WINNERS
1st Place: A Mile-High Reflecting Pool by GoldShadow; Tomorrow Will be a Better Day by Jim Morrison
3rd Place: The Pedestrian by Pakman
COMMENTS
Tomorrow Will Be A Better Day by Jim Morrision
Jam’s Score: 38/40
Virg’s Score: 32/40
Total: 70/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 10/10
I really, really enjoyed the tone of this piece. I especially like how you managed to give the story an upbeat vibe while simultaneously undercutting it with the protagonist’s insecurities. The juxtaposition of sadness and hope at the end is great.
Style: 8/10
Your writing style compliments your characters and the setting well, although it’s a little rough in some spots. I like the justifications your character uses to explain away his failures.
Enjoyment: 10/10
Maybe I like this so much because I can totally relate to it. Either way, it was a great read.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 10/10 – Hit it.
Tone – 7/10 – I liked the habitually interruption of his one though (it might have been overdone a little bit, but not by too much) as if it were his mantra, is om, and how even that doesn’t get him over the edge. The thought of will power gladdens him more than the willpower itself in a way.
Style – 7/10 – The style was okay but a little rusty around the edges. Very few things stuck out to me as well conveyed or painted in my mind. That said, few things stuck out as an eye or mind sore.
Enjoyment – 8/10 – I enjoyed the story overall. I had a feeling where it was going but was not disappointed when it got there. Would like to see what you’d do with it without the word cap.
The Wrong Guy by Werekill
Jam’s Score: 18/40
Virg’s Score: 24/40
Total: 42/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 1/10
I was mugged this summer. Three guys jumped me and took my wallet and my cell phone, and I can tell you they sounded NOTHING like this. They certainly didn’t tell me their names or explain their motivations for thievery. And it didn’t take me two weeks to recover from it, just a fat lip and a swore jaw for a few days. Of course, getting mugged to learn what a mugging is like is a bad idea, but wise-cracking thieves are the exception, not the rule.
Style: 3/10
The story spends too much time on the totally unbelievable mugging. With only 1,000 words, you have to focus on what’s interesting, and that was your characters, not the plot.
Enjoyment: 4/10
There are glimpses of a good story in here. Get away from the robbery and the clichés about revenge and focus on the characters. That’s where the story lies.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 10/10 – Under the limit.
Tone – 5/10 – The tone was, as far as I can infer, supposed to be this suspenseful thread that left you on the corner of your seat… but it didn’t do it for me. I know criminals are almost innately not very rational people, but the rapport between the two criminals, his reasons for mugging the man, randomly saying his name to a total stranger, how the story transitioned to the later half, etc. all took me out of it. Almost all the dialogue was overly expository in the veins of ‘I’m doing this and this because of this’, which is just not how most people speak. Read the dialogue out to yourself when you write it; does it sound like something someone would say? If not, redo it.
Style – 5/10 – The style borders a bit on tone here, being the cause for the others effect. What makes a story good and memorable isn’t just the plot, but how the plot is woven and painted by the author. How you set up the imagery and the protagonists left them very bland and uninteresting in the long run. Thinking back on the main character the only thing that comes to mind is he was a thug and an idiot… and I can’t think up much of anything else. There should be more to a character (let alone a main character) than that and he was just a part that represented the whole of the story.
Enjoyment – 4/10 – The story was okay, but nothing that really made me wonder or want to know what was in the next paragraph.
Breaking the Mold by Gova
Jam’s Score: 22/40
Virg’s Score: 27/40
Total: 49/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 3/10
I never got a sense of anything in the story besides the girl your protagonist speaks to. There are no names, no descriptions of what the room looks like, not even a mention of the class your characters are in. I couldn’t form any mental images while I read your story.
Style: 5/10
The three paragraphs where the protagonist examines himself would have been much better as dialogue between the two characters. It comes across as navel-gazing when it all takes place inside the protagonist’s head. Those insecurities should have been revealed in a dramatic (not melodramatic) dialogue between the characters.
Enjoyment: 4/10
It’s hard to make something happen in only 1,000 words, but there needs to be more action than the protagonist talking to himself. Getting the girl’s number was a good place to go, perhaps it should have happened earlier in the story.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 10/10 – Not much to say here.
Tone – 6/10 – Your story is a little more light hearted than the others and your tone matches that, for the most part. Again, like I’ve mentioned with the other entries, the dialogue drew me out a bit; it just didn’t sound like something two people, one interested in the other, would say. Yes, it’s a work of fiction, but it still needs to draw me in as much as possible. Also, the last line made me metaphorically face palm for how cheesy it was, but I have a feeling it was meant to be more of a characteristic of his newfound self after his epiphany than just a cheesy line.
Style – 5/10 – Also like many of the other stories, there is a lot of mostly unneeded expository dialogue. So and so did this and thought this and smiled this and said this thisly. Yes, you’re telling me the facts of the story, but the facts aren’t the only thing that comprise it. Show me his troubles and consternation another way without having to rely on this crutch. Instead of saying I think this and this and this, you could do something like have them talk about some metaphor/idea relating to the topic and then give his curt opinion for or against. Just one example, but in reality that’s how we gather the opinions and beliefs of most people, not through debate and the self introspection during the breaks.
Enjoyment – 6/10 – The story was still decent to read, but I really, really have a thing against cheesy endings, so that drew me out of it quite a bit.
A Tale of Two Men by The Paprika Killer
Jam’s Score: 21/40
Virg’s Score: 28/40
Total: 49/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 3/10
Your protagonist is far more articulate than he should be, and is voice is very inconsistent. It’s jarring to have a character who’s first words are, “Ew, what’s that smell?” later say, “…but he had a charming smile and a set of beautiful blue eyes, eyes so perfect they could drown oceans.” Also, that metaphor is meaningless; oceans can’t drown. Don’t fall into the trap of using glittery language for its own sake.
Style: 2/10
Your protagonist recounts his life without passion or art, and the story becomes an angry info dump for the benefit of the man he’s about to kill. That might be fine if this were a longer piece, but in a story so short, it really hurts the overall piece.
Enjoyment: 6/10
Despite the problems, I still enjoyed the story. I hope you revise this in the future.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 10/10 – Fits the prompt; not much else to say.
Tone – 6/10 – The tone was a little off settling to me; the fact that once someone gets into jail he just bursts into some well thought out monologue about his harrowing tale made me think ‘What kind of jail is he in?’ It took me out of the grittiness you were likely going for in the story. The final words were supposed to be chilling, but by that time the tone the story set wasn’t there for me to drive it home.
Style – 6/10 – I’m generally not a huge fan of stories that are mostly dialogue; they seem very unrealistic and not the most efficient way (most of the time) of telling a story. If you want to show me more of the character by his tics and cadences as he speaks, sure, it’s great. But otherwise it just makes the story seem unrealistic for the most part; no one really gives thousand word stories without interruption. Not only that, the old man would likely have realized what was going on long beforehand, which nullified the prestige for me.
Enjoyment – 6/10 – I enjoyed the story. I’m assuming it’s based on the Mariner’s Revenge Song by The Decemberists. But, because of that, once I realized that I knew how the story was going to proceed (not even just the turn at the end, but things like the mother dying and the ship chase, etc.) which didn’t render it incredibly dull, but put a little rust on its luster.
The Pedestrian by Pakman
Jam’s Score: 28/40
Virg’s Score: 22/40
Total: 50/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 7/10
I felt as if I was riding along with Dennis in the car. I would have liked to see more details about Dennis as a person though. Did he drink often? Was he a good student? Why did driving perfectly matter to him, and what does it say about the rest of his character? I wanted to know more.
Style: 5/10
This is where the piece suffers. There’s some redundancy and overexplanation, and those are wasted words in such a short piece. Set the stage clearly, but don’t be afraid to leave some things to the reader’s imagination.
Enjoyment: 6/10
I’m glad that you had an event happen, as it’s often the case with flash fiction that writers focus on internal conflicts. The style issues prevented me from fully enjoying your story though.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 9/10 – Technically, just went over the limit but not by much.
Tone – 4/10 – The tone just wasn’t there for me. The event was supposed to be some earth shattering type event. Someone dies. Big notions come into play. But it felt more like the work of a journalist with expository dialogue and nothing that conveyed the inner turmoil or emotion of the protagonist other than showing what he was doing which, in this circumstance, pales in comparison to what’s going on inside.
Style – 4/10 – I know you were a bit rushed on time and didn’t get to edit, so won’t go into too much here, but the style was very bland and read more as a list of facts than a work of art or some tightly woven tale.
Enjoyment – 5/10 – The story itself wasn’t a bother to read, but there was nothing too substantial in it as it is to really stick around and let me dwell on it afterwards.
A Mile High Reflecting Pool by GoldShadow
Jam’s Score: 37/40
Virg’s Score: 33/40
Total: 70/80
Jam’s Score
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 10/10
Pretty much spot-on. The characters are believable, the dialogue is interesting, and the conflict is real without being overstated.
Style: 7/10
Good for the most part, but it breaks the story’s hold over the reader if they have to stop to look up the definition of a word, as I had to with “mien.”
Also, why does the story’s narrator refer to the protagonist as “Richard,” when his name is Carl? It’s a bit of misdirection that seems out place.
Enjoyment: 10/10
A really great piece of writing.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 9/10 – Twenty seven words over. Completely unacceptable. You and your family should be shamed and your children should take your wife’s name to avoid any public relation to you.
Tone – 8/10 – Tone was good. It felt like a jovial, awkward conversation on an airplane between two strangers. A few of the lines seemed a little forced or unnatural, but they were only a handful at most and didn’t account for much of the total weight of the story any ways. The ending made me say ‘yeah, yeah, knew that was going to happen’ since you set it up as being the mini twist ending from the very beginning. The very last line was good though… maybe a little too wordy, but still a good ending line.
Style – 8/10 – Style was good. Some of the imagery and descriptions of the two people were good, though I remember a few times thinking ‘Eh, that’s a bit of a reach’. Still, strongly composed.
Enjoyment – 8/10 – Even though I knew how it was going to end, mowing through the paragraphs was fun and flowed nicely. Good story, though it still needs some loving taps from the edit hammer.
1st Place: A Mile-High Reflecting Pool by GoldShadow; Tomorrow Will be a Better Day by Jim Morrison
3rd Place: The Pedestrian by Pakman
COMMENTS
Tomorrow Will Be A Better Day by Jim Morrision
Jam’s Score: 38/40
Virg’s Score: 32/40
Total: 70/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 10/10
I really, really enjoyed the tone of this piece. I especially like how you managed to give the story an upbeat vibe while simultaneously undercutting it with the protagonist’s insecurities. The juxtaposition of sadness and hope at the end is great.
Style: 8/10
Your writing style compliments your characters and the setting well, although it’s a little rough in some spots. I like the justifications your character uses to explain away his failures.
Enjoyment: 10/10
Maybe I like this so much because I can totally relate to it. Either way, it was a great read.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 10/10 – Hit it.
Tone – 7/10 – I liked the habitually interruption of his one though (it might have been overdone a little bit, but not by too much) as if it were his mantra, is om, and how even that doesn’t get him over the edge. The thought of will power gladdens him more than the willpower itself in a way.
Style – 7/10 – The style was okay but a little rusty around the edges. Very few things stuck out to me as well conveyed or painted in my mind. That said, few things stuck out as an eye or mind sore.
Enjoyment – 8/10 – I enjoyed the story overall. I had a feeling where it was going but was not disappointed when it got there. Would like to see what you’d do with it without the word cap.
The Wrong Guy by Werekill
Jam’s Score: 18/40
Virg’s Score: 24/40
Total: 42/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 1/10
I was mugged this summer. Three guys jumped me and took my wallet and my cell phone, and I can tell you they sounded NOTHING like this. They certainly didn’t tell me their names or explain their motivations for thievery. And it didn’t take me two weeks to recover from it, just a fat lip and a swore jaw for a few days. Of course, getting mugged to learn what a mugging is like is a bad idea, but wise-cracking thieves are the exception, not the rule.
Style: 3/10
The story spends too much time on the totally unbelievable mugging. With only 1,000 words, you have to focus on what’s interesting, and that was your characters, not the plot.
Enjoyment: 4/10
There are glimpses of a good story in here. Get away from the robbery and the clichés about revenge and focus on the characters. That’s where the story lies.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 10/10 – Under the limit.
Tone – 5/10 – The tone was, as far as I can infer, supposed to be this suspenseful thread that left you on the corner of your seat… but it didn’t do it for me. I know criminals are almost innately not very rational people, but the rapport between the two criminals, his reasons for mugging the man, randomly saying his name to a total stranger, how the story transitioned to the later half, etc. all took me out of it. Almost all the dialogue was overly expository in the veins of ‘I’m doing this and this because of this’, which is just not how most people speak. Read the dialogue out to yourself when you write it; does it sound like something someone would say? If not, redo it.
Style – 5/10 – The style borders a bit on tone here, being the cause for the others effect. What makes a story good and memorable isn’t just the plot, but how the plot is woven and painted by the author. How you set up the imagery and the protagonists left them very bland and uninteresting in the long run. Thinking back on the main character the only thing that comes to mind is he was a thug and an idiot… and I can’t think up much of anything else. There should be more to a character (let alone a main character) than that and he was just a part that represented the whole of the story.
Enjoyment – 4/10 – The story was okay, but nothing that really made me wonder or want to know what was in the next paragraph.
Breaking the Mold by Gova
Jam’s Score: 22/40
Virg’s Score: 27/40
Total: 49/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 3/10
I never got a sense of anything in the story besides the girl your protagonist speaks to. There are no names, no descriptions of what the room looks like, not even a mention of the class your characters are in. I couldn’t form any mental images while I read your story.
Style: 5/10
The three paragraphs where the protagonist examines himself would have been much better as dialogue between the two characters. It comes across as navel-gazing when it all takes place inside the protagonist’s head. Those insecurities should have been revealed in a dramatic (not melodramatic) dialogue between the characters.
Enjoyment: 4/10
It’s hard to make something happen in only 1,000 words, but there needs to be more action than the protagonist talking to himself. Getting the girl’s number was a good place to go, perhaps it should have happened earlier in the story.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 10/10 – Not much to say here.
Tone – 6/10 – Your story is a little more light hearted than the others and your tone matches that, for the most part. Again, like I’ve mentioned with the other entries, the dialogue drew me out a bit; it just didn’t sound like something two people, one interested in the other, would say. Yes, it’s a work of fiction, but it still needs to draw me in as much as possible. Also, the last line made me metaphorically face palm for how cheesy it was, but I have a feeling it was meant to be more of a characteristic of his newfound self after his epiphany than just a cheesy line.
Style – 5/10 – Also like many of the other stories, there is a lot of mostly unneeded expository dialogue. So and so did this and thought this and smiled this and said this thisly. Yes, you’re telling me the facts of the story, but the facts aren’t the only thing that comprise it. Show me his troubles and consternation another way without having to rely on this crutch. Instead of saying I think this and this and this, you could do something like have them talk about some metaphor/idea relating to the topic and then give his curt opinion for or against. Just one example, but in reality that’s how we gather the opinions and beliefs of most people, not through debate and the self introspection during the breaks.
Enjoyment – 6/10 – The story was still decent to read, but I really, really have a thing against cheesy endings, so that drew me out of it quite a bit.
A Tale of Two Men by The Paprika Killer
Jam’s Score: 21/40
Virg’s Score: 28/40
Total: 49/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 3/10
Your protagonist is far more articulate than he should be, and is voice is very inconsistent. It’s jarring to have a character who’s first words are, “Ew, what’s that smell?” later say, “…but he had a charming smile and a set of beautiful blue eyes, eyes so perfect they could drown oceans.” Also, that metaphor is meaningless; oceans can’t drown. Don’t fall into the trap of using glittery language for its own sake.
Style: 2/10
Your protagonist recounts his life without passion or art, and the story becomes an angry info dump for the benefit of the man he’s about to kill. That might be fine if this were a longer piece, but in a story so short, it really hurts the overall piece.
Enjoyment: 6/10
Despite the problems, I still enjoyed the story. I hope you revise this in the future.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 10/10 – Fits the prompt; not much else to say.
Tone – 6/10 – The tone was a little off settling to me; the fact that once someone gets into jail he just bursts into some well thought out monologue about his harrowing tale made me think ‘What kind of jail is he in?’ It took me out of the grittiness you were likely going for in the story. The final words were supposed to be chilling, but by that time the tone the story set wasn’t there for me to drive it home.
Style – 6/10 – I’m generally not a huge fan of stories that are mostly dialogue; they seem very unrealistic and not the most efficient way (most of the time) of telling a story. If you want to show me more of the character by his tics and cadences as he speaks, sure, it’s great. But otherwise it just makes the story seem unrealistic for the most part; no one really gives thousand word stories without interruption. Not only that, the old man would likely have realized what was going on long beforehand, which nullified the prestige for me.
Enjoyment – 6/10 – I enjoyed the story. I’m assuming it’s based on the Mariner’s Revenge Song by The Decemberists. But, because of that, once I realized that I knew how the story was going to proceed (not even just the turn at the end, but things like the mother dying and the ship chase, etc.) which didn’t render it incredibly dull, but put a little rust on its luster.
The Pedestrian by Pakman
Jam’s Score: 28/40
Virg’s Score: 22/40
Total: 50/80
Jam’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 7/10
I felt as if I was riding along with Dennis in the car. I would have liked to see more details about Dennis as a person though. Did he drink often? Was he a good student? Why did driving perfectly matter to him, and what does it say about the rest of his character? I wanted to know more.
Style: 5/10
This is where the piece suffers. There’s some redundancy and overexplanation, and those are wasted words in such a short piece. Set the stage clearly, but don’t be afraid to leave some things to the reader’s imagination.
Enjoyment: 6/10
I’m glad that you had an event happen, as it’s often the case with flash fiction that writers focus on internal conflicts. The style issues prevented me from fully enjoying your story though.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 9/10 – Technically, just went over the limit but not by much.
Tone – 4/10 – The tone just wasn’t there for me. The event was supposed to be some earth shattering type event. Someone dies. Big notions come into play. But it felt more like the work of a journalist with expository dialogue and nothing that conveyed the inner turmoil or emotion of the protagonist other than showing what he was doing which, in this circumstance, pales in comparison to what’s going on inside.
Style – 4/10 – I know you were a bit rushed on time and didn’t get to edit, so won’t go into too much here, but the style was very bland and read more as a list of facts than a work of art or some tightly woven tale.
Enjoyment – 5/10 – The story itself wasn’t a bother to read, but there was nothing too substantial in it as it is to really stick around and let me dwell on it afterwards.
A Mile High Reflecting Pool by GoldShadow
Jam’s Score: 37/40
Virg’s Score: 33/40
Total: 70/80
Jam’s Score
Adherence to Prompt: 10/10
Tone: 10/10
Pretty much spot-on. The characters are believable, the dialogue is interesting, and the conflict is real without being overstated.
Style: 7/10
Good for the most part, but it breaks the story’s hold over the reader if they have to stop to look up the definition of a word, as I had to with “mien.”
Also, why does the story’s narrator refer to the protagonist as “Richard,” when his name is Carl? It’s a bit of misdirection that seems out place.
Enjoyment: 10/10
A really great piece of writing.
Virg’s Comments
Adherence to Prompt – 9/10 – Twenty seven words over. Completely unacceptable. You and your family should be shamed and your children should take your wife’s name to avoid any public relation to you.
Tone – 8/10 – Tone was good. It felt like a jovial, awkward conversation on an airplane between two strangers. A few of the lines seemed a little forced or unnatural, but they were only a handful at most and didn’t account for much of the total weight of the story any ways. The ending made me say ‘yeah, yeah, knew that was going to happen’ since you set it up as being the mini twist ending from the very beginning. The very last line was good though… maybe a little too wordy, but still a good ending line.
Style – 8/10 – Style was good. Some of the imagery and descriptions of the two people were good, though I remember a few times thinking ‘Eh, that’s a bit of a reach’. Still, strongly composed.
Enjoyment – 8/10 – Even though I knew how it was going to end, mowing through the paragraphs was fun and flowed nicely. Good story, though it still needs some loving taps from the edit hammer.
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