# Literary Maneuvers June 2018 - "Gas Station Prophet" - SCORES! (1 Viewer)



## bdcharles (Jul 14, 2018)

What can I say? I'm so sorry it's taken me half a year to get you your scores. I've been busy, our judges have been busy, and what with the football on and the weather being amazing, everything just got right on top of us. But that's all over now; we are back as we were. 

A cracking crop of entries this month, to a stellar prompt. Would you like to know how it went?

Would you?

Well, all right then. *Non Serviam* had this to say:


SueC

SPaG 5/5
Tone and voice 4/5
Effect 7/10

Overall 16/20.

Impeccably written, structurally balanced, flowed well, nice mixture of prose and dialogue. I enjoyed reading this. The protagonist is unlucky and he's called Jonah -- perhaps the choice of name was a little heavy-handed?

It's a story about luck, and personally I think stories work better when they're about the choices people make. 


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Addie

SPaG 5/5
Tone and voice 4/5
Effect 6/10

Overall 15/20.

Splendidly written and nicely structured. This was dialogue-heavy -- it felt a bit like a script -- but it flowed well, and I enjoyed the read. Well done!

I've slightly marked down on "Effect" because I don't feel it followed the prompt. I could see how it was about a gas station, but I couldn't see the "prophet" anywhere. 

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Plasticweld

SPaG 4/5
Tone and voice 4/5
Effect 7/10

Overall 15/20.

I'm reading these on successive evenings after work, and this is the third piece in a row that I've enjoyed reading. Well done!

I'm afraid I've marked you slightly down for grammatical infelicities such as starting to look the way it did used to and the extraneous apostrophe in the TV show the Simpson’s.

I did like the protagonist, with his hopeless dad jokes and his (apparently groundless) fear of casual racism in small-town America. 

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H. Brown

SPaG 2/5
Tone and voice 4/5
Effect 7/10

Overall 13/20

This piece scored lower than it should have done on spelling and grammar grounds. Not just because of "horse/hoarse", "wisper/whisper", "apologise/appologise" but also because for no apparent reason it switches narrative tense in the second sentence of the second paragraph. 

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AphoticN

SPaG 5/5
Tone and voice 4/5
Effect 6/10

Overall 15/20.

Well-written and nicely structured. With your next piece, you might want to consider reducing the number of adverbs, particularly in the early paragraphs.

I've marked this piece down slightly because I didn't feel it 100% followed the prompt. I got the connection with the prophet, but I was unable to see how gas stations were related. 

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DeClarke

SPaG 4/5
Tone and voice 5/5
Effect 7/10

Overall 16/20.

Quite a different take on the prompt from the others that I've read so far. Well done for following the prompt quite exactly, and for a well-written piece. This scored highly and would have scored even better if I hadn't I deducted a mark on SPaG for a careless error in the first sentence (the Heavens are plural). 

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Godofwine

SPaG 5/5
Tone and voice 5/5
Effect 7/10

Overall 17/20.

I enjoyed reading this; I sensed where it was going but the ending still brought an evil grin to my face. You're overextending your similes and metaphors, which I think is deliberate for humorous effect. but might perhaps have been slightly overdone. 


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*I* then chimed in (standing in for our mentioned judge who, being a celeb, was last seen hightailing it out of Dodge pursued by three (3) screaming hordes of paparazzi, two (2) full propositions of alimony lawyers and, as it happens, a bear) with the following notes:

"A Winner"
SueC

SPaG 5/5
Tone and voice 4/5
Effect 7.5/10
Overall 16.5/20

A cool story. It ended with a bang and a nice dose of symmetry. No technical glitches - with you, if there was any SPaG problem, I would actually wonder if you were ok  I would say maybe skim off some of the extraneous words and maybe some of the backstory - that whole bit about Jonah's childhood and his working life doesn't surface after its one mention. Can you use some wordcount freed up from that to foreshadow, to do something narratively with a small number of well-chosen words? Also the prompt, while present, didn't strike me as super-original. But it was good, despite that. Definitely got to me, what with a such a close call at being a billionaire cruelly snatched away by life's quirks.

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"The Devil Godsend"
Addie

SPaG 5/5
Tone and voice 3/5
Effect 6/10
Overall 14/20

Right you have me off the bat with the title. Let's see if you follow up. Oh, and you've written yourself into the story too. That's neat. There's a lyricalness to this. It reminds me of that song by the Killers, When You Were Young, with the Jesus guy and the sense of American west. The content and structure too is quite songy, the tale of the irresistable bad boy. As a story, while there was nothing technically wrong with it, it wasn't too challenging and as a result went a little flat. Depends what you want, and what you want to do, of course. More needs to happen, basically. But I would like to see something done with this as I say in the songwriting genre. Have a think anyway. No SPaG blips.

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"A Little Brown Man in a Little White Town"
Plasticweld
SPaG 2/5
Tone and voice 3.5/5
Effect 8/10
Overall 13.5/20

A cute, funny offering, and I like the dialogue - it is very easy and casual and believable. Make sure you punctuate it right though. The opening paragraph repeats "town" 4 times, then again in the standalone line that is para 2. And Simpsons should not have an apostrophe. I know this stuff doesn't seem like it matters, but when reading something written, I want to be in such steady hands that I don't even know I am not there transpiring away alongside the rest of the events. SPaG blips shatter that illusion. Also you change tense midway through.

"So are you an Indian with a dot, or a feather?" - I had to laugh at this - great characterisation of the type of town you describe. Oh, and I love that "make America grate again" line. If Kraft or one of the (so to speak) big cheeses doesn't use that as a tagline, they're idiots. Copyright it quick, and sell it to them for, well, for an indecent amout of profit, and on that subject, clever trick with that: it works as both a grammar joke and an international geopolotics one. Well played. Maybe all the world's woes rests on that homophone. Incredibly, I've never actually thought about it that way. As a story, as a piece of entertainment, it didn't go too many places for me, but it was very enjoyable nonetheless.

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"I Should Have Listened"
H. Brown

SPaG 2.5/5
Tone and voice 3.5/5
Effect 9/10
Overall 15/20

You start this in just the right place - the moment when the Thing, you know, the thing, the thing that everyone is talking about, happens. And it's a great foreshadow with the crazy man on the street. The prediction happens, and it is perfectly terrible. We don't even see what it is. The crazy guy was right. It's a trope, but it's a good one.

But boy do you love a fronted adverbial. I think it's a fronted adverbial anyway. "X-ing, I do Y. A'ing to the B, I verb the C." Do it differently.

This - "I appologise my way through my morning meeting" - is perfect. Double-p in apologise notwithstanding, I love a rock solid verb choice. Why mumble your way through when you can do what you said. I'm stealing this, and I already know who I'm going to use it in conversation with. Your grammar still needs some attention though. Horse / hoarse - obviously either could work, but they take the story very different directions. But that side of things has generally improved - it's just that I am an absolute stickler for control and precision in that area. Still good stuff though.

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"False Prophet"
AphoticN

SPaG 4/5
Tone and voice 4.5/5
Effect 6.5/10
Overall 15/20


Your writing has a lot of really rich imagery, good word selection (twitchy shrimp, disruptive coldness, violent vortex, tannin-stained waters). You paint a vivid picture. Though too much and it can get very describey, to the point where it almost sets up excessive rhythm: very baroque things are moste heavilye describ'd in unspeakably ornate terms as they go about their decidedly unPynchonesque business of definitely, unarguably existing. That said, this amount of detail could work if you use it as a tension building device. All these words, all this information - hell must be about to break loose. And I did feel that. For a long moment I was a captive worm on a hook. It's the single minor chord that precedes a dread event in a film; musically it may not have that much to it, but in context amazing things can be done. But this is a fishing story. The prompt is left bobbing in the water. I wanted more. So, just think about how you can use these devices to really drive ideas and control plots. Watch also for grammar wobbles.

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"The Seventh"
DeClarke
SPaG 4.5/5
Tone and voice 5/5
Effect 8/10
Overall 18/20


Title - yes. Font - right here, and serifed. And is that the daintiest tang of poesie in the text? You bet. My expectations are high now, so where are we? Rave of the Valkyries? Hieronymous Bosch meets lightsaber drama? I'm interested in the colours of the peoples' eyes - no, really, I am - because I am thinking, there's no blue, are these angels the bringers of blue, the azure that has been so recently robbed from the heavens? This is so heavy I go through a couple of passes of not taking it entirely seriously before realising it's the voice of the prophet himself, that I hold in my hands an ancient text. An actual ancient effing text, people! Of course! Nice work. Original, putting us in the head of the seer. The voice is right on the money and I love the way it switches from the sort of awestruck Biblisms to the workaday language of car fixing. And I love a bit of eschatology so it was good to see some here.

The only issue I had was that it occasionally veered towards the overly hard to read and took a few attempts to get into. I only dinged you a half SPaG because towns peoples' should be one word, as you have it later but yeah, good stuff. You took a chance on a certain style and, for me, it paid off.

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"Rain Drop, Drop Top"
Godofwine
SPaG 4.5/5
Tone and voice 4/5
Effect 7.5/10
Overall 16/20

Cool title. And I love the "one sultry long leg leaked out of the vehicle". Again I am a sucker for the perfect verb. Why get out of the car when you can leak and slide out. Lovely, visual, perfect. Same with the car alarm chirping - adds a really nice sonic touch that completes both realism and the boom with which you open. I am liking this woman, not that the attentions of a mere mortal like me would make any sort of a dent in her rock'n'roll approach. And that line about power and Beowulf's sword characterises both Eleanor and Willie well.

With this:
"he walked as if she knew the crowd was staring until the door shut behind her."
the "until the car door shut beghind her" seems not to be in the right place. The image was perfect up until that point, then it faltered a little. You also end the preeding para with the same 2 words. 

This line:
He tried desperately not to lose himself in the cleavage as the dress’ plunging neckline called to him like the Sirens’ song as he made his way up toward her green eyes.
Was great. Possibly the only way you could make it greater is not to have it as a string of as-linked clauses. It's a bit of a pet peeve for me at the best of times; to convolute a sentence like this seems careless.

"steal the occasional glance" - stealing glances is a shop-worn phrase bordering on the cliched. You clearly have the ability to reimagine it, so I suspect you just kind of forgot here. Same with "feasted his eyes".

I am not sure what happened at the end. She drove off, it turns out he was right about the weather, and there was a scream? What happened? But - that said, the SPaG was, barring the occasional missing space that I know is almost certainly down to the weirdo WF formatting, was right on the nose. A good read and you worked the tense change in damn near seamlessly. 

* * *​ 

So what does it all mean? Well, the TL;DR of it is basically this:



Non ServiambdcharlesTotal*SueC*1616.516.25*Addie*151414.5*H.Brown*131514*PlasticWeld*1513.514.25*AphoticN*151515*DeClarke*161817*godofwine*171616.5


It's a close game. There's no peloton - you're ALL pack leaders! But the most pack-leadery of them all this time was



**** DeClarke ****​
Snapping at his/her heels we have the dionysian, the bacchanalian, the I'm all out of deities who revel in this sort of thing, it's 

*~~~ godofwine ~~~*​
And proving once more that her Advanced Mentor status was no administrsative slip-up, I give you

*}}} SueC {{{*




So there it is. No rest for the wicked, the current month's comp is almost done. Congratulations all and thank you for all your time and words.​


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## SueC (Jul 14, 2018)

Congratulations to all - a job well done and thank you so much, judges! DeClarke and godofwine - you both rock! Everyone did great and I know judging must have been very hard. Thanks again for all the time, kind words and critiques. Always so much to look forward to, and well worth the wait.


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## H.Brown (Jul 20, 2018)

Congrats to all who entered this must have been a tough challenge to judge for all our judges. Was a fun prompt to use, looking forward to another that speaks to me so much. And yes judges my spag does still need work and I thought I'd got them all this time, dammn it...


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## DeClarke (Jul 24, 2018)

Thanks for the win...I don't get many wins in life so this helps a lot. Congrats to the other winners, and I can't wait for the next LM. Or rather, the next next LM, since I already dropped my story in the next LM. Next... er.. um, last, whatever.. enjoyed it!


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