10 Comments
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Keith Long's avatar

An excellent story, well done.

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Zachary Dillon's avatar

Well, THIS is a bit of a suspended moment with room to breathe. Not to say it isn’t fraught, but those aren’t mutually exclusive.

A well-carved scene.

P.S. I think he lives.

Kidding! I’m kidding.

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

(I honestly never considered what happens directly after the cliff on this one because I only had fifteen minutes to write it, so the neighbor dude having just killed one dude, may in fact live. But historically if someone wants to hurt you and they have a knife the only advice anyone will give you is "fucking run.") Thanks! I love miniature moments like this. I recently found a notebook full of morning pages from 2023 that are mostly just... Well, they're a sentence or two and they all sound like a crazy person wrote them.

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DOMO CAMPOLO's avatar

Think I got some grit stuck between my teeth. I really dig the vibe.

It got me blasting stoner-rock 🤙🏼

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Mkwawa shujaa's avatar

Damn, that’s intense. I love how it throws you straight into the chaos with zero fluff.

And it leaves you with moral dilemmas, is harming someone because they are harming others good?

It honestly feels more than a 15 minute work, congratulations 👏🏿

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M.P. Fitzgerald's avatar

Jesus Fuckels Christ what a flex. Excellent flash, but you know that. Gonna try my hand at these drills that you do.

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Nick Winney's avatar

i love this.

the sort of A then B then C then back to A rhythm of it.

great stuff!

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Zivah Avraham's avatar

Excellent story. Being older than you and British, I was taught ALWAYS to write dialogue with quotation marks and it’s so hard to unlearn.

When I handwrite, I never put them in (to ease the flow of writing. But, things evolve and if I don’t use them when handwriting to ease the flow, why not try omitting them when typing them up? Food for thought.

Prompt work. I used to find restrictive but, with a different mindset and also, thanks to Edith’s SoC workshop, I’ve quickly learned to love them. And even taken part in competitions with prompts as the MO.

The Rainbow Rat will slide his way along the gutter when everyone’s good and ready. There’s nothing that can’t wait while you pay attention to you and yours, which is the most important thing. Grief is grief. There’s no timetable, no rules.

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Trevor Cohen's avatar

This is a rad quick write, quick read with the volume turned up. I like how you handled the dialogue here without quotations. Xtra smooth flow. And thanks for the rec to Edith's workshop.

I'm sorry for your loss and wishing you the best.

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

Thanks! Especially on the compliment for the DX. I mostly write in first, second. or third, present free indirect discourse, so any time I can find a way around a quotation in dialogue and still have it parse means I’m doing good. (And it signals that when there are quotes, you should probably pay attention to them.)

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