Silver or Steel?

[Harenil]

[RokrantheGreat]

The swaztikas (sp?) are a nice touch.

[DvChWi]

The swaztikas (sp?) are a nice touch.

What? It's "swastikas," but I don't see what that has to do with anything.  

[RokrantheGreat]

lol on the PC at school there were a few Chinese symbols and swastikas littered amongst the text.    Don't show up on my home pc.

[Harenil]

Oh, hehe. The ending stinks.... because there is no ending!

[RokrantheGreat]

So we have a story about an insane werewolf killer... original, to be sure.

[Vlad!]

Again, my thoughts as I read through it and then general comments at the end after reading several times:

]]It was night, but not as any other dark night in that old forest.

Maybe it's just me, but thils line seems a little clunky. COnsider replacing 'as' with 'like,' or the phrase 'not as' with 'unlike.'

]]Jedediah immediately leaped to his feet and spun around, his silver sword poised. He realized his mind was only fooling him.

This does not flow very well, and you could perhaps use this as an opportunity to (wait for it) show rather than tell. The first sentence works well, but for the second you might try something like "...to his feet and spun around, silver sword poised, but slowly let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. 'Mind's playing tricks again' he muttered darkly to himself."

Not a bad story (though you seem a bit werewolf-obsessed, heh), but near the end you go overboard on the ellipsi (ellipses?). If you want a better way to make it seem disjointed and to show that he is somewhat unbalanced, consider having him talk to himself rather than having the narrator describe his thoughts. You can also show this internal dialogue as merely his thoughts (this is usually symbolized through italics rather than quotation marks).

It's very short, and (as you say) seems to lack an ending. Why is someone lucid enough to own a (possibly) silver sword demented enough to not know why he's outside? Has he been called forth almost against his will by the forces of darkness (this is much like Lovecraft's short story "The Dreams in the Witch House")? Did he set out on an important journey and hostile forces in the forest have confused him? Or does he have short-term memory issues like the protagonist in Memento?

[RokrantheGreat]

Or is it all just a dream...

[Harenil]

Thanks. This one's still in the works, and Rokran, I was considering that.

I am a bit werewolf obsessed, 'cause they cool. =D  Stories like this have a certain feel that I both enjoy writing as well as reading.

I wrote this one from the tellers POV, as well as the main character's POV. Sorta mixed together, and confusing, but I think it gives it a nice feel. Jedediah is supposed to be going a little crazy in a cold night. I usually use italics, but this time I chose to do something diferent, maybe I'll change that, as the deadline for this contest is the 20th of October (I think...).

You are thinking to much, Vlad, he's just going crazy, no dark influences here, though he might actually be a werewolf... hmm... Original idea:

He goes into the forest paranoid about werewolves, forgets what he was out there for in the first place, rests in a cave, wakes, remembers everything, goes home, only to be killed with a single silver arrow.  =D


I gave up on that, I want it a little more unique, a little more... interesting. When I get it all finished up, I'll repost it.

[EDIT] Again, the same stupid rules:

Entries are judged for relevance to the Fantasy/Science Fiction theme, grammar, punctuation, spelling and presentation.

I think it should be on how good the idea was, and how well it was written. Not just grammar, puctuation, spelling, etc.  

[Vlad!]

One would assume that the stories are judged on how good they are, but the contest administrators try to make it a bit less subjective.

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are all important. I have a book of short stories by an author I love (Arthur Clarke), but it was badly typed and badly edited, so almost every story had some typo or spelling error or something in it that just drove me nuts. It really detracts both from enjoyment of the story and the credibility of the author.

I don't read a whole lot of fantasy, and one of the reasons why is because I don't like the way a lot of it is written (with the notable exception of Tolkien's works--now THERE was a writer and an intellectual). So maybe my suggestions are not suitable for the whole fantasy milieu, but I would still suggest that you stick with basic narration motifs and firmly separate the narrator from the protagonist in a third-person novel. In the third person, grammatical eccentricities and writing as through the narration were spoken is much less accepted than with first-person. One suggestion you might consider, though, is to have it turn out that Benton is actually writing the story himself in a third-person motif, but he keeps 'forgetting' that he's writing in third person, so an 'I' will sometimes slip out when it's supposed to be a 'he.' As the events draw near a close, the writing becomes more erratic and disjointed, until it reaches the 'present,' where some shock awaits the reader (gasp! Benton really is a werewolf!).

There is a Sherlock Holmes story by Doyle (the adventrue of the creeping man) that reminds me of an amusing plot device that may serve to give your story an overriding narrative: a man is generally a model citizen, but sometimes he is subject to fits of amnesia and apparently sleepwalking. But he is respected by his neighbors, and he doesn't believe that anything bad comes of his nocturnal ventures. Eventually, a rumor begins to spread that there is a werewolf in the area, so our hero sets out to see if he can slay it. As he is wandering the forest, a bout of amnesia comes on. As he emerges from it (which would be about the point where your story begins, though the parts before could be told via short flashback or your apparent preference of narrator exposition), another small hunting party comes across him and tells him that the werewolf was sighted not too far from here, and he mauled one of the townsfolk. A hunter managed to pierce his leg with an arrow, but alas it was not silver. They go on their way, and when Benton takes a step he collapses. He looks down to find the broken haft of an arrow sticking through his leg. Story ends, big thrills!

Anyway, I hope some of these disjointed suggestions make sense and/or help.