FLASH CHALLENGE: March '08

[kailhofer]

The "Free Skate" Challenge:

This one might take a bit to explain, so please bear with me.

I think most of us would agree that in pieces we read, it's our emotions and memories that connect us to the main characters. We sympathize with what they're feeling & going through because we draw parallels to when we felt similarly in our own lives. Therefore, if we as writers want our audience to connect strongly with our characters, we need to know how to convey that emotion and also what events are likely to be remembered by that audience. This month's challenge is about exploring simple, emotional moments in our own pasts and channeling that into our stories. You know your own experiences best, and chances are, the little things that were really embarrassing or sad in your life aren't that different from the ones in your audience's lives.

For example, when I was young, we lived out in the country. There weren't many kids my age, and there weren't many organized things for kids to do unless you drove a long way. Class trips, cub scouts, etc. only had a few places to go, so you went to the same places a lot. One in particular I went to several times a year was a roller skating rink.

As I recall, it wasn't a very fancy joint. A small, carpeted section where you got your skates or lounged at the snack bar when it opened up was divided from the rink section by a metal rail. The rink was a very, very hard cement floor polished smooth by millions of revolutions of roller skate wheels. There was a big disco ball in the center, and some lights that flashed occasionally to the loud music. A really nice, old couple ran the place. And that's all there was.

Thing is, I couldn't skate. I was one of those dorky kids that had to push themselves along the wall until I was waaay too old to still be doing that. I was overweight and not overly good at making friends. It was the 70s, and unlike today in schools, bullying was not only allowed, it seemed to be encouraged. I lost count of how many times I heard, "C'mon, move it, fatso!"

I had every reason to hate going. Except, I didn't hate it. It beat the heck out of playing by yourself or with your little sister all the time. (Sorry, Sis!) I hated having to scurry out of the way for the Limbo & the Hokey-Pokey. I hated having to hide in the snack bar during every moonlight couples skate. Really, I wanted to be out there skating with anyone who wouldn't make fun of me, even if it was a girl. Instead, I sat at the rail, waiting to hear on the speakers, "And now we'll go back to free skating. All skate."

"Free Skate" was a time when you weren't a nobody, a prisoner of your own inadequacies. It was a time when you were free to try in any way you could, and maybe, just maybe, you could finally get it and fit in. See what I did with that memory in the example below.


I challenge you to take an embarrassing or sad memory from any point or place in your past and remake it in a new, speculative fiction way.

REQUIREMENTS: (1) Your memory piece must place your protagonist in an awkward or poignant situation that is resolved in a new way. This should be a little, fairly innocent thing like your pet frog dying or walking into the girls bathroom by mistake here, not accidentally burning your house down and inadvertently killing your whole family or anything that tragic; (2) Your piece may be in any speculative fiction genre; (3) Change the names of any real people or places to protect the innocent; (4); This is a Rated 'PG-13' challenge; and (5) Give your story a title and include a byline for when I post the list of authors. Do not bother sending me a bio. I won't use it.

If, in my judgment, any requirement is missed, I won't post the story for voting. Sorry, but rules are for everyone.

HOW TO ENTER: Stories should be submitted to me by PRIVATE MESSAGE, and NOT posted into the thread. If you've never sent a PM, all you have to do is log into this forum and click the 'PM' button at the bottom of this post. That will take you to a special message board, a kind of Aphelion-only email, where you paste your story into the body of the message and then send it to me. You are responsible for doing your own formatting, and for the sake of uniformity, leave an extra line between paragraphs, just like when you see them in the 'zine. I'm allowing different colors for now, but I'm not going to allow changed fonts or sizes, artwork, or any other embedded or external links. I want all the stories to display the same on everyone's computer. DO NOT send a regular email to me--I don't want to risk a spam filter blocking someone's hard work.

NOTE: ONLY REGISTERED MEMBERS who have posted at least one message may submit a story. Without that one post, the system will not let you send a PM. So if you wish to join the challenge, post a hello or introduction, or just put your two cents worth in on any of the discussions going on anywhere in the Forum. We'll be glad to meet you.

DEADLINE: Stories should be in by 10 p.m. Central Standard Time, Sunday, March 23, 2008. The stories will then be posted for voting. Voting will close at 10 p.m. C.S.T. on March 30.

VOTING: Stories will be posted "blind"--without the author's name on them, and the vote results will stay hidden until the poll is closed. This is to make things as fair as they can be, without favorites to be played, and allows for anyone to enter, from newbies to editors. Names won't be on the poll for voting, and all the story titles are literally tossed into a hat and chosen at in random order. When I close the poll after the voting week, I'll post a list of the stories and who wrote them.

If more than two stories are tied at the end of voting, there will be a succession of one-day runoff votes until a single winner is chosen or the number of winners is reduced to two.

If you feel a second story deserves a vote, you may legally vote again as a guest, but you'd need to do it from a separate network, say from a library or your workplace. Votes are tracked by IP address only, so a guest vote from your same network will change your previous vote to the newer one. Voting for yourself a second time is just tacky, so don't do it.

WHAT YOU WIN: Pride and the knowledge that your story was voted by your peers the best against strong competition--there are some outstanding stories each time. Writers get improved short fiction skills, increasing their chances in the marketplace, without the lengthy investment in time a longer story would take.

If the challenge can stay in good graces, winners will once again be published in the annual "Best Of" issue in February. Many thanks to the Editors for that.

GUEST ACCESS: Guest votes will be allowed again, so feel free to tell friends and neighbors about the contest and encourage them to read all the stories, not just yours.

An example of what may be done follows.

Example story, not eligible for entry:


[right]997 Words[/right]

[center]Dancing Queen

By:
N.J. Kailhofer[/center]




Wow. That girl really knew how to skate.

How did she do that? How did she know where she was going? The lights were all off except for the spots reflecting off the disco ball twirling around the room.

She was older than us, and had black, curly hair held out of her eyes by a headband. She wore a tight Jaws t-shirt over a pair of really high, red satin shorts. She was very skinny, with long, pale legs. Tall socks stuck out over the tops of her skates. Small fuzzy dice dangled from the laces. She darted in between the couples on the floor, twisting and turning, spinning around and going backward, and the whole while dancing to the Abba song on the speakers.

A sharp whistle next to me made me jump. Looking up, I saw the old man who ran the place standing next to me at the rail. He was staring out at the floor, two fingers that he used to make the whistle still in his mouth. At the desk behind him, his gray-haired wife watched with a sour look on her face.

He gestured to someone out on the floor, and I saw her coming. She swung both arms like a speed skater, and darted between couples with only inches to spare as they turned around the loop. She had a big grin, and no fear.

She spun in a tight circle and stopped in front of him.

He frowned. "Whatcha doin' out there, Julie? You know that's for couples."

She smiled at him, her braces gleaming. "Aw, c'mon. There's loads of room out there."

"No," he said. "I let you out there like that, next thing I know, there's a whole gang of kids out there causin' trouble. You wanna go out there, get yourself a date or wait for the free skate."

He went back to spraying deodorant into skates behind the desk.

She pouted and I studied the floor.

"Hey you," she said. "How old are you?"

I looked around. "Who, me?"

"Yeah, you."

"Twelve."

She thought for a minute. "That's old enough. Wanna?" She jabbed her thumb toward the spinning disco ball.

"Uh…" I swallowed hard. "I don't know. I was, um, waiting for the snack bar. Get some, you know, stuff. Wacky Wafers candy and a Coke maybe."

She glanced at the clock on the wall over the desk. "It won't be open for another ten minutes."

"Oh? Uh, really?"

There was an uncomfortable pause.

She slid over and took hold of my hand. My throat went dry, and it got really hot in the room.

"C'mon," she said, tugging me toward the floor.

I rolled forward until I would have had to let go of the rail. My other hand held fast.

"Whassamatter?"

I said in a really tiny voice, "I can't skate. I don't know how."

She looked at me sideways. "Are you kidding?"

I couldn't look her in the eye. "No."

She stepped in close to me until she was cheek to cheek. I had trouble breathing. No girl had ever wanted to be this close to me before.

"Trust me," Julie whispered in my ear. I didn't even realize at first that she had my other hand in hers.

She stepped back. "Just look into my eyes."

They were big, soft brown pools that seemed bigger the longer I peered into them. I saw a couple pass by behind her, then another, and realized it was us passing them. I hadn't known we were moving. I couldn't even feel the floor under my skates. She never looked away or checked behind her, yet she was weaving us in and out of the people on the rink effortlessly. I didn't want the moment to end.

Then I heard it. "Hey, look at fatty! He's out here with his girlfriend, the skate nerd."

I looked. We were passing Mike, the jerk, with Marie, little miss popularity. They laughed at us.

Marie jeered, "Even she's out of his league."

I didn't want to look at Julie's face. I didn't want to see her agree with them. I looked at the floor instead.

"Hey," Julie said. "I'm not like that."

She was smiling. "Don't mind them. They never amount to anything. Just keep shifting your weight. This side... now the other. Good. Now turn your foot a little when you push."

Her eyes sparkled. "You're almost there."

I spied Mike and Marie behind her, making faces at us. We must have been a sight: hand-in-hand, me staring into the eyes of this older girl who normally wouldn't even have acknowledged my existence.

"Julie, why are you doing this? Everyone else just makes fun of me."

"You're not so bad." She smiled, steering us back toward the rail. "Besides, there won't be music this good for another thousand years."

I stumbled as we crossed over the edge where the carpeting started, and she caught me in a hug and let me down on one of the benches. "I just love coming back here to skate." She kissed my cheek. "Remember me this way."

She turned to the old lady behind the desk. "Gotta go. I'll stop by next time I'm in the neighborhood."

The lady waved, and Julie skated out the doors to the parking lot. I tried to follow, but fell right down.

Mike bellowed, "Look at the loser!"

The old guy helped me up and luckily the crowd didn't laugh as long as they normally did.

"You'll get it, kid," he said. "The whole planet will catch on, someday."

"Thanks."

I looked out the doors. I could see the whole parking lot, but she was gone, like she'd vanished off the face of the Earth. As I rolled back to the benches, thinking about her, I realized I was skating. I was finally doing it!

Grin on my face, I headed out for the free skate.

Thanks, Julie, wherever you are.

[center]The End[/center]

[kailhofer]

Yes, one so far. I'm waiting for some retooling on it, but I'm confident in the author that he'll be able to pull it off in time with the same high quality as his other works.

Nate

[kailhofer]

I just wanted to make sure it was clear that the piece you submit needs to be speculative fiction, as called for in #2. I've always defined specfic as science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural, alternate history, cyberpunk, or magic realism. (Horror, in this case, may be difficult to allow given the wording of requirement of #1.)

There have been some wonderful, touching moments submitted so far. Things I never considered, but are very enjoyable to read. However, there seems to have been some misconception as to the genre required, and wanted to make sure things were clear.

Also, remember your story is only based on a memory and no one will know how much of the moment or feeling was real, so don't let that hold you back. Looking at the skate nerd/time traveler my example... in real life, I dimly remember some event where the old couple's granddaughter was supposed to be there, but I have no idea what she even looked like and certainly never spoke to her. I learned to skate by myself in the small space of my parents basement because I was tired to being laughed at. Honestly, I'm still not overly good at it, but I'm rather proud of how it reads in the story.

Good luck!

Nate

[kailhofer]

It seems I'll be in San Diego when the poll has to close for a wedding, thanks to a generous gift of a plane ticket and a place to stay. I don't know if I'll have access to a computer or the internet or not. So, if the challenge is still running on the 31st, you'll know I'm out of communication. I'll close it as soon as I can. FYI.


UPDATE: 2 stories received, 2 stories sent back for revision. 0 accepted so far. Deadline is 10 p.m. central March 23rd.

Nate

[kailhofer]

You aren't going for a wedding, are you? That would be too strange.

3 in so far.


Nate