Monthly Story Comp - ***WINNER*** LONELY STAR

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Well, here is an attempt to bring back a long gone comp (gone since May 2004, and yessiree that IS a long time!)

First I'll establish some general rules which I hope are to everyone's liking. If they're not, PM me - comps are supposed to be fun and fair.

- Participants will write a story not limited by length unless specified by the month's rules;
- It's impossible for a judge to be impartial in this kind of competition where, for instance, great writing can save a meager plot. So the voting will be public, and go on for at least a week after the deadline, when the winner will be announced.
- The deadline itself is, as said before, monthly, but as usual some slack is given. Don't abuse it, though. Five days after the "oficcial" deadline no further entries are allowed and voting begins EDIT: but this tolerance is not mandatory, rather left to the thread-starter's description.
- The competition should last a month. Therefore, this particular one will run until the 26th of July.
- The actual posts must NOT contain the story, but a link to it. The story MUST be hosted somewhere, even if temporarily - I suggest Microtech, which automatically deletes your file after whatever time you select.
Ã,  - The object of this is to write a story. It can be a short story with 10 lines, it can be a whooper with 20 pages. It can have no characters, or a myriad of them. It can be in first person, or third; present or past of future tense. Your ONLY limitations are the ones the rules state, if any.
- The winner provides the theme and rules for the next comp.
- Participants must specify whether the link they provide is to be simply clicked on or downloaded from. TXT files, for instance, don't display well in Internet Explorer, and should be downloaded for proper vieweing in one's word processor. Nevermind this one, most people favour DOC or RTF files anyway, and it's easy to take a look at the extension and figure it out.

Arright, I hope these sound fair. Now here're the rules for the present comp:

BETRAYAL

I know that's a broad theme. It's on purpose. Go wherer you want from here. There's only one "sub-rule" this time around:

- Someone must have a dark, terrible secret, which may or may not be exposed.

When I say "dark secret", it can be everything, even "a passion for pomegranates", if your story is done in a comedy/light setting.

All right, that's it. I hope this gathers enough attention to get rolling again! Remember, if it fails, it's not because of the comp, it's beacuse I couldn't really make good rules and themes... in which case I'd like someone to step up here.

[Gord10]

Nice theme. Guess I will join.

[Pelican]

Sounds interesting. Shame I haven't had a lot of inspiration come my way lately... I hope I can come up with something for this, but don't hold your breath!

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Just yesterday was the second day of the audition for the theatre school I'm applying. One of the things I was supposed to do was to improvise something from something in a text they gave. I took the "family dinner" scenario it featured there, took it in another entirely different direction, and this little bit of story was born.

I'd like to consider it as an entry - I don't see why the starter of the comp can't enter himself, since he won't make the final decision. Besides, only yesterday did this story enter my head.

This is also an example of what you can do. You'll see this story is just a small episode in the life of these people, and you'll see that only one of those characters actually speaks, the others are just described, and so is their speech. This is because in my improvisation I focused heavily on that character, and wanted to do the same here. It's also an example of the things you can do. Notice the length? Rather short. And the story certainly isn't a Pulitzer winner, but by God it was fun to write. That's what I want to see here. Brilliance is good, but it doesn't matter half as much as having fun while writing your story!

EDIT - Here's a further bit of info - the participant must specify whether people have to download the file or just read it. In this case, downloading is better, because it's a TXT file and doesn't display properly in Internet Explorer. I'll add it to the rules.

EDIT 2 - I really have to start rereading what I write and proofread it. Ah well, «tis submitted already.

[hedgefield]

This sounds cool, I might just write up something...

[FrogMarch]

Rui, tht was brilliant. The style was great, and it had a nice twist. I especially like the way it was mainly told from the father's point of view, and had great character studies.

There was one bit that seemed a bit awkward (the use of three parantheses in one sentence), but on the whole it was ace.

[[Cameron]]

Hmm, as soon as I read the topic for some reason I felt compelled to write this short thing. Dowloading this file would perhaps be the better option.
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Lionel.doc

-Cameron

[Ginny]

There it is, after 3 drafts

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Dear_Michael.doc

It's a doc file so you can either save it or read it in the browser, I don't care .

edit: found a typo
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Dear_Michael2.doc

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Not many entries yet, but it's still a full two weeks left - and I really like what entries there are! Ginny, two things I particularly like about your entry are the style (epistolary (sp?) form has always been a favorite of mine) and the way you took the term "betrayal". Not at all an "obvious" or "common" "betrayal". It's very gratifying to see people being so creative with the few pointers they've been given.

[Ginny]

I do wonder, I notice in my story there are two places to see the theme of betrayal. I wonder how each person sees it.

Spoiler

One is betrayal by god, and one is a certain betrayal of Michael by Yonatan. Originally I meant the former but either works.

[close]

As for the epistolary style (I had to look it up and will now pretend that I knew what it is all the time;)), it just seemed to fit best, but I know you didn't get exactly what kind of letter it is. Another friend of mine didn't either, after reading the hebrew translation. I wonder if I was too vague.

Also, if it interests anyone, Keren means 'ray' in hebrew. The other names have their.. reasons .

[Gord10]

Nice entries, Cameron and Ginny. I'm also working on a story for this competition.

[Bluke4x4]

Johnny

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I assume the "doc" extension means it can be either downloaded or viewed, which has to be clarified as stated in the rules. Ah well, maybe I'll remove that one rule, as no one bothers to keep it, and most people seem to favor Word anyway.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

*bump* I just had news that I probably won't be around when the deadline is reached and voting starts. So sorry, cholly. Can anyone please take care of it?

[Nikolas]

Well here's my entry...

Mind you there are no typos. And as te name suggest it's a bit creepy and, well, sick...

http://rapidshare.de/files/3282367/creepy.doc.html

Cheers

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Heh. Actually there are many typos, but it don't bother me much.

What *does* bother me a bit is that while there is a clear sense of betrayal, I don't see a deep dark secret anywhere...

[Nikolas]

Heh. Actually there are many typos, but it don't bother me much.
...

The typos are intentional.
Anyway I was trying to give an impression with all the typos...


As for the dark secret, well it's a bit undergorund meaning that the whole story and the identity of the person it talks about is a secret. Think about it. The whole story is about that secret.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Well, I'll let it be an entry, but it seems to be a bit of a stretch to have included both the secret and the betrayal in one. The latter is clear, the former not at all. We don't feel like there is a secret there, per se, simply something we don't know about, if you see the difference.

[Nikolas]

Fair enough...

[Ginny]

nikolasideris, I can't download the file for some reason, I just get a page about RapidShare. Rui sent it to me but I thought you should know.

I'll just post again in 3 days to remind you that voting starts the 26th, but I think this competition should just be handled like the puzzle time .