& so we have our #SatSunTails winner!
You can help by promoting next week’s #SatSunTails on your blogs, twitter, G+, facebook, tumblr etc, that would be great. Also, if you’re on twitter and you’d like an @reply every weekend in order to remind you that the competition is open then please leave a note regarding this along with your twitter handle in the comments of this post so I can set that up for you.
But for now, let’s get to the winners!
The Written Prompt
crushed stardust
Runner Up Mentions
@fetterslopez –
Poetic in its reading, I found this a really playful story.
@jezri1 –
Sad and touching. A lovely read.
@Leo_Godin –
Unexpected. A great use of both prompts that surprised and delighted.
Overall Winner
@samthewlis –
Poignant and a beautifully slow realisation through the text.
Winning Entry
I see her most days. Standing, looking away from me, like she’s waiting for someone to arrive.
I don’t know her name; she has never spoken or otherwise acknowledged my presence. Last time though, she turned and I saw her face, so I know who she was. A few years ago there was a terrible car accident in the village- a young mother had been driving her children home from school, when their car had been blindsided by a speeding delivery truck. The children survived with grazes, but she had been pronounced dead at the scene; her once-beautiful face now scarred and still, covered in windscreen glass, sparkling like crushed stardust.
It took me a long time to work out why I could see her now, when I hadn’t before. I wonder if I will spend my days watching and waiting for my children to die and join me, too.
Critique Mentions
Now, as promised, I shall critique those entries that didn’t make it. Sometimes it can literally come down to the smallest things.
Whittling the results down to find critiques this week was incredibly hard and hopefully you can see why with the excellent entries that were received.
@me2annoyed –
Petty, but also a pet hate of mine. ‘It’s’ should have been ‘its’ as the branches belong to the tree. The apostrophe with ‘it’s’ always marks that the letter ‘i’ is missing from ‘it is’ and thus, if we reread the piece with this in mind, ‘it is branches reaching’ makes no sense within the context of the story. It’s a common mistake, but it’s one of those that flashes at me in any piece of text.
@Rowanwolf66 –
something about the way that the protagonist simply says she loved him bothered me. I’m not sure why, but I guess I expected a little more hesitance in admitting such a thing when the character has obviously gone to such great lengths to conceal her identity and the reluctance to admit anything ("It’s none of your business.") earlier in the text.
@klingorengi –
As much as I always love your tales (and this one is no exception), some of the sentences were rather overcome with description and needed breaking up a little. They were beautiful but the first was a bit too long and unfortunately that means you lose the thread of what the sentence is trying to say in the beginning.
So thank you to all of those who entered. The criticism is never meant to harm. It is there to help you better your writing and someday win overall. I’m sure it will also benefit those who were not criticised. I hope this has helped you in your writing as well as encouraged you to join in again next week!
Click here to read the mentioned entries.
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