First things first, I’m glad that this assessment is worth 0% of the final grade.
Knowing that, I decided to take some risks with this story that I might no otherwise have taken, and was very ambitious in my ideas, something that I feel did not pull off very well, thus: the first thing.
The world of my story is part of a much larger set of ideas inside my head that have slowly become more and more refined over time. I wanted to put these ideas to paper, and utilise the stuff we talked about in Week 1 to make a short story that was quite obviously missing context but still be understandable and spark the readers imagination rather than confuse them. I wanted to put in as few details as possible, but still paint a somewhat defined picture in the readers minds. The 800 word limit meant that I had to cut almost every idea I had, originally the bulk of the story was meant to be the final conversation, and I planned several topics of conversation but each one was 500+ words long. But unfortunately the basic setup (of which another several paragraphs were culled) ended up taking most of my words.
As I said in Week 1’s blog post, I wanted to explore the shock or twist ending and the Grand Magistor falling off the balcony of his own volition was the foundation of the story, and infact the final paragraph was the first one I wrote. However the impact of the ending was greatly diminished by the wordcount neutering the “cleverness” of the story (I had planned a conversation about the concept of discipline and how the stewards knew exactly how many seconds it took to climb the tower).
I would love to revisit this story unshackled and write it how I originally envisioned.
It is obvious from the start that you had bigger plans for this world the could not fit into 800 words. The sense that the story is much larger than the snippet we see here oozes though the piece.
I noticed that you drew on the McKee reading, especially the part about “fascinating characters tend to have not only a conscious but an unconscious desire.” It was clear that how important his task was it was to him yet the way you wrote his inner monologue injected a feeling that his subconscious was not as dedicated to the task as he wanted to be. The way in which he reassured himself that he would help the prisoners if he could, suggested he may be holding back as if he was not sure if he was on the right side. The vagueness in describing all the horrors the enemy has inflicted onto the world slightly undercuts how the audience responds to his convictions but I know that this is just due to the word restrictions and if you had the room to tell the story the way you wanted to these would be made more clear.
I liked the inter-cutting between inner thoughts and third person action. It not only injected an emotional arc to the story but the insight it gave into his mindset throughout the story made it so damn intense and captivating.
Your reflection really helped me to understand the parts of the 800 word story that felt a little rushed or underdeveloped because it is really clear that you have more to explore in this world. I would be very interested in getting an even deeper look inside the head of the protagonist, seeing his past and what his side of the war looks like and to further explore his dedication to the cause.
This was a really well written piece and I am really floored that you could fit such dense concepts into 800 words.