Not Quite Right features discussions that are unfiltered and uncensored,
and may include themes that are inappropriate for younger listeners.
Also, I swear a lot something doesn't seem
quite right.
Welcome to not quite right.
My name's Ed and I'm Amanda and welcome to the second daredevil for the January
2026 not quite right prize.
But it's not the second daredevil for this daredevil.
It sure isn't Daredevils are people who have signed up for the honour and
privilege of having their story ripped to shreds on air on the podcast.
And as you've said, this is not our contestants first time or
the second time.
It is in fact their third time.
So they're well aware of what it feels like to be ripped to shreds and hopefully
they've become a little bit desensitised.
Yeah, I hope so, because we're still not going easy on,
will go harder and harder until you can take no more until you learn.
So we'll read your story, we'll talk about your story,
break it down, share our thoughts, and hopefully we will all learn something
in the process because this is a learning experience.
It's not a criticism for its own sake.
No.
And we hope like this is a as a general statement about these daredevils.
If you are a daredevil and we rip your story apart, it's our job.
Yeah, it's how we learn.
It's not personal.
And we hope you don't take it personally.
We do worry that people take it personally because I know I would,
I would take it very personally and I would, you know, I would have my revenge.
That's it.
We would put him on the **** **** and we would be looking for revenge.
And look, that's fair enough.
I hope you realise sometime between planning your revenge and actually acting
it out that we do love you and we're just, we just want the best for you.
But it is hard to receive criticism, even well intentioned criticism.
It feels so personal when it's about a piece of art.
If you come and criticise an email I wrote, I don't give a **** you know?
But like, you come and criticise a piece of fiction
that came from my heart and my brain and my imagination,
you put yourself on the page, right?
Yeah.
It's like you, you're coming for me.
So we don't want that for our daredevils.
We hope our daredevils can see it for what it is,
which is just constructive criticism about the way the words landed on the
page, basically.
And look, you've only got a couple of days to write
the story.
It's not, it's it's never gonna be as polished as
you want it to be.
So you've got that.
But look, as mentioned, our victim for today is no, no, no, no.
If I can't say none other, I've got no what?
It's so much trouble.
Oh my God.
Our victim is none other than Karosh, who's here for 1/3 time.
First time was back in April last year for his story leaking compartments,
and then again last round in October for third time's the charm,
AKA the third ************.
That's right.
But this is actually his third time around, so maybe third time is the charm.
We will find out very shortly.
Or maybe it's the third ************ maybe and Karosh is a dirty traitor
because he's he's decided to go team Amanda this time.
Appreciate it.
And Amanda, what were your prompts?
So my prompts were the word prompt, Fluxino C vilification,
or you also had the option of using the word draw, the action prompt of chasing.
And the kicker?
You had to prominently feature a law of some kind in your story,
and I'll be reading this one.
So here is Fox no Sydney.
Hilly Pillification by Karosh Troy lay in his sleeping bag,
staring at the rolling sheets of clouds blocking the night sky as they glided
ever so slowly across the infinite expanse.
Troy shivered, wiggling himself toward the cooling
embers of the long gone campfire.
He kept his eyes on the sky.
If only the clouds were as far as the world went.
Or if at the very least, they wrapped the entire planet,
never showing the tiny inhabitants of Earth that there was something beyond.
The cold bark of laughter slipped past Troy's lips.
The clouds were his ceiling for the moment,
and his if onlys should focus on it staying that way.
Tearing his eyes from the sky, Troy squirmed deeper into his sleeping
bag.
He relished the absolute darkness, just him and nothing else.
Away from all the world's noise, his child's self would be crying,
begging mum and dad to turn on the lights and eventually they'd put glowing star
stickers on the walls and book filled shelves in his room and he would have
loved it.
Troy shoved down the bile in the back of his throat.
How immature he had been, a version of him in the past who peered
through telescopes wanting to see more and more was unthinkable now.
A naive idiot who was awestruck by dying stars.
An insignificant speck who, standing in front of a hospital bed,
realised stars were just barely big enough for their inevitable death throes
to leave a mark.
Troy's chest tightened, shutting his eyes tight,
trying to trap his pointless tears.
He clawed himself out of the sleeping bag.
He needed air.
The damned things he felt had to go.
If only the clouds could take them.
Forgetting the tears waiting to burst through,
Troy threw his head up and opened his eyes, seeking the comforting clouds above.
Yet in the cloud consumed sky overhead, a single patch had opened directly where
he was looking.
During the long moment of shock and panic that followed, he froze,
letting the stars hold his tearful gaze, so unfathomably large,
yet little more than pinpricks from where he stood.
Troy wanted to scream.
He tore his eyes away, giving his all to stop his awestruck past
self from bubbling up.
His heart thundered in his chest.
Thoughts, memories, and feelings clamoured in his head,
begging to be seen.
Worst of all, his eyes wandered back, spurred by a little voice insisting among
the clamour that if Troy squinted hard enough,
maybe the stars would look like a smile.
Like her smile.
The nagging voice won, drawing a pair of rosy lips among the
stars, smiling down on Troy, allowing all that he had left behind to
catch up.
As tears blurred his vision, something occurred to him.
If it was all so meaningless, so insignificant,
then his insignificance wasn't that also insignificant?
He stopped struggling.
A *** heaved itself out of his chest, freed after so many months.
And Troy, the naive, awestruck Troy cried.
O thank you Korosh.
And Korosh has left us a voicemail, so we will play that now.
Hello Ed And Amanda, it's Mika Roche calling in for another
Daredevil.
I hope you guys are doing well.
The idea for the story came from the fact that I saw essentially what is now the
title of the story.
Just kind of pop in on my feet.
And I found it interesting and just decided to make that the centrepiece of
my story, which kind of also helped because
choosing a title always took a lot of time from me.
So that's how that happened, and I am very sorry because I can't
pronounce that.
Good luck to you guys.
Anyway, another thing that is kind of very
experimental for me in this story is that it's very, very internal.
Like I tried very much to create a narrative arc,
like a change in the status quo that's relatively obvious,
but I'm still not 100% confident that it's exited the vignette area and entered
what can constantly be called a story.
So I wanted some feedback on that for sure.
Other than that, I hope you enjoyed it and the new format
was Spot.
Thank you.
And yeah, look, it is very hard to create a action filled
narrative when you've just got 1 character.
That's a challenge, especially if that character is
presumably camping or outdoors alone and we don't be camping,
otherwise something's gone horribly wrong.
And so, yeah, that's the challenge of moving beyond a
vignette into a story and having all of those elements of a story structure,
the beginning, middle and end, and most importantly, the change.
So plenty to talk about there, and we'll get into that in just a moment.
But let's start with the title, which is, of course,
Foxino Hiller pillification or something.
Foxino Sini Hilly pillification.
Thank you, Amanda.
And I mentioned in the intro, if if I had signed up for Daredevil,
I would be seeking revenge.
And I think this is your revenge.
Oh, I don't know.
He said in his voicemail there that this word popped up onto his feet.
And look, it's a great word.
And we learned in the longest episode when we talked about it,
what this word means.
And it's this idea of the meaninglessness of it all.
And I think that is a great inspiration.
I think a lot of people are searching for meaning now.
In fact, a lot of people have been searching for
meaning since the dawn of time pretty much.
So that's a relatable idea.
It's something that people can engage with and so I can see why you'd be
inspired to write a story about it.
So the dictionary definition of that word is the action or habit of estimating
something as worthless.
So in the context of this story, presumably it's like a self reflection,
estimating oneself as worthless.
Although I will say that Troy in this story is wrestling with loss as well.
So it's not necessarily that estimation of 1's itself is worthless.
It is.
It's more that feeling ineffectual, like in the face of what we can only
assume is death of a loved one, feeling like powerless to stop it.
Yeah, I guess it's the concept, which is touched on in the last
paragraphs, of Insignificance more than it is
worthless.
I think those are just slightly different but related concepts.
So let's get into the story.
And I guess do we want to just talk about the overarching ideas in this story
before we get into the words themselves?
Yeah.
Sounds good.
So look, Croatian raised a great point in his
voicemail there and I think I want to address that.
First of all, I think it's really great when you can be
self reflective and see some of the challenges in your story.
That's step one, right?
And what's step two?
Well, what the **** do I do about it next, you know?
And that's what I hope that we will be able to help with today because I agree,
this is an interior story.
And unfortunately, I think that's a limitation of this story.
And I think it's probably this story's main limitation because for me,
you did have a sense of character change, which is great and which is missing in a
lot of stories that we would call interior or internal.
That character change often doesn't appear at all.
And you've you have worked to put that in and that counts.
That counts for a lot.
So by the end of the story, Troy's kind of reverted to his childhood
self and he's come to this realisation, Well, yeah, nothing matters.
So like, if nothing matters, like, why am I trying so hard?
Like just kind of accept it a little bit and be full of wonder again, almost.
And that's a resonant idea for me.
I am an existential nihilist, and I believe that nothing matters.
But I believe nothing matters in a way that is beautiful.
If it doesn't matter, you do what you want, right?
And I think that's what this story touches on,
which for me is very interesting.
But what it doesn't do is it doesn't arrive at that change through the action
and consequences of the actions of the scene.
So I think what's missing here and what can still occur in an interior story is
cause and effect.
There is not so much much cause and effect here.
We have a lot of reflection on stars and clouds and thinking back to the past and
thinking about one's effectiveness or in the world and thinking about someone that
you've lost and all of these things which are compelling thoughts,
but there isn't an action and then a reaction.
And that's the thing that's hard to do with a single character.
But I will say that Justin Kreps didn't in his story,
which made the shortlist a couple of rounds ago with a very interior story
with 1 character who was wrestling with these ideas of do I need to sort of get
involved in what's going on in the world and share and reshare this information?
I feel so helpless and but in that story, even though it was very internal,
the character was kind of thinking something and processing that with what
he was looking at and coming to realisations.
And it wasn't kind of just already in his brain.
Yeah.
And that was another child killed in Palestine.
That's right.
That's the story.
Definitely.
I can see the effort here on Croatia's part.
And I think he comes close because he does really make a strong attempt to
weave in physicality and cause and effect into the story.
I mean, he uses these ideas of the clouds and
astronomy and kind of child good thoughts as these visual devices that weave into
the story.
And that is a good grounding for that kind of change as well.
I feel that we don't quite get that connection completely made in the last
couple of paragraphs, which is where where the disconnect is
really.
Yeah.
Well, this is the thing, right?
As you've just mentioned, the clouds and the stars, you know,
we challenged our last daredevil, Eleanor, about cohesion of idea and concept.
And I think Karosh has done that really well here,
this idea of the clouds covering up the stars almost like a blanket.
And, you know, he's in the sleeping bag, like, sort of in the dark.
But then when he comes out, he can see the stars.
And that's confronting for him.
Like all of these things are pointing in the same direction, which I love.
I mean, we're even talking about how the parents
would stick the little star stickers on the wall.
And so all of these things are working together, which is tick, tick, tick.
That's really great.
From my perspective.
It's all sort of right on theme.
But what's not happening is that that stuff around the stars and the clouds and
going into the sleeping bag, which as you've indicated,
is action in the scene, which is great, but that doesn't cause anything.
So the only causation that happens is that he looks up at the sky and he can
see the stars, but he didn't do anything to make that
appear.
They're just there and then he sort of comes undone.
What I would love to see, and what is normally an effective method
in stories, is for the main character to have some
agency in their own story.
So they are doing something and as a result of the thing that they do,
something else happens.
And then they react to what happens and then something else happens and we sort
of work towards the conclusion.
So he's doing things, he's camping and he's going in his
sleeping bag and kind of trying to protect himself,
but he's not doing a lot more than that.
He's not having an influence on what's happening around him.
And I think if he did that, we would be able to have that cause and
effect that leads him to come into this realisation and bursting into tears and
all of this stuff, rather than that kind of being almost a
foregone conclusion when the story begins.
Yeah, totally agree.
One more thing I'd add, and this is before we get into the
writing itself, we see these descriptions of Troy
wrestling with his emotions, which is really great showing, right?
But I feel like we don't understand why, and we need to understand the why.
And it becomes apparent close to the end, you know,
2/3 of the way through that he's lost someone and it's only her.
Like that's the only clue that we get of who it might be.
We don't know really.
Apart from that we assume it's like a mother or well, this is the thing.
The mother's the only one who the only her that is mentioned specifically.
However, you know, this idea of rosy lips and that being the
thing you focus on suggests that it's a partner.
And my best guess would be that it's his partner.
You know, he's a man alone now sleeping out in the
forest.
And like, if he was missing his dad too, you feel like that he would also be
mentioned.
And, and if his dad's not missing, then what?
But we don't know.
And I think that's a big problem.
I think we need to know who he's missing and why.
And.
Yeah.
And we know there's a hospital bed, so we kind of have an idea of what
happened.
I don't think that's enough of the picture.
I think more of the picture needs to be painted.
And that doesn't come even.
Even the hospital bed comes about halfway through the story.
So we spend half of the story nearly watching Troy squirm and wrestle with
emotions that we don't really understand.
And we say this all the time about stories,
but bring your reader along right from the start.
Yeah.
Tell us why.
And that's also hard to do when you've only got 1 character.
Absolutely.
So if it is the mother who he has lost and that's a possibility in this story,
well then just sort of bring that part up and sort of almost reflecting on, well,
what would mum be thinking in this right now or saying to me or,
but she's not here to say it anymore kind of thing.
And if it is a partner, well, maybe you used to camp together and talk
about possibilities in your lives and those possibilities were stolen away from
you.
And that's where the, you know, the stars and looking out and imagining
possibilities beyond just what's on Earth becomes really poignant and resonant.
And now you just think, well, I've got nothing to hope for or look
forward to.
And so I'm just going to hide here under this sleeping bag.
But if you used to camp together, then you can bring that in and sort of be
like, well, she would have said and give us a name.
Yeah.
You know, what would she have said to you if she
were there?
But she's not there.
That's pretty much all you need.
And then we can get into the emotional processing.
And then you might be weaving in some other little details as we go along to
sort of expand on that relationship and why it was so meaningful to you that you
are have almost like lost your sense of self as a result of the loss.
Yeah.
I've got in my notes here that she, whoever she is,
needs to be present in this story.
Like, it's a single character story.
The clouds are present, stars are present, but she's not really present in the story
and she needs to be there the whole time, as she is in his mind, presumably.
Well, this is the thing.
If you have ever lost anyone who's very important to you,
they are really ******* present.
And that can be reflected in a story.
Like they're dead and gone, but they are not gone.
Yeah, like I've lost my dad.
I still think about him a lot.
I sometimes stumble across his handwriting or little things like that
that immediately recall like a flood of emotion in memories.
And I think you can do that in a story like this.
Like, do you go to make a hot chocolate and you
pull out the mug and it's still got the dregs from your last trip in it?
Or I don't know, like any.
It could be anything that brings back a flood of emotion.
You've got options there to work with to bring this character into the scene.
OK, so let's get into a bit of the prose, the story.
We're not going to go through all of it, but we open with Troy lay in his sleeping
bag, staring at the rolling sheets of clouds
blocking the night sky as they glided ever so slowly across the infinite
expanse.
And yeah, I think that's a good opening line in
that it both sets the scene.
We, we can picture where he is.
The sleeping bag does all the work there.
Like if you're in a sleeping bag and you can see the sky,
we can pretty much picture where you are.
And not only does it set the scene, it sets the tone as well.
Yeah.
And look, this idea of rolling sheets of clouds,
like, I really liked that description.
You can picture that.
So that was a really, really beautiful turn of phrase.
What I would challenge, and this is first sentence.
So let's let's start challenging right away.
But we've got Troy Lane, his sleeping bag, staring at the rolling sheets of clouds.
Now that use of staring there is, you know, what we'd call filtering.
So to the extent possible, when you're describing that your main
character is experiencing something, so they're seeing it, hearing it,
feeling it, smelling it, tasting it, thinking it, whatever it might be,
work to remove those words, work to remove, in this case, staring,
in this case, standing for, looking at or seeing.
We don't need you to tell us that.
So instead of that, just show us the rolling sheets of clouds.
So Troy lay in his sleeping bag above rolling sheets of clouds blocked the
night sky.
You can give us that image without needing to stage direct where Troy's
looking because we know he's the main character.
We are looking at what he is looking at, and it's a minor point,
but it can make it feel more immediate for the reader.
If we're giving stage direction, it's reminding us there's a storyteller
here and we want to just be in the story as much as possible.
Yeah.
I think in addition to that, in this situation specifically,
the verb staring is a very static action, like just staring at something.
Not much is happening.
And when you remove that, you're actually highlighting the rolling
clouds.
And that's more of an active.
It's an interesting point.
I've never thought of that before, so thank you.
You say we're all learning and I just, I feel like I learned something there,
expanded my horizons, if you will.
And if we're going to continue nitpicking that very first sentence because we love
to do it, this section of they glided ever so
slowly.
Now slowly being an adverb.
Whenever you see an adverb so often, usually a word ending with LY,
that's an opportunity again to think about, can I make the verb stronger?
So we've got glided.
Now.
To me, glided is not a thing that happens slowly.
If you think gliding, it's pretty smooth and effortless and it
just goes ahead, I think there are other choices of word
which would imply that it's slow so that you don't need to say ever so slowly.
Inched, for example, or crept.
Or, you know, I'm not necessarily trying to choose the
word here, but just pointing out that whenever you
have an adverb, you can look at maybe cleaning up the
bird instead.
Yep.
So just the rest of this opening paragraph we have Troy shivering,
wiggling himself towards the cooling embers of the long gone campfire.
He kept his eyes on the sky.
If only the clouds were as far as the world went,
or if at the very least they wrapped the entire planet,
never showing the tiny inhabitants of Earth that there was something beyond.
So very reflective ideas here.
Again, one of the problems I have is just we
don't really understand what he's dealing with at this point.
We're getting these reflections, but they are quite generic reflections I
guess of anyone who's feeling like things are too much for them.
Right, so just that the idea of putting us into
to his mental world so that we can understand what those reflections
specifically point to would help us connect emotionally with the character.
One more point from this paragraph, but we can also apply it to the rest of
the story.
And this actually comes from Dean's comment on the story.
So thank you Dean.
But we have a story here with 1 character called Troy and Troy's name comes up
again and again during the story.
And that's an opportunity to simplify and just use, hey,
because we know who you're talking about because there's no one else in the story.
Well, again, it's an opportunity to remove some of
that stage direction as well.
Like we've got.
He kept his eyes on the sky, tearing his eyes from the sky,
these sorts of things.
I mean, that's his and not Troy there.
But nevertheless, we don't need to keep reminding the
reader where he's looking.
If you just show us what he's looking at, we will see it and it will be implied
that that's what he sees.
And, you know, in a single character story,
I guess that removes some of that awkwardness that comes with having to
repeat again and again what he is doing.
Yeah.
But it all stems from this idea of keeping things active, which is important.
But there, I guess there is only so much you can do
when you are a person in a sleeping bag under the sky and your fire's not even
lit.
So I guess we do get some other things we could do to keep warm.
OK.
I've been watching.
Too much heat arrival.
Such as?
But, but he's not there with other hockey
players.
He's.
Oh, yeah, you're right.
You make a very good point, Which is a shame.
He'd probably cheer right up.
He'd be like she who?
Oh, I'm sorry.
This is serious business.
I'm sorry.
Once I get into heated rival territory, it's all over.
So we we get some more moments of Troy dealing with these thoughts we get.
His chest tightened, shutting his eyes tight,
trying to trap his pointless tears.
He clawed himself out of the sleeping bag.
He needed air.
The damn things he felt had to go.
If only the clouds could take them.
So again, some really good showing there.
I guess you need to let the reader in, as I've said,
on to what those thoughts might be.
And I think if we knew, then we would be feeling some of that
pain.
It would sort of resonate more.
Like at the moment you don't know what he's dealing with.
It could be something completely innocuous and silly.
And of course, it's implied that it's quite serious.
But we don't know.
You know, if you meet someone in the street and
they're in distress and you don't know what's going on with them,
it's very hard to sort of connect and help them.
But if they were to tell you right away what the problem was,
they've lost their daughter immediately.
You've connected, and now their distress makes perfect
sense.
So I think it's just about that.
It's about bringing that up, but not just about bringing that
explanation of the context to the start of the story,
but also the stakes and the goal.
So his goal seems to be to repress his emotion.
That appears to be the goal here is to sort of swallowing it all down and trying
to fight back the tears.
And his goal seems to to be to kind of repress that,
but we don't have any sense of the stakes of that.
Like, what would happen if you cried?
Why do you care that there's no one around?
So of all the times to cry, even if you have issues with crying,
no one's going to know.
And I'm also going to say something right now, and it may sound really, really,
really dumb, but bear with me, OK?
So if you are in a state of mind where you are saying,
I wish the clouds would just blanket the earth so that I wouldn't have to remember
that there's anything beyond it, why would you go to the one place where
you're going to see stars?
You go into your house in the suburbs and you won't see stars because there's too
many lights, you know?
And OK, that's stupid, right?
But quite seriously, why would you do that?
Why are you camping?
What brought you there and now that you're there, what are you trying to do?
Like are you just wrestling with this independent of anything else or are you
trying to achieve something here?
It's not clear.
And so that's part of that interiority thing.
And while we have character change and we do because he does cry by the end and
have that release, but we don't have that sense of the goal
and the stakes at the beginning of why crying is an issue or what.
What's stopping you and why you're here and what are you trying to achieve on
this camping trip?
We don't know.
You're just there.
I get the impression that Karosh for, based on what you've said,
like this word conjured this scene for you, you know,
the scene of trying to move beyond your emotions.
But what you're saying there, Amanda, is just the wider context of that for the
character and why they would be in that place of all places.
And I'm also thinking along the lines of something I've always like to come back
to is just escalation, ramping up, I guess,
the drama and even introducing some crazy elements and how that can help your story.
Because, you know, you're working with your limited pieces
and trying to move them around, but you've chosen a setting that is very
difficult to do.
So I thought about a couple of things.
One of them might be why he's there.
Is that because whoever he's lost, assuming it's a it's a partner.
Maybe this is where they used to go, right?
And so why doesn't he bring like he could bring a second sleeping bag and roll that
out and that can be part of the action.
And that couldn't kind of express that.
Or even more wild than that is what if, and now it's my turn to be stupid.
You are grinning.
What if a bear turns up?
Like what if something catastrophic happens?
The and I don't know how that would play out,
but I'm just thinking outside the box because when you're writing a story,
it doesn't have to be real.
But you know, what if a bear turns up or what if like a
a wolf confronts him or something that that forces that moment of realisation or
maybe it's not I'm about to die moment or something like that.
What if, and this is for all my if you know,
you know.
OK, what if a **** shrieks really loudly and
scares him, right?
If you know, you know.
And if you don't, well, that's sad.
Can you explain that one to me?
That's a heated rivalry, right?
I see.
No, but quite seriously, like having a shocking moment that breaks
you out of this internality like and reminds you where you are and what's
going on around you.
You know, those moments sometimes can kind of break
the dam of the tension.
And now you're laughing and now you're crying because you're laughing and it's
all flooding out of you.
So there are options.
And this isn't to say that that is the way to to deal with this story.
There are many other options that you could go with.
But as you've said, it just like sort of building and
escalating and putting more pressure on him.
So if his goal is to, for example, get through his first solo camping trip
since he lost her, this is just I'm just putting it out
there as an option.
If that's his scene goal and he wants to do that in a way where he doesn't deal
with his emotion, he's just he just needs to get through it
and that's his goal.
And if he cries, then it means he's failed, you know,
because he's needs to be strong and all of these things.
Let's say that's his set up and then the pressure is building on him and he keeps
getting reminders of her and it's trying to push him to cry.
And he's like, I'm not going to cry.
And you know, and then finally he looks up and there's
a break in the clouds and that's when it all comes out.
I think that feels more powerful because we know what he's working against and we
can see that conflict in the push and pull of trying to make him cry kind of
thing, and him having to fight that urge.
And then, well, when he does cry, the irony is he feels better.
That's kind of how that story might play out if he went with that as a scene goal.
But of course, there are many other ways to take that.
And maybe it is his mother who died or whatever it might be.
But, you know, why is he there?
What's he trying to achieve?
And let's watch him sort of fight that throughout.
Yeah.
And maybe fight a bear.
Well, no, there are so many ways you can go.
And the the reason why I would say that is just because that's what makes your
story unique.
And I think just having the courage to think of absurd things happening makes
your story memorable and, you know, elevates it beyond an internal quest for
meaning to something that is striking and memorable and personal for this.
Yeah.
And there's any number of things that, you know,
it could start raining and he has to deal with that.
And, you know, maybe he sees someone or maybe he
stumbles upon a hockey rink and I'm antics.
And so.
Yeah, cottage.
He stumbles across a cottage.
Yeah.
So I mean, I would say even if you've got that
premise, even if you've got that idea of he's in
the woods and he's wrestling with these emotions, it doesn't have to end there.
Even if it starts there, it doesn't have to end there.
And there are ways that you can escalate and don't be afraid to think outside the
box and, you know, challenge yourself to just go places.
But that's just fun too, isn't it?
Right.
Yeah.
Like when that's the imagination part and some of your ideas will be garbage ideas
and other ideas, you'll be like, whoa, spark of inspiration.
I feel excellent about this.
So that's always a good idea.
And I will say just tied to that, you know,
we're talking about the emotion of this story, and it is an emotional story,
but I would say that for the duration of the story,
we're kind of emotionally in one place until right at the end, you know,
the dam bursts and he cries.
And it's good to have as we talk about a single effect, you know,
a single emotional effect.
But that's the effect at the end that we're building to throughout the story.
We need to be seeing movement and building of tension, as you've indicated,
would also build the intensity of that emotion at the same time.
So all of these things actually work together to enhance a story,
make it feel more meaningful and more powerful.
Yeah.
So let's, let's jump to the end.
I don't want to spend too much time on the pros itself because I think I think
the pros is generally quite solid.
And you've given some examples of a couple of things to watch out for.
But the last couple of paragraphs I wanted to jump to because we've got this
moment of where like the clouds break and he sees her face in the sky beyond the
clouds.
And he allows himself to kind of give in to that.
He realises like, I just can't fight it.
And it's described as the nagging voice.
1 So he sees the rosy lips smiling down and he has this moment of crying and,
and breaking down, which is, I think it's a, it's a,
a nice moment to have.
But what follows on from that is that something occurred to him and then we get
this resolution.
And as you called out earlier, the realisation needs to come from
something else, I think something more active in the
scene and something ideally that has flowed on from the action he's taken in
the scene.
So again, cause and effect.
And I've described it this way before.
And in fact, I steal this concept from KM Weiland from
the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast and website,
who no doubt stole it from elsewhere.
I don't know, maybe she coined it.
But this idea of Domino's right?
So in a story, and she talks mainly about novel length
fiction, but it still applies in a piece of flash
fiction.
The idea that one thing happens and it knocks the next thing over and that
knocks the next thing over.
And that's what we're talking about here about action.
What does he do that causes something else to happen?
And when that happens, what does that cause to happen?
And it might be a reaction from him, for example.
And then when he reacts a certain way, which initially is probably not the best
way to react, what does that do that actually makes
this situation worse And you know how we building it.
And then by the end, what is that final domino that brings us
that change that happens for the main character?
I find personally that visual of dominoes to be a helpful way to think of cause and
effect in a story.
May or may not be helpful to you, but I do think whatever way you slice it,
working to have actions that are meaningful in the story that progress the
plot is always a good goal to have.
All right, so let's go to the prompts before we wrap
up.
So the the word prompt was draw and that was used in the sentence,
the nagging voice one drawing a pair of rosy lips among the stars.
So a more metaphorical or physical but non literal, non literal,
slightly non literal way of drawing the action prompt of chasing is,
as Croatia's described in his explanation, is running from his emotions and failing
to shake them off.
Which I think is a good approach, right?
Running from something non physical there.
And the kicker?
Croatius said incorporating several laws into the story,
mainly cosmic and universal laws.
The most overt of these is death, which is mentioned in the term inevitable
death throes.
Now, this is one of those perfect examples
where I would have needed that brief explanation.
Without that, I don't think I would have been able to
identify a particular law in this story.
And even with honestly, a generous interpretation,
I think I would have struggled to find one.
I'm perfectly happy with that explanation.
That's fine.
I think that's great inspiration.
You know, we're not there to kind of nitpick and
say what's a law and what's not a law and all that sort of stuff.
To see that it's inspired the stories enough and I like that it can take people
in different directions mentally.
That's the whole point of the prompts, is to inspire something in you and bring
out your best story.
But also we just need to that validation that you have considered it and haven't
forgotten all about it because of course that's how we keep it fair.
So I think that's great and I think that ticks the boxes.
So before we wrap up, I just wanted to return to Croatia's
questions.
And I think we've covered most of that around the internality piece.
But the only one I wanted to spend a bit more time on is your question about story
versus vignette and creating a narrative arc.
Because I feel like you did create a narrative arc here.
And you said, Amanda, there is that moment of change at the end.
And so we look at that as having a beginning, middle and an end.
Well, it has a beginning and it has an end.
It doesn't so much have a middle.
It doesn't have like an inciting moment, doesn't have like a development.
It is beginning and end.
Yeah, I guess that's how I'd describe it.
But having said that, those elements of story are there.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think you've described it as like a
beginning and an end.
And I would say another way of looking at it is the outcome is like a foregone
conclusion at the start of the story.
Nothing happens in the story to make that happen, really.
I mean, yes, we do observe the stars, but the character hasn't done anything to
'cause that to happen.
And so it's all just happening in his head and he kind of already knows the
thing that he realises by the end.
So I think that's the challenge you need to overcome,
is just working on that middle part.
What are the dominoes?
What's the cause?
What's the effect?
How does that escalate, escalate, escalate until the moment of no return
where something changes forever?
Yeah, we got the change.
We just need the thing to bring it about.
No exactly drawing those connections, but look as a whole, as a story.
Definitely the positive elements is that you do have this real attempt at being
active through the language as well as being evocative.
I think that works really well and you do have those steps in there.
You do have those elements in there.
They just need to be connected.
Whether you take it into an absurd direction, as I,
I always like to recommend, or something a little bit more mundane.
There just needs to be a little bit of a development and something to things that
are normal can be very interesting.
That wasn't a quality of statement.
That was just a statement mundane as opposed to absurd.
Well, look, I would add to that list of qualities
about this story, positive qualities that there really is
that consistency of like the thesis here that we, you know,
we're talking about how the stars represent hope almost or possibility.
And that this idea of being blanketed either by a sleeping bag or by clouds and
just being able to pretend that that stuff doesn't exist,
that is really beautiful.
I love that it's very resonant.
It just is fed throughout the entire story,
which I think is very artfully done.
So there is a lot to like about this story.
I do think emotionally it was powerful and I think that that emotion would have
only hit harder if we'd been able to follow it from that very get go.
So yeah, hopefully we've clarified here some of
the challenges that maybe kept this story from the long list on this occasion.
Hopefully it's demystified a little bit how to take something internal and make
it active and make it feed into that essential character change.
You got the character change, so tick.
And now it's just the next step from there.
So thank you, Karosh.
Third time, the charm???
That's up to you to determine.
But yes, we did like the story.
And so, yeah, you do have an annual pass.
So we're looking forward to reading your story next time around.
I mean, I think we've seen progress in Croatia's
work, so it'd be nice to see where we go next.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that about wraps it up for this episode.
We'll be back in a week's time with our third Daredevil.
But until then, right on, Right on.
We hope you enjoyed this special Daredevil episode of Not Quite Right.
If you have thoughts on this story, follow us on social media and join the
conversation.
And if you'd like to participate in the next round of the competition,
head over to ourwebsite@notquiteright.com.
That's WRITE something doesn't seem quite right.
Flux in flux fluxina fluxino fluxino, fluxino cini cini hilly pilly.
So here is fluxino cini hilly pulification by Karoche one more time.
Fluxino cini hilly pulification.
Try not to pause after hilly, it's fine.
But I think you can.
No, I think you can do it, just less of a pause after hilly Fluxino
cini, hilly pulification, Foxino cini, hilly pulification.
That was fine until you giggled.
Fluxonosinihillipilification, Fluxonosinihillipilification,
Fluxonosinihillihillipilification, Fluxonosinihillihillipilification by
Karoche.
Let's do that as like an exercise before we start every recording session.
We have to get that out and you can't start until you say
Fluxonosinhillihillipilification.