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Winter Ceramic DM™: THE WINNER!
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<blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 1303121" data-attributes="member: 2"><p>Thank you, judges, for the fast decision! Wow, that's appreciated. </p><p></p><p>Notes on my entry:</p><p></p><p>I was dog-walking the other day when a phrase came to me. "Her dance was joyless, for her heart had turned to ash." It was evocative enough that I couldn't get it out of my mind, so it became this story. I quickly decided that I would try for a fairy tale, and that in order for it to work it would have to have either clever accomplishments or a sad ending. I wasn't sure I was up for it. Take a chance of something with a read-aloud cadence? What the hell, risk is fun.</p><p></p><p>The fire and the rock cleft ("Georgia O'Keefe, your lawyer is on line one") suggested two of the four classic elements. I had my sea motif for the water, so that left the wind. Wait, fairy tales don't involve the elements; I almost scrap this before deciding that fairy tales need a bad guy. If I make the wind into a storm, and make the storm into a bitchy mother-in-law who also acts as the uncaring and impersonal villain, it should fit beautifully. Okay, done. Just call her something else because the relationship shouldn't be immediately obvious.</p><p></p><p>How to make it bittersweet? Tie the saving of the girl's love into the release of the sea crone. I got justifiably dinged for my use of the padlock image, which is funny because until now I hadn't noticed its relative weakness; I love the image of the three women standing there in the dark and staring at the lock, knowing that a turn of the key could make everything both better and much, much worse. How selfish are they, really? Temptation, temptation, and a bitter cost.</p><p></p><p>My last ceramic DM entry a few months ago was unnecessarily wordy so I tried to make this one lean. The character of the sisters suffered a bit as a result, but I leaned on the shared knowledge of fairy tales a bit. The girls had found lovers but not husbands on that rainy afternoon, and I thought it would be apropriate to make one of them pregnant. Both? No, that would tie pregnancy too closely to the "wages of sin" idea, and I thought I'd give a nod to realism here. Anyways, when giving the sisters something to do I tried to tie their personalities or conditions into the solutions, and I'm pleased with how that went.</p><p></p><p>I thought about making the ending sadder, to make it clear that the sisters were lonely as well as wiser, but by reusing the opening line I couldn't get the cadence to work correctly. I decided that truncating it worked just as well, and that subtlety might be more powerful; with luck, some of the themes of this story continue to resonate after it is read. I dreamed about it last night! And win or lose, I both had fun and learned a lot while writing this - and that was my goal. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>Bibliophile, thanks for a good round! The second person narration was really bold; I'd be interested in hearing the backstory for writing the tale. Is their untold internal logic for things like the postcard, or was that more of an attention hook that didn't need to be explained?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Piratecat, post: 1303121, member: 2"] Thank you, judges, for the fast decision! Wow, that's appreciated. Notes on my entry: I was dog-walking the other day when a phrase came to me. "Her dance was joyless, for her heart had turned to ash." It was evocative enough that I couldn't get it out of my mind, so it became this story. I quickly decided that I would try for a fairy tale, and that in order for it to work it would have to have either clever accomplishments or a sad ending. I wasn't sure I was up for it. Take a chance of something with a read-aloud cadence? What the hell, risk is fun. The fire and the rock cleft ("Georgia O'Keefe, your lawyer is on line one") suggested two of the four classic elements. I had my sea motif for the water, so that left the wind. Wait, fairy tales don't involve the elements; I almost scrap this before deciding that fairy tales need a bad guy. If I make the wind into a storm, and make the storm into a bitchy mother-in-law who also acts as the uncaring and impersonal villain, it should fit beautifully. Okay, done. Just call her something else because the relationship shouldn't be immediately obvious. How to make it bittersweet? Tie the saving of the girl's love into the release of the sea crone. I got justifiably dinged for my use of the padlock image, which is funny because until now I hadn't noticed its relative weakness; I love the image of the three women standing there in the dark and staring at the lock, knowing that a turn of the key could make everything both better and much, much worse. How selfish are they, really? Temptation, temptation, and a bitter cost. My last ceramic DM entry a few months ago was unnecessarily wordy so I tried to make this one lean. The character of the sisters suffered a bit as a result, but I leaned on the shared knowledge of fairy tales a bit. The girls had found lovers but not husbands on that rainy afternoon, and I thought it would be apropriate to make one of them pregnant. Both? No, that would tie pregnancy too closely to the "wages of sin" idea, and I thought I'd give a nod to realism here. Anyways, when giving the sisters something to do I tried to tie their personalities or conditions into the solutions, and I'm pleased with how that went. I thought about making the ending sadder, to make it clear that the sisters were lonely as well as wiser, but by reusing the opening line I couldn't get the cadence to work correctly. I decided that truncating it worked just as well, and that subtlety might be more powerful; with luck, some of the themes of this story continue to resonate after it is read. I dreamed about it last night! And win or lose, I both had fun and learned a lot while writing this - and that was my goal. :) Bibliophile, thanks for a good round! The second person narration was really bold; I'd be interested in hearing the backstory for writing the tale. Is their untold internal logic for things like the postcard, or was that more of an attention hook that didn't need to be explained? [/QUOTE]
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