5...4...3...2...1...Ding! Time's up.
CFC's latest Iron Pen Competitors have now finished their stories and are eagerly awaiting your comments and the outcome of the voting!
Please welcome the competitors for this challenge:
Iron Pen Karate Bovine
Iron Pen Philosopher
who have submitted entries incorporating the mystery theme Lost & Found.
This round of Iron Pen was inspired partly by an assignment given to a group of students by author Harlan Ellison during a 1974 session of the Clarion Writers' Workshop and partly because I've misplaced a particular book I really wanted to read (I know it was here somewhere <grumble, mutter>...). So please join our Iron Pen authors as they offer their own stories of what has been lost and found.
Comments/critiques: Please keep in mind that the main objective of Iron Pen is to give the writers constructive feedback on their stories. Please say why you liked or didn't like the stories. What changes would you suggest, if any? If you were writing a story on this theme, would you have done so similarly to the way the two current competitors have, or would you take another approach entirely?
Judging:
When judging, you may wish to consider these criteria, among any other personal preferences you might have:
Length. Did the story meet the minimum required length? Did it exceed the maximum length? This requirement is meant partially as a way to keep the competition fair, as it's harder to judge fairly if one story is (for example) 2000 words and the other only 500 words. Also, if a writer wants to submit stories professionally, there will be length restrictions involved in that. It never hurts to start practicing writing to meet specified requirements.
*Note: Both stories have met the minimum/maximum word counts.
Mechanics. This is a presentation criterion. A story that is good in terms of plot, characters, and theme may have typos, formatting errors, etc. which can distract the reader. No matter if the story is written for recreation or for professional submission, proofreading matters.
Characterization: Do you think the characters are believable? Has the author succeeded in making the reader care what happens to them?
Secret Theme: Do you think the author used the theme effectively?
Entertainment: This is the major criterion. The main goal of any story is to entertain the reader and provide an interesting reading experience. Do you think the author succeeded in doing this?
Voting: The voting/scoring is explained below, after the second story.
And now, on with the stories!
This is a story about me. I can already hear your excitement.
Still. I was...well, happy. Or, at least, had the illusion of being happy.
You know, you think that everythings perfectly okay, but then it turns out that it isnt. At all. Ironically, it wasnt really some sort of sudden realization. Maybe I knew it all along, and all it took was something that would just...unlock it.
In this case, as banal as it might seem, it was music made me realise what my mind so fervently rejected. Pink Floyd, to be exact. You know, when youre a certain age (god, this makes me sound like Im a dinosaur or something. Im not.), youre just highly affected by music, no? The song that would destroy my happiness would be How I Wish You Were Here.
I think weve all heard it at some point, but on that day, it made me realise that my life is crap. Its awful, and theres only darkness coming on. No light in the tunnel. The singer is longing for someone to come back - perhaps passed away, or somewhere faraway from here. But it is then that I realized. Theres nobody that I could wish to be here now - my fathers dead, and hes...well, he wasnt a role model in any way. He had learnt that he has went into a deep hole, but too late, too late! I had loved no one...and, in all fairness, probably no one did love me, in the romantic way. So as to speak.
Lonely. Lonely is the word Id use for my life so far. I was a loner. Im stuck here in this town where nobody likes me. As clichéd that might sound. Life imitates art, after all.
So, youd be asking yourselves (if you reached so far), how did I become happy again? What made me claw out of this desperate state?
It was...oddly enough, the Internet. For year now, Ive been part of the community called Imperium Offtopicum, here on this fine forum. They are good people. They, well, theyve accepted me as a part of it. Integral to this community is their chat, where most of the contact between IOTers happens. But its not just a place to discuss games. No. Its not uncommon that some of its members would often drop off their emotional struggles, the things that bother them or make them happy.
Until that day, Ive never truly felt the need to do so. I always thought that I was strong. That I was, well, sane and balanced person, who has no need of such things. But that day...I felt that if I didnt get it out of my system, Id legitimately go insane. Or crazy. Maybe Id just shut down..more than ever.
But it is there that I found people who supported me. Its so odd. I always thought theres no one out for me. And, well, thats partially true. Not in the..ah, how should I say it - meatspace? But on the Internet? As sad as it might sound - yes. Where people in the real life would scoff at me, the people on IOTChat told me good words. They praised my writing. It felt good. I mean, its not that they ever said that they hated it. But...I dont know. That was a show of niceness that I certainly didnt expect then. Maybe I was just too blind. Or paranoid. Thinking that they say that Im good at this merely because its polite to do so.
Of course, it wasnt a magical and sudden return to normalness. The following days were still shaky. I didnt feel well for days. I was unfocused, and whatnot. Not to mention that my classmates werent helping.
Yet...I regained the so longly coveted happiness. Sure, maybe its illusionary, but who cares? Were all gonna die. Might as well enjoy life. As clichéd and bad as this might sound. Ive learnt, that, indeed, theres people I could wish to be here, for me. Not as a romantic interest, for sure, but as friends with whom I can safely share my feelings with. My pains.
And being able to share your pains, your problems, your emotions - isnt that what makes us happy, in the end?
It all began with my brother's breakup with Lisa, which was a DOOZY. Not for fireworks, but I averaged an hour every night at bedtime all of a mid-90s October sitting on the edge of his bed listening to him cry, literally holding his hand.
I'd been trying to get him to break it off for months, for reasons of - um, we're white as sheets and she wasn't and racism is ugly and we weren't the racists, and she shouldn't have been listening to friends and family who were, jerking my little brother around playing push-me pull-me all the time. She was super-hot and bright, a good sport, a real prize otherwise, and it was just a rolling human tragedy all around, my brother being quite an excellent specimen himself and the two of them being genuinely into each other in a big way.
-I hope poor Lisa's had had a happy ending, since.
A month later he came back from a week's visit to his old stomping grounds in Manhattan with a picture of a curly-haired girl and a foolish (given such a brief acquaintance and the rebound thing) instant attachment. I was put in the same situation as during Lisa hot&cold, having to be diplomatic; "This is a bad idea so soon."
I met "Curly" almost a year later and got to know her fairly well, and she was a real broken piece of work; at least she was laudably free of the usual Yankee hang-ups against us natives of the southeastern US, so no prejudice an issue this time. -But wow, family-daddy issues and insecurity to such a pathological degree that it was your problem, too, if she was in your life, as she'd been inserted into mine against my will. Clung to my brother, the only brother I have in the whole world, like a barnacle; even when I was visiting from another state and she'd been seeing him all the time. She knew she was doing it, crowding our precious brother-time, and genuinely felt bad about it, (we actually discussed it) but couldn't stop.
There's this Greek tragedy thing on Momma's side of the family where nobody, NOBODY, not my siblings, my cousins, my mother, my aunts and uncles, even my grandmother, marries well. (It's begun with the next generation as well.) -Much as I loved Grampa, he didn't treat Gramma quite right, and their descendants have frequently not even managed good enough for them, let alone a good fit, sorry Daddy (who truly was good enough, but a poor fit for Mom).
Now, my brother has a deep need for his alone time, and there was history of him reacting rather savagely when my lonely self got needy. -And here he is with a lady who literally left him alone at no waking hour she could manage, years into the relationship, even knowing he'd like some guy time with his visiting brother who isn't around every day. She only went away to go home and sleep (I actually encouraged her to sleep down the hall while I was there and save herself the schlep, them being big Christians, but my presence making it proper).
Of course he went and married his rebound girl who was thoroughly wrong for him like an idiot. He's a tactical genius, the guy is, in making his plans work, but a strategic moron in choosing goals. Suddenly, another unfit person is forced into my family and my life permanently, interfering and making herself my problem. She liked us fine (it was mutual), but issues, issues, issues of her insecurities meant that she was never going to be comfortable around us, and suddenly and increasingly over a few years it went far beyond the standard 'married now and don't have time' stuff everybody does. If she'd been less of a barnacle (I don't use the term casually) he could have come home to visit a lot more often, and would have liked to - but no, she didn't want to come and he couldn't come without her, and that she knew it and felt horrible about it didn't help me see my only brother once in a while, the damn selfish thief.
There were deaths in the extended family over these years, the last three grandparents, both sides scattering, to my distress, as I've come to regard friends as ephemeral from experience, and family, crap as it is, as all I have that's forever.
...They had a baby, whom I'm SO glad Daddy got to meet while he still knew what was going on before his death, and who informs the current situation profoundly, but all I'll say about that is that I'm an old bachelor with no prospect of kids of my own and my universe changed the first time I held her in my arms; I hope to God that I never have to set foot again on the wrong side of the continent, and my heart is in San Francisco...
He doesn't call, it's a shock when he bothers to answer an email, things got bad between us in the last 12 years since they moved out there. I found out he'd graduated with his doctorate (I said he was a genius, just wish HE knew it, because that would change EVERYTHING, including not spending years getting a PhD. to prove I wasn't the only smart one) in December, in true dysfunctional family style, months after my mother and sister knew.
They're finally coming home this summer for an indeterminate period while he looks for work in the region. -Next door, she hasn't changed, but I'll take it. I'm working at managing my expectations, this is a recipe for another killing heartbreak with three inconsiderate people holding my heart hostage, but I can't help but hope that something stolen from me is coming back, and he'll finally remember again that month of holding his hand when it all started.
Voting:
How this works: This is an anonymous, multiple-choice poll. Please vote for one choice for each contestant. That's 2 votes in all. VBulletin isn't set up for multiple questions within the same poll, so this is the only way to do this without having separate threads for each story.
The poll choices represent scores from 1-5 points, on a scale of how well you think the story met the judging guidelines outlined above.
A = 5 points
B = 4 points
C = 3 points
D = 2 points
F = 1 point
How the scoring works is that the totals for each grade will be added up and used to arrive at an overall score. It is possible for a tie to happen, and if it does, I will not be casting a tie-breaking vote.
Please do not vote more than twice, as that would result in unbalanced (and unfair) votes.
Please take the time to offer comments and constructive feedback, as well as voting. The people who compete in these contests work hard on their stories, and appreciate knowing what readers think of them.
CFC's latest Iron Pen Competitors have now finished their stories and are eagerly awaiting your comments and the outcome of the voting!
Please welcome the competitors for this challenge:
Iron Pen Karate Bovine
Iron Pen Philosopher
who have submitted entries incorporating the mystery theme Lost & Found.
This round of Iron Pen was inspired partly by an assignment given to a group of students by author Harlan Ellison during a 1974 session of the Clarion Writers' Workshop and partly because I've misplaced a particular book I really wanted to read (I know it was here somewhere <grumble, mutter>...). So please join our Iron Pen authors as they offer their own stories of what has been lost and found.
Comments/critiques: Please keep in mind that the main objective of Iron Pen is to give the writers constructive feedback on their stories. Please say why you liked or didn't like the stories. What changes would you suggest, if any? If you were writing a story on this theme, would you have done so similarly to the way the two current competitors have, or would you take another approach entirely?
Judging:
When judging, you may wish to consider these criteria, among any other personal preferences you might have:
Length. Did the story meet the minimum required length? Did it exceed the maximum length? This requirement is meant partially as a way to keep the competition fair, as it's harder to judge fairly if one story is (for example) 2000 words and the other only 500 words. Also, if a writer wants to submit stories professionally, there will be length restrictions involved in that. It never hurts to start practicing writing to meet specified requirements.
*Note: Both stories have met the minimum/maximum word counts.
Mechanics. This is a presentation criterion. A story that is good in terms of plot, characters, and theme may have typos, formatting errors, etc. which can distract the reader. No matter if the story is written for recreation or for professional submission, proofreading matters.
Characterization: Do you think the characters are believable? Has the author succeeded in making the reader care what happens to them?
Secret Theme: Do you think the author used the theme effectively?
Entertainment: This is the major criterion. The main goal of any story is to entertain the reader and provide an interesting reading experience. Do you think the author succeeded in doing this?
Voting: The voting/scoring is explained below, after the second story.
And now, on with the stories!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LOST AND FOUND: Happiness.
by Iron Pen Karate Bovine
This is a story about me. I can already hear your excitement.
Still. I was...well, happy. Or, at least, had the illusion of being happy.
You know, you think that everythings perfectly okay, but then it turns out that it isnt. At all. Ironically, it wasnt really some sort of sudden realization. Maybe I knew it all along, and all it took was something that would just...unlock it.
In this case, as banal as it might seem, it was music made me realise what my mind so fervently rejected. Pink Floyd, to be exact. You know, when youre a certain age (god, this makes me sound like Im a dinosaur or something. Im not.), youre just highly affected by music, no? The song that would destroy my happiness would be How I Wish You Were Here.
I think weve all heard it at some point, but on that day, it made me realise that my life is crap. Its awful, and theres only darkness coming on. No light in the tunnel. The singer is longing for someone to come back - perhaps passed away, or somewhere faraway from here. But it is then that I realized. Theres nobody that I could wish to be here now - my fathers dead, and hes...well, he wasnt a role model in any way. He had learnt that he has went into a deep hole, but too late, too late! I had loved no one...and, in all fairness, probably no one did love me, in the romantic way. So as to speak.
Lonely. Lonely is the word Id use for my life so far. I was a loner. Im stuck here in this town where nobody likes me. As clichéd that might sound. Life imitates art, after all.
So, youd be asking yourselves (if you reached so far), how did I become happy again? What made me claw out of this desperate state?
It was...oddly enough, the Internet. For year now, Ive been part of the community called Imperium Offtopicum, here on this fine forum. They are good people. They, well, theyve accepted me as a part of it. Integral to this community is their chat, where most of the contact between IOTers happens. But its not just a place to discuss games. No. Its not uncommon that some of its members would often drop off their emotional struggles, the things that bother them or make them happy.
Until that day, Ive never truly felt the need to do so. I always thought that I was strong. That I was, well, sane and balanced person, who has no need of such things. But that day...I felt that if I didnt get it out of my system, Id legitimately go insane. Or crazy. Maybe Id just shut down..more than ever.
But it is there that I found people who supported me. Its so odd. I always thought theres no one out for me. And, well, thats partially true. Not in the..ah, how should I say it - meatspace? But on the Internet? As sad as it might sound - yes. Where people in the real life would scoff at me, the people on IOTChat told me good words. They praised my writing. It felt good. I mean, its not that they ever said that they hated it. But...I dont know. That was a show of niceness that I certainly didnt expect then. Maybe I was just too blind. Or paranoid. Thinking that they say that Im good at this merely because its polite to do so.
Of course, it wasnt a magical and sudden return to normalness. The following days were still shaky. I didnt feel well for days. I was unfocused, and whatnot. Not to mention that my classmates werent helping.
Yet...I regained the so longly coveted happiness. Sure, maybe its illusionary, but who cares? Were all gonna die. Might as well enjoy life. As clichéd and bad as this might sound. Ive learnt, that, indeed, theres people I could wish to be here, for me. Not as a romantic interest, for sure, but as friends with whom I can safely share my feelings with. My pains.
And being able to share your pains, your problems, your emotions - isnt that what makes us happy, in the end?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The King is a Fink
by Iron Pen Philosopher
It all began with my brother's breakup with Lisa, which was a DOOZY. Not for fireworks, but I averaged an hour every night at bedtime all of a mid-90s October sitting on the edge of his bed listening to him cry, literally holding his hand.
I'd been trying to get him to break it off for months, for reasons of - um, we're white as sheets and she wasn't and racism is ugly and we weren't the racists, and she shouldn't have been listening to friends and family who were, jerking my little brother around playing push-me pull-me all the time. She was super-hot and bright, a good sport, a real prize otherwise, and it was just a rolling human tragedy all around, my brother being quite an excellent specimen himself and the two of them being genuinely into each other in a big way.
-I hope poor Lisa's had had a happy ending, since.
A month later he came back from a week's visit to his old stomping grounds in Manhattan with a picture of a curly-haired girl and a foolish (given such a brief acquaintance and the rebound thing) instant attachment. I was put in the same situation as during Lisa hot&cold, having to be diplomatic; "This is a bad idea so soon."
I met "Curly" almost a year later and got to know her fairly well, and she was a real broken piece of work; at least she was laudably free of the usual Yankee hang-ups against us natives of the southeastern US, so no prejudice an issue this time. -But wow, family-daddy issues and insecurity to such a pathological degree that it was your problem, too, if she was in your life, as she'd been inserted into mine against my will. Clung to my brother, the only brother I have in the whole world, like a barnacle; even when I was visiting from another state and she'd been seeing him all the time. She knew she was doing it, crowding our precious brother-time, and genuinely felt bad about it, (we actually discussed it) but couldn't stop.
There's this Greek tragedy thing on Momma's side of the family where nobody, NOBODY, not my siblings, my cousins, my mother, my aunts and uncles, even my grandmother, marries well. (It's begun with the next generation as well.) -Much as I loved Grampa, he didn't treat Gramma quite right, and their descendants have frequently not even managed good enough for them, let alone a good fit, sorry Daddy (who truly was good enough, but a poor fit for Mom).
Now, my brother has a deep need for his alone time, and there was history of him reacting rather savagely when my lonely self got needy. -And here he is with a lady who literally left him alone at no waking hour she could manage, years into the relationship, even knowing he'd like some guy time with his visiting brother who isn't around every day. She only went away to go home and sleep (I actually encouraged her to sleep down the hall while I was there and save herself the schlep, them being big Christians, but my presence making it proper).
Of course he went and married his rebound girl who was thoroughly wrong for him like an idiot. He's a tactical genius, the guy is, in making his plans work, but a strategic moron in choosing goals. Suddenly, another unfit person is forced into my family and my life permanently, interfering and making herself my problem. She liked us fine (it was mutual), but issues, issues, issues of her insecurities meant that she was never going to be comfortable around us, and suddenly and increasingly over a few years it went far beyond the standard 'married now and don't have time' stuff everybody does. If she'd been less of a barnacle (I don't use the term casually) he could have come home to visit a lot more often, and would have liked to - but no, she didn't want to come and he couldn't come without her, and that she knew it and felt horrible about it didn't help me see my only brother once in a while, the damn selfish thief.
There were deaths in the extended family over these years, the last three grandparents, both sides scattering, to my distress, as I've come to regard friends as ephemeral from experience, and family, crap as it is, as all I have that's forever.
...They had a baby, whom I'm SO glad Daddy got to meet while he still knew what was going on before his death, and who informs the current situation profoundly, but all I'll say about that is that I'm an old bachelor with no prospect of kids of my own and my universe changed the first time I held her in my arms; I hope to God that I never have to set foot again on the wrong side of the continent, and my heart is in San Francisco...
He doesn't call, it's a shock when he bothers to answer an email, things got bad between us in the last 12 years since they moved out there. I found out he'd graduated with his doctorate (I said he was a genius, just wish HE knew it, because that would change EVERYTHING, including not spending years getting a PhD. to prove I wasn't the only smart one) in December, in true dysfunctional family style, months after my mother and sister knew.
They're finally coming home this summer for an indeterminate period while he looks for work in the region. -Next door, she hasn't changed, but I'll take it. I'm working at managing my expectations, this is a recipe for another killing heartbreak with three inconsiderate people holding my heart hostage, but I can't help but hope that something stolen from me is coming back, and he'll finally remember again that month of holding his hand when it all started.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Voting:
How this works: This is an anonymous, multiple-choice poll. Please vote for one choice for each contestant. That's 2 votes in all. VBulletin isn't set up for multiple questions within the same poll, so this is the only way to do this without having separate threads for each story.
The poll choices represent scores from 1-5 points, on a scale of how well you think the story met the judging guidelines outlined above.
A = 5 points
B = 4 points
C = 3 points
D = 2 points
F = 1 point
How the scoring works is that the totals for each grade will be added up and used to arrive at an overall score. It is possible for a tie to happen, and if it does, I will not be casting a tie-breaking vote.
Please do not vote more than twice, as that would result in unbalanced (and unfair) votes.
Please take the time to offer comments and constructive feedback, as well as voting. The people who compete in these contests work hard on their stories, and appreciate knowing what readers think of them.
".
