Nano story contest

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Danik 2016

Lol! I prefer this version.

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I do also. There is nothing like a constraint to force one to revise. I am looking forward to yours, if you get that good idea.

Thanks, Yes/No!

Some of you might be interested in:
The Dark Flash Month
https://brokenwriterblog.wordpress.c...k-flash-month/

That sounds like an interesting blog. There is also https://everydayfiction.com/ You can post comments on stories as well as submit them.

Thanks Yes/No. The link I posted is from Meg´s blog. I don´t know if you are still following her.

Well, the deadline has well passed with only one entry. YesNo, while you're the winner by default, it was a fine story.

The contest was a nice idea, Danik; I'm sorry it hasn't gotten much response. I'm always hopeful the board activity will pick up again.

Here are the two ideas I had after suggesting the topic:

1) On the freeway the other night, I came upon the now ex-love of my life standing in my lane, waving her arms, disabled car off to the side. Another chance, thank you, Lord! I approached her slowly so she could see it was me, and waved. Then I floored it.

2) Three years ago, I gave the beloved dog I could no longer afford to a friend of a friend. Out walking today, I saw her, unmistakably her, with a feral pack, rooting in garbage. She growled with them when I came near, no longer knowing me. Or does she remember?

Both of those stories are good, Calidore. I suspect the dog remembers and flooring it was unexpected in the first one.

I might as well continue this contest to see how it goes. The new topic will be "summer" which hopefully doesn't restrict too much. The deadline will be in two weeks or until someone submits something if it goes longer than two weeks.

Excuse me for not participating in this round, Calidore and Yes/No, I had to meet a deadline. I will contribute to the next.

I liked both your stories Calidore, although in the first I was floored by the use of floored in this context. I looked the verb up, but it still isn´t clear to me if the narrator helped his ex or if he went away and forgot about it. As for the second, the mystery remains: it could be that the narrator took a similar looking dog for his own. I suppose dogs and even cats recognise their owner after years.

A remembrance (still the last topic, more than fifty words)

I once had a cat called Jeremias. He immediately disappeared, but was found asleep on the winter clothes. We tried to take Jeremias with us, when we moved, but he escaped.
Some times later, I was there. A now feral cat answered my call.
I never saw him again.

Thanks, Danik and YesNo.

Danik, in the context of driving, "flooring it" means to push the accelerator to the floor. The second chance he was thankful for was in fact getting another try at killing his ex. Getting just that story down to 50 words, plus trying to include the misdirection and foreshadowing in those same 50 words, made it the more difficult of the two to write by a considerable margin. Ideally, it still holds up on rereading.

The memory question in the second story was actually a last-minute change. The narrator's original dilemma was whether to have her picked up and hopefuly adopted again, saving her from a much harder and probably much shorter life as a street dog. But she's now in a pack, her natural social setting, and doesn't know that she can have it better, especially since her first two (at least) human masters abandoned her. So would he actually be helping her or just ruining her life yet again? I quickly found that there was no way I was getting that into 50 words.

Fifty words is very little indeed. If I find the 100 words thread, I will put it up again. I found it difficult to squeeze Jeremias into 50 and odd words.

I imagine it must be even harder when working in another language. In your story, replacing "jumped out of the van" with "escaped" will do it. :)

A remembrance should work with Calidore's suggestion, Danik.

Thank you both very much. I included the suggestion.

Submiting to the new topic.


Mildly Distopic

Two years ago their winter turned into summer, 50ºC shadow temperature. Fault of one of these naughty children, El Niño or La Niña.
Humans and animals sought desperately for water. There were deadly disputes around the smallest water puddles.
Until the insects took over, destroying all the rest.

Nice one for summer, Danik! It looks like two weeks is up for this contest, but I will extend this two more days to see if we can get another story on the subject of summer.