have fun.

Two different people should never be directly quoted in the same paragraph. It can get confusing. You only did it for the first one, but it's better to have none at all.

I have a little difficulty believing that the grandfather would have as varied of a vocabulary as he does, especially since he was having a hard time remember select details. That's one of the problems with stories told by dialogue. You could have done flashback like transitions where he was talking to describe the situation, having his voice fade into the description. Have reality jolt back when his wife smacks him.

When he forgets what the preacher was singing about, you should've had an ellipses after "was" when the granddaughter interrupted him.