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.
How are you going?
A couple of drinks already.
I'm a little bit concerned about how this is going to go for both me and our
Daredevil.
Yes, Well, you're slightly drunk.
I'm in a really weird mood.
You are in a I'm like half elated.
I'm half about to have a nervous breakdown.
It's the vicissitudes of life, vicissitudes pulling and pushing on me in
every direction.
And I don't know what's going on.
So it's the only fun one for our daredevil today.
Red flag is when you start using the word versus a chance that's that's a sign that
something is not OK.
It's definitely not quite right here and not quite right today.
OK, well at least we're on brand.
So welcome to the 4th Daredevil for the April round of the Not Quite Right Prize
for Flash Fiction.
And Daredevils are people who have signed up for the honour of being torn into
little pieces by Amanda and I on the podcast.
Torn into Vicissitude, if you will.
So we'll read the story, we'll talk about the story,
share our thoughts and opinions, and hopefully we'll learn something in
the process.
Today's brave daredevil is Lisa Vitali.
So Lisa's been entering not quite right prize since April of 2025,
where she actually received a wild card.
That was from me for her story A New Bloom,
which I remember it was about a kind of an older couple meet cute.
Very nice story, but Lisa hasn't made the long list since
that story.
All right, rub it in.
So no doubt she has signed up for a daredevil to find out why.
Good strategy, to be honest.
So Lisa's written for Team Amanda this round.
Woo you.
So my team had the word St the action of breaking out and the kicker of
prominently featuring a break dancing move.
And you have the honour of reading this story today.
I do.
And so here is Amy and Abby go day drinking in the Hunter Valley by Lisa
Vitali.
If you enjoy your fingers, don't feed them to the Peacocks.
Amy's drinking her wine.
I know because the winery Splatoon echoes when I spit out mine.
***** she promised breakfast before wine tasting, Swore we'd eat early.
Yet here we are, third winery and not even a breadcrumb
all morning.
I'd kill for a ******* Gherkin.
The sommelier catches my eye and drops down to break out a bottle of Pinot Noir.
He's super hot.
Blue eyes, curly brown hair pulled into a bun.
I'm pretty sure he's got a six pack to go with that ***** *** currently sticking in
my face.
Amy's shoving her glass forwards, leaning so her **** spill forwards too.
**** how do you enjoy our Chardonnay wine?
Fabio asks, grabbing a Corkscrew to open the pinot.
He pours half a glass each.
I sway in my seat.
Delish.
What do you say?
Bloody brilliant.
Amy tries to affect an Australian accent.
Picking up her glass to Australia.
She cheeses me.
You girls know the local toast yet here you say.
Cheers.
Big ears, Juan Fabio smiles at me and you say,
pointing at Amy.
Same goes big nose.
I pour at my nose.
It's not that big.
******* rude *** Australians.
I take a chug, swallowing the juicy, very red liquid, hints of vanilla.
Finally Amy winks.
Abby doesn't always like to swallow.
I cough, tasting wine.
A loud meow like sounds startles me and I spill my glass.
What the hell?
I whirl around.
Another meow.
Ah, the Peacocks wine.
Fabio wipes down the bar and refills my glass.
My fingers graze his as I grab it so soft I burp.
They usually hang out across the street till midday, then wander over for a feed.
Yeah, your sign.
They're not really going to eat our fingers, right?
Amy smiles, her teeth sculled grotesquely from the
wine.
Speaking of eating, I slur.
You got any pretzels?
Wine, Fabia.
So nuts.
I chuckle, thinking.
**** I devour a roasted Peacock.
Amy laughs.
You'd eat a Peacock?
And did you just call him wine, Fabio?
Oh, my God.
So dramatic, Abby.
We'll get food.
Promise.
She's I said that out loud.
I look at Wine Fabio.
He's laughing as he opens a merlo, then winks at me.
Yeah, those Peacocks are more dangerous than
drop bears.
Drop bears, Abby, let's see the Peacocks.
She's already up, glass in hand.
I lurch after her.
One of the birds is strutting towards Amy, who's got her hand out like she's going
to pet the damn thing.
A flash of blue, green and red as an unholy shriek fills
the air, followed by the tinkling of breaking
glass.
Amy grabs her hand, howling.
****.
You right, mate?
Wine.
Fabio rushes over.
Amy's flopping on the ground.
Aye, sip my Merlot, Abby ice from the bar.
He barks.
I nod and run.
He knows my name.
We get Abby sorted with an ice pack and wine.
Fabio looks at me.
Name's Mark.
We don't have roasted Peacock, but we serve wood oven pizza next door.
Fancy some lunch?
So thank you, Lisa, for your story.
And Lisa's left us a voicemail, so we'll play that now.
Ed and Amanda, it's scurvy.
Some of you know me as Lisa.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
I did this as punishment for myself for not submitting a story in January.
But I am really excited to hear you guys destroy my story.
I am interested in what works for you, what didn't work for you, and feel like,
well, not completely an unreliable narrator.
There is a little bit of an unreliable narrator and that ties into the ending.
Some people see it as ROM com and to me it's kind of open ended.
He might just be like, you guys need lunch and here's the
restaurant.
So yeah, interested to hear what you guys have to
say and super excited.
Thanks.
Bye.
So thank you, Lisa and an interesting comment about the
unreliable narrator.
We've got like a a drunk narrator in this scenario,
and it seems that she's unreliably narrating like her own thoughts and what
she thinks are thoughts coming out as words,
which I which I did enjoy about the story.
Have you ever had that happen to you, Amanda?
What saying something out loud that you thought that you were?
I've got a question for you.
Have you ever like group emailed the entire office something that one time
talk about?
Let's just agree to not press either of each others bruises right now.
Okay, that's agreed.
All right, well, let's get into the story then,
and we'll start with the title.
And the title is Amy and Abby go day drinking in the Hunter Valley.
The Hunter Valley is actually just up the road from where we are,
and day drinking up there sounds lovely.
Yeah.
So it's a vineyard region, all the wineries, great Shiraz,
I guess it's famously like a day trip destination if you just want to go get
drunk.
So you might have like hens parties and things like that go up there.
You might have a little dirty weekend up there kind of thing.
But yeah, beautiful region and perfect setting.
Yeah.
You can hire a little bus or jump on a little tour,
and they'll take you from winery to winery,
and you slowly get more and more drunk as the day goes on.
Slowly.
Yeah, I think this title works.
I mean, it's a comedy, right?
And so I think the title sets that up pretty well.
We've got our characters mentioned, we've sort of got the whole set up there
in the title, which means you can sort of launch
straight into the story, which I think is a good strategy
sometimes with the title.
Yeah, it sets the scene right there.
So one thing I just want to highlight though, and it's a,
it's a bit of a side note because I don't necessarily think it's an issue in this
story, although I do want to get to something
about this.
But it's common piece of advice to sort of not give your characters names
starting with the same letter, which seems really stupid, right?
Of course, out in the real world, people have names starting with the same
letter.
That's OK.
Or even similar names.
And Amy and Abby are not only starting with the same letter,
they're also quite similar names.
2 syllables starting with a with why kind of thing.
And the reason why you would normally recommend against that is because it can
be difficult for a reader to differentiate those two characters in
their mind and can start to get a little jumbled up.
It just becomes an artistic choice of how we are managing the readers reading flow.
And it can be useful to give more different names to help achieve that flow,
even if you know it's not about being realistic,
it's about what works in a story setting.
And I would say that while I don't necessarily have an issue with the names
Amy and Abby, there was a big typo in this story where
the wrong name was mentioned.
And I think that might have even been Lisas own confusion around who was who in
this story.
And that's the risk that you run, I suppose.
And it's obviously a very, very easy thing to fix.
So just to be clear, it's towards the end.
So our point of view character is Abby and the friend is Amy.
But then right towards the end, we have Amy flopping on the ground.
I sip my Merlot Abby ice from the bar.
He barks so he knows my name.
And then it says we get Abby sorted with an ice pack.
It should be.
We get Amy sorted with an ice pack.
Very, very minor issue.
But at the same time, that's like the final lines.
It's a stumbling block for the reader right there at the end.
That's not ideal.
It could be the unreliable narrator slipping in once again.
She's so drunk she's forgotten her own name.
It could indeed be that.
Yes, Hunter Valley has that effect on people.
Yeah, I think you're right.
And I didn't pick up on that.
But I do remember rereading this story again before this recording and having a
moment where I had to kind of stop and go back and go hang on, which one's Amy?
Which one's Amy?
And reread a few sentences there.
So definitely good advice there.
OK, so moving on to the story.
And the opening line is, if you enjoy your fingers,
don't feed them to the Peacocks.
And that line is presented in italics as kind of a stand alone statement that
opens the story.
And maybe, you know, I think it's clarified a little bit later
in the story that this is a sign that they're reading.
But when you do read that, initially, it comes across almost as just a thought,
maybe just in the way that's presented in italics here.
Yeah.
So I think as a general piece of advice, I'd really strongly recommend against
having what I call this disembod bodied.
Usually it's dialogue.
In this case, it's it's a sign and it's not dialogue,
but it's not attributed to anything.
And as readers, while it is, and I think the objective here is to it's
like hook, right?
It's a hooking line.
It's interesting and absolutely tick.
It works on that basis.
But we don't have any context for, as you said, is that someone's thought?
Is it someone saying that like, where is this line coming from?
And then we ignore that to move on immediately to another line which doesn't
relate specifically back to that.
That can be a little disorienting.
And so while it is hooking, it's also confusing.
So I would really strongly recommend against that and to say, look,
tell us it's a sign right up front.
There's no reason not to.
You can still have the hooking component of like the threat of someone's fingers
being bitten off, but you have some clarity around what
exactly are we looking at here in the scene.
And I think that's really important when you're trying to drop us into the scene.
Yeah.
What I do like that Lisa has done here with several elements and one of them is
the Peacocks is foreshadowed these things that happened later in the story,
so introduced them early and then paid them off later.
Yeah.
I mean, it does create that satisfying sense of
circularity.
Brought something in at the start that we pay off.
Then at the end there is something I want to just add on that.
I think it's a structural thing.
We talked about it in the last Daredevil episode.
I think it applies here as well.
So while I love that circularity of what we've we've got there,
it's not really setting up a scene goal.
And you don't have to do all these things.
But in my view, it would have been helpful in this story
to have some sort of scene goal.
So if the scene goal is to not get bitten by the Peacocks, for example,
and then we do, that's a story, right?
But if we just have that sign and it's sort of separate,
and then we have a whole story that plays out, which is about these two friends.
There's a bit of a ****** dynamic there, making fun of each other for drinking or
not drinking This guy there that one of them at least is attracted to,
or both of them are attracted to, and they're kind of fighting over him.
It's really got nothing to do with the Peacocks.
So we've kind of spent the whole story on other things only to then come back to
the Peacocks again at the end.
And while I like that kind of bookending of that story,
you kind of need the middle to fit with that and I'm not sure that it does.
And so I think what would have been more helpful is if there was kind of like a
clear single which related to the Peacocks or even if it didn't relate the
Peacocks, it's there right side by side with that.
And that plays out over the scene.
So the Peacocks are there the whole time and like coming in and out,
you know what I mean?
Rather than just kind of they're there at the start and they're there at the end.
You know, we talked last time about the Domino's,
like, one thing impacting another until the end,
rather than just kind of these things happening independently of each other
only to sort of come together at the end.
Yeah.
There are a few goals and desires that come through for our main character, Abby,
in this story.
And I think maybe one of the challenges that I had connecting with her and her
goals is that there are a few different things floating around.
She's attracted to this man who's sommelier,
this sommelier who's serving her.
And that's one thing underlying everything is just like she's hungry and
she's day drinking and she can't stop thinking about food.
So she's got these things that are floating around and I'm.
I'm not sure really which one I want to latch onto and have drawn to,
like a satisfying conclusion.
They are both kind of fairly low stakes.
I don't know.
I think the food thing is very high.
I get very well.
When you're in that mood, it, it feels like life or death.
But she's ready to eat a roasted Peacock.
Yeah.
She's hungry.
We've all been there.
A few drinks.
You haven't eaten properly.
Mm.
Hmm.
Yeah.
And look, I think the scene goal here is food.
That's what's set up for us.
And then that's not paid off in the climax, right.
We've got this full setup that she's starving and she's ****** *** at her
friend because she hasn't even had a crumb and she's getting quite drunk and
all of these things.
It's all the setup.
But then the ending doesn't have any bearing on that.
Like take that back.
We do because we talk about the pizza next door and that does come up at the
ending, but it's not really the resolution to
this particular story.
And so I think that's an issue.
I think that if we stick a little bit more closely to seeing goal and then
obstacles getting in the way of that seeing goal and then ending with the
conclusion where you either achieve or don't achieve that goal,
you tend to have a more coherent, cohesive feeling package of a story.
So I was thinking about this as well.
And I know where we're kind of jumping around a little bit and we're now
thinking about the story overall, but but trying to just work out because
what I think Lisa has done very well is set up those goals of being hungry,
of having this man that she's interested in.
She set up the Peacocks as part of the story, which again gets paid off.
All those things do actually reach a resolution at the end of the story.
What I think is an issue here is that the main character doesn't actually have any
agency in achieving any of those.
So we're not presented with this story arc where she has these desires and she
needs to seek to overcome them.
She finds a way to do it, there's some change and she gets what she
wants.
It really is the Peacocks that do the work and she is just there being drunk
and it falls in her lap essentially at the end.
So the last line feels almost like a Deus Ex machina, like Peacocks turn up,
and now she gets what she wants.
So I think, again, back to your Domino's, you know, if there was some agency,
if there was something that caused that sequence of events on Abby's part,
that may have been a little bit more satisfying as an ending.
Yeah, I think it's all about having this
cohesion of concept, right?
We've got a few ideas here.
And then you're right, they do get paid off.
They're not just sort of mentioned and then forgotten.
But there needs to be like a thread from start to finish of these things impacting
each other to get there.
And I think we've made that point clear.
I do think that that is a challenge in this story.
And it's probably the main challenge in this story because what this story does
have a lot of, and what I'm realising more and more is
very important is voice.
The voice is really strong.
We have really fun characters here.
We have this kind of caddy dynamic which brings in the drama and the tension.
And I love that.
Like, I guess you set yourself up with a little
bit of a challenge if you have a character who is a bit caddy, right?
And she is, she's like, oh, like that's pretty full on to say about
your friend.
So that I guess is a challenge that to get the reader on side and to care about
this character's goals and what they want.
You know, you kind of want the reader to sort of be
barracking for your main character.
It's not the only way to do things, but it is something to bear in mind when
you've got this kind of caddy dynamic of like, whose side are we on here?
What are we, what are we wanting to see?
Do we want her to get her happy ending?
Do we want her to get her comeuppance?
Like, what are you setting the reader up to
expect and to want in this story?
It's something worth thinking about.
Yeah, it's funny because I didn't have a
negative response to the main character being being caddy and ****** just because
it wasn't personal about her friend.
It was all about how she was responding to this guy.
What do you mean it's not personal?
She called her a ****.
I know she did, but.
But it wasn't about her.
It was about the jealousy.
It was about the jealousy, Yeah, towards this, this other guy.
So that made sense to me speaking as a *****.
No, look, whatever.
Like I'm just putting my perspective on that.
It's just something you tread carefully with,
I guess if you're if you're putting in a character who she's there with her friend
and she's seeking to undermine her friend.
We've got the friends sort of set up as this antagonist,
but she's not doing it much that's particularly harsh herself.
You know, she's just getting on with things.
So anyway, it's worth bearing in mind what you're
setting the reader up with there.
Yeah, but I do agree with you on The Voice.
The voice is very strong here, and it really does drive this story and
keep it entertaining.
And it is entertaining all the way through.
So I do like in the early section here, where basically after the introduction.
Yet here we are, third winery, not even a breadcrumb all morning.
I'd kill for a ******* Gherkin.
The tension starts to build, and it's done in a funny way,
and in a pleasing way.
And there's also some good showing, I guess.
So Amy's shoving her glass forwards, leaning so her **** spill forwards too.
**** I like the showing there.
You like that?
You like that showing.
Gotcha.
No, I I just like how that's it's very
apparent from the context there what is going on in the mind of the protagonist
and we we get her jealousy coming through without having to say the word jealous or
anything along those lines.
So really good showing.
No, absolutely.
And I think throughout like that's the kind of bouncy vibe that we've got.
We've got fun dialogue.
We've got don't smoke at me when I say bouncy, alright.
Yeah.
Like, I do think it's fun throughout.
It keeps your interest throughout as well, with that sort of tension between them.
I do have one little logic question, which is that we talk about how Amy is
drinking.
Like, that's why when I spit, it echoes in a spittoon.
Right.
But Abby is drunk.
Yeah.
And so how did Abby get so drunk if she's getting a little bit on her high horse
about I'm spitting it out and there's this joke about her not swallowing and
all of this stuff, and yet she's quite drunk.
Like I understand and you can get quite drunk pretty quickly on a bit of wine and
no food, but it kind of contradicts itself on that.
Well, I think that's the unreliable narrator
that Lisa's calling out.
So we're not really trusting Abby in the in her recounting of events here.
True.
But I guess it's not set up in a way where that feels satisfying.
It sort of feels more like confusing.
And maybe that's a fine line.
I don't know.
But to me, it feels like a bit of a a logical
question that has a reader like hang on, the friend as well,
who must have her own perspective, is also joking about her not swallowing.
Yeah, So it appears to all.
There's an echo, there's heard that her jokes that appears
to all based on the evidence that we're given, not just what she's saying,
that she's not actually swallowing the alcohol.
And so that becomes a bit of a question, like if you were setting me up with the
evidence that contradicts what she's saying.
So she's saying the friend is drinking and she's not,
and yet we're seeing her drinking.
I think that starts to sort of feel a little bit more satisfying in terms of
what she's saying and thinking versus the reality.
But if the evidence is actually supporting what she's saying,
then how is that unreliable?
You've just given me some facts that support what she's saying.
So, yeah, so making that clearer, and that is a tricky thing to pull off,
but I do enjoy the fact that Abby is getting so noticeably drunk progressively
through the story in in what is a very short space of time, really.
But we see it start to kind of unravel, and that's fun to watch.
Absolutely.
It does make for an entertaining story.
I have another little challenge, which is, and I don't know how you feel about this,
but wine, Fabio feeling like quite an old reference.
Yeah, not just an old reference because I'm
familiar with Fabio, the romance novel cover model hero that
we know so well.
Famously broke his nose or whatever on a roll.
Yeah, bird fluid, but.
But also like, the description of this sommelier,
to me doesn't match Fabio.
Like, he's got a man bun and brown hair.
And yeah, that's not Fabio.
To me.
Fabio is very much the long blonde hair and the big, bulky, muscly frame.
How are you picturing in this?
Yeah, like I'm picturing like a skinny kind of
hipster kind of guy.
Yeah, not this kind of big, burly, like, overly built, muscly, blonde,
super tan guy.
Like, I mean, I have been to the Hunter Valley.
I've never seen anyone like that there.
You tend to see the more hipster kind of type of people.
So I mean, I'm being nitpicky here, and I'm speaking just from my own
experience of what I'm picturing, but I'm just not sure that that's quite
the right reference for.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess aside from the Hunter Valley
reference, it's the fact that the Fabio reference
doesn't match how the character has been described.
It doesn't match how the character's been described.
And and it also just feels like, well, you know,
these sound like sort of younger women.
Yeah.
Fabio is quite an old reference.
Is that who you're thinking about, or are you thinking about someone more
modern like Jacob Alaudi or something like that?
Do you know what I mean?
Like, why are we going so far back into this
old reference?
I mean, that's me being critical, but that's my opinion.
If I was beta reading this, that's something that I would bring up
and just sort of say, oh, I'm not sure about that.
So make of that what you will.
Like, you're more than entitled for that to be
the reference if that's your reference.
But that's, I guess, something that I would challenge
personally.
One thing I really do love is the use of the prompts here.
So this was my team's prompts breaking out some wine is like a really nice use
of the breaking out prompt and a great place to take it if that's what you're
inspired by.
So that to me was wonderful.
St the word prompt faded into the background a little bit.
The Peacocks being from across the street.
Great tick, you know, But also we have just a couple of the
break dancing moves.
So the bartender himself, like drops down to get the pinot,
and Amy herself drops down to the ground when she is bitten or whatever.
And then there's a Corkscrew as well.
It's a Corkscrew used to open the wine.
Of course, most wine bottles in Australia being a
screw top.
But you know, some older stuff, maybe he's gotten the top shelves,
top shelf stuff out for them.
But yeah, like I think that's a really fun use of
the prompts and it resulted in quite a fun story, which is really cool.
OK, so just going back to Lisa's voicemail,
one of the things that Lisa mentioned in that was that this ending was kind of
potentially an open ended kind of situation.
Like is it really a meet cute in a in a ROM com situation?
Or is he like, you guys need some food?
And So what are your thoughts on that?
It's funny because I didn't actually interpret it as anything other than a
meet cute like that.
That wasn't ambiguous at all to me, the ending, it was the fact that, hey,
let's go get some lunch.
Yeah.
I wouldn't expect someone just being nice to use those words.
But it's also like, names Mark.
Like he's kind of setting it up that way.
Yeah, good point.
I mean, taking Lisa's point about the unreliable
narrator, it didn't come through that strong for me
in the writing that there was an unreliable narrator,
apart from the fact that she was clearly drunk and she didn't know what she was
doing, But not in a misleading way.
Yeah.
And I think this comes back to what I said earlier about the facts, Like,
what are we actually presented as readers in terms of what's actually happening
versus what she's saying?
And to be honest, what we're presented with is all what
she's saying.
And we're not getting that conflicting kind of view.
Whereas, you know, in these final moments, if we wanted to make it more case of Mark
just being like, you guys need some lunch, we wouldn't have needed some of that
either in the dialogue or how does his body language not match that?
Like, does she kind of grab his arm?
He flinches.
Like, whatever it might be, that reflects the fact that he's not into
it.
Yeah.
Even if she thinks he is.
But we're not really given that we're, like, names Mark,
fancy some lunch like that sounds like a come on.
I don't think that's unreasonable for her to think that.
So yeah, if if you wanted to sort of play with
that unreliable narrator a bit more, it might come down to what else we get to
see that conflicts with that viewpoint.
So one thing I want to just call out about this story that I did enjoy and is
something that a lot of writers struggle with is the dialogue.
And the dialogue here is really great.
It's lively, it's fun, it's entertaining.
Every line is is witty and well thought out, and it doesn't drag.
That's a big strength for you.
Lisa is writing good dialogue.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think, you know, if it comes down to like,
why aren't I making the long list?
I can't speak to the other stories that we have read over the time,
but just referencing this story specifically,
I do think it comes down to that structural component,
which we talked about in the last Daredevil episode as well.
Just giving that kind of complete package of something that feels like a cohesive
whole.
It's not just a bunch of things together, like a bunch of ideas.
Those ideas are woven together in an artful way to feel fighting by the end of
the story.
And I don't think we're far off here.
It's not like all of this stuff works.
It's all playing in together, but it's just not quite tied together and
working together towards that goal.
And I really do think as much as I've been harping on about dominoes and stuff,
I think that's what it is.
It's like you need your goal and then you need the conflict to be specific to will
this person get their goal or not in this scene, yes, no, yes, no.
As they progress and as you mentioned, Ed, like some agency there,
what are they doing to kind of work towards their goal?
And if her goal is eating, how is she kind of coming up against that
challenge?
And you mentioned at slow stakes, I don't think that matters because I
think you can have a low stakes story and have all that comedy.
We've got the drama of being bitten by a Peacock.
All of that's great and entertaining enough,
but it needs to kind of come as a result of these attempts to get food if that's
our goal here.
And then for that to be kind of the resolution.
If the goal is different, if she's painfully single and it's more
to do with that, then that's what we need to be working
towards as well.
And yeah, you can totally have fun with that
unreliable narrator thing where she thinks she's winning Mark over and the
friend maybe is actually winning him over or not,
or he's just used to drunk women and he flirts to get tips or whatever it might
be.
But we need to know what that is.
And we need to be working towards that as the comedic endpoint and pointing
everything towards that rather than these pieces just kind of coexisting.
So yeah, all of the pieces I, I feel are there in the story.
And Lisa, you, you have worked hard to draw them
together.
But for me, it's the emotional resonance that needs
to be there.
Yeah.
Like, if I look back at our initial judging
comments on this story, the thing that sort of cropped up between
the judges was that this sort of meet cute moment right at the end felt very
much like tacked on and not flowing from the story.
Now, Lisa's indicated in her message there
that that was kind of on purpose to kind of feel like actually that wasn't really
happening.
She was imagining that.
But you know, we can only comment on our experience and
our experience collectively was we thought it was really happening and it
felt very sudden.
It's like someone's just had her finger bitten and she's bleeding.
And now he's like, do you want, do you fancy some lunch?
And it just felt very like out of nowhere.
And emotionally that's confusing.
And you said, Ed, that, you know, you didn't get that emotional resonance.
And I think that's the case.
It's like all of a sudden we have this sort of romantic moment.
And Lisa's indicated that wasn't really what she was trying to set up there.
But that's what we got.
And so if you want something different, then I think that needs to be reworked a
little bit to really clarify exactly what we are and are not getting in that ending
there.
Yeah.
But again, a lot of positives from this story.
And I think you're showing some talent as a writer.
Again, great dialogue, some great lines here, and a lot of fun.
Yeah.
I think Lisa or Scurvy knows what she's doing.
She's had some success elsewhere in other competitions as well.
And so, you know, I think it comes down to what each story
needs.
And you know, if you've got great beta readers,
they can point out here's where I'm not connecting.
And then you get to play with that and fix that up before you submit.
So it's really just about that.
I have no doubt in my mind that Lisa's capable of connecting all those dots and
what have you.
It just comes down to knowing exactly what dots you need to connect for the
reader.
What sometimes is in your mind is not necessarily what ends up on the page.
And so you just have to kind of rework until everything's there.
So thank you so much, Lisa, for your story and for putting yourself
on the line.
And now you can go and enjoy a big glass of wine after that, after that roasting.
And, you know, I think it's very interesting that you
said that this was like some sort of self flagellation for not submitting in
January.
So I, I think that's great.
Like, sure, why not?
Why not just punish yourself this way?
But I hope it didn't feel too much like punishment.
We are, of course, only here wanting the very best for all
of our daredevils.
But, you know, it's hard going out there and warts and
all in front of everybody to have yourself and your writing skills torn
apart.
Absolutely.
But you know, there's clearly a lot of talent here.
And I have no doubt, Lisa, that you'll come back guns blazing for
revenge next round.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you once again.
And we will be back in a week's time with our fifth and final Daredevil for the
April round.
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.