Tek's Writing Challenge: Dorkelf

dorkelf

dorkelf

Active Member
Well, for my 100 daily words, here are the finalized rules for this contest:


If you are planning to participate, simply make a post with the following title:

Tek's Writing Challenge: [YOUR CGALLIANCE USER NAME OR REAL NAME]

When I see your thread I will sticky it. Your thread has two purposes:

1 You post to it every day over a period of 7 days. Each post should make it clear that you have written at least 100 words that day, and if you don't have a good reason to do otherwise you should post samples of what you've written. YOUR POST ITSELF DOES NOT HAVE TO CONSTITUTE 100 WORDS, it just has document that you've done so.

2 Others can respond to your posts. Responses must fall under two categories: A) Critique or advice about the writing samples or writing in general; B) Encouragement (including good-natured humor). Please don't abuse the latter - these threads are going to get long and we don't want people to have to weed through spamz to follow the writer's progress.

This challenge is now open and I'd encourage participants to start right away. I will keep this challenge open through the Summer, until August 1, 2007.

One final note - There will be a special reward for anyone who decides to continue contributing to their thread for another three weeks, for a total of a month of contributions. You will be automatically eligible to participate in group writing projects. And it just happens that I'm planning to start one of those on August 1. Contributions after the seven-day challenge will NOT have to be consecutive (this is a change from what I originally posted). They just have to be reasonably regular - let's say, no more than three days without posting excepting an emergency or extenuating circumstances.

Paul
 
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This contest is a great idea. I had 2 suggestions.

1. Maybe there should be one thread strictly for the author's work, and another thread for comments. It'd help for readability. If that's too much of a hassle, then I recommend the authors color their words or make it a larger size than everything else -- just something so it sticks out.

2. I can't remember, but my list looks a lot cooler with the numbers and more than 1 item.
 
Ah, but having only one real suggestion has a drawback - when someone shoots it down, there goes your whole argument! :p

You're absolutely right that the actual writing will be in danger of getting lost. Here's my suggestion - I can simply go in and delete non-writing, non-critique posts after they've been sitting there for a while. If I end up deleting something the author didn't want deleted, it can always be undeleted. But maybe I can help prevent threads from getting too clogged up that way.

Ok, I've got a 100 word committment today, I'm just going to write something on the spot.

The Rabbit

Rabbit turned to look into the thick woods. Coal-black eyes glistened in the moist, dark night. Whiskers twitched, dislodging a tiny dropled of dew that had become an annoyance to the small, fluffy, grey-white creature. And then a horrible thing happened. The rabbit grinned.

Several bad things happened right away. But before I describe them, let me explain to you first that a rabbit's grin is one of the most disturbingly unnatural, evil things that have ever existed in any dimension of the universe. They are also blessedly rare, because most members of the species aren't gifted with sentience that might cause them to feel an overwhelming degree of murderous hate and rage. They're just not evil enough to ever grin.

When a rabbit grins, there are certain glands around the jaw joint that are activated. The very existence of these glands is a mystery to humankind, for no better reason than the failure of humans throughout history to ever directly observe a rabbit grinning, much less trace the results to the action of a tiny but very sophisticated glandular system. To be honest, Rabbit himself wasn't really aware of the fact that his glands secreted a deadly electromagnetic pulse. A pulse that amplified as it traveled through a dimensional conduit, until it burst into full amplitude right at the center of the earth.

Now, if you're worried that such a powerful electromagnetic burst in the earth's core might create continent-devastating earthquakes or perhaps cause the earth to explode with a beautiful, spherical shockwave like the Deathstar in the latest digitally-enhanced version of Star Wars Episode III, then allow me to assure you that the Earth is just as tough a customer now as it was the last time a rabbit grinned, about 200,000 years ago. There were no earthquakes, no floods. Not a single man or woman at the time felt so much as a tremor, although some observed astutely that there were a lot of dead animals around. And the birds all seemed to be flying to and fro and colliding with each other, as if in a confused frenzy. It all worried the farmers and hunter-gatherers of old, and though they enjoyed an unprecedented feast of freshly self-slaughtered bounty, they soon felt the negative effects of the sudden extinction of hundreds of species on the planetary food chain. But ultimately, as I'm sure you're aware, the species survived even that.

Now, I'll bet you're wondering if the exact same thing is about to happen that happened 200,000 years ago. Well, no, because two important things have changed in the intervening 200,000 years. First of all, animals have adapted to make themselves quite a bit more resistant to a reveral of the earth's magnetic field. And second, mankind has adapted to make itself quite a bit more susceptible to it.

Paul
 
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Uhm... I didn't even know the earth was more than 200,000 years old. :)

*resolves to go rabbit-hunting more often*
 
That's the cool thing about fiction...the Earth could be five billion years old in MY story if I wanted it to. :)

I did a lot of writing today (well, yesterday I mean), but it was all for an upcoming instructional design project (magnetism with third grade students) and I won't bore anybody by posting any of it. I'd estimate that I wrote about 6 or 7 single-spaced pages worth of material. Got lots more to add though before I turn it in next weekend, no time for fun fiction right now. :mad:

Paul
 
Well, despite the fact that I'm writing quite a bit every day, it's all for two major projects (one of them, very major) and an in-service presentation, all due this weekend. I'd planned to squeeze in 100 words of fiction on top of that to support the start of this writing challenge but it just hasn't worked out that way. As it stands I'm going to be skipping Guild Wars PvP tonight as well as church on Wednesday to get all this work done. After this weekend though I will definitely be able to settle into a writing groove.

Paul
 
Death Star didnt expload in Ep. III. it exploaded in Ep. IV and again in Ep. VI.

other than that i liked it. made me smile. EVIL RABBITS!!!
 
Most accurate defense of my goof: I have spent so many years thinking of Return of the Jedi as the "Third Star Wars Movie" that I still get myself confused now. :)

More interesting but less plausable defense of my goof: Humpf. Everyone knows that the recent movies should be demoted to pre-episodes, in which case (and with some creative re-titling of the opening sequences) Return of the Jedi could and should be righfully titled Episode III. So THERE. :p

Hey, just wanted to update this with a note that I am just about ready to get myself into a daily creative writing mode. (I've been writing every day, just not fiction.) Have just a few more long-neglected responsibilities that got lost in the wake of my 3-class semester to take care of first.

Paul
 
55 fiction - The Puppy

The puppy

He loved the puppy.
It was all he had, the puppy,
and his dad.

“What do you want, son?” the Judge asked him.
“Joint custody,” the boy replied.
But that wasn’t the right answer.

Back home, dad waits alone

“Where is puppy?”

arms folded

“Where is he, dad?”

silent.

The boy who never cries, cries.
 
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55 fiction - The Twins

Down
through a tall, tangled jungle sea
falling into embattled chaos
silent town heard past pounding heart and breath.
Flinging solid wrist, his dagger severs a vine
and she grabs it, falls through
and down.
Her dagger plunges.
The monster falls,
but victorious, its ugly scream echoes,
grows thunderous, a tremendous victory cry.
Undefeatable silence.
 
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Flash Fiction - 5 wishes

“BEFRIEND, EARTHLING, I GIVE YOU FIVE PILLS.”
“Nice costume. Are you some kind of drug pusher?”
“THE FIRST PILL WILL EXTEND YOUR LIFE EXPECTANCY TO AN ACCEPTABLE LEVEL OF 1.2 MILLENIA.”
“Mm. Tastes like an orange tic-tac. What’s this next one?
“THE NEXT FOUR PILLS ARE TO COUNTER THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THE FIRST PILL.”
“What side effects? Grrraaaaarrr!”
“RELAX. TRANSFORMATION INTO AN ALPHA CENTAURIAN DUNG BEETLE IS A QUICK BUT PAINFUL PROCESS. TAKE THESE QUICKLY. THERE NOW. COME WITH ME, YOU WILL NEED TO FEED IMMEDIATELY.”
 
Some of my recent work, any critiques are appreciated

“Permission to speak freely, sir,” Weinmann said. Joe had just explained his plan, and had been hoping for some good advice, or maybe an offer for Weinmann to come along with him on his mission. But now Weinmann was about to say something dumb. Usually Joe would play along – he’d say ‘granted, soldier’ or something like that, and let Weinmann get the silliness out of his system. But today he needed Weinmann to be serious, for once in his life. He needed Weinmann’s help, although he had trouble admitting it even to himself.

“I think you have a problem with your brain being missing. Sir,” Weinman continued. Joe knew he was quoting from some weird sci-fi TV show or movie. He never watched any of them himself so he couldn’t keep track of which was which. There were at least a dozen weird quotes Weinman always said after asking for permission to ‘speak freely’.

Joe sat back, folded his arms and looked at Weinmann as if the younger boy had just crawled out of the school basement. Weinman cocked his eyebrows high up over the circular rim of his stocky black glasses. Then he pointed at the library door.

“The library door needs my permission to open,” Weinmann said, another annoying geek quote. He shuffled sideways towards the door, holding a curious eye on Joe. He reached the door and pushed on it. It opened.

Weinman stood there for a few seconds, probably hoping for the opportunity to deliver yet another annoying geek quote. But Joe just continued to stare at him. Then as the door started to close, Weinman quickly scurried out of the library. Like a rat trying to hastily run through a door it couldn’t open itself.

“Geek-rat,” Joe muttered as the door closed. Now that Weinman was gone, the library was practically empty, except for…

Joe turned towards the circulation desk. The library clerk, a young blonde Scandinavian lady named Tiina Fischman, had been standing behind the counter just a moment before. He looked around the library, saw nobody. Where had she gone?

It wasn’t good for Joe to be in there by himself. There was no supervision. Although most teachers at the school suspected that Joe would love to have as little supervision as possible, in reality he loved being supervised. When he was supervised, he always had an alibi, meaning it was a lot harder for him to get blamed for things.

He was always blamed for things he didn’t actually do. Thankfully, he was almost never caught for the things he actually did do. But what he was about to do seemed very, very risky.

Joe figured it was time to leave the library. But first, he would do what he had come there to do. No, not read. Nobody ever came to the library to read. Not in High School. Well, maybe people like Weinmann. And Joe didn’t have any research projects either. Weinmann taught him how to find what he needed on the ‘net, so he never had to come to the library to do research anymore. The library didn’t even have any computers anymore. They’d been taken out the previous year.

The key was behind the circulation desk. It had probably belonged to the former librarian, Ms. Gorber. She had supposedly retired, but she’d left at the beginning of the school year and nobody had come to replace her. That had been five months ago. Some of the kids thought she had died, or had been kidnapped, or maybe just gotten senile and wandered away. But Weinmann had done a lot of research. First, he had found no mention of anything about her in the news or obituaries. Second, and most interestingly, he’d found out that she had a son. A son who went to their school. The boy’s name was Gary Gorber. But at school he was only known by his nickname: Empty E.

Empty E wasn’t in any of Joe’s classes. He wasn’t in any regular classes. He was in a special education classroom, a room that nobody seemed to know anything about. It was on the top floor of the building, and there was only one stairwell leading up there. The stairwell was right across from the office of one of the assistant principals, Ms. Strickland. Ms. Strickland’s secretary, Ms. Blanchard, was ALWAYS there, monitoring the stairs to make sure nobody went up there who didn’t need to go up there. It was her second greatest joy in life, to monitor those stairs. Her first greatest joy was to catch intruders – either normal students going up or upstairs students going down. She knew who belonged where. And if she didn’t recognize you and you didn’t have a permission slip from a teacher, you would immediately get detention or even in-school suspension just for stepping foot on those stairs.

However, there was also a small elevator that lead up to the third floor, an elevator which only worked once it was unlocked with a special key.

The key was hanging behind the circulation desk. Joe had found out about it because he had once witnessed a teacher using the elevator to transport a student with a broken leg. Joe had a very sharp memory, so he could always recall little details like exactly what a key looked like. So when he’d visited the library a few days later, to check out a book he needed for a report, he’d noticed that the key hanging there behind the circulation desk was identical to the one used for the elevator.

The key would get him upstairs. Then he would have to find Empty E. Then he would ask Empty E about what had happened to his mom. Joe had to know. It wasn’t so much that he really cared about what had happened to the lady, though she had certainly seemed nice enough. It was just that Joe couldn’t stand to leave any mystery unsolved. He just had to know.

The clerk was still absent. Joe walked over to the circulation desk, turned around with his back to the key, and took a last glance around the library. Then he reached down for the key.

The library door opened. Joe snatched the key and shoved it quickly into his back pocket.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Weinmann, leaning his head through the door and gesturing towards Joe. “Get the key already and let’s get up there!”

Joe blinked at Weinmann. “I thought you didn’t like my plan.”

“I never said I didn’t like your plan,” Weinmann retorted. “I said your brain was missing. Sir.”
 
I enjoyed reading this. Reminded me of younger years when I was a super snooper. Very good I say! So lets take a elevator ride and see what hides behind door number 2 yeah???
 
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