# June 2017 - LM - Drone - Scores



## kilroy214 (Jul 1, 2017)

bdcharlesppsagekilroy214totalInside 7C
by _Terry D_13.5161615.16pluralized11.51715.514.6Smith11.5141212.5plawrence10.5161112.5Godofwine11141011.6-xXx-9.5687.8ppsage---JE

Scores are in and we have winners! Congratulations to all who entered, who without you, this competition wouldn't be possible.
In 1st place, we have *Terry D*, with *Inside 7c
*In 2nd, *Ricky's Drone* by * pluralized*,
and in 3rd, a tie between *Poker* by *plawrence* and *A World Away, Right Here* by *Smith*

Way to go guys! See you in July. Like, lol, or thank any entry you may want now, let me know if I've got any math wrong.
And now, the scores!


[spoiler2=bdcharles's Scores] *"Inside 7C"
anonymous

SPAG 4/5
Tone 3/5
Effect 6.5/10
Total: 13.5/20

SPAG seems mostly problem free - "couple'a" is usually "coupla", and you like your ellipses, but voice, psychic distance and POV allows some wiggle room. The tone is reasonably convincing and well-executed, giving me a good picture of the sort of person we are, though it's probably not the most original voice and sits well inside most people's comfort zones. 

In terms of effect, I felt the opening "Bam-bam"s - and to a similar extent, the closers of the main part too - were a little superfluous. If you had opened with "It feels good to hit the meat" I think that would be a classier start. The take on the prompt was clever and you maintained thematic relevance throughout, with the "drone" of the neighbours (or the noises in his head, whichever one) being the continuous agent of change. As I say, I suppose it is, to me, not the most exciting take on the prompt (I heard the police are stepping up their drone usage, which is great story fodder :smile: ) but I can see you were not wanting to take the obvious route.


"A World Away, Right Here"
Smith

SPAG 4.5/5
Tone 2.5/5
Effect 4/10
Total: 11.5/20

Here we've got a vet with a morality crisis on shore leave. Pretty go-to subject matter, though your spelling, punctuation and grammar are right on the money. You are straight in with a passive, which is brave, and actually I don't mind it, as long as the thing works (it seems to) and isn't overdone, though it will add unnecessarily to your word count. Eg: you could easily say "Feet bounded down the stairs before Ethan could even close the front door." and use two words elsewhere. But as it is, it doesn't massively detract as long as it's not a habit and like I say, it doesn't seem to be, which is good.

The voice is, it must be said, a little too by the numbers for me. This happened. That happened. Someone did this. Something else was bad. Try and look at ways of jazzing the events to life. Don't report - make happen! :smile: Eg. with this: "He locked the door behind him, gritting his teeth at the click." I see you are trying to portray character. Ethan is chuffed off, tired and whatnot, but you can demonstrate this by being in his POV, by being him in effect and writing in his own voice and having him do appropriate things. Slam the door, have him thump something. This lets you evoke things in a much more interesting way, rather than resorting to more standard phrases and gestures.

With this: "his back to the window which looked out onto the grassy lawn. One of many in their cul de sac. ", try and think of less obstrusive ways to depict the world. Putting something in its own sentence centre stages it, makes a device out of it. Why? What's so significant about their lawns, narratively? You could again save yourself 8 words by phrasing wisely:
"his back to the window which looked out onto the identikit grassy lawn. One of many in their cul de sac."
"his back to the window which looked out across the cul-de-sac's cookie-cutter grassy lawns."
Hell, you could save 2 words for use elsewhere by correctly hyphenating cul-de-sac. Little word-count hack for you there :wink:

I think the big thing for me here was you spent a long while on the setup. Don't get me wrong, it would work perfectly serviceably in a novel but in 650 words, you have to do more with less or it leaves you little room for the resolution. Using expressions like "Redirecting his gaze" just burns word count, and with the same basic sentiment being reworked throughout until the fourth-from-final paragraph at which point we start to see what's up, by then the risk is that you've left yourself too little time to develop a noteworthy set of events. That said, your tie-in to the prompt is pretty solid, with the drone figuring prominently in Ethan's mind. 


"Poker"
plawrence

SPAG 5/5
Tone 2/5
Effect 3.5/10
Total: 10.5/20

SPaG are spot on here. No issues at all on that front from what I can see. The issue is that not much happens other than gossip and persiflage (as your character freely admits), until "I pass. Fred, tell them about the man two doors down." Then my ears really perk up because, yeah, what about the man two doors down? Yes, there's a little bit of charater setup prior to that but the characters are all very much alike. None of them are particularly sympathetic either...

Dialogue tags like "chortled" are a bit hammy. Outside of comedy, who "chortles"? Indeed, who "responds"? Have him slap the table or something. You appear to like your more purple dialogue tags (which actually doesn't bother me; people say to use "said" only, and I understand that but to me that too can be dull and I can get into something more interesting; anyway I digress) but just be mindful of overuse.

I think you also spent too long on the setup. This is before the thing of interest transpires and as such, the tone is just too conventional for me. Think about the moment, the instant of change, at which your story starts. The preamble you can just imply in situ, alongside the more exciting events. Good effort though. You can definitely write.



"The Bronze Sutra"
ppsage

SPAG /5
Tone /5
Effect /10
Total: /20

I love the opener. I wanted to write "very Vonnegut" but comparing it to anyone is doing it a disservice. I have nothing more to say about this. 

Actually, no. I guess I owe it to people to say what I liked about it. The opening line gives us character and setting and some sort of unusual event (the tone) that will probably propel the events of the story. By the second line we have voice - the italics and bold bits. Where there are repetitions, they work because they serve that voice, & build character just by being there. And that voice continues. We are Marvin Garten throughout this intelligent piece. 

I am going to dock a half a point for "tinnireatic" as someone ding-donged me good and proper for "tubercolic" last month and I think it might have been you ... joking aside though, if you make up words and roots and suffixes and stuff, it is better if they build on actual existing structures - and besides, 19 out of 20 just looks better than 20 :wink: I am going to also take another half-spag for the repeated "ing" - there are 6 - in this:

"He propped himself into his bedtime reading position. Holding himself perfectly motionless when the maddening tone became especially threatening, Marvin found a certain tightening of the soft palate caused an interfering, counter vibration of his tympanum".

You may have intended this to set up the assonance of the tinnitus but I didn't quite feel it. To do that you would need to make something more of it, make it a more obvious motif, otherwise it looks like a happy accident.

But outside of that it's nigh on perfect flash in its sublimely select weirdness, yet the clever premise makes it entirely clear what happens. I was interested amd entertained at all times. Wish you weren't judging so it could be scored properly.




"of sires, spires, pyres and drones"
-xXx-

SPAG 4.5/5
Tone 3/5
Effect 2/10
Total: 9.5/20


You have 33% of the wordcount which is pretty ballsy so right off the bat I am expecting something very flashy here - and yes, already your title grabs me. It's cool, unique and interesting.

By the first line I like your style. I am intrigued. What is this curiously epic situation about the king of the mountain levelling the land? Let us see.

At the second line ... the style is still very spartan and robotic. Relentlessly weird. Maybe too much so? Sacrificing clarity and comprehensibility? Then again that could be voice and this may yet go somewhere. Let's see.

But by the third line things have started to stall. I am not unadjacent to nonsense or SoC (perhaps that is the "soc" in "eusoc"!) in the service of some sort of point - I came of age second time round on a diet of Chris Morris and "Jam" - but precisely what in the name of I-dunno-what is an "eusoc wilson" when it's at home?! I'm not sure whether this is serious. It's how I write when I've been on the sleepy tea :smile: If you're gonna do SoC, the context needs to be far more controlled. That's the artistry of it - to manage the unmanageable into a state of new sense. 

And again, this is all before the story, which could have been very interesting with a drone coming on line and doing something unique. Spires and pyres don't feature; sires barely do, and that only in the most tangential fashion after a hell of a lot of reader-inferring, so your fantastic title and opener carries no payload. I could get more behind it if you used up all the wordcount (or if you had used the word "gyre"; I like that word for some reason!) but I suspect your heart is not in the comp this month (and it's fine; we've all been there, I've written some right old fuff in my time just for giggles) so it's hard to reciprocate with all that much gusto. Shame as it coulda been very decent - I've seen your writing elsewhere and it's very good imo but hey-ho. SPaG is fine for the job at hand :wink: "And Plural I." Yes, I get it, but ultimately it all asks too much of the reader while giving very little back. I started to feel a little undereducated reading it, and that's when you lost me cos I am anything but. Soz bout dat :smile:


"Ricky's Drone"
Pluralized

SPAG 4.5/5
Tone 2/5
Effect 5/10
Total: 11.5/20

SPaG generally can't be faulted. Cool idea too, with a bastard drone whirring to diesel-sputtering life like a rogue chainsaw. Not the most gramatically challenging piece, though you do have some very nice imagery; donkeylike grace, hillbilly doomsday, one last wheeze leaves the carburetor, first squirts and urgent spurts - nice use of sounds to conjure the liquid wetness of blood. Great choices all. :smile:

The main issue I had with this was that it reads like a joke. I don't mean that disparagingly; I mean it read with the cadence of a tall tale. So the tone was a bit humdrum. With a joke that's necessarily so to pin the hopes on the punchline, but here, when Julian's hand is sliced off at the wrist, there was no impact. Not sure what Tesla-style shock means. A sort of Einsteininan wide-eyedness? Dunno. It made the piece feel quite light, like it was verging towards the comedic but not really. Repeated use of the word dumbass both undermines the ability-slash-willingness to identify with the protagonist and makes for a rather generic voice.


"Smuggler's Blues"
godofwine

SPAG 4.5/5
Tone 2.5/5
Effect 4/10
Total: 11/20

No SPaG issues that I can see, and the writing, technically, is very smooth and easy to take in, though "northwest" (the compass heading as opposes to the airline) shouldn't be capitalised. Had to ding you half a point for that - sorry! :smile: 

Stylistically, my first thought is that the title is quite generic. I feel I know what you're going to go for. Voicewise it is a little waffly. Ho hum, we are waiting about, meandering along with Derek's thoughts, and by the fifth paragraph, all that has happened is Derek has looked at his watch and had a bit of a ponder about stuff that happened X weeks ago. There's a lot of backstory. It's fine, but some of it needs to inform Derek's actions today rather than be enumerated in such detail. The actual events don't get going til paragraph 8 and unfortunately the story ends just as it is beginning. I wanted the bag of coke to explode on impact, showering Evan and the other guards - or better yet, the inmates - with white powder. I wanted everything to kick off. Something, anything. Your story promises (hooks, in the end) but ultimately fails to deliver any kind of payoff or resolution.*[/spoiler2]

[spoiler2=ppsage's scores]  [1]*anonymous
"Inside 7C"
Spelling/Grammar: 5
Tone/Voice: 4
Effect: 7
Overall: 16


Review: This is an extremely attractive story which uses two devices which are particularly effective in the arena of super-tiny stories: first person and distinctive voice. Both make it immediately engaging and put the focus on characterization which is a good spot when there's only 650 words to spend. It suffers a bit from timid vocabulary choices. And terribly from being one gigantic, done-to-death cliche. It's predictable from the first sentence with the only question being murder or suicide, and that one only momentarily. It's distastefully cruel to lunatics everywhere, who suffer enough already.




[2]Smith
"A World Away..."
Spelling/Grammar: 5
Tone/Voice: 3
Effect: 6
Overall: 14


Review: Dialogue, especially when working from third-person, is one of the best devices for creating immediacy and characterization. So it's always surprising when, in one of these tiny stories, one finds the author wasting time putting droll commonplaces into quotations. A strong, imaginative idea is there behind this story, but it's so weakly and timidly expressed that I can't see it very clearly. The story tries to be both a startling-reveal story and at the same time something about father-son. Neither works very well here and maybe only one would be as much as the form can contain.




[3]plawrence
"Poker"
Spelling/Grammar: 5
Tone/Voice: 4
Effect: 7
Overall: 16


Review: This is the way dialogue should sound. The actual statements are characterizing and informative. The tags and their accompanying commentary maybe not so much. They seem a little fussy and often redundant. The idea for this story is certainly imaginative and original but it also seems like a small and weak thing to hang all this on. 




[4]ppsage
"The Bronze Sutra"
Spelling/Grammar: 
Tone/Voice: 
Effect: 
Overall:200


Review: The idea behind the eccentric punctuation was to make this read like a religious tract where concepts are somewhat randomly highlighted, often to the detriment of continuity. Admittedly esoteric.




[5]xXx
"*don't read..."
Spelling/Grammar: 3
Tone/Voice: 2
Effect: 1
Overall: 6


Review: I'm as easily offended as the most flagrant SJW, but don't feel anything in that line here. I suspect the warning of being a false flag. Which kind of fits. This is like nine unrelated great first lines, a few of which make some kind of narrative impression on me. Barely. Syntax and punctuation seem sort of random.




[6]Pluralized
"Ricky's Drone"
Spelling/Grammar: 5
Tone/Voice: 5
Effect: 7
Overall: 17


Review: Excellant example of a style of writing in which it's easy to compose a competative entry. Dialogue quirky and pertinent. Details intimate and telling. Language choices strong and in corrolation. The story is a (reasonably) sufficient skeleton. I have problems with the material of the ending. (The form fits well.) I've just been listening to Hiaasen (Nature Girl) so I'm pretty conversant with ideas of misplaced re-attachment. My problem here is that this idea is too new in the story and so ponderous that it somewhat obviates its precedents. It also overly implicates the surgeons, who should not be complicit. 




[7]Godofwine
Smuggler's Blues"
Spelling/Grammar: 
Tone/Voice: 
Effect: 
Overall: 14


Review: I feel like this story is trying to be a little too big for its britches. It has a bit more backstory than the form easily allows, clumbsily narrated, and raises outside questions in a way that cannot possibly be answered in the allotted space. The thing is, a reader knows this immediately. This gives a prologue-y feel. It makes the author's job unecessarily more complex. The actual incident sequence here, which, after a tease, we don't get back to for something like five paragraphs, is original, clever and workable. It will hold up a strong story. Hang some telling details on it. Details which will let us know things which deepen the story without obstructing it. 

* [/spoiler2]

[spoiler2=kilroy214's scores] *Inside 7C
Terry D


Tone- 5
Effect- 6
Total- 16

I thought this story had a great narrative voice and had some great similes to go along with it. Pacing was great, and fitting for the 'slow descent' into madness the reader observes. The only thing that held it back for me was that I could see the ending coming from a mile away. That's probably more of this reader's fault than the story, though.

A World Away, Right Here
Smith

Spag- 4
Tone-4
Effect-4
Total-12

The very first line in this story is written in passive voice. Just say Ethan heard footsteps.
I thought this story had the right heart, but it was very wordy and did not sum up very at the end, and there is conflict in the story as well, which is good, and the conflict that Ethan has with himself was good, but the conflict he has with his wife just comes off as mildly annoying to the two of them. It's like working on the degradation of his soul from piloting a drone is something on the honey-do list that he never gets around to, right there with pulling weeds and fixing the bathroom door knob.

I think with a stronger voice and a bit more of a conclusion, this story could really pack a punch. Vets suffering from the horrors of war is an old cliché, but making him a drone pilot is a new spin I've never seen, and a modern twist on it that I think holds water.

Poker
plawrence

Spag- 4
Tone- 4
Effect- 3
Total- 11

Honestly, I thought a lot of drone (the flying device) stories were going to be in this months LM. Yours is, but it is also refreshing in a way. It's not the really the central plot to the story, and I liked that it was not.

This story feels like it takes a good chunk of time to take off. There is a lot of set up, and not much of an ending. By that I mean there is not real payoff, it just kind of ends.

The dialogue was well written and realistic. I was hoping for more character development. These people come off sounding pretty mean and disgusting, and there isn't really anything to redeem them from that. They want to justify invading someone's privacy just because he's a cross-dresser? That's kind of messed up. If there had been some kind of ending that justified their attitude or turned the story on its head, then I could see some sense in it. But as it stands, they drive off to lunch to further their schemes, makes me not like the characters, and not really care for or about them.

The Bronze Sutra 
ppasge

I thought this was clever and well written. It has a great voice and is a interesting take on the prompt. Well done.


Don't read this...
-xXx-

Spag- 5
Tone- 2
Effect- 1
Total- 8

I'm not sure what to make of this. I didn't really find anything coherent in these lines that I don't even know if I can call this a story. It's like ten sentences that have nothing to do with each other.

Ricky's Drone
pluralized

Spag- 4.5
Tone- 5
Effect- 6
Total- 15.5

The joke at the end that the last part of the story leads up to was cringe-worthy. I mean that in the best way possible, it did not detract from me liking the story at all.
There is some very good use of description, and an overall interesting concept for a story. Two kids make a drone and antics ensue. Very very violent, bloody, antics. It reminded me of how I told my 8 year old daughter I'm going to start making fidget spinners with razor blades and sell them as gag gifts. Kind of a whimsical slaughter-fest.

There were a few of the similes that did not make sense to me, donkey-like grace and Tesla-style shock, to be exact, although I get the idea the fact that they don't make sense is the point. I also felt the ending seems a little rushed, like the story had to be cut down a bit to get to 650 words, and a lot of those words cut out came from the ending.

Other than those minute things, I thought it was a delightfully depraved tale.

Smuggler's Blues
Godofwine

Spag- 3
Tone- 3
Effect- 4
Total- 10

There is a lot of build up in this story that feels like it's leading to a big climax, and the story winds up just petering out at the end. There is definite conflict this guy feels, and I really thought that this would end with him deciding to not drop the drugs in after figuring he's no better than the prisoners locked up in the prison, or the package falls and lands on and kills the warden, or lands on the roof a guard house, or in a middle of a group of Aryan Brothers, instead, he's spooked by another guard for a moment.
Blues implies a chronic problem he's had to deal with many times, be it internal or external; internal-his inner conflict with what he's doing, external-the packages keep landing in bad spots. This is more like Smuggler's Minor Annoyances.

There were a few lines that read weird, and I think they were sentence that had been edited, but not completely ironed out (...the ones two guards... and ...he would push the button his Apple watch sending the cocaine...)

And I didn't really get what the 'menthol on his lips felt like coming home' line meant. Coming home from where?

There was a good build up in this story. I really thought that Evan was going to 'accidentally' take a header over the wall so that the guy could cover his ass, or something of the like. As it stands, the ending felt tacked on. I think in a broader sense, this story could pack more of a punch, but in 650 words, it didn't get enough room to take a full breath.*[/spoiler2]


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## Smith (Jul 1, 2017)

Thank-you judges! I'll be sure to watch the passive voice more (I think I'm finally starting to get a hang of it, because the only real mention of it was my opening sentence), and hopefully working on being more concise - cutting out nonsense - will mean I can use more words where it matters.

Of course, I also have to remember that the guidelines for writing a 650 word piece are not the same as for writing a full-length novel.


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## ppsage (Jul 1, 2017)

Thanks bd... good catch on all the inging.


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## Terry D (Jul 2, 2017)

My thanks to the judges for the time, effort, and incisive critique. Also, my congratulations to Pluralized, plawrence, and Smith for placing this month. All the stories were terrific, and eking out a win is a humbling experience.

bdcharles -- I think you are right, the opening sound effects aren't as effective as the line you quote. And to think, I could have saved 4 words for later use! I use ellipses more frequently than I would like. Bad habit, but a nice short cut to show a pause without expending any words.

ppsage -- Ah, the compromises we make for word count. I think the 'timid' word choices you mention were a result of writing in first-person, present tense from the POV of a simple man. I've been accused before (rightly) of "coming out of character" when I've gotten too creative with phrasing. It's a tough balancing act. I'm also intrigued by your assessment of this story as, "distastefully cruel to lunatics everywhere...". I thought I might get some blow-back for this. But, if I let that weigh on my story choices I'd never be able to write about African American gang-bangers, beer chugging red-necks, avaricious, middle-aged white guys, or creepy kids. In a longer work I'd probably avoid this sort of trope, but within the realm of flash fiction those tropes can be useful.

 kilroy214 -- Nope. It's not on you. I write my stories to be like a thrill ride at an amusement park, and sometimes -- like on that first big drop on a roller coaster -- part of the effect is knowing exactly what's coming. Sometimes I'll try to hide the drop, or leave it until the end, but other times I just want folks to climb aboard because they know where we are going. I'm glad you liked the ride.


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## Pluralized (Jul 2, 2017)

Congratulations, Terry - I suspected that story would win and should have known it was yours. Better watch out, your profile's shelf is about to collapse with all those trophies piling up. :distracted:

Thanks to the judges. Double thanks to Mr. Kilroy for doing the heavy lifting month after month like a champ - you are a great host for this thing and we appreciate you.

No excuses here for my crappy little story, just a general lack of creative juice and sometimes I just whittle at the stick anyway to see if features worth saving decide to surface. Fiction writing is a frustrating endeavor at any length, but probably goes double at 650. I still had fun and this got me writing so high fives all 'round.

Cheers to all - looking forward to drowning your babies in July's challenge: "The Follower." Please, for the love of all that is sacred, nobody write about a guy with a hook-hand riding in the back of some lady's car. Or at least make it really good.


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## PiP (Jul 2, 2017)

Congratulations, Terry. I loved this prompt and could kick myself for not paricipating


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## -xXx- (Jul 3, 2017)

yay, Yay & YAY all around!
_*learning mode on*_


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## Sebald (Jul 3, 2017)

Well done, everyone.


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## Terry D (Jul 6, 2017)

Thanks, all. :welcome:


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