THANK YOU! A huge thank you to everyone who participated by reading and voting. Your vote helps nurture the feeling there are projects to work on and that creativity does matter, a feeling well-needed after a difficult year.Thank you for responding with curiosity, smarts, compassion and humor.
THE RESULTS :
(click here to review the blurbs)
1 Chloe - 4 votes
2 Harry - 2 votes
3 Glory - 4 votes
4 Anne - 4 votes
5 JP - 5 votes
6 Ellie - 0 votes
7 Meg - 1 vote
8 Maddy - 0 votes
9 Julie - 1 votes
10 Paul's Mother - 3 votes
11 Jack - 0 votes
12 Diana - 4 votes
13 Ivy - 2 votes
14 Hattie - 2 votes
THE WINNER:
And the winner is: Option #5 - John Paul (JP)
When I saw the groom with a black eye and the bride with an 8-month belly draped in lavender sequins and carrying the head of an alligator costume, I knew this was going to be my kind of wedding.
The winner, oddly enough, is one of the most recent starts I've created, and the one that I have the least amount of information on in my own head so far. So thank you for choosing the character that is a fresh exploration, and one where my sometimes acerbic humor is likely to find expression. While I do have a few pages on this story, I suspect that I'll be taking it in a different direction than those pages currently detail.
Chloe, Glory, Anne and Diana tied for second - and so what is next on the agenda could be more complicated question (and not one that currently needs to be addressed). It was encouraging to see that all but three blurbs got at least one vote, that there was some kernel of interest be activated. Most who voted voted for several stories.
Jack and Meg, who between them only collected 1 vote, are the two oldest stories floating around (the two that got me into graduate school, although I never considered them finished so much as abandoned). I am relieved to have excuse to let them gently rest permanently. While I'm fond the characters - characters are children in a way, and I have fondness even of the less appealing ones - Jack and Meg have somewhat worn-out situations and making those interesting would have been an arduous challenge for rusty writing skills. Maddy and Ellie, the other zero votes, were both part of multiple point of view exercises, and were, in each case, the least strong voices in the exercise in my mind - and apparently the voting audience's as well.
Voting on creative elements doesn't live in a vacuum, of course, and I learned a little bit about folks' reading tastes - those that opt for humor and romance (including G's entertaining comments on those that sounded "porny" on FB) while others preferred a darker or more reflective tone. Several people were irritated by the use of present tense, so stylistic elements clearly were in play even in such small snippets.
It's worth noting that I don't intend to write the Great American Novel. I'm not looking to alter the course of history and create a new world philosophy. Rather, I intend to tell a story and let some characters explore. Obviously, I've got my own set of themes and tics that tend to reappear in one form or another, which I suspect most readers have already intuited in this blog well before the fictional parade of characters marched by.
Thanks again for reading.
It's worth noting that I don't intend to write the Great American Novel. I'm not looking to alter the course of history and create a new world philosophy. Rather, I intend to tell a story and let some characters explore. Obviously, I've got my own set of themes and tics that tend to reappear in one form or another, which I suspect most readers have already intuited in this blog well before the fictional parade of characters marched by.
Thanks again for reading.
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| Story Prompt: What if a door-to-door salesman was a 2-foot tall white bird? |
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