Flash Fiction Adventures
This is the story of me entering a writing competition and making a boneheaded mistake.
So website Podcastle publishes audio fantasy stories, mostly ones that have been previously published elsewhere. They are holding a flash fiction competition, for fantasy stories of 500 words or less, which are voted for by members of their forums.
I wrote a story about magic swords and how you shouldn’t put two in the same room, re-wrote it and then, just before entering it, I checked it one last time, made a change or two, copied it into the submission box and then ignored it until the closing date.
.
They got 196 entries and split them into 16 groups to be voted on. For each group members of the forum got three votes and the top three went through.
My story turned up in group three and due to me being an idiot it was missing the last two paragraphs. (I checked and these paragraphs were on the second page of the Word document I’d written it in Presumably I only copied and pasted one page.)
So what to do? People had already read, commented and voted for the story. You get all the set up of how bad things happen when you put two magic swords together, and then they open the door and... it stops. A classic if inadvertent cliffhanger ending.
It was missing the description of what the room looks like now and the explanation of what’s actually happened. (Many commenters noted that there was a lot of setup that didn’t pay off and the ending was abrupt. Quite.)
I could have written to the moderators and explained what happened. I could have withdrawn my story. Or... I could let the accidental thing carry on as it is. Give it a chance.
I did. I planned, when I revealed myself as author after it was voted out, to also reveal the story behind the story, which is what you’ve read so far.
By one vote my story made it through to the second stage (semi-final). (Yes I voted for it. If I won’t love my poor misshapen writing who will? This, of course, makes the situation from hereon entirely my fault. If I had swapped my vote for Swordplay to the fourth place story they would have gone through.)
Sorry Before Woodsmoke Danced at the Enati Tree. (My notes suggest I ranked it fourth). Thank you everyone who cared enough about the six sevenths of my story to vote for it.
So there you have it. The Swordplay I entered was not the Swordplay I intended, but it was its own thing anyway and it had a good run, making it into the semis. I don’t know if there’s a lesson in this. Maybe always check before hitting send. Maybe don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Maybe just that I’m an idiot.
And that’s the story of how I broke my story but some people kind of liked it anyway
So website Podcastle publishes audio fantasy stories, mostly ones that have been previously published elsewhere. They are holding a flash fiction competition, for fantasy stories of 500 words or less, which are voted for by members of their forums.
I wrote a story about magic swords and how you shouldn’t put two in the same room, re-wrote it and then, just before entering it, I checked it one last time, made a change or two, copied it into the submission box and then ignored it until the closing date.
.
They got 196 entries and split them into 16 groups to be voted on. For each group members of the forum got three votes and the top three went through.
My story turned up in group three and due to me being an idiot it was missing the last two paragraphs. (I checked and these paragraphs were on the second page of the Word document I’d written it in Presumably I only copied and pasted one page.)
So what to do? People had already read, commented and voted for the story. You get all the set up of how bad things happen when you put two magic swords together, and then they open the door and... it stops. A classic if inadvertent cliffhanger ending.
It was missing the description of what the room looks like now and the explanation of what’s actually happened. (Many commenters noted that there was a lot of setup that didn’t pay off and the ending was abrupt. Quite.)
I could have written to the moderators and explained what happened. I could have withdrawn my story. Or... I could let the accidental thing carry on as it is. Give it a chance.
I did. I planned, when I revealed myself as author after it was voted out, to also reveal the story behind the story, which is what you’ve read so far.
By one vote my story made it through to the second stage (semi-final). (Yes I voted for it. If I won’t love my poor misshapen writing who will? This, of course, makes the situation from hereon entirely my fault. If I had swapped my vote for Swordplay to the fourth place story they would have gone through.)
Sorry Before Woodsmoke Danced at the Enati Tree. (My notes suggest I ranked it fourth). Thank you everyone who cared enough about the six sevenths of my story to vote for it.
So there you have it. The Swordplay I entered was not the Swordplay I intended, but it was its own thing anyway and it had a good run, making it into the semis. I don’t know if there’s a lesson in this. Maybe always check before hitting send. Maybe don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Maybe just that I’m an idiot.
And that’s the story of how I broke my story but some people kind of liked it anyway
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