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[Issue 70] Continue The Story - Edition IV


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Looking for a writing contest that will provide challenge to your story-telling and plot-twisting prowess? Don't look any further because we are bringing back the classic!

 

 

Writers, Continue The Story is back! This almost annual competition will once again give you a chance to create a story compiled from the best chapters written each month. Your job for this month is fairly simple – write the opening chapter for the story. Theme is not given. You have a free hand to write whatever you like.

 

To make things organized, we have a couple of rules. Please read them first!

 

1. Each chapter should have its own title.

2. Word limit is 800 words. Slightly less or more is acceptable (+/- 100 words).

3. Note that this contest is called Continue The Story for a reason. Your plot must be interesting and have potential to

    be developed in further chapters.

4. Plagiarism is prohibited. We also won't accept entries from past installments. Come with something original, you will 

    have enough time.

5. All entries should be posted in this topic. Only participants with low rank that doesn't allow them to post in forum are 

    allowed to send their entries via Forum PM.

 

If you are stumbling in the dark, and you're unsure what to do or how to start, I advise you to check out the previous winners below;

 

 
Prizes
 
1st place:  40 000 Crystal.png
2nd place: 30 000 Crystal.png
3rd place:  20 000 Crystal.png
4th place:  15 000 Crystal.png
 
Consolation prizes for other worthy entries: 10 000 Crystal.png
 
Deadline: 5th January, 2018.
 
 
Get your writing utensils ready! We are looking forward to the new story coming from your pen. Best of luck to all participants!
 

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Technically, the first chapter might be called that way, but the point of the contest as a whole is to continue where the winner ended. 

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have never been interested in story writing but... i'm gonna do this one. story about a tank on train tracks came to my mind after knowing i'll never find out what happened in night sisters train tracks story

Edited by GuidoFawkes

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The fourth iteration of this contest, and it's only now that people are pedantic about the title?

 

How this community has changed.

Edited by Remaine
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So this is a clean slate- we're not continuing the story from anything before?

Yeap, this is were you present your own story, it's the first chapter so you have a free hand to write whatever you like as long as it has potential to be developed in next chapters.

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Alright, here's my entry (word count 888, within acceptable range):

 


Chapter 1: A Severe Anachronism

 

Johnson woke up with the light streaming in through his windows and dancing upon his eyelids.    

He looked up at the window.  It seemed so far away, so distant- no, that was because it was unusually small. He shook his head and focused- the window reformed itself into a rectangular hatch, where the first far-reaching rays of Arbol curved over the Earth.  Why, he must have been asleep! Sleeping in his M4 Abrams Tank- what would his superiors say?  He stood and looked outside.

 

The sun rose on a great, featureless plain where the grass occupied itself with rustling to and fro in a great sighing wind.   The air had a clean, untouched quality to it that comes in the early sunrise on open land. On the Great Western Plain few beings dwelt to delve and raise, to mark the land in a vain testament to a fleeting power that held sway in its time. It was something more than new and wild; it was timeless and unspoiled. 

The melodic sighing of the air increased imperceptibly; disturbed, suddenly directionless.  The ground began to vibrate, softly at first, then growing in intensity to culminate in a roaring, thundering chorus of hooves as the main attacking force of Subatai approached their target.   Over 40,000 horsemen, with a wagon train burdened with siege engines.   The wind heightened in defiance, and it caught the standard which unraveled to display the black and red.   The sight of their home colors emboldened the grim, grey-clad men who broke their formation to spur their mounts to greater speed.  The horsemen assumed a more horizontal formation as those in the rear pushed their way forwards and lengthened the flanks. 

From the highest keep, the Polish Duke Lyveryn and his officials watched impassively with hopeless expressions.

“Subatai,” he murmured as he turned his back on his aggressors and walked through a door to the tower staircase.  The generals looked at each other.

“We don’t have enough to give battle, but we’ll humor him.  The citizens have been evacuated, so the only hope is to force a siege right here. ”  The officer on his right laughed; a short, empty sound. 

“Damn!” he was shouting.  “Damn the pope and his aid.”

“Nobody is going to send their forces to be cut down on the open ground.  We’ve shut our gates- it’s too late.  No pope would risk it- especially not our current one.”  

The horn was sounded, which served to blunt the momentum of the charging horsemen.  They slowed to a trot and scanned the battlements.  The large red flag was raised, the gates were shut, and archers appeared at the battlements.  Even though Subatai had never lost in a battle, the red and white instilled among his troops a sense of vague foreboding.

The Commander stood up.  “All right, you know the orders.  Half to the gatehouse-“ he pointed to the gatehouse, “and half to the right frontal wall.  Concentrate the siege engines on that main gate, it’s weak.  The walls are thicker than they look, double-locked.  But your armor will protect you within range.”  

            The soldiers looked at each other.   They were clad in dull gray scale armor, with sloped helmets and reinforcing breastplates.  It was engineered specifically to protect from the arrowstorm coming from in front and above.   Although large shieldwalls were the most effective against archers, Subatai liked his forces fast and mobile, and Lyveryn himself was not an archery commander. 

The troops knew something, however, that an ordinary observer would not; that is, mixed among them were the best troops Subatai had to offer.  The Mongol hordes, after all, were far from an undisciplined mass and had divisions and sub-divisions.

            The soldiers were still looking around at each other when a wave of grey swarmed over them; the rear half of the force was streaming forward and through the ones in front.  It was eerily silent; and the wave of grey began to break up and stretch as the faster soldiers’ speed carried them ahead.   The ladders were being hastily brought up by teams carrying them sideways, and the foremost troops, realizing that they couldn’t charge straight into the wall, were looking back at the ladder teams with impatience written all over their featureless helmets. 

            The defending archers, of course, were firing off arrows as fast as they could during the whole spectacle.  It was very underwhelming- the arrows were doing very little, and they flew too thin.  Most did not hit their target, or any target whatsoever for that matter.

            Up reared the ladders in unison, latching onto the battlements and bulwarks. The swordsmen were at the top of the battlements extraordinarily quickly; a silent onrush of men.   Then a new sound reached their ears: the glittering clash of steel upon steel.  From the large towers that flanked each section defending swordsmen issued forth.  It was obvious, however, that the battle was lost for the defenders. 

 

Suddenly the skies broke open and the very air crumbled.  A flash of light had streaked into the Mongol hordes massed on the open plains.  Where it ended its path, there was a large crater, a column of smoke, and a swirl of fire.  Of the men that had been there, no sign remained for the others, fearful, crowding, watching for the source of the Thunderbolt.


Edited by H_A_Z_A_R_D
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Firstly, is it possible to participate but not take the prize (but give it to the best next fellow)?

 

Secondly, can we participate with alts?

You can participate, but the prize you win won't be transferred to another person.

 

Yes, you can participate with alt, but that automatically disqualifies your other accounts.

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You can participate, but the prize you win won't be transferred to another person.

 

Yes, you can participate with alt, but that automatically disqualifies your other accounts.

I wrote my article based on a the third part for a series of stories I am writing in the AWC page, but this story which I wrote here is standalone and consequently does not need to be read after the first and second part. Is this okay? If so, can I also post it in the AWC section for feedback?

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I wrote my article based on a the third part for a series of stories I am writing in the AWC page, but this story which I wrote here is standalone and consequently does not need to be read after the first and second part. Is this okay? If so, can I also post it in the AWC section for feedback?

If the storyline is standalone and it is not required to read previous parts of your series, than yes it can technically be used.

 

Still, maybe you should try to create something new outside the already existing series.

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THE SUPER

 

David was a creature of habit, and yet he had learned to accept his anonymity and predictability as a blessing, not a curse. He rose at the same time, dressed in clothes indistinguishable from those he wore on any other day, ate the same breakfast, took the same route to work. He filed insurance claims until lunchtime, and then he walked to the park. Here he sat for forty-eight minutes to read the newspaper, to eat his sandwich, and then he walked back to the office. To him, this routine had become a comfort.

 

David had made no definite plans as to the means of disposal for her body, nor how he would explain her sudden disappearance to family, friends and neighbors. Perhaps he believed that once the deed was done he would be struck by a brilliant solution, a streak of lightning, a bolt from the blue.

 

David had decided the manner of her death, however. He would stab her in the eye. The chosen instrument of death was not a knife, but a knitting needle. He had bound half its length in duct tape so as to provide a firm grip, yet with six inches exposed he believed that the needle – if driven suddenly, and with sufficient force – would pass directly through her eye and into the brain. There would be little, if any, blood, and death would be instant. She had given him fifteen years of comfortable, predictable marriage, and he did not wish to cause her any undue pain or distress. In fact, David did not think of it so much as a murder, but more of an execution for some unknown crime.

 

And so it was, on a cool summer evening, that David and his wife sat at the kitchen table to eat. She had prepared a chicken salad and opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. They ate in near-silence, the stillness punctuated by the odd pleasantry, the fact that rain had been expected but not arrived.

 

“Perhaps tomorrow”, David had commented, finding it ironic that he was mentioning something of which she would know nothing.

 

David sat calmly, the knitting needle beneath his thigh. He felt a sense of philosophical resignation regarding the inevitability of what was about to happen. There would be no struggle, no raised voices, no desperate drama as she fought against hands tightening around her throat. There would be no blood spatter, no scuff-marks from frantic heels against the linoleum. She would find herself at dinner, and then she would be dead. Perhaps she would not even notice.

 

“You’re having no wine?” he asked her.

 

“No,” she said. “I have a slight headache. The wine will worsen it.”

 

It was then that David experienced a sudden pang of something. She had smiled at him, and smiled in such an innocent and unaffected way, and there had almost been a sense of sadness in her tone.

 

She could not know what he had planned, for he had planned nothing beyond her death. She could not suspect him of any deceit. Each day had been the same. He had done the same things, expressed the same thoughts with the same words, continued with routines that had remained constant and unchanging for years. In fact, it was safe to say that the single most defining characteristic of their marriage was that nothing ever happened.

 

But now he was feeling something.

 

Was it regret? Guilt? Was he even now questioning the determination he had made to kill her?

 

Why was he experiencing this sense of disorientation, a feeling of agitation in his stomach, a fleeting wave of nausea?

 

Why did he now feel so weak, so uncertain?

 

He opened his mouth to speak. His words were thoughts, but they were not sounds.

 

She looked at him, the same sense of sadness in her eyes. The stab of pain in his gut was breathtaking. It snatched every molecule of air from his lungs and throat. He had never felt anything like it. The pain did not last so long – thirty seconds, perhaps forty.

 

He felt his cheek against the plate of moist salad, and then he felt nothing at all.

 

David’s wife carried the wine bottle and the glass to the sink. She was methodical as she washed them, ensuring every grain of sediment was removed from both.

 

And then she stood in the kitchen doorway, and she looked at her dead husband, and she believed that during the last days – as she had planned his murder – she had felt more than enough emotion to compensate for a decade and a half of feeling nothing at all.

 

I thought this was great, actually.

 

But I wondered about the title and I also wondered about the contrast in your English in this piece compared to all your other posts. "The Super" is a very strange title. Maybe a kind of misspelling of "The Supper"?

 

Anyway, I was intrigued so I had a quick check on the wonderful thing that is the internet.

 

http://www.rjellory.com/a-thriller-in-800-words-or-less/

 

Not cool mate. Really?

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If the storyline is standalone and it is not required to read previous parts of your series, than yes it can technically be used.

 

Still, maybe you should try to create something new outside the already existing series.

Well, it's actually more of a reboot. I'm not overly creative at stories, so I think if it's okay with you and the judges of the contest, I'd prefer to keep my current entry.

I thought this was great, actually.

 

But I wondered about the title and I also wondered about the contrast in your English in this piece compared to all your other posts. "The Super" is a very strange title. Maybe a kind of misspelling of "The Supper"?

 

Anyway, I was intrigued so I had a quick check on the wonderful thing that is the internet.

 

http://www.rjellory.com/a-thriller-in-800-words-or-less/

 

Not cool mate. Really?

B-B-B-Busted!

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I thought this was great, actually.

 

But I wondered about the title and I also wondered about the contrast in your English in this piece compared to all your other posts. "The Super" is a very strange title. Maybe a kind of misspelling of "The Supper"?

 

Anyway, I was intrigued so I had a quick check on the wonderful thing that is the internet.

 

http://www.rjellory.com/a-thriller-in-800-words-or-less/

 

Not cool mate. Really?

wow

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