Nov 1, 2008

Quick Tales writing contest shortlist

Caferati and LiveJournal are running a 1000 word flash fiction writing contest called "Quick Tales". The (longish) shortlist was recently announced (here), pruning the initial set of 1024 to 134 entries.

I have two stories in this list. These are entries 639 and 823 (both untitled - no words to spare for titles :-)). The former is about a cop who has to read someone's journals, while the latter is about a bored man in a local train.

The theme of the submissions was "Journal" (in part, this exercise is also aimed at promoting LiveJournal among Indian netizens). I struggled to come up with ideas for this topic, and somehow managed a few.

Anyway, all the stories have been put up because there is a "Community Choice Winner" prize based on public voting (public == LiveJournal account holders). I'm more keen on receiving feedback, so if you get a chance, please read the two stories linked above. If you are so inclined (== sufficiently jobless), you could numerically evaluate it using a score between 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) or textually by leaving a comment. But you'd need an LJ account to do either. So if all you want is to let me know how you felt, emailing me or leaving a comment here is just as fine.

You can also read the other stories (an index by entry id is here). Of the few that I've read, I thought #618 titled "The Quack" was very imaginative.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Ramanand

No. 639 - Loved it. Really classy and well written. Thats what we can call a 'short story'. Just one comment, I felt a bit distracted by way too many paragraphs. If that was intended, then hmmm :-)

No. 823 - Nice plot. Very simple plain vanilla story (maybe force fitted for theme compliance?) The impact would be super had it been a longer more descriptive narration. Nice surprise ending a la O Henry.

Enjoyed both thoroughly. I am not on Live Journal so no votes there from me. All the Best. Hope No. 639wins.

Cheers

Manish (666)

J Ramanand said...

Hi Manish: nice to hear from you! Thanks for the comments. Didn't intend too many paras, but could be because I was trying to squeeze so many events under the constraints. 1000 words + theme made me 'suffocative' rather than evocative :-)

Abhishek said...

618 is really nice. I don't like either of the stories that much, frankly. This is given the fact that I've seen you come up with much better plots. Your penchant for trying out different settings and executing them to perfection is however admirable.

J Ramanand said...

Abhishek: thanks. I estimate I can only come up with better plots about 5% of the time, so you'll have to excuse me this time as well :-)