Voting Stage - May Flash Fiction Challenge

Hi Sam,

I'll write you soon.

Geena told me to go ahead and write you. The church drama people got your e-mails. We're all looking forward to the next challenge.

Thanks for including us.

Sam

[kailhofer]

Finally, I've had enough spare moments to finish reading all these stories. Excellent effort by a lot of you.

My personal favorites were "The Pettiness Device" by Jean-Paul Garnier and "Ivy and Justin" by K. Vesi. I felt that these two were the two strongest, character-driven stories in the bunch. There are a lot of ways to frame a story and character-driven is the one I prefer by far. That, however, is only my personal opinion.

It's fairly horrible of me to lump 17 mores stories into one short statement, but one sometimes only has so much time. Life gets in the way. Anyhow, I would encourage the rest of the entrants this month to bolster your efforts toward showing over telling in a story. Showing more engages the reader, brings them into a story. A good way to do that is to focus on creating a very strong character--one with one ore more flaws to them--who has a real, serious problem to overcome in life. That character may or may not resolve that problem in the story, especially in that this is flash, but his, her, or its actions should be governed by the overarching need to resolve the bigger issue. There is much more to showing vs. telling than can be explained in a short paragraph, of course.

As a conversation starter, I would ask, and no offense meant to Daniel by doing so, but what did you learn while trying to write your story? Aphelion is all about helping writers grow and learn. It's why this site is here.

Daniel taught Tim and I better grammar and how to block out a story in outline form before breathing life into it. I'm so proud of the story I wrote this time. It had real tension which until Daniel showed me how to do it, I couldn't imagine how to write in that way.

Plus, 11 members of our church drama group sent Daniel stories not related to the challenge so he could help them with their writing. They were thrilled with the help which motivated them to want to join Aphelion during the next challenge.

Thanks to everyone who voted for me, I appreciate it. And well done to the winners. I think that there may need to be more voting time next challenge if the number of stories jumps up by... 50!!! I look forward to it. Thanks, Daniel.

Alex.

I was unable to enter the challenge cause I was having problems with my computer. I wrote Daniel the day before the deadline and told him about the software mess I was dealing with. He asked me for my phone number and told me to stay put for a few minutes.

10 minutes later the phone rang and I thought it was Daniel, but it was Comcast tech support. They asked me what my problem was and I told them that I didn't have Comcast. They said Daniel asked them to call. So they worked with me for 45 minutes and help me fix the problem.

So everything's perfect! I don't know how he did it!

Shane

Daniel is helping me with a project to self publish my story, "Kit and Kaboodle" as a children's story. I'm working on the story now to apply the comments made during the challenge it was in. I'll do it if nothing more than have it to pass out to friends and give as presents but, who knows, after the rewrites it might be something.

Thank you, Daniel.