Week 1: Start with endings

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« Reply #15 on: June 02, 2013, 01:19:15 am »
Quote from: sciborg2
Madness, I'd be interested in seeing what you did for the other two endings you mention.

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« Reply #16 on: June 02, 2013, 01:19:23 am »
Quote from: Madness
Scarf was fantasy and Dean was sci-fi. I'll post them tonight after work. I only have hard copies and I'll need to transcribe them. Thankfully, they're only paragraphs.

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« Reply #17 on: June 02, 2013, 01:19:31 am »
Quote from: Madness
Of course they'd be my longest paragraphs. Definitely near the start of that course.

And it was the exact colour of her scarf.

She had worn his favorite scarf on the day she'd been taken from the courtyard. He imagined it now, the rare silk fabric from Dijan, stained a deep red with dyes from Leban. He knew he forever sullied the image of his love, to think of her as he crept through these sewers, dripping wet with sludge to hunt her captors but he leaned on the sweet memories, felt propped by the weight of their emotion. The scarf was a mark of their power in the Greater World but more importantly, it was the very mark of their love. In a land gouged by ignorance, their love shone for all to see. He thought of this as the first of the bandits, sighted him crouching behind some barrels, yelled across the shallow waters, splashed towards him, an axe brandished at his head. He heard nothing of the cries, had only the colour of her scarf in his soul's eye as he ducked the swinging axe, separated limb from shoulder, torso from legs. Others were approaching him now, one dragging his bride before him, knife piercing her throat, blood lazily falling across her fair neck. She looked at him with horse wild eyes and he tried to reassure her, never breaking her gaze. Two more bandits fell into the brown wastes at their feet, weapons falling in dismembered splashes. And they fell around him. Until one grabbed the shaken girl, cut deeply through her throat. He stretched his arm towards her, saw the sword through his chest before he felt it, and stared numbly as it sank back through the torn flesh. The waters around him turned a deepening red with their blood. And it was the exact colour of her scarf.

This might have actually been our first writing assignment of the course, actually, reading the date on this. Obviously, the critique I got was that clearly this is a number of paragraphs wedged together.

Dean felt shame, but resentment more.

The Training Game was the staple of the Academy. They didn't publicize it but every cadet heard rumors of mortal violence. The officers were always quick to quell such whispers, claiming that the Academy couldn't suffer the negative publicity of such flagrant untruths. Yet as a rising Officer himself, Dean soon learned that the Officers played at dropping hints to the young cadets, murmurs of blown skulls and dripping bodies in the Training Game, sometimes as often as any of the older cadets, who enjoyed toying with their younger counterparts. These thoughts brought to his mind the pulsing flashes of las fire, the fleeting sound of pulsar grenades exploding, and klaxxons whining. The memory was a vague as any childhood moment yet seized him as deeply. He clutched his chest, steadying himself on the bulkhead, breathed deep the sterile air of the Academy dock. Visions of Ian twisted against the edge of a training obstacle, bloody and torn, missing legs below uneven shins. Laughing Officers. And him. The General. Dean felt shame, but resentment more.

Cheers.

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« Reply #18 on: June 02, 2013, 01:19:41 am »
Quote from: sciborg2
Scarf - I like the action in this one, but time feels disjointed.

I thought she was already dead, because recalling her while running through sewage didn't make sense to me as "sullying" their love. (I'd also avoid using the word love, IMO better to convey this emotion than to state it unless it's in a character's speech or thought process.)

What the Greater World could be is intriguing, though it made me think he might possess some supernatural powers.

The challenge, it seemed for both of us, was to make the scarf relevant enough so that the last line would be poignant. I was thinking relating the color of the scarf to blushing after being insulted, where a male character might insult a female one he finds himself having power over (say as a tutor).

It allows poignancy without sliding into hyperbole, where I think the blood == red scarf may have led us both.

Dean - Another good one. I like the cadence in your writing. Here I couldn't connect the feeling of shame what came before. I think the cruelty of the exercises - kids getting blown up? - is also hard to accept without surrounding context, so that would depend on where this paragraph was placed in a larger work. Maybe Ian shouldn't be have severed limbs, but rather just serious injuries and a sense of failure?

One thing that might help is to interweave the cruelty of the place with the desire to do well. Dean knows its a sham, but he also wants to "win" the "game" and have the accolades that go with "winning". I sort of got this, but more due to the emotions conjured up by the hoop jumping of high school and vague memories of Ender's Game.

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« Reply #19 on: June 02, 2013, 01:19:50 am »
Quote from: Madness
Thanks, sciborg. I considered editing these today when I posted them but thought you should see the uncut versions. However, I'm in need of a break from philosophy reading so I thought I'd come freestyle another one right now.

Sometimes I go there. Sometimes I just sit, listen, holding the last piece of her. Trickling sounds mark the creek's slow passage over small rocks and draw my gaze to the clear waters. She dances into view, twirling, twirling, falling, rolling, laughing in the vibrant grasses. She sits and I watch her raise eyes from the creek to the grassy hilltops and their headdress of trees. She stands and lifts her arms like a preacher before the masses, like Atlas before the Void Sky. I notice the tears then, feel the rising tide within and its streaming across my cheeks. I look down and remember remembering, the Void Sky most of all. And it was the exact colour of her scarf.

As an aside, Greater World and Void Sky are two terms I use a lot in my writing, specifically a novel setting. In reading your comments, I wonder if those associations come through in my writing - it certainly seems to me that I use those terms in order to compensate the lack of context in my own mind, while writing these paragraphs.

Also, I was channeling Ender's game at the time of writing the second paragraph lol. Glad to see it came through. Love that book and series. Speaker for the Dead is probably one of my favorite books ever.

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« Reply #20 on: June 02, 2013, 01:19:59 am »
Quote from: sciborg2
Changed "Another could one" to "Another good one". Yikes!

I like the new one as well, though I think the "And it was..." last line feels a bit forced here. The "And" I think makes it more of a challenge.

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« Reply #21 on: June 02, 2013, 01:20:07 am »
Quote from: Camlost
Ah Madness :)  I meant to start a post like this myself but I hadn't be able to get around to it. However, since you posted a few of our original prompts, I'll rummage through what I managed to save and add to the conversation.

For the ending the exact colour as her scarf I had written:

The sun was beginning its long, laborious climb into the midsummer sky above the plain as the calling fire gasped its last dying breath, tossing sparks and ash into the air as it collapsed in on itself. Still she danced on, her feet trampling the long grass as she kept time with the drummer's frantic rhythm, circling and spinning around the now spent fire. Sweat sheened her painted body, the smell of it and the cloying scent of smoke clung to the ceremonial dressings she wore. Her doeskin vest and the scarf wrapped about her arm had long since been soaked through with her ceaseless exertions, the endless revolutions that caused her long skirt to bloom outwards, and the antlered crown upon her head swayed precariously with her every move. In response, a thunderous stampede could be heard in the distance, racing towards them above the plain. Heavy, dark clouds began to coalesce on the horizon, the exact colour as her scarf.

Not one of the ones that managed to make the cut to be shared infront of the class but there it is