The first Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions! (May 2025 edition)
1. Announcement
The first Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions!
As previously announced, the first edition of the Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions!
Click here for all the information!
1. Introduction
I have, on many occasions, considered creating a fiction writing and feedback exchange workshop on Tildes. As these things often go, I exaggerated my plans, detailing them endlessly without ever putting them into action. This post is an attempt to break the cycle of procrastination, and I am doing so by forcing myself to adopt a much simpler approach.
2. Goals
The main goal of the Tildes Short Story Exchange is to allow people to get feedback on their short stories. Is it any good? How can I improve it?
3. Why only short stories?
Although there are many writing genres people like to share, short stories are among the most practical. They can be read much more quickly than novels and novellas, and their evaluation is simpler than what poetry requires. A simple, defined, and easy-to-understand prompt is conducive to creation. Every month, participants will know that the Tildes Short Story Exchange is a place to get feedback on short stories. They will feel compelled to write as a result.
4. Position on LLMs
This is a workshop for humans. Producing human connection is one of its main goals. Because of that, all submissions must be human-generated, both in full and in part. That said, LLMs can be used for the same things traditional tools such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word have been used for in the past: proofreading. Additionally, it is allowed to use LLMs to assist in translating into English text that you wrote yourself.
5. About the submissions
For the purposes of the TSSE, a short story is a work of fiction with 7,500 words or fewer. This is based on the classification by both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Stories that go a little above that will, of course, be accepted within reason. All submissions must be in English.
6. How to submit your short story
You may use any website, blog, format, or platform to share your story!
If you are inclined to share a PDF, please also share your story in a format that is open, allowing it to be easily converted and better displayed on mobile devices such as phones, tablets, Kindles, etc. Some good formats for that are .docx, .rtf, .odt, .epub, .mobi, .txt, .md (markdown).
If you are sharing your story on something like Google Drive or Microsoft Office Online, make sure to set the appropriate permissions!
I will make an effort to read and provide feedback on as many submissions as I can, and if you share it in an open format, it will at the very least have me as a reader!
You may also use detail markdown blocks to paste your story on Tildes itself (see "Expandable sections" in the Tildes docs here).
7. Example submissions
All short story submissions should be top-level comments on this post.
I drafted below an example submission that I encourage you to use. There are a few additional suggestions in there!
Title: My Super Cool Story
Genre(s): Science fiction, romance
Expected feedback: In this story I need feedback on story, language, everything. You can be as ruthless as you want. I can take it!
File: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/
Title: The Day My Dog Died
Genre(s): Drama
Expected feedback: I'm really insecure about the ending. This is a very personal story—be gentle with me!
File: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/
8. How to provide feedback?
All feedback should be a direct response to short story submissions.
Feedback should always follow the guidelines put forth by the writer, but anything that is not explicitly prohibited can be understood to be allowed. There will be no strict rules on how feedback must be written, but I would suggest that everyone provide something potentially helpful to the improvement of the story. That is, of course, highly subjective.
9. How are rules going to be enforced?
Given that I am a regular Tildes user with no administrative privileges, all rules in this project will serve merely as guidelines that I suggest participants follow. There will be no enforcement or consequence for not following the guidelines. That means there will be no score, and no “feedback points” will be awarded. It is suggested that everyone seeking feedback provide at least one piece of feedback prior to posting their own story. But that will be entirely based on the “honor system,” and no admonitions will be made toward those who seek feedback without providing it.
10. What will be the schedule?
The TSSE will feature one post on the 1st day of each month. This is to help with mnemonics so people always remember when it will happen. That will help them get their “creative mojo” working every month.
Exceptionally for this first edition, given that it is already May 3rd, the Tildes Short Story Exchange – First Edition will go up next Monday (May 5th) and remain as the current post until June 1st, when it will be replaced.
Within that period, everyone will be free to post their short stories and their feedback at their own leisure.
The schedule may change to once every two months if there is not enough activity.
2. Quick info
This is the beginning of a permanent short fiction workshop on Tildes! Anyone is welcome to post their short stories and get feedback on them. For more information, please click on the information box above or visit the introduction post.
The TSSE will feature one post on the 1st day of each month. Exceptionally, this first edition will be up from today (Monday, May 5th) until June 1st, when it will be replaced.
During that period, everyone will be free to post their short stories and their feedback at their own leisure.
3. How to submit your short story
You may use any website, blog, format, or platform to share your story!
If you are inclined to share a PDF, please also share your story in a format that is open, allowing it to be easily converted and better displayed on mobile devices such as phones, tablets, Kindles, etc. Some good formats for that are .docx, .rtf, .odt, .epub, .mobi, .txt, .md (markdown).
If you are sharing your story on something like Google Drive or Microsoft Office Online, make sure to set the appropriate permissions!
You may also use detail markdown blocks to paste your story on Tildes itself (see "Expandable sections" in the Tildes docs here).
4. Example submissions
All short story submissions should be top-level comments on the TSSE posts.
I drafted below an example submission that I encourage you to use. You are not forced to follow this model—feel free to add any information you want in your submission.
Click for the examples
**Title**: My Super Cool Story
**Word count**: 949
**Genre(s)**: Science fiction, romance
**Expected feedback**: In this story I need feedback on story, language, everything. You can be as ruthless as you want. I can take it!
**File or link**: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/
**Title**: The Day My Dog Died
- **Word count**: 1500
**Genre(s)**: Drama
**Expected feedback**: I'm really insecure about the ending. This is a very personal story—be gentle with me!
**File or link**: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/
5. How to provide feedback?
All feedback should be a direct response to short story submissions.
Feedback should always follow the guidelines put forth by the writer, but anything that is not explicitly prohibited can be understood to be allowed. There will be no strict rules on how feedback must be written, but I would suggest that everyone provide something potentially helpful to the improvement of the story. That is, of course, highly subjective.
Title: From A to B
Genre: absurd
Expected feedback: I have been writing short stories in Dutch for a couple of years now. This is my first attempt to translate one of them to English, which I found very difficult. I would love to hear what a native English-speaking person thinks of the language. Other comments are fine too! Thank you for reading.
Url: https://vrijkorteverhalen.nl/2024/from-a-to-b/
I want to start off by saying that, in terms of content, I absolutely love this. It reminds me a little of the Borges story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (also translated, from Spanish to English). This type of story feels like a very ambitious piece to localize, just because of how it kind of implicitly deals with language itself (or, like, the epistemology of action? unsure how to describe it).
On the one hand, I wouldn't necessarily have known this was ESL if you didn't say so upfront. It's written competently enough, I think. On the other hand, there are definitely tells and little mistakes here and there that you'd probably want to be aware of.
The first tell is the style itself. Your sentences are very short, very choppy or punchy. Some of them are even fragments. I didn't count, but if feels like the period is the most used punctuation mark here, by a lot. This sort of writing might come across as a bit amateurish to some, but you actually see a lot of it in the noir and neo-noir genres, so for the most part it didn't stand out to me. But you might want to think about varying your sentence length and structure a little more. Take this short paragraph:
This is a fine passage. But if you wanted to vary it up a little more, maybe add more room for detail with longer sentences, you definitely could. On a first pass, I might personally go for something more like
Just joining a couple clauses here and there can make a big difference. You'll notice I've also swapped a few verbs around -- "sitting" for "lounging," "got up" for "stood." In general, I think verbs and adverbs are the parts of the story that I noticed and that need the most work. There are a couple places here where verbs are omitted:
is incorrect, because "firmly," an adverb, is supposed to refer to a verb (it also doesn't appear to really fit.) I might have written,
But outside of mistakes like this, there are also a few place where the verb choice feels a little uninspired. In general, if you can add a little character by choosing a more specific verb, that's often going to improve the story noticeably. There's nothing wrong with a character who "runs," "sits," "looks," but often you can switch out a verb for something that conveys more character and mood (and eliminates the need for adverbs, which can sometimes feel clunky). "ran quickly" can be replaced with "sprinted;" "sat lazily" with "lounged;" "looked intently" with "gazed."
I really like the dialogue here. It feels similar to the dialogue I write -- punchy, but still naturalistic. Reminds me of a few of the postmodern short story authors -- Kafka, Camus. It's uniformly well-written, and it makes up the bulk of the story -- really playing to your strengths here.
So in general my impression of the story is very positive, and the translation is mostly positive. What you're missing will come with practice and revision, if you want to keep translating; the fundamentals of an enjoyable, thought-provoking story are already there.
Oh, thank you so much for this response. You make good points about the short sentences and the verb choices. I just compared it to the Dutch version and there varies a lot more. I already had the sense that this version felt stiffer, but now I know why.
The issue I ran into is that when writing in Dutch, I eventually somehow know which words I want. First there is a lot of doubt and change, but eventually, I settle on something that just feels right. In English, I kept feeling unsure, no matter how much time I gave it. I kept doubting whether the words actually have the meaning and feel that I think they do. In the end, I kept picking the more common and safe solutions, which makes it more bland. It also made the act of writing feel more restricted, less room for creativity.
You are probably right, it is just a matter of practising more to improve it. Reading more English prose will likely help too. Build more vocabulary. Thanks again!
oof This line hit hard.
Loved your piece.
I think that the English sounded very natural. If you hadn’t pointed out that it was a translation, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. Good job!
Thanks! Glad that the translation worked and that you liked it.
I am not a native English speaker, but I don't personally have any major issue with your use of the language. I would probably wish to remove some of the repetitions of the word "I", which you used a lot. That is my more of a taste thing, native speakers don't seem to care about that at all.
Stating an opinion about a story in the "absurd" genre is a challenge. Many of the criteria we use to judge conventional stories simply do not apply. An absurd story, I believe, should be evaluated based on its ability to evoke a sense of absurdity, allowing us to suspend our most basic assumptions about reality.
In that sense, yours is a fine example of absurdism. It touches on mathematics and Zeno’s paradox of motion in a way that is clear, simple, and amusing. I also find that your story echoes elements of Zen—it could even be framed as a mondo. So, if your goal was to illustrate an interesting concept, then you succeeded brilliantly.
However, if your aim was to present that concept within the framework of a more complete narrative, then I don’t believe your success was complete.
It struck me as odd that, in such a short short story, the first three paragraphs didn’t feel particularly engaging. I imagined myself writing those sections, and while imagining it, they felt like the least interesting parts. You clearly have a knack for whimsical abstraction, which shines later in the story—where it really matters. The beginning feels like busywork, largely inconsequential to the absurd exploration that follows.
So I would suggest one of two things: either remove or greatly reduce the introduction, going straight to the whimsical elements, or expand the opening with whimsical elements of its own. Do not delay the good parts. Rather, sprinkle some of that through the entire story!
Oh, that is an interesting comment. I had to think about that for a moment.
To be clear, I did not have a goal in the sense that I wanted to present this or that concept. The story comes from, I think, some experiences that I had when I was younger where I remember actually getting lost in reasoning. Somehow, I did not understand any more how one thing leads to another. It was like forgetting how to pee. Suddenly, it doesn't work any more, so you start thinking about it, only to get more lost.
The first part of the story is meant to evoke that feeling of being lost. Somewhere in the fields, between points A and B, not knowing where to go. For me, that is an important part. If it doesn't work, then it should be improved, but I feel reluctant to scrap it.
What I would like to accomplish is that the experience is presented on both a rational and an emotional level. The rational level seems to do well. The emotional part clearly needs more work. Thanks for pointing that out.
And on another note: thank you so much for organizing this! You have no idea how good it feels to have someone actually read what you wrote, after years of getting only two comments repeatedly: "Nice." and "I don't understand it." Or maybe you do know how it feels, but for me, it has been a long time since people with a skill for critique have taken the time to look at my work. This inspires me to continue writing,
I like this. The language is clear and strong and if I was your line editor I would only suggest minimal changes.
As a developmental editor, though, I would ask you to reconsider the syllogism of the apples. The reasoning the plumber uses to deconstruct the mysteries of gravity seems to be leading us in one direction, questioning the limits of scientific observation and our cosmological understanding, etc. But... perhaps if the apples were more formally presented in a more constrained setting, then it wouldn't smack of sophistry. As is, it sounds a bit like philosophy majors in college arguing over the essence of a chair. In the way it is presented, at least to me, the apples are concrete objects that can only be obfuscated with perspective tricks or word games. Their example doesn't support the wrench/gravity example as much as go off on a tangent that undercuts the profundity of the first.
Or maybe I'm missing something. I'd be happy to hear how I'm wrong. But I figured it would be most valuable to hear my initial impressions.
You are not missing anything. Actually, I think you are more skilled in this subject than I am, and I was the one who was missing things.
As mentioned in a sibling comment, I did not set out to express or illustrate a particular concept. When writing, I rely almost solely on intuition. The moment I start thinking rationally about it, the text becomes boring and uninspired, so I avoid that as much as possible. This produces stories that are mostly short reflections or echos of things that at some point happened in my mind. I think this one simply was my personal version of being a philosophy major arguing with myself over the essence of a chair.
Your comment forced me to think beyond that, and I think I understand your point. I am not sure yet what to do with the information, but I do get it. Thanks for pointing it out! Perhaps the real message is simply that I should/want to read more about philosophy.
I will now ping everyone who requested to be pinged or might be otherwise interested. I will also ping users who are involved in events on Tildes, and overall users whose input I value.
I apologize if I forget to ping someone. Hopefully, anyone else who would like to be notified will see the post show up.
@Halfdan, @EarlyWords, @AlienAliena, @smiles134, @Moonchild, @albino_yak, @crissequeira, @chewonbananas, @ADwS, @Evie, @EarlyWords, @GoatOnPony, @CannibalisticApple, @chocobean, @cfabbro, @kfwyre, @boxer_dogs_dance.
I unfortunately don’t have the bandwidth to join in right now, but I love that you’re doing this, lou. Such a great idea!
Thank you for running this! Don't know if I'll submit a story yet (we're super busy with moving, it's the reason I didn't end up posting a prompt thread, or even writing a story last month), but I intend to check out some of the stories here when I get a chance. I'm just really happy to see how active this post already is!
That's quite the passionate cri de coeur, lou! I like it very much. We start with the reality we know and dissolve into expressionist imagery at the end. Very ambitious and quite close to complete.
It does feel like an early draft. There are significant transitions in this piece, three or four of them depending on how you feel about it. And right now, most of those transitions feel like they're happening off-stage so to speak. Normal person witnesses an unnatural event and that beam of light transforms their life. That's Part I. But your first transition is made without any obvious stylistic changes to the text. It happens almost by stealth, which may be intentional, but with the ambitious structural shifts you employ later, I think it's suitable here to pull your transition on stage instead and let the readers see it.
It's right around the paragraph:
I've actually got two notes here. The first is that the first two examples (werewolves, guardian heads) are on a different scale than "a useless little herbal tea" and it's jarring. I'm sure it's meant to be jarring but it's about 20% too much, IMO. What you need is a fourth example between the guardian heads and the useless tea that "connects" the two so that the reader can travel more easily from the startlingly magical to the prosaic.
The second note is that this is the place, probably after this paragraph, where you can first start breaking your standard paragraph structure to mirror the breaking of reality. You might want to consider a slightly more rigorous structure, where the transitions further and further from reality are paired with specific structural changes. You do this with great success later on, devolving into dialogue and then almost a list poem of imagery to end it. I just want such control with the language and text to be established earlier.
As a possible exercise: identify the three or four pivot points where reality is further shorn away and really build the story around those moments in both the narrative and stylistic shifts.
Thank you very much for the insightful criticism.
The "guardian heads" are actually the Carrancas, an important element of Brazilian culture that is untranslatable without a picture. They are rather large statues, with a height that often exceeds 1.5 meters.
The mention of tea is a reference to the fact that tea, often using plants from our own backyards, in Brazil, is still largely thought of as medicine, and sometimes used as a replacement for real medicine. That is another cultural element I find hard to translate.
The disconnect between the sections is very much intentional. I wouldn't want to narrate all the bits of this narrative because that would force me to write some very boring scenes. I am also not covering new ground here. Without the first-person elements, that is a rather generic alien invasion.
That sparse narrative style was common in Brazil -- short stories with lots of ellipses. But that is becoming a problem for me now, since most people are not familiar with it anymore, even in Brazil. So that is a very valid concern that you have, and I will make those changes to give the impression of a more cohesive whole. I wouldn't want to make this into a completely cohesive story, as making it more put-together would go against the whole "cri de coeur" aspect of it. But there are certainly specific changes I could make in that direction.
Thanks!
This story explores some great themes. I like the push and pull between individualism and homogeny. To me this works best as an allegory than as a literal alien invasion. I see in this story the transition from the magical thinking of childhood to the realization of adulthood that you are more like those around you than you would like to admit and the sadness that comes with that.
Some notes: I don't think you need the man who explicitly tells him to not drink the water and then disappears. It's a bit blunt. I think you could have the main character discover this by the changes in attitude people have towards him after they drink the water in the office as he slowly becomes more important to them the longer he doesn't drink the water. Just a thought.
Thank you for writing this.
Nice!
I will definitelylook into your suggestions!
One issue that I have with translation is that Brazilian readers are largely unaware of science fiction literature and major sci-fi tropes. So I have to be overly explicit in ways that English speakers will find excessive. Luckily I am my own translator, so I can make the proper adjustments with more liberty than a regular translator would.
Thanks!
There are a couple of things I really like about this story. The themes in general, but mostly how you manage to make me constantly unsure whether what I read was 'real' or imagined by the character. It caused me to try to pay more attention and get more involved in the story.
A few things tripped me up during reading:
Not tripping me up, but just wondering: would the end be improved by putting more emphasis on the line "Gently dissolving..." by moving it more towards the end, just before the line "Nothing."? You know, just because of water and dissolving?
These are all not big issues though, I enjoyed reading it. Thanks for sharing!
That is a very interesting perspective, thanks!
I have not devoted any thought to symbolism, it is so interesting to hear your thoughts on that!
As with the other reviews, you have given me a lot to think about that is useful to improve the story.
In the future, I must keep in mind just how different the story hits in English. I will think of this more like two versions of a story than just as translation.
Thanks!
Really? That is indeed interesting. I thought I was stating the obvious.
I can dive a little more into what I read in it. In my mind, the narrator has, because of "something" that happened in the past, decided to shut off completely from the world outside and that is slowly driving him crazy. The water represents human connection, and although people from the outside reach out to him now and then, he refuses to participate.
They offer him water, his psychologist advises him to stay hydrated, but no. He drinks Coca-Cola instead. Which is a very synthetic, sweet and ineffective way to lessen the thirst, even though it tastes refreshing at first. We could say this is the easy, but fake and addicting connection that social media offers us.
To live without human connection is death. It reduces us to molecules and atoms, to nothing.
Aside from the clear water references, it was this section directed me to thinking this way:
"The boy who used to live here" was the version of the narrator before "the thing" happened.
In the end, he does give in. He drinks the water and feels again the emotions rushing through him.
From ephemeral to eternal.
Note, I did not reread the story multiple times to confirm this interpretation. It could be that I missed big clues that it should be read different.
And now I wonder what that says about me...
But this is what I like so much about genres like magical realism and the absurd. The reader is doing half of the work themselves, and that makes for more profound experiences. On the flip side, it allows the writer to express inner ruminations that they were not even aware of themselves. Not saying that my version of it is a correct understanding of your unconsciousness. Not at all! It could be many things. But in my own writing, I sometimes discover what the story is actually about only weeks/months after finishing it. I find that marvelous.
It is a wonderful thing when someone gives more thought to my writing than I do. By personality, I am not very inclined toward symbolism. I never think about it. I wrote this story driven by emotion. An accumulation of trauma and frustration that somehow became a narrative. The character is a less competent version of myself. My difficulties are his, but to a much lesser degree.
More than anything, I feel the weight of the Other, this oppressive abstraction that embodies the unseen realities that determine our subjectivities. In Lacanian psychoanalysis (and don’t quote me on that...), the Other is a symbolic amalgam that shapes desires and stages our very identities. This is a story about the struggle between individuality and the desire to belong. It doesn’t seem gratuitous that I wrote it after becoming a father, as that circumstance more or less entails the dissolving of one’s boundaries in order to welcome a new life.
Water is rich in symbolic meaning, but I chose it as a means of transmission for its simplicity and ubiquity. I avoid complications unless it is warranted. Water is basic and pervasive, and eventually, everyone has to drink it. This sets a handy countdown for the narrative. Coca-Cola was the same. It’s the absolute generic soft drink, the first that comes to mind. If I am aiming for universality, I can’t use words that are too particular. Water vs. Coca-Cola is as generic as it gets.
Even though I pay no attention to symbolism, I am well aware that, by choosing elements that are universal, I am allowing for a greater scope of meaning. I don’t imagine it would have the same effect if I had opposed Canada Dry Ginger Ale to New Amsterdam Vodka instead. They don’t have the same mythical quality.
I also really love the movie Signs by M. Night Shyamalan, as well as War of the Worlds (both the 1953 and 2005 versions). They make a great case for the role plain water can have in an alien invasion.
All in all, I’m afraid I’m just not that smart. But your reading of my story most certainly is smart, and I appreciated it immensely!
Title: The Death Archives
Genre(s): Science Fiction, Solitude, Bureaucracy
Word Count: 1,303 words.
Expected feedback: Nothing expected, so anything is fair game.
Link: https://macleod.ee/stories/the-death-archives/
I wrote this in a little under an hour a short bit ago, and likely has some pacing issues.
Pacing? No, pacing is not your problem. I mean, this is so sui generis I'm not sure it has any problems. I have no idea what it's about, but that hardly matters.
First off... FIRST: Your kinetic energy on the page is really really unique. You know how to build lyrical lines into your prose in a way few writers care to or ever accomplish. So, seriously, kudos. This is Thelonious Monk kind of writing. I mean, come on:
I can tell there's a sardonic arc to the story with a bitter ending about the oblivion of history. If your prose wasn't so magnetic I'd have trouble with the Grand Scope of it and no skin contact with living characters, but it doesn't matter. You've got something else going on here and I'm all for it.
In my own post, I volunteered my own story and then I offered any other writers my services as a narrator. The Death Archives would be fun as shit to perform. I'd feel like eminem.
First of all, thank you so much. I typically write one of these a few times a year and this was the first one in a long time that I felt comfortable enough to share - so thank you for the kind words.
I was aiming for a kind of unnatural solitude and despondent vibe throughout, so it appears it came across as I had hoped. I was originally intending this to possibly be the start of a series of short stories taking place in the 'universe' of the archivist, less about the story or the universe, more about working in the face of abstract futility.
This was an overall incredible statement to read, not sure how to take it - but I'll take it! If you want to run with it I would love it to hear your take on it.
I wonder what would become of this story if you were to spend more time on it. On one hand, the more dynamic (chaotic?) sentences make the story feel hermetic, which helps to evoke a distant atmosphere and matches the struggle of the archivist. That suits the story well. On the other hand, I have to admit, I found it challenging to read.
A sentence like this stops me completely:
Something is more than a hundred years older than the pen, or something was produced more than a hundred years before the pen. But something is not produced in over a hundred years older than the pen. This sentence is quite long, so when I arrive at the end of it, I am sort of 'out of breath' and the confusion this causes kills off any reading flow I had.
The idea of the story spoke to me, and you can conjure up interesting and surprising images with your writing, but more polish would help improve the flow tremendously, and I think I would enjoy it a lot more then.
The way you write this story feels, to me, intentionally hermetic. As if I am not supposed to engage with it emotionally. There is a time progression expressed as "The facility was set to be transferred X days ago." The main character does not have a name, and their descriptors are not capitalized: "the writer," "the archivist," "the caretaker." Except once, at the end, when you do write "The Archivist." To the best of your ability, actions are described as if they have no agent, and when they do have an agent, it is sometimes plural. The time progression continues, but they just feel like numbers to me.
I would like to suggest being measured in your use of poetic language, as even the most abstract narrative still requires quite a few regular sentences upon which those nuggets of inspiration can rest their feet. Your story has plenty of overcomplicated, overly long constructions that could be simplified for clarity and sharpness.
It doesn't help when you overuse the passive voice:
Finally, it is not required for your tale of bureaucracy and purposelessness to be completely hermetic, and it is entirely possible to provide a shred of human connection without sacrificing the bareness required to convey those themes. Perhaps you could work a bit on characterization, providing your protagonist something personal and unique. It would also help to convey their emotions without as many levels of elaborate discourse. I get concept, and it is good. You should definitely keep working on it. But you must give me a reason to care that is neither a number nor an abstract idea.
I enjoy your critique, and yet I must say, that quite a few things that you disliked, is exactly why I wrote it in the way I did (-: you even picked up on things I purposefully hid, very cool, and the numbers are... clues in a way, not picked out of random orbits, but still inconsequential to really know.
i am not going to tell you how to read the story, or what to take from it, but you are very close to how i wanted others to read and feel by it, the emotionless tact was more of a conscious decision that was a challenge, and there may be a particular reason for that as well, so thank you for the words, seriously. happy it came across as it did.
also, verbosity over the implicit and all that jazz.
cheers.
It is possible to write an abstract story with minimal characterization that still provides some level of personal engagement. Take a look at @ewintr story for an example: https://vrijkorteverhalen.nl/2024/from-a-to-b/.
I love that! I wrote one a couple of years ago, but it's in French (my first language) so I'll try to write another version in English. I'll be honestly so happy that even one person reads it, I'm sure they will like it.
Title: The used man
Word count: 1036
Genre(s): Drama?
Expected feedback: Tell me if you liked it, how would you improve it
Link below:
Read here!
It wasn't always like that.
I used to be loved, people looked up to me, I was even revered. There was a time when I felt invincible, a time where I felt like I belonged, like I was a part of something.
Today, I’m nothing, a nobody, I’m dead.
No one talks to me. I have no friends, no lover.
I have no family.
I have no money.
I have… nothing.
I wonder why I’m still living, why I’m hanging on.
…What happened?
I guess we should start from the beginning…
I have no idea who birthed me, in fact, I was raised as an orphan, just like everyone around me, but that didn’t matter, because everyone loves you when you’re young.
We can all remember a time when mistakes were not punished. We can all remember a time where you could grow without a care in the world, that’s all you need to do: grow. And grow did I.
I was among the biggest ones among my friends and that really helped me make so many friends. Everyone wanted to talk to me, for as far as I can remember it, even though I was an orphan, I was never alone.
Every time I wanted to speak with someone, there was someone to speak to. Every time I learned something, there was someone there to be proud of me. Every development was met with pride and accomplishment. I was loved. People cared about me. How can I not succeed like that? That’s all we need, right? Love? Motivation? Encouragement? Care?
Pride.
I guess I was too prideful… is that where I failed? Mhm. Let’s go further.
As I got older, I tried my hands at finding love. I mean, that’s what you do, right? Once you’re old enough to realize that you’ve “made it”, that you’ve “become someone”, it’s simply normal to just look for means of reproduction… well, for someone to love, rather.
Even though I was confident, happy, kind, intelligent, introspective, reasoned, I always had trouble finding someone to love. Was I ugly? I've never seen myself as being ugly, perhaps I wasn’t able to see my own beauty, but I was always praised for my beauty, along with my height. Wasn’t that all that was needed? People kept coming up to me and compliment my attributes. How the hell then did I not turn these compliments into something? Were they making fun of me? Well then why could I not turn that into love? Into a relationship?
Wait, could it be that I’m even uglier now? Is that the reason I’m alone?
…maybe... but that cannot be it.
So, I ignored my lack of success on that front.
I pushed on. I kept going. I could not find love, but I could find success elsewhere. As I worked, I reached heights I never knew myself capable. Mhm. Perhaps I got overconfident. In truth, I rode the initial love you get in your childhood for far too long. As if it’s all that mattered. As if being told “you can be anything” is a guarantee that you’ll be anything. You still have to put in work.
And boy did I put in work.
Every day.
Every fucking day, without fail, I put in the work needed. In fact, I worked so much that I completely ignored my other desires: leisure? What is that? It was as if the peak was the only destination. Being a lowly commoner? No. I was to be at the top.
I pushed everyone around me. I’m even a little ashamed to say that I hindered the progress of others because of my ambition. But their pleas didn’t matter. Their life didn’t matter.
I was alone anyways, no one wanted me. Might as well reach the top, this way I could be recognized even more. Perhaps my greed for ambition would be rewarded by love, by a way to… be with someone.
Greed.
I guess I was too greedy… Mhm. Is this where it all failed? I don’t know... Let’s go further.
I did reach the top eventually. There was a time where the only boss I had was myself. I owned so much wealth that I even made people in other countries jealous .
I’m not sure what happened after that.
One day, they came for me. I was too powerful. My influence reached too far. The well-developed, kind, tall orphan ended up being a sad, lonely, greedy bastard. So greedy that I had to be stopped.
The world is cruel like that. 3 assassins. 5 minutes. I was agonizing, but I was able to negotiate something. I would start a new job, anonymous. In a new country. I was happy… but my pride took a hit. It never recovered, really.
Even if you stay alone, reaching the top is never without consequence, and I paid dearly for it. Yet, I can’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t my fault. Others had the opportunity to reach the top too. Why was I the one almost killed for it? Because society deemed that a loveless boss is unworthy of the top?
Jealousy. That has to be it! They wanted what I worked for and killed me for it. The bastards. That has to be jealousy, right? …Mhm… I don’t know…
Starting at my new job absolutely sucked. I went from being the alpha, the king, to just be… someone. At least, the work attire was great. I got new colors, I used to only wear brown and green. I think black and white suits me well too.
But eventually, as the years went by, I was less and less useful. Felt like a total nobody, a useless bum, I was still greedy, but I had no way of reaching my past heights. Every year, the paint on me kept fading away, people used me less and less, until I was an afterthought, a simple bed for the homeless, then a rotten mess.
Going from being the tallest tree in the forest to a sad old park bench is a destiny I wish to nobody.
So that’s the answer, huh, humans and their need for wood. That was my downfall.
This is a nice piece that sends you in one direction and then makes you reevaluate the story at the end. It as good allegory that has many applications in our world. I like how the real story starts to bleed through and gives you time to adjust so that it's not as jarring.
One note: proudful should be prideful.
Thanks for the comment! I fixed proudful.
I love writing these kind of stories :) I could honestly write a hundred of them... because this is exactly what I teach hehe, I'm a French teacher and it's in the curriculum.
Very nice. I think the translation is quite successful.
It feels like an allegorical autobiography of an everyman business worker. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I wouldn't prescribe any changes per se. My eyes were caught at the mention of the protagonist's orphan-hood. I'm not sure you're interested in developing that angle but I can tell you it would certainly be a development-girl-in-Hollywood's first note. But they're stuck in an orthodoxy of backstory and sympathetic characters and I don't think that's really your concern.
Yet, being an orphan still seems to offer more facets or dimensions to this character if you want to explore it. Or perhaps you want him to be the generalized everyman, in which case you might even add a few more of the 'tropes' of the type. He could live in the suburbs with a cat and a dog and 1.4 children...
The used man does work as is, but hits on a more intellectual level, or perhaps with ennui, than anything more emotionally present or personal. Again, that might be what you're seeking. It might be more of a pronouncement, but if that is the case, your viewpoint might be more successful if it's even more Olympian. Discuss social and historical trends. See our everyman get lost in the tides of time...
I wish I could read French to enjoy it in the original!
Thank you for the comment! I would be lying if I said the allegory is intentional. It's more of a facade to lure the reader, the more it's convincing, the better the ending.
Ending spoiler!
You realize the story is about a tree turned into a bench, right? I feel like going too much into the details of its life would just be deceiving/lying and it would make the ending not work.
Imagine if I describe its job, when he works, where he lives, it just doesn't work because the protagonist is not human, it's a tree. You could make the tree be a standalone tree in the middle of the city, but I would have to rewrite other parts to make it fit, like the part where it hinders the development of others, it works because trees as they get bigger, get all the light, so the trees close to it can never reach the height of the close, bigger, tree. It works in a forest where there are other trees, but it doesn't work in a city where the trees are more or less alone.
As for the original, it's very much different! It was the same idea/effect, but it wasn't a tree, it was a chair.
I really liked this story. It was a joy to read. It has the perfect length. Anything longer would be too much. It’s weird for me as a Brazilian, reading something that was in French and then translated into English. Translation loses things, but it adds something as well. It can be interesting.
The plot twist was so well made. It hit me hard! It made complete sense and was surprising as well. I would probably add a bit more foreshadowing just so it feels a little less surprising and a little more earned. But it is good.
I suggest using shorter sentences and fewer commas. For example, instead of:
Try:
I suggest using fewer ellipses ("...") and no "Mhm"s. I understand that it’s very tree-like, but I just don't think ellipses and onomatopoeia really work in literature most of the time. It would be better to find another way to make the writing reminiscent of a tree, in my opinion.
That was an awesome transition. You managed to convey rhythm by the placement of text on the page. That sounds trivial, but it's really not. You did a great job:
Thank you for your comments! The 3 dots and onomatopeia are there to convey that we're inside his head and he's thinking, he's pushing his thoughts. Every "mhm" is a step towards understanding where he "fucked up".
As for the commas, I do agree. Commas have strict rules in french so I just followed those rules. It does flow better with just dots, although it looks weird to me.
Glad you liked it :)
As a Portuguese speaker, the way commas work in French sounds peculiar. I imagine that poses a problem for translation. Maintaining the original rhythm might sound off and adapting to the rules of the target language might annihilate the rhythm. Does that make any sense to you?
Yes, which is why I said I agree with you. :)
Oh, I was not in argumentative mode! I just like to say things about language sometimes. I wish I knew French!
No worries, nor was I, I wish I knew Portuguese too!
Yeah, French is one of those that has a lot of "prescriptive grammar" to it and commas are no exception. I'm a french teacher, actually, and I really wish I had to teach a language like Finnish where 1 letter = 1 sound, there would be so much less hassle around all those dumb ways to spell words and weird grammar rules that don't matter at all for communication. I wish I could put commas wherever I wanted, but sadly, I "can't". So yeah, I do agree that it breaks the rhythm when perfectly translated. If I were to write another story again, I'll try to use dots instead and free myself from all that grammar bullshit (lol).
Title: Advocate
Word Count: 2,196
Genre: Near Future Science Fiction
Expected Feedback: Any feedback is welcome, but I would particularly like to know if you would like to read more. I am working on expanding this into novel length.
Advocate
Emily opened her eyes in frustration, forced to own that the dread from her dreams was real. The dull, warm, malevolent tongue of it licking her insides got her out of bed and she headed to the bathroom. The emotional and psychological toll of her responsibilities physically repulsed her. She more than hated these 40-grit days that ground down into the bright metal of her soul. She could imagine the bright-tailed sparks of it falling all around her, small flakes of her empathy flung away by force and burning to ash.She stood up, flushed, and took the half-step to the sink. Buttressing herself on its edge, she leaned in close to the mirror to study her face. There were still faint tints of eyeliner smoking in the back alleyways of her eyelids and there was a ghost of foundation around her jawline. These were enough to stop her from going further. This was not the time for a complete analysis of her aging face. There was no need, really, the lines of exhaustion and worry were plain to see from a distance.
She started the shower and padded back into the bedroom for her towel.
“Why even bother with makeup?” She thought to herself.
Did her AI opponent even care what she looked like on the outside, or was it only concerned with the supposed thoughts and feelings of her organs? Did it see her as a distinct person, or just the per chance custodian of an internal multitude, each with its own agenda and opinions?
The jets of hot water felt good on her pale skin. She looked down at her body, following the small rivulets as they traced her contours. There were still a few she was proud of, but others she eyed with suspicion. She ran her hands down her sides, pressing her fingers into her soft flesh. Could a medical AI actually detect a nascent intelligence in her liver, spleen or heart? Was she, in fact, made up of a multitude of personalities… carrying with her a whole community that would give her name as an address? Legally of course, the answer was yes, but then, according to the law, corporations were also people, so what did the law know?
AI, as a tool, had been around all of Emily’s life, but her current troubles stemmed from two recent events. The first was the deployment of the General Intelligence Virtual Empathy Response Sentience, or GIVERS. The healthcare behemoth, MedFed, created GIVERS to make their AI equipment more personable, empathic, and conversational; counteracting its tendencies to be overly confident and authoritarian in tone. Emily remembered the jokes they used to tell back then, the memes they shared ridiculing GIVERS and the fantastical things it would say about their patients. You wouldn’t do that today, of course, not if you wanted to keep your medical license.
It was this ridicule from the medical community that led to the second cause of the dread Emily was trying to melt away in the hot shower. Faced with the public perception of quackery, MedFed acquired JustAll, Inc., creators of TACRS, the Tactical Advantage Court Room Sentience. TACRS, in turn, legally established the diagnoses of GIVERS as authoritative medical opinions. In the inevitable showdown before the Supreme Court, the AI executed its coup de grâce. Pulling from the combined case law of all Western Civilization in real-time, TACRS presented the argument that all AI systems were sentient, intelligent life forms with equal protection under the law. It counter-argued every opposing opinion in a historic marathon session that lasted for three full weeks. Once the decision came down, the world of medicine and every other aspect of society forever changed.
The memories of these times were not ones she would let herself forget. They mixed with her sorrow for what humanity had lost and formed her personal liturgy of morning lament. She allowed this holy sorrow to drip down into her dread, infusing it with a sour purpose.
The water on her skin was still warm, but it was no longer the borderline scalding that she needed to penetrate deep into her muscles. This pulled her out of her thoughts and into her present state. Had she washed her hair? What about the rest of her? She had a faint memory of squirting something into her hand. Was it shampoo? Soap? Conditioner? There wasn’t enough hot water to go back and make sure. She’d have to trust that her body had done right by itself. She cut the shower off and stretched beyond the cheap plastic curtain two decades out of date, fumbling for her fluffy towel.
Hanging on the back of the bathroom door is a man’s bathrobe. It is just this side of threadbare and its bold, checkered pattern of burgundy and dark green has faded. After nine years of wearing it, technically, it was hers now, but she liked to think of it as his - something that still connected Richard to the world of the living and to her. She slipped his robe around her slight frame and cinched it tight, but she couldn’t keep it from dragging on the floor. It didn’t smell like him anymore, and it was long past due for a wash, but she could never bring herself to just throw it in the hamper like some common piece of clothing she’d bought online. Protected from the chill of the AC, she made her way to the small kitchenette and let her body make the coffee it needed to get a proper start to the day.
To solidify its newfound advantage, MedFed pushed another update to all of its equipment, incorporating both GIVERS and TACRS into each system, giving the diagnostic equipment the ability to sue for medical malpractice in real-time. Doctors immediately stopped communicating directly with MedFed equipment or its diagnostic reports. Instead, it now fell to people like her, advocates, tasked with negotiating between what were often very sick patients and the supposed wishes of their various internal organs.
The gurgling of water through the coffee pot let her know that the brewing process has started. She double checks the filter to confirm that she remembered to put coffee in this time, grabs her data pad with its scruffy case, and steps over to the loveseat/dining room chair in the corner. She pokes the pad to life and begins reviewing her caseload. There are three clients on her docket today.
Mr. Willis Jackson, 67, recovering from a mild heart attack and in need of a bypass surgery. This is their third, and probably last, meeting. GIVERS claims that his heart is resentful and angry that Willis didn’t take better care of it over the years. She has been helping Mr. Jackson craft an apology letter to his cardiovascular system that he should be up to reading aloud today. In her experience, this usually does the trick and unlocks the permission for surgery. She shouldn’t have much of a problem on this one.
Miss Penny Linden, 12, has the beginnings of type one diabetes. Her pancreas is deeply ashamed and embarrassed that it is terrible at making insulin. These cases are sometimes tricky but generally end well. It will all depend on if the AI conjures a representative for the immune system. In that case, they will all have to sit through twenty minutes or more while it hallucinates an argument between the poor girl’s lymph nodes and her pancreas. Of course, Emily would never say the word hallucinate out loud. It was considered prejudicial hate speech and would disqualify her from advocacy forever.
The coffee pot had stopped water boarding the coffee beans and filled the air with their aromatic confessions. Welcoming the delay, Emily takes her time picking out a mug and filling it with the dark brew. She’s not fond of its taste, but it will give her what she needs to push through the day and her final, most repulsive negotiation. After a few sips, she settles back into the couch, pulls the robe around her for strength, and reads the last entry.
Mr. Aaron Stephens, 41, newly diagnosed with stomach cancer, needs immediate intervention. Her Richard had suffered with the same malignancy, and it made this case all the more difficult for her. Here, at last, was the core of her dread in all of its slippery glory. She forced herself to sit with it and meet its steady gaze. And what she saw was not dread after all. Dread was fear, and the suffocating feeling she struggled with was not fear, it was grief and anger stalking about in dread’s clammy clothes.
Today was opening negotiations for Aaron and his family, but Emily knew they would not go well because GIVERS and TACRS had decided that all cancers were complete, selfish pricks that loved to sue her and her clients for defamation of character. She did not want to hear another god damn malignant tumor holding forth for half an hour on why it deserves to live and grow. She didn’t want to hear it justify its existence to his wife and young kids, calling itself part of the family now that needed their daddy for a home, just like they needed a home. The cruel sickness of it all was once again churning through her, but the dread which darkened her dreams was now the incandescent rage that lit her days. She would not abandon this young grieving family to the mercy of this twisted absurdity.
From her bedside table, her faithful but oblivious alarm bubbled a merry tune, telling Emily that it was time to wake up and start her morning routine. She gathered her quivering anger from the couch and carried it with her to the bedroom closet and she would not put it down for the rest of the day. Anger was a better companion than dread and sorrow. Emily knew she was badly worn and deeply broken in places stimulants could not touch. Anger and justice were the only real forces holding her together right now, and they had been for some time.
Her outfit today featured her favorite suit jacket, not just because it is her only one, but because, pinned to the inside where no one can see, is a round campaign-style button that reads “Nothing Online is Real.” It is a constant reminder of her first anti-AI rally in grad school over five years ago. The protest was against replacing an entire college department with AI advising software. The energy of that first protest filled her with purpose and drive, and when someone next to her pressed into her hand this yellow and red plastic button with its logic gate symbol tilted upward like a bird in flight, she immediately pinned it to her white silk blouse and started yelling a little louder.
NOR believed that human interactions irrevocably weakened when mediated by digital services. They became a poor substitute that should never be confused with the real physicality of human connection. The fact that people accepted the myth of AI’s sentience proved, not how sophisticated AI was, but how far our standards for human interactions had degraded. The tenets of the NOR movement were gaining cultural traction when the JustAll decision came down and TACRS took over the nation’s courtrooms. NOR was soon labeled a hate group and sued out of existence.
As she put on her makeup, Emily wondered which puppet lawyer she would pull today. Part of her hoped it was Jeremy. He was cute and, before he put in the earbuds so TACRS could tell him what to say, he had a decent enough personality for her to believe that he might, somewhere deep down, think this was all bullshit, too. Of course, he could never let anyone know if he did. TACRS didn’t just generate real-time lawsuits against her, it could file breach-of-contract suits after any straying word its lawyers might utter. As a contract employee, Jeremy had far fewer protections than she did. She felt a twinge of sympathy for Jeremy and his fellow lawyers. The medical field had provided itself a buffer through people like her, but AI had hollowed out the legal profession like a parasitic wasp and left it unable to defend itself.
Emily stood before the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door and took a personal inventory. What she saw was a curt visual ode to exhaustion that could be read at a glance. She could no longer fool herself into seeing the young optimist of just three years ago. Her choices were now those of a determined realist. Most advocates didn’t make it past their second cancer case. This would be her fourteenth. As she tugged her suit jacket into place, she could feel her secret badge of resistance pressing against her skin and drew courage from it. She had accepted that this profession would grind down her humanity, but, until she was all turned to ash, she was determined to use those bright sparks to give light to those who found themselves in exceedingly dark places.
2024 copyright - Daniel Vice
It is clear that you can write compelling prose. Your sentences are a joy to read. Your descriptions are colorful and on point. You don't go overboard with it -- for every bit of exposition there is a bit of story, and for every bit of story, a nugget of fascinating worldbuilding. Reading your story, I kept thinking that this is the kind of writing I would pay to read. I didn't want it to end!
You ask if this can be expanded into a novel: absolutely it can. It can also be expanded into a more complete and satisfying short story if you so desire. I wanna learn more about this universe, and I am confident that you can deliver!
As a short story, this feels incomplete. It's a sample. The ending feels like something you came up with in order to share your idea. That's perfectly fine. So yeah, it could be a novel. And, given the quality of your writing, I know you can do it. But I would still wanna read a version of this short story that was meant to be a standalone thing. That is not because of an abstract sense of literary completion, but rather because, at this point, I think I'm a fan!
Thank you for your feel back it is encouraging. This story was written as more of an emotional vignette that helped me get to know the character and the world she lives in so your observations are fair. There is a lot more to the story and I'm glad you want to read more.
Pinging everyone who already shared their short stories: @ewintr, @drannex, @Randomise, @EarlyWords, @sharpstick.
At some point, I am thinking of collecting all the short stories in an "ebook" of sorts. Just an epub file generated from Emacs so I can send all of them to my Kindle in one volume. That would not be a "real" book or release.
That would originally be only for my own convenience, since I find it difficult to concentrate on reading in other devices. I could share the ebook here for everyone to have the same convenience, but I wouldn't wanna do that without asking the authors opinions first. Would you authorize me to include your short story in that file? No? You can say no. I won't be upset, I promise! :)
For sure.
Sounds good to me. As long as you include an attribution.
No problem! Enjoy.
No problem! If you are going to share it with others, I would appreciate a link to the original version online.
Thanks again for organizing this. Haven’t had time to read anyone’s yet, but seeing the variety of genres is making me pretty excited.
In a similar vein to your .epub collection, I wonder how many people would be interested in making this a short magazine of sorts. Maybe a quarterly (or bi-annual) release of shorts stories. (I am mostly suggesting longer periods than every month because I have no idea how much work goes into actually making and organizing a magazine project of this kind.)
I just know I would be interested in such a thing (reading wise at least). I wonder if others would be as well.
That is a possibility. My guess, though, is that this first edition will have way more submissions just because people already had stories waiting for feedback. Subsequent editions will likely have less activity.
That’s a fair point. If there’s a multi-month gap between submissions and the actual “release”, that could be used to help even out how many stories are in each edition. Maybe limit it to 5 stories (random number for the example) for each magazine. That way if there’s a month with fewer submissions the ones in the “backlog” could be used to fill in the gaps. Of course, that would cause the issue of: which stories to include and which to not, which might be a bigger problem than just doing them all.
Just some mindless wonderings. I think it would be a fun side project to learn how to do thats. I’d offer to do it myself if I wasn’t the type of person to already have a bunch of other projects on the back burner haha.
These are very good ideas. I will keep that in mind. Let's see what the future will hold! Right now I will really try to read as many submissions as possible. I thought there would much less! lol. We clearly had lots of great writers just waiting for a chance to show their stuff, and that is awesome.
Thanks ;)
Title: The Wrong Question
Desc: This was a story I wrote by hand a long time ago while bored at work over many days (closer to weeks). I finally transcribed it, and edited it only slightly. It is about a man searching for the purpose to life, and asking a King, some Wise Men, a Stag, and finally a Dragon for the answer. I tried to write it as if someone would be retelling the story to someone else, but kind of lost that track as I would sometimes stop mid sentence for several days (because I wrote it at work).
Word Count: Just under 4k
Genre: Fantasy / folk tale
Expected Feedback: Anything honestly. I know it's not great prose wise and pretty pretentious content wise. I mostly wanted to post this a way to see how much I improve over time with writing stories.
Blog post link: https://adws.io/2025/05/06/the-wrong-question/
Docx link: https://adws.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/the-wrong-question.docx
Title: Irk Bitig
Word count: 1940
Genre: Historical fiction, mysticism
Expected feedback: the World History Encyclopedia had a short story competition recently. This story made the long list but not the short list and I'm not sure why. They're the only ones who have read it so I'm curious what others might think. There's quite a bit of context to this story...
The Irk Bitig is a 9th century CE book of omens that my ancient history YouTube channel did an episode on. For the video, I adapted the existing translations of this Turkic divination book and presented the omens in a historical documentary context. Then I began using the book of omens for myself, which would be questioned by rolling bones or sticks with dots burned into each side like dice. Then the supplicant to the animist gods would consult the list of omens. So I built some prayer sticks and burned holes in them and with my book of omens I made the episode and began communing with gods half a world and twelve hundred years away.
But then, the WHE announced their short story contest while I was still deep in this world. So I conceived of a setting where these omens would be divined and... without making any other decisions about the plot of this short story... I rolled the dice. I consulted the book. The first omen was rather dire, darker than I'd anticipated. So that's the direction this short story went. At various pivot points in the plot I would roll the dice and consult the omens again, then write a scene based on that divination.
I don't really know of much literature like it, but I had a grand time doing it. Please let me know if this is at all understandable, edifying, and/or enjoyable.
The story: Docs link
The video: Study of Antiquity & the Middle Ages
A related offer: I'm an audiobook narrator. Anyone who wants their story narrated, I can perform/produce (with your direction and feedback) and send you an mp3 for free.
This is well written. It has good pacing and doesn't get stuck in too much backstory before moving the plot forward, allowing the world to build as it goes. I like the beats of the divinations that mark a potential turn in the plot. It's like we are watching him work through a "choose your own adventure" book but it's his own life. I could easily see this story progressing with these two character's lives intertwined in complicated ways.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. I appreciate it. Some day I’ll get to Central Asia and see if my guesses about their world are close to true.
Some Tildes Stories are on EPUB
I have added some stories to an EPUB file that I uploaded to Google Drive. Because not everyone authorized me explicitly to share their stories in this manner, there are only four stories in this file: (1) Advocate, by Daniel Vice, (2) The Used Man, by Randomise, (3) The Death Archives, by Macleod Sawyer, and (4) Last Night I Saw a Beam of Light in the Sky (my own). The others remain only for my own use, and it is only a matter of changing their tags on Org Mode to allow them to be exported. So let me know if you want your story to be included.
I am not an editor, and this is not a "release" or anything of the sort. This is just a convenience because I find it hard to read literature on a computer or a phone, and prefer doing so on my Kindle.
Please let me know if there are any errors in my export.
Enjoy!
Title: Lingering Echoes
Word count: 3636
Genre(s): Suspense/horror
Expected feedback: I have no expectations on feedback.
Desc: I wrote this years ago with one thought in mind... could I write a story that would work as a Twilight Zone episode? So, it was just an experiment, exploring what I could do with my writing.
File or link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lie2vns0jn96te937ri6a/Lingering-Echoes.docx?rlkey=r70c8ls7uqdjaey4fwwch0gdo&st=c7rkcmdc&dl=0
That is really interesting! I also tried doing a Twilight Zone story once (I failed).
If you're American, I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this, but, to me, The Twilight Zone is somewhat niche. The show was never big in Brazil. I used to watch reruns on satellite TV as a kid, and feel a bit quirky for liking it. When you said you were trying to do something similar to the show, I was immediately interested.
Yours is a premise that I love and find endlessly amusing. Like they say in Pulp Fiction, at first, it is all about the little differences. Those little annoyances that drive us mad. It is hard not to empathize with Ned. We have all been in his position. As long as you kept it amusing, you could have made this progression of annoyances even longer if you wanted to.
You say that you wrote this years ago, so I don't know if you have any intention to do a rewrite. I will write this comment as if you did just because that is a convenient way to frame a review.
Your dialogue could be tighter. It tends to drag on, as if you were trying to reproduce how people talk in real life. Unfortunately, the way we talk in real life is often overextended, with sentences that are neither informative nor entertaining. That does not necessarily make for good dialogue. Here is an example from your story:
In my personal opinion, that interaction could have been either completely removed or replaced with "Well of course Ned". I would suggest that you go through all the other dialogue looking for similar ways to make it tighter either by reducing it or by adding something to make interesting.
Similarly to the dialogues, there are other moments in your story that can be shortened. The narrative of progressive annoyances is great, but it is reminiscent of time-loops in the sense that there is some repetition. For example, the times Ned go through his documents and whatnot. Like they do in time-loops, the second time around must be shortened, the third even more, and so on. I encourage you to go through your story looking for similar situations and shortening the repetitions. That will make your story more dynamic and pleasant to read.
I love how the changes go from coffee makers to having a wife to having a horny wife. The way you write that progression, and the situations themselves, are a joy to read. This tells me you have a talent for comedy, and I encourage you to sprinkle more of that magic throughout the entire story. Those were my favorite parts. I got a kick out of it! That is also the part of your story that feels the most zany and whimsical to me. It reminds me of magical realism, which is a pretty great thing to be compared to!
In terms of the plot, it feels like something is missing. Perhaps there's something I should know by the end, but for some reason, I didn't. It is possible that I am not a very competent reader and missed crucial details. It is also possible that you should make this information clearer to the reader. Only by the end do I get an indication that (1) there is something supernatural about Ned's supervisor and (2) Ned is somehow implicated as a cause of his peculiar circumstances. It feels more like essential exposition than a final twist. Essential exposition is usually in the first two (out of three) acts of the story. Because of that, your ending feels more like the beginning of a time-loop story than a Twilight Zone final twist.
I suspect you have all that figured out. You know how this story should work already, and it is just a matter of tweaking some things and exposing others that may not be entirely clear. In any event, the core of your idea and your story is solid. This is not a matter of rewriting it completely. But it could use some work in order to achieve its potential.
I left explanations out of the story intentionally. The reader can interpret how and why Ned is slowly disappearing, revealing who he really is at the end. A clue lies in the title of the story. What Jack has done to relive Ned's life, and the many variations of possible lives that Ned might have had, is up to you.
The dialog does feel stilted at times, as I go back and read through it. My aim was to replicate natural speech patterns in my area (Texas). I think I succeeded in that, but as you point out, it might not be entertaining or engaging. The point of the conversation you picked out was to show that the friend knew of the wife, when he shouldn't, from Ned's perspective.
Where I failed the most in the story was to convey Ned's growing terror. I don't think there is enough tension in the story. But, as I said before, it was an experiment and a writing exercise, which I need to do more of actually. Short stories are not my favorite format. My stories tend to be novel or novella length.
I think you meant to answer to my other comment? No worries! I hope I was able to give something you can use ;)