NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #197 - "Alchemy"

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R

Red

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Theme: Alchemy

Word Limit: 2500 words

Submission Deadline: Friday September 16th

Voting Deadline: Monday September 19th

Secondary Objective: Avoid contrivance
Weave your threads carefully, but don't indicate where we're going. Avoid the expected convergence of ideas. Bring us to unexpected places. Don't let us make out the shape of your structure as you set the eaves. Above all, be true to your characters, and to your story.


Submission Guidelines:

- One entry per poster.
- All submissions must be written during the time of the challenge.
- Using the topic as the title of your piece is discouraged.
- Keep to the word count!

Voting Guidelines:

- Three votes per voter. Please denote in your voting your 1st (3 pts), 2nd (2 pts), and 3rd (1 pt) place votes.
- Please read all submissions before voting.
- You must vote in order to be eligible to win the challenge.
- When voting ends, the winner gets a collective pat on the back, and starts the new challenge.

Important side note: A lot of our regulars like to write out short critiques/comments for the stories, but you can always opt out by simply adding a note like "I'd prefer no critiques" in the post where you submit your story. We're an understanding group and respect that not everyone wants comments on their work. Above all, we just want to read your story.

NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge FAQ
Previous Challenge Threads and Themes
 
Congrats Red. Looking forward to that secondary, kind of glad we're getting in on the upswing of difficult secondaries again.

Anyway, to drum up some conversation, how does everyone feel about perspectives(ie: first/third/close/omniscient)? Me and Cyan talked quite a bit about them last writing hangout, and I'll be honest, I don't get how to do third person omniscient well. How does one perspective jump effectively?

Also side note, I think Mike is crazy about his dislike of second person, but that might be because I like weird things, and I thought Tangent's use of second person was well done.
 
Good topic and secondary. Contrivance is something I sometimes struggle with, as is playing too much to expectation. I wonder if that's something that ronito's exercise would help with--come up with three ideas [for endings], discard them all, come up with something else.
 
The only example of omniscience I can think of is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that tone is consistently the same narrator the whole way through, though. And that asshole in the Bible, but that's really niche.

and second person isn't really helpful in anything other than advertising.
 
Red said:
Secondary Objective: Avoid contrivance
Weave your threads carefully, but don't indicate where we're going. Avoid the expected convergence of ideas. Bring us to unexpected places. Don't let us make out the shape of your structure as you set the eaves. Above all, be true to your characters, and to your story.
Click to expand...
I have a feeling my story may have inspired this one.
 
Cowlick said:
I have a feeling my story may have inspired this one.
Click to expand...
It was a common motif last round.

I couldn't think of a better way to phrase the secondary. I think stories with well-built foundations tend to feel less contrived even if they feature unlikely coincidences, and even if we have some idea of what is yet to happen. Foreshadowing is useful and necessary. Without it, we are blindsided and can feel cheated by events that seem to happen simply to move the story forward. Effective foreshadowing provides the stepping stones we must use to arrive at a satisfying conclusion. When it is too direct and obvious however, we can feel afterward as if the story is merely performing the necessary motions to get us from point A to point B, that it has simply become a mechanical exercise on the part of the writer. "Avoid contrivance" then is meant to discourage predictability and plot convenience in general.

Some of my favorite stories have what may be considered contrivances: Cheever's The Swimmer, Carver's Whoever Was Using This Bed, Canin's The Palace Thief. The contrived elements of these stories are part of what makes them so successful: they provide subtext and meat to hook into on deep readings. I think that is one of the ways we might distinguish well executed contrivance against poorly executed contrivance: one deepens our understanding of the world by anchoring a story to an idea that resonates in our real, true lives; the other simply exists as a pat or convenient way for a story to unfold or end, as a trick for the author to demonstrate cleverness, or to make a story feel tied nearly together and "complete"—as if this is something that should be striven for. For this lesser kind of contrivance I think of JJ Abram's Star Trek Into Darkness. I won't spoil the story for those who haven't seen it. I am sure those who have seen it instantly recognize the plot points which exist to conveniently move the story forward (and continue the series).
 
Freeza Under The Shower said:
The only example of omniscience I can think of is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that tone is consistently the same narrator the whole way through, though. And that asshole in the Bible, but that's really niche.

and second person isn't really helpful in anything other than advertising.
Click to expand...

Omniscient was more common in the past (especially the sort with intrusive narration, which these days can feel a bit twee). But it's still used a lot in some genres, notably romance. One of the strengths of omniscient is the ability to show us the thoughts of multiple characters as we go through the events of a scene, which works really well to help build the conflicts and tensions of romance. Learning how to do it well is another question, but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

Ditto second-person, which is even harder to do well and even less common, but you can do some interesting things with it. I thought Tangent's use of it last time was pretty solid.
 
This should be a neat theme; I'm ready to take a mulligan on the last one.

I don't really have a preference when it comes to perspective, each have their little tricks that make them play out better than others. Subject-verb agreement is really the most important thing regardless of style, as switching between the agreement can drive a reader crazy.

Second person is tough because it tends to be written in a more passive voice and you have to call out references to your reader (you are speaking to them directly after all). It works well in small doses, especially if you can pull the reader's attention to certain details in your story.

Omniscient is actually difficult to define since you could argue any story written in past tense falls in that category. There are little tricks though to emphasize it. the phrase "little did he know", for example, but really any kind of foreshadowing element falls in that realm. It's also hard since we are talking short stories that don't really have a lot of space to reveal that additional knowledge but it can work well with a lot of attention to detail.

Anyway, really excited to get started on this one. Good luck all!
 
Congrats, Red!

Wow, fun topic and secondary. Not saying I'm committing myself to an idea yet, but still!

Cyan said:
I wonder if that's something that ronito's exercise would help with--come up with three ideas [for endings], discard them all, come up with something else.
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Where is Ronito, anyway?
 
Also, I think avoiding contrivance is my biggest writing challenge. I tend to go straight to the very obvious... and thus don't consider myself terribly creative. Definitely going to try the ronito exercise this time!

Now to come up with an idea...
 
I keep meaning to enter one of these. Would be nice to get back into regular writing. Not sure what I would do for the theme and there's only 1 week to go. Maybe the next time... but I feel like I've said the same thing to myself the last time I saw this thread pop up.
 
TheChaos0 said:
I keep meaning to enter one of these. Would be nice to get back into regular writing. Not sure what I would do for the theme and there's only 1 week to go. Maybe the next time... but I feel like I've said the same thing to myself the last time I saw this thread pop up.
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Just write something. Everyone in here but Mike will happily attest to the fact that Friday night is all the time you need to write your story. Which gives you six days or so to think about what to actually write.
 
TheChaos0 said:
I keep meaning to enter one of these. Would be nice to get back into regular writing. Not sure what I would do for the theme and there's only 1 week to go. Maybe the next time... but I feel like I've said the same thing to myself the last time I saw this thread pop up.
Click to expand...
These threads only go for a week and a half. If a week isn't enough, when would be? What would the circumstances have to be for you to actually do it?
 
TheChaos0 said:
I keep meaning to enter one of these. Would be nice to get back into regular writing. Not sure what I would do for the theme and there's only 1 week to go. Maybe the next time... but I feel like I've said the same thing to myself the last time I saw this thread pop up.
Click to expand...
Like everything else in life, there's never a good time. You just have to do it.
 
Cyan said:
These threads only go for a week and a half. If a week isn't enough, when would be? What would the circumstances have to be for you to actually do it?
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Week an a half is more than enough. For some reason thought these go on for longer.

Red said:
Like everything else in life, there's never a good time. You just have to do it.
Click to expand...

Shh, no talking sense here. ;)
 
Will join in spirit. I'd make a joke about cameras breaking when I start filming, but my whole Chromebook er broke... So...
 
Well this all sounds terribly contrived.

Writing hangout in about half an hour. Standard quick recap: it's on Google Hangouts, and the format is ten minutes of chat, then thirty minutes of writing with mics muted, repeated until we've gone for two hours. Webcams aren't required, though several of us will have them. Mics are recommended but also not required, as you can use the text chat.

The hangout link is (quote to see):
 
FlowersisBritish said:
Congrats Red. Looking forward to that secondary, kind of glad we're getting in on the upswing of difficult secondaries again.

Anyway, to drum up some conversation, how does everyone feel about perspectives(ie: first/third/close/omniscient)? Me and Cyan talked quite a bit about them last writing hangout, and I'll be honest, I don't get how to do third person omniscient well. How does one perspective jump effectively?

Also side note, I think Mike is crazy about his dislike of second person, but that might be because I like weird things, and I thought Tangent's use of second person was well done.
Click to expand...
Second person is underused. It's unfairly derided. It works both as direct address and intimate self-reflection as if from a first person source. It separates itself from first person by forcing a distance or a divide between speaker and subject, and many people dislike it for this. I think it is precisely that distance that makes it useful: self-reflection often necessitates us to step out and consider ourselves as if under a microscope. We ourselves become the subject of our own mind's eye.

There is an element of accusation to this. And again I think even that benefits certain stories, wherein a past self has been cruel or uncaring toward its future, present self. Or has been unaware of how harsh the world can be, what was in store. The speaker is separate from "you" because he is privileged with some knowledge that "you" does not have. The story is the process of imparting that information to "you"—although this is typically a fruitless endeavor, as the speaker and "you" are too far removed by time.

Having said that, the last really great second person story I remember was published in 2012. They don't work very often. But then, second person is probably the most rarely utilized perspective. So it could be that I haven't had as many opportunities to read good ones.
 
It's also a dangerous game to play that style of close writing though. Wallace tried in Infinite Jest and had an unsurprising history with depression along with it. Kind of an Icarus deal, really. Unless you're a schizophrenic and that's every fucking day for you. I'm not kidding: I read about close writing, considered it too dangerous to play with (from experience), and then saw a Kickstarter page by a clearly schizophrenic individual and it was perfect in terms of close writing. It was shocking.

So naturally I am now a big fan of the Julian Jaynes "bicameral mind" thesis that the evolutionary human mind is actually schizophrenic, with the contemporary 'closed and binded' mind a relatively recent development. It's also worth pointing out that schizophrenia is much more likely among religious minds.

so..... I got interested in that story, clicked on to the writer's site, saw a tab called 'god', went 'huh?', and don't you know it, she's gone right off that cliff.

Don't play with fire if you're not wearing flame-retardant gloves.
 
I'm not sure what you mean by that. If there's a correlation between skill at close writing and schizophrenia, it seems pretty obvious to me which direction the arrow of causality would go.
 
what I mean is that schizophrenia or 'Integration Disorder' as it is better referred to today, is basically just a lack of a primary identity that can impose itself over all the other identities that inhabit the (normal!) human mind. What that means is that any identity can immediately be identified with, leading to close writing on all of them when writing, whereas an integrated identity (the current-day average individual) has to overcome some serious protective 'walls' to get anywhere near that, and should probably not even try to mount that wall, lest they want to have an schizophrenic episode themselves.
Pretty much any religious prophet, or old-school scripture, sounds like and probably is, the mind of someone lacking an integrated identity. One Dutch person with I.D. has made a writing career of sorts out of describing what that's like. His first title is appropriately named 'X believes himself to be God', which is what this relates to. A person lacking in identity integration identifies with all, including the celestial dictator forced inside our minds through socialization. And by that last part I mean that when the primary identity breaks, this forced in 'secondary' can take over, and these are continuously at war within anyone trying to maintain both as active. You can't have two minds at once. Maybe you need be a (former) Catholic or Muslim to appreciate the insanity of that, but that mind split against itself is unfortunately very real. See Robbert Pirsig and his 'book of a generation', if you recognized 'mind split against itself' as being from his famous book.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Additionally, I personally believe -from what I know about the various processes- that depression, anxiety, and identity integration run along similar lines in the core brain (from the back of the neck -which relates to the gut, which is the emotional brain if you will- into the amygdala in particular), so that when someone actively tries to mimic the experience of one, you are 'forced' -by simultaneous occurrence- to experience part of the associated conditions as well. Thankfully mostly just depression, not actually full blown schizophrenia. As you are no doubt aware, almost all writers have issues of depression in varying degrees. Or at least the 'literary' ones. The 'for profit' ones can play a game of catch with it.
I believe that this is, aside from some rather obvious pre-selection into the category, the prize you pay for being to close write or otherwise emphatically mimic minds that are not 'your own', that is, minds that are not the primary self-identifier.
This concept was kind of used in the show Hannibal with the character of Will Graham too, where his identity is made unstable by trying to mimic Hannibal's, which is outside of normal moral understanding since he's a psychopath (nobody understands that void, and TheOneWhoKnocks made a really great analysis on how the art of the show represents that in the S1 or S2 thread). But Hannibal is interested in the possibility that someone might be able to do so, to a point where it becomes his desire to see that fulfilled even if he has to sacrifice his freedom in order to get it (spoilers? I guess?).

This is probably more 'my thing' though.


edit:

coincidentally, a lot of the discussed above is also mentioned in this article on Nautilus, which came up through the 'how to know you're a jerk' thread as a related post:
http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/a-mental-disease-by-any-other-name
 
There are a lot of ways to reach an emotional apex - in life & the written version of it. True, some authors can disappear from the world and have the talent to take their readers with them. But I don't think you have to 'lose' your mind for this to happen. Some authors work their stories as if it were clay; other's lay their dreams at your feet. This suggests - on top of the idea that there is more than one proven way to go about things - that one need not be afraid of exploring the dark night. Many others have done so and have no mental health issues - even those who take more 'precarious routes'. With the caveat that if you are 'suffering' mental health issues, as always, seek professional help.
 
So I just read one of Red's recommended stories, The Swimmer. Holy cow do I now absolutely get what he means about contrivances. That story's mere premise involves a long list of contrivances, but it is very unpredictable and just plain good. Thanks Red, really enjoyed reading it.
 
FlowersisBritish said:
So I just read one of Red's recommended stories, The Swimmer. Holy cow do I now absolutely get what he means about contrivances. That story's mere premise involves a long list of contrivances, but it is very unpredictable and just plain good. Thanks Red, really enjoyed reading it.
Click to expand...
Yup 👍

One of my favorites. There is a 1968 Burt Lancaster movie adaptation that's pretty good as well. Dated in some ways but it retains a lot of what makes the story work.

It's one of those stories that resonates with me. It hits like a brick, the inevitability of it all
 
"Separation Anxiety"
Words: 1,258

“Have you told Maggie?”
“I have not.”
“It’s about time you did, don’t you think?”
He checked his watch pointlessly, as the battery had died long ago. “I can’t. I won’t.”
“So what then? She’s to spend her days wondering what happened to you when you just up and disappear?”
He’d been friends with Kevin long enough to know that he would not let the topic drop easily. “You don’t understand. It would kill her. Besides, I haven’t given up just yet.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out on a bustling midday Broadway. He was only days away now and if something didn’t happen soon he wouldn’t have many more moments like this; moments of freedom.
Not willing to relent long enough for even a moment’s peace, Kevin wrapped his knuckles on his chest firmly enough to demonstrate he was serious. “Darrell, listen to me and listen good. Maggie is a good woman, and a great mother! You’re almost fifty grand in the hole and you’ve two days to get right before they snatch you up. And you know how it works! The cost of your imprisonment will be more than you can ever hope to work off in this lifetime! Which means Einstein, you go in and you ain’t ever getting out!”
“I haven’t given up.”
“You need to tell her.”
“I need just one more day to come up with something. If I don’t, I’ll tell her. You have my word.”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“There aren’t a whole lot of moves left that aren’t stupid at this point.”
“Don’t think you can make something from nothing Darrell. It doesn’t work that way. Smarter people than you have tried to game the system and failed.”

He walked the evening streets of Oakland aimlessly. He wasn’t alone in his dilemma. The remainder of his afternoon after Kevin’s rant had been spent watching videos online of debt survivors who’d managed to avoid Debtor’s Prison. His hope had been to find something he could use, an idea, anything. Unfortunately, almost every happy ending had been the result of some deus ex machina stroke of luck. One woman received a bailout bundle of cash from a celebrity for whom she’d started a fan blog. A construction worker in Detroit was the recipient of a lawsuit settlement just weeks before his date of surrender. And another won enough in online poker to pay off his debt the same day the Feds showed up at his door.
He didn’t have a blog, win a lawsuit, or gamble. And the while he’d considered the last option, he couldn’t afford risking a debt so large that it could pass to his children when he passed. Running for it was an option, but that too could result in the debt passing on. Only this time to Maggie. He could turn himself in early, but with only two days remaining the credit to his balance would be laughable and not likely to result in even a day less incarcerated.
With more people in debt than not, Congress had passed the Farley Act two years ago to combat the phenomena. The act outlawed bankruptcy and made debt a Federal offense. Those in debt in excess of $30,000 who’d missed more than five payments were subpoenaed. Individuals unable to pay in full their defaulted balances within 90 days of receipt were to be arrested and sent to one of any private labor camp. In labor camp, men and women were to work off their debts through forced labor. The catch however was that in order to garner enough votes for the act, the cost of maintaining these private super prisons could not pass on to the tax payer. Instead, the debt was to pass directly to the defaulter, adding to their already insurmountable balances.
The aftermath of the Farley Act had been a tremendous closure rate on loans, matched only by the closure rate on real estate sales. And if he too had a home to sell, he most certainly would have by now.
Don’t think you can make something from nothing . . .
His fate wouldn’t sting so bad had the debt been accrued through reckless spending or bad investments. Then perhaps there would be some kind of catharsis in that he’d done it to himself. But no, his debt was unavoidable. Their situation, like most tragedies, had hit them undeserved, unexpected, and unavoidable. He wouldn’t be the first or the last to wear an orange jumpsuit because of cancer. But what else could he have done but take the loan? He wasn’t about to watch Maggie die.
He walked for miles with no thought to trajectory. We walked until the people he saw no longer looked like him and walked some more. Eventually, the city he loved became something unfamiliar. And as night overtook him he began grow weary.
Stopping about halfway up an empty block of what appeared to be some kind of industrial sector he stopped and decided to head home. The wind picked up, as downtown Oakland lit grey a roiling canopy of cloud cover. Without a jacket, he held himself against the chill and for the first time could feel himself giving way to hopelessness. In that moment, something slapped lamely against his leg. Looking down, he found a flyer pressed against his jeans, suspended by the wind. At first hesitant to touch the neon-colored paper, he bent and took it up.
“Give the gift of hope,” the header read in bold Times New Roman font.
For a long time he stood there, alone and cold, ogling the flyer under the flickering orange street light. He read the document over and over, at times mouthing the words aloud.
“This is it. This is my play.”

Mrs. Dabne was her name and beneath the pale track lighting she looked almost elegant in her pants suit. She wore the kind of pearl necklace he once given Maggie early in their marriage. The same necklace long since pawned to chip away at their debt.
Dabne looked down at him with an almost matronly expression. “I’ve spoken with the surgeons. Everything has been taken care of. Your generous forfeiture will make someone very, very happy.” Reaching into a manila folder she withdrew what had to be his salvation. “And that brings us to the end of our brief but pleasant transaction. It is my great pleasure to give you this.”
For a moment it looked as though she might try to hand it to him, but Maggie, her eyes still swollen with tears, spared everyone the awkwardness of an incident. “I’ll take that.”
The woman smiled blankly and handed the check to Maggie. “You may take some solace in the fact that the recipient is a soldier. A soldier who was wounded serving our country in Syria. ‘IED’ I believe they call it.”
“It doesn’t,” Maggie told her, folding her arms. “Please leave us.”
Her hair was coming back nicely and now covered her head in auburn fuzz. She’d been crying for a long time and now was time for more anger. As he lay there, propped up in the clinic bed, no longer in possession of arms, he accepted her indignation with an expression of cool and stern reverence. Inside, however, he was aglow. He had won, magicked something out of nothing. She was alive and in recession and he was a free man. He’d turned coal into diamond. Well maybe not diamond. But he’d definitely turned coal into something at least a little better.

Edit: Not sure why Scrivener is botching the formatting.
 
Just a heads up: I'll be at work from now until about Saturday 4pm eastern time and may not be able to collect submissions. We can have another long grace period or someone else may volunteer to compile entries.
 
Red said:
How are we meant to pronounce "Tristeve"?

Glad to see this crew again.
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I pronounce it "tryst-eve" personally. It was a play on Tristan (Tri-Stan -> Tri-Steve) originally, back when I thought they were a one-shot thing.

If I ever did something with these guys, all their names are getting changed.
 
Science Fair

I... I don't really even know where to begin with this one... Guess I'll save it for the write up.

But maybe bonus points for avoiding contrivance for perspective?

I hope you guys like sports...
 
A moment of melanosis as our shadows touch across the room and I smell the stir of the liquor and the wax of the bar and the salt of the cracked peanut shells on the dirty floor and the flood of noise drowns thought and I stumble for a place to sit.

I clear the shells with a booted foot, knock over a vodka shot left behind and wipe the table with a napkin that fades from white, and I wait as the flood subsides to something I can swim and let him approach.

He sits across and our shadows mingle and he hands me the glass in his hand and I drink and it burns gold, raises fire, and the tilt of his lips holds the secrets of the world and the light of the sun.

The red of his smile forms a border, a wall, and I rise on the tide, swimming high, and our shadows meld and we are together within and have always been together, forever and the fading sound the fading light the fading world conspire and we will let it be so, for we are us and we are perfect.
 
Red said:
Just a heads up: I'll be at work from now until about Saturday 4pm eastern time and may not be able to collect submissions. We can have another long grace period or someone else may volunteer to compile entries.
Click to expand...

Nezumi said:
I'm all for a long grace period...
Click to expand...

So that's a deadline of 9pm British Summer Time, huh? Good-o!

I had one of those "what are words, even?" last night and got nothing done and I have stuff to do today, but was fed up at the thought of not entering so I will try to get something done later...
 
darn it... I missed this one.

dancing was a theme I couldn't come up with anything even though I was thinking about trying to do one of these.

this how ever would have been right up my wheelhouse with both themes.

oh well, perhaps the one after the next one (gonna be to busy for anything besides a little bit of writing on my own main story for the next 14 days)
 
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