[ OT ] 4yr Contest Voting - Round Two ( of two )

I vote for /u/schoolgirlerror for “ By the light of my cigarette ” 
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 **Lessons learned during this contest** 
 
 I don ’ t know about anyone else, but this contest taught me a few valuable lessons about the perils of writing to a word count. I started writing with no concept of how long the story actually should be and ended up compressing key sections once I realized how little space was left. In hindsight, I should written the story to completion, then gone back and whittled away the fat in order to make weight. So, that was pretty cool. Go learnin'! 
 
 *Feedback on the finalists* 
 
 “ Diner du Duane ” ( Mirari_Inanis ) - I already provided a bit of feedback on this in the last round. Lovely piece, fun for a hang-out, but not enough was gained and hardly anything was lost. 
 
 “ By the light of my cigarette ” ( schoolgirlerror ) - I love that this has a full character arc. I don ’ t love how tidy that arc feels. There ’ s not enough in the encounter with Sha to convince me that anything significant has changed for Nate. She ’ s a poser. He ’ s a poser. Everyone ’ s a poser. I wish the stuff with Sha was slightly less blunt and on-the-nose. 
 
 That said - I remain completely open to the possibility that Nate is an unreliable narrator and a cynic, at that. This is his writing, after all. So why wouldn ’ t he give his main character ( himself ) an unearned, epiphanic moment? Is this Nate writing what he thinks someone like Kit would want to hear? Is Nate the kind of person who learns lessons or prefers to fake it instead? 
 
 Either you tricked me or Nate tricked me or I tricked myself. Either way, there ’ s too much that works here for me to vote for anyone else.Cheers to you, you contest-smashing jumble of 1s and 0s. 
 
 “ Stitches ” ( resonatingfury ) - This feels a bit like cotton candy writing to me. And, it needs to be said, a lot of people like cotton candy. It ’ s sweet and tasty, after all. For me there wasn ’ t much substance here and part of that may just come down to the fact that I didn ’ t quite buy anyone ’ s behavior, especially Dana. Dana is too kind. I like to think that people like Dana exist ( and I bet they do ), but they don ’ t necessarily make for compelling characters. It ’ s great that Frank is nice to Victoria and I ’ m sure any mother would be grateful that he walked her back home ( even against his will ), but letting a stranger into your home - with your two young children - is dangerous and not something I buy a single mother doing without at least a bit more of an internal struggle. 
 
 In truth, however, I ’ m not sure what you do differently here. In the version I ’ d prefer this is a lot messier and people are a bit more conflicted and when you get to the catharsis at the end it ’ s been a bit of a bumpier road to get there. But this is conflict-free and sometimes that ’ s what people want in a story. Nice people being nice to people who need niceness. 
 
 “ Burden ” ( LustLacker ) - I loved a lot of this - it felt like a bit of a Bradbury-McCarthy mash-up. The writing is very strong and quite vibrant. The ending is very flat and pretty disappointing after everything that ’ s come before, though. I suppose it means they made it, but it ’ s an ambivalent note to end on. So here ’ s my completely unasked for suggestion - start at the fence. “ You have 30 seconds. ” Then flashback using that 30 second period as the fulcrum, with the question “ Is this guard just fucking with me and he ’ s going to shoot me in the back, or are we really homefree? ” Because the “ present day ” periods covered in the story are sort of meaningless. The man walks with the girl. Check back….still walking. One more time... yup, still walking. There ’ s no tension in those moments because nothing is really happening and we don ’ t yet know where he ’ s going. I think the flashbacks would gain a lot of tension if the present day stuff was more openly hostile, and by diving into the past we can start to figure out whether or not these two are completely boned. 
 
 Also, while I like some of the world-building here, I ’ d suggest that there ’ s actually too much of it. If you walked back a few of those terms and ideas and made things a bit more vague, I think I ’ d be more inclined to think, “ I wonder what happened? ” As it is, I was left with more of the “ Wait, what? There was a war and then some sort of oppressive, dystopian government set itself up and there ’ s famine and the war is over but we ’ re still bombing Canada for some reason, and this all happened is what - a couple decades? What the hell happened? ” kind of questions. I feel like I either need to hear more about this stuff to understand what it is ( and why it ’ s important to the plot and not just writerly noodling ) or less so it ’ s not quite so front and center. 
 
 “ Mother May I? ” ( Just-a-Poe-Boy ) - I can ’ t help but feel like what happened at the end could have happened to any parent. You get busy, you lose sight, something terrible happens. I get that there ’ s an extra level of terrible here because the kid asked for the pills and the mother said yes, but the end result isn ’ t any different. And when you ’ ve spent so much time and energy focused on Victoria ’ s many anxieties and phobias, it feels like those should play a more central role in how everything falls apart. 
 
 Speaking of Victoria ’ s issues - she may just have a few too many of them. She is comically over-the-top, to the point of distraction. I kept wondering how this woman is even a functioning member of society. 
 
 That said, there ’ s a ton of great tension in this and Victoria ’ s constant, self-absorbed inner-commentary is fascinating. 
 
 “ Greenland ” ( Barahagara ) - The ending doesn ’ t work for me. That ’ s it, really. The rest of this is pretty marvellous. Amazing details, great progression. The setting itself does a lot of heavy lifting creating an underlying tension. Flat, endless plains of white. The neverending sunlight. It ’ s really great. 
 
 But the ending is very flat and slightly silly. There ’ s no hint that this is what ’ s coming. There ’ s not even an obvious reason for it - Alex doesn ’ t really seem to care, he just doesn ’ t want to be involved. And what about everyone else? These are the only four people that know about it? 
 
 Honestly, it may just be that everything that came before was so good I couldn ’ t help but be disappointed by the ending. Excellent stuff.
