Yup. One more HM on the stack.
So, I've decided to try something interesting with my next story. An experiment, shall we say. Essentially all of the stories that I've read out of the recent WotF anthologies (the last eight) were written more like novels. Meaning, they included a lot of stuff that wasn't necessarily pertinent to the story, but that fleshed out the world and helped it to feel a bit more full. So, instead of trying to keep things succinct and bare bones, I'm going to hit this next story as if it was a novel. Strip down the plot so that it's just a simple snapshot and really make things fluffy. Granted, not so much that it makes the story boring; just enough so that it feels more like you're reading a snippet of a novel instead of a fully-contained short story. For some reason, those seem to be the kinds of stories that win.
And as long as we're on the topic...
Has anyone else read the most recent anthology? The 25th? Anyhow, there was one story that really had me questioning the judges. There were 36 pages to it, there were no obvious speculative elements in it until like page 32, and it was nearly a plot-perfect copy of Stephen King's Needful Things. I mean, down to the fact that the main character was an officer of the law. I've read multiple times that the most important thing in this contest is to have unique ideas in our entries. So, does this mean that the judges don't read King? Or what other options are there? This just boggles my mind and makes me more frustrated than I care to admit. Just get over it, Dan. The world is pretty dumb sometimes.
