Fortnightly Writing Competition - All the World’s a Stage (Result)

[Baron]

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely... writers?  I have to say I enjoyed your stories more than the grade 10 English class where I had to memorise that stupid soliloquy from Shakespeare.    Feedback follows:

Spoiler

@Mandle:  That was the ultimate concert, in a very literal sense!  Some of the description was over-the-top, but it suited the extreme spectacle at the end of the world.  Some sentences would have benefited from tightening up, but as we know from Loppins and K'rr not everything always goes off without a hitch at these kind of events.  I liked your liberal use of compound verbs (saidboomed comes to mind), and the slow but inevitable demise of both the concert and the world was both tragic and captivating.  You lost me at the climax, however, when god himself comes through the meeting place of singularity lasers.  It was, for me, a step too far, especially given the sci-fi vibe you worked so hard to build up for the first 3/4 of the story.  I don't think it's as much an aversion to reading about deities as it is a structural problem introducing all-important characters too late in the story.  The twist just seemed too incredible, and ripped me out of the story-world.

@Sinitrena:  I'm going to preface this commentary be declaring that I am every inch a Kevin Clausen when it comes to paying attention to opera, even in its written form.    It did seem like quite an impressive production, at least when I wasn't checking my phone.    Some of the supertitles needed a bit of editing ("they rush to the back" breaks the past tense of the story, "t had stopped" which is scientifically unlikely, and I read it as "WHODONELT" before I realised it was a capital I instead of a small L - I've always seen it spelled as "Whodunit", which is cleaner to read if not etymologically true to its meaning).  The mystery was compelling, although there was an info-dump of a lot of details all at once during the investigation.  I had noted that Piotr didn't lurch like everyone else on stage due to the premature movement, so he had to have some knowledge of the changed schedule.  I don't know if this counts as proof in the eyes of the law, but the back-story after the fact made it obvious he had motive (no one else really did, at least so far as the story tells us).  I think this story would work better in a longer format, perhaps with a backstage glance beforehand to build up an idea of the jealousies, rivalries and grudges that existed beforehand, which would both humanise the victim and the suspects more, and offer other plausible suspects to consider.  This of course is feeble advice for a short-story competition, and coming from someone prone to writing story fragments at that.   

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[Stupot]

Well done Baron. You got the most votes and are the winner.

I look forward to your next theme

[Baron]

Thanks for all the votes (er, both of them).  I can see it was a very near run thing from the results, and that my victory rested on the slimmest of margins.   I bashfully admit to mistakenly PMing the contest administrator despite the rules, so I hope my (tying?) vote wasn't discounted on a technicality.  Thanks for all the feedback!  I hope to have the next competition up and running presently.