FINISH THAT THOUGHT #12 - RESULTS!

It's finally here! The moment you've been waiting for...for longer than usual. Communicating with the other side of the world takes some schedule coordination that I just didn't have this week! ...Plus, someone *cough* me *cough* was offline for over 24 hours unexpectedly. Enough excuses, we're here to see what the judge has said. He made comments on each story on the original post here. If you missed them, be sure to check them out. Otherwise, here are his winners!!!




Special Challenge Runner Up:

wh1006

Dollhouse, by wh1006. I think this story could do with some fleshing out, and I think that there’s no greater compliment to give for a flash piece than to say you’d love to read a longer version, and to see more of the world the author has written. I’d love to read a longer version of this, and to see more of the characters and world you’ve created, wh1006. I think that lengthening it would let you add more suspense and terror to the piece. Mr Harvey is creepy, in an innocently evil kind of way. Although we don’t know exactly what he’s doing to his little dolls. Creepy and inventive.


Special Challenge Champion:

PenName

I’ve been trying recently to use the line the sky burned as the introduction to a story – which is why I chose it in the first place – and none of the stories I wrote carried it off properly. So it’s a line that I’ve had to cut from about six science fiction/fantasy stories. Penname’s story Delia’s Dragon, or How Delia Discovered Her Ancient Powers is the kaiju story I was trying to write. The dragon is immediate and real, “…his golden tints glimmered with every fire-blasted breath, looking every bit like a swarm of swift fireflies.” And I loved the nail-polish names in this piece, too. What a dragon!


Runner Up:

duckglow

Although duckglow’s 53 Seconds did have a couple of issues I loved the descriptive work in this story, this line in particular: "Gusts of wind ripped through the desolation and carried off pieces of men." As I said, there are a couple of things that need touching up, but I do love a good apocalypse. A story that captures that moment at Ground Zero, and it carries the weight of that moment in cleverly spartan prose, handling it matter-of-factly and making it even realer.


Grand Champion!

Tinman

It takes a certain dash or flair to make a very short story like Tinman’s untitled piece work. I love flash and micro fiction – I feel swept along when I write them, like the story carries me, rather than the story being dragged into being by my writing it. I especially liked the humour in this story, it’s hard enough to write humorous writing, let alone make it so brief. Other than the typo (and I’m sure it’s a typo, not a grammatical mistake), this story is great. I feel like it could be either shorter or longer, and that’s a good thing.