Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The Last Extremely Short Stories . . .


. . . are posted below. The task was to come up with five sentences which, when placed in front of the last five sentences of someone else's story, created a completely different story. Neither endings nor openings were submitted in a quantity that indicates a desire to continue the feature. Here are the four that haven't yet been posted.

18 comments:

Julie Weathers said...

I wish you would reconsider this decision. I found them very interesting even though I have been of little help, I love teh new beginnings pared up with these endings.

I promise I will try to be a better minion when I return.

Dave Fragments said...

I liked these. They were different and a refreshing change. Perhaps these could be a once-a-year feature.

Stacy said...

I'm thinking more like once a week.

I do like these, but they don't seem to have generated a lot of feedback.

We all must be better minions and comment more.

Robin B. said...

I thouhgt maybe they didn't work because there wasn't a link to them on the lft side the blog like there was for the openings, etc.

And I guess it was a new thing to post comments on, and I remained sidelined by that - not sure.

But I liked them.

These four were done really, really well. They blended just about seamlessly.

Ellie said...

I really enjoyed them, too. I hope they make a comeback at some point.

Whirlochre said...

I thought this was a good idea and I'm with Julie and Dave — let's keep it, if only for special occasions.

Evil Editor said...

The problem wasn't lack of comments, it was lack of endings. I was afraid I'd be bombarded as every one of the 500+ people who'd sent an opening sent the ending of the same work. Instead we got 15, 3 of which were from people who'd already sent one. Next time we're low on everything else we'll try again.

Anonymous said...

It seems like most of the comments in this exercise were on the beginnings or how funny it was. Did those who submitted the endings feel like they got helpful feedback?

Evil Editor said...

No, but it's hard to be helpful when reading the last five sentences of a novel, knowing nothing that came before.

Xenith said...

We(3) have endings(1) but as we haven't been commenting lately(2) we didn't think we should be sending stuff in.


1 admittedly not as many endings as beginings :)

2 we've been writing, a lot

3 that's what happens when you spend too much time writing :(

Dave Fragments said...

Well, a few times I wanted to ask "what was the point of the story if this was the end" but then I searched out the last five lines of some of my old stuff and I got the same feelings of "what was that?" and worse...

What does anyone expect of five lines?

McKoala said...

I liked it. I was planning on doing more, even sending stuff, honest.

Anonymous said...

I hope this is not the last we see of the Extremely Short Story! And it is difficult to comment and/or suggest anything on such a limited selection. But some of them were funny as hell!

Meri

Robin B. said...

Can we have another chance - and maybe you could put the linkie thing on the left by the openings link, or do you not like it?

And...what do you think about endings? Do you like them nicely wrapped up and tied in a bow, or left somewhat open-ended? Or does it depend on the book?

ril said...

I agree that these are fun to do and fun to read and would like to see it again. I enjoyed it!

none said...

Writing sites often go quiet in November because it's nanowrimo. But it's hard for sqrls to contribute anyway when they've given up writing (or it's given them up--not sure which).

Meh. Sorry.

batgirl said...

I liked this too, and am feeling a bit guilty that I didn't contribute more.
Evil, something that holds me back sometimes is not knowing where more contributions are wanted. Should I assume that if something is still up on the other blog that it must need contributions? I'm willing to provide the dross that allows the gems to shine more brightly, as long as I know there isn't enough dross yet.
-Barbara

Evil Editor said...

The sidebar links to Openings, Guess the Plot and Cartoon captions should provide info on how many Continuations, GTPs, Queries and captions are needed. Even if there are a lot of openings and cartoons waiting, some sit there a month without finding a good continuation/caption, so new material is always welcome.