I posted previously about all the winnings and good things going on. This evening I had to pick up son from girlfriend's house and then bring him to the house to pick up a few things so I could turn around and take him to his friend's house to spend the night. On the way home, I stopped at the post office since I've not checked it in a couple of days. It was full of fun envelopes and not so fun ones (those are the pesky bills). One of the fun ones was my second place story, "Zombies Amuck," with the judge's comments and my check for winning ($20 for second place; first place person received $30). It's fun trying to decipher the comments made but for the most part they pertained to expanding more, describing more, give more detail, et cetera.
Two of my favorite comments were here: (this is right after George, the main character tries to keep Amy and William, his two best friends, away from the family plot so they don't discover he's a zombie)
"Well, I've seen plenty of graves and there's nothing special about that little plot back there. Figured we should just move on and go find some more interesting ones."
Amy finally caught up to us, her face ashen like she had seen a ghost, or a zombie. (Judge's comment - Good image)
He did say a little further on that I had use of dialog (whew - because that's what I use most in my stories - lol).
And his final comment: Very interesting story. You develop interesting characters and an element of mystery & surprise in the story. I enjoyed it!
I think if we had a another thousand words I could have developed and expanded the areas that he felt needed more description. As is, the story limit was 2000 words and I came in at 1793 words (so guess I did have a bit more to play with but I don't like really cutting right up the max limit). So now I have a certificate and a story with comments for my entry and who knows, next year I may do it again.
I like getting packages like this in the mail - see you all in the postings - E :)
4 comments:
Yay you!!! Me too - good mail is always fun - and so are uplifting comments. Congratulations, E!
Hey Cas, I'm so glad to see you are still around. Hope things are going well for you. Drop me an email sometime - we have some catching up to do - lol. E :)
It's always nice to get feedback like this and who knows, maybe this little story will become a novel one day. I had a short story I wrote for a writing workshop that years later I took to a different workshop for mystery. The instructor loved the opening scene so much he helped me plot out different ideas to turn the short story into a novel. It's now one of my many works in progress.
Thanks, Virginia. I don't really know right now that I have thoughts of turning it any further than it is. I had originally started the story for the R. L. Stine contest while I was working with the class in Utah via virtual means. They entered the contest trying to win books and stuff for their school or class.
I'll probably do another short story for the Writers' Guild Competition next year.
I only have one novel length story in my repetoire and it will get published one of these days - lol. Other than that, I love doing short stories and don't strive to do novels. Thanks for stopping by. E :)
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