Grrrrr, Gor. Thag smash Gor.

At last, contest results! And really, they're not half bad.

I was tied for 14th out of 35 entries in my category, which sounds terrible (OK, it really sounds merely mediocre, but I have high expectations of myself), but the scores are very bunchy at the top. The highest score was 149/150, and I got 141.5. (Each entry had three judges, and they dropped the lowest and averaged the other two.) In the best hero category, I was tied for 3rd with 19/20, but only the first place entry from each category advanced to the finals.

This is the contest where I rewrote my first chapter from scratch over the course of a week, had a few people look at it the next week, and then sent it out. It's been revised since, I think for the better, so it'll be interesting to see how I do in the two contests I entered with it post-revision. I got consistently high scores on all areas, but especially characterization, setting, and style. I got very few comments (as seems to be the way with high-scoring entries), but I'm getting an ego boost from:

This is a very well written entry. You've created strong characters and set up compelling conflicts. Best of luck!

You did an excellent job creating Jack. He's strong yet sensitive to the needs of others. I fell in love with him quite easily. Well done!

The writing is vivid, alive, and fresh.

I'm definitely intrigued. The synopsis reveals a depth of story arc unusual for this time period.

I'm looking forward to seeing this in print.

It's not quite what I hoped for when I entered, but I think I'll preen a bit nonetheless.

Wow, Susan. That sounds great! Those are all really good comments, and several in areas where you've felt you've been strong. So good on you! This should be good affirmation. And that's great about the 3rd in hero creation -- you've really been pleased with your writing of Jack, so that's great to hear back that you really are on the right track with him.

pulling brain out of seventeenth century

Susan, excellent!

back to pass-pages

Oh, my. THis is so very much on topic for this week's drabble category...

Back in February, I got an email from someone shilling their self-published, badly-translated novel. Remember? I wrote a locked post about it in my livejournal.

Reposting from February, in all its glory: Really Bad Writing!

- - -

I got an email this morning, looks like a blind mass solicitation, from someone shilling their new novel. Its "thesis is that people in both the east and west must change their ways or love for one's fellow man will die." But, wait! There's hope; s/he attaches the first two chapters, and "If you buy it and like it, I would appreciate it if you would recommend it to your friends and maybe then love can return to our lives."

Snippets. Be warned, this could easily be a clinic on how to tell, not show:

Izzy was a lad of medium height, stocky enough to be noticeably oafish in his movements. His chestnut hair was light and wavy, like wheat in a summer field, a lock of which hung over his large, green eyes that sparkled with their own light from within. The lad was the silent type. His silence and timidity shrouded him in an air of mystery which made him even more remarkable when he was with other people.

(I love the summer wheat dangling over his large, green eyes that sparkled with their own light from within. Oh, that lad...!)

Izzy's timidity was especially noticeable when he was in the company of young ladies. In his twenty-seventh year he had not yet considered the question of marriage. Nor was there any visible sign that he had even thought about it. That set his family to worrying. In order to remedy the problem, the family got together without Izzy's knowledge and decided that they had to find him a girlfriend, with the malicious intent of getting him married. After a brief search the family came up with their choice: Mariona Bages from the house of Saberut. She was thirty-two years old.

(But wait - our hero must flee, and who shall blame him?)

Mariona lived in permanent contradiction with her image as a free-thinking liberal. Thus in order to reaffirm her position to herself and to anyone else who might be watching, she demolished all the socially acceptable barriers to good behavior. The first barrier to fall was that of the flesh. As a consequence, she created her own self-image, probably the one she wanted others to see. So it was no secret that she had toyed with all the boys in town as well as those in the surrounding countryside. Her fame had spread far beyond the county. She was known as a "modern woman," open and deep to the point where she would give it away to the first man in sight.

(Well, obviously, he mustn't marry her - run, Izzy, run!)

Izzy was shaken when he learned of his family's plans for him. He didn't think he would be able to put up with that shrewish fleshpot for the rest of his life, so he asked his family very seriously to leave him alone so he could keep his head sharp and free. But his family had their own ideas about that. They had chosen this specific woman for two reasons: first, to get Izzy married off and settled down. Second, because they believed as did the rest of the town that the Saberuts were first-class people and that if they could marry into that family, they too would somehow become first-class people. Izzy's ambitious family wasn't at all worried about sacrificing their son by marrying him off to the rather floozy Mariona as long as by doing so they themselves managed to rise in social status.

(continued...)

( continues...)

(Our hero Grows Up:)

Izzy didn't give it a second thought. He firmly declared that he wasn't interested in her. His family countered all his protests with force and conviction. They all ganged up on him and relentlessly hammered their idea home until poor Izzy, who had considered himself a happy man before all this, could take no more of their pressure. He anguished over their plans for his future to the point where he made a transcendental decision: against his will and his future happiness, he decided his only way out was to escape from his beloved Rupit. So he packed a suitcase and walked out the front door of his house just like someone going for a walk, but toting a suitcase. Before leaving town, he stopped to say goodbye to his friends Isidro and Maria. "I'm not coming back until I find the woman of my dreams and that's a problem I have to settle all by myself," he told them. After saying goodbye Izzy left town, his happiness riven with a crack from top to bottom. And thus began his introduction to the wide, wide world around him.

Self-published, I presume. And Bulwer-Lytton Award, anyone?

My eyes, my eyes!

It's soooooooooooooooooooooo bad...

This week's topic doesn't ping for me, although I've thoroughly enjoyed everyone else's brilliance. But I still had something I wanted to write, so I hope it doesn't twist the topic too badly to drabble about another sort of badness. If it's not okay, I'll move it to my own journal.
---

it's too bad

The act took a split second. Fingers closing around the rock, backswing, throw.

Half an hour to break the rest of the glass out, to sweep the sidewalk, to throw away the shards.

An hour in the shop to replace the window, newly ordered, complete with defroster.

And yet, for weeks, months, forever? Tiny unseen splinters of glass find their way into my palms, my knees, my clothing, my books. Little lethal bits of malice, carelessness, lodged into my carpet like spikes of cluster bombs, waiting to pierce my unsuspecting good moods.

Recovering, as always, takes longer than inflicting damage.

Ah yes, good ol' Izzy. I remember that.

That's some excellent use of detail in your drabble, Liese.

And that's great about the 3rd in hero creation -- you've really been pleased with your writing of Jack, so that's great to hear back that you really are on the right track with him.

Yep, I'm really happy about it. He breaks the hero mold in a variety of ways, most notably by being non-noble and non-broody (though he does brood a bit in the late going), so I'm glad to know he appeals to someone other than just me.

In a possible fit of over-analysis, I copied the scoresheet from the contest website and made a master sheet with my scores and comments for each question all together, so any areas that all the judges loved or that more than one had a problem with would jump out at me. There was only one question on the scoresheet for which none of them gave me a perfect score: "Has the author effectively created sensual tension?" All of them gave me 4 out of 5. And y'know, I'm not sure there's a fix for that. Anna and Jack meet while helping deliver a baby. It'd be just a little odd if they were openly lusting between contractions or over the afterbirth, methinks. And one of the areas where all three gave me a perfect score was "Does the attraction appear to be emotional as well as physical?" Since I'd rather read about an emotional bond that grows into a physical than vice versa, I think I'm on the right track.

I've reluctantly accepted that I'm going to have to go back and tweak my opening two paragraphs a bit more, however. Two of the three had issues with them, and a few other people who've read it either got confused or thought it went on too long. Which sucks, because I'm particularly fond of those paragraphs and think they're way prettier than most of what I write. So I guess that bit of writing advice that tells you to kill your darlings contains some truth.