My "Review"

-- This'll be kind of a long one, so feel free to skip it unless you think talking about writing stuff and competition stuff is interesting.

So, I didn't advance this round in the 2014 NYC Writing Contest, which is kind of a bummer (and a little sketchy: out of the five stories chosen to advance their writers, only one is available to read online, and it's only a decent read at best).

How the competition works is this: they give you a character, incident and genre and you have just a few days to create a short story with those elements. It's massively fun and challenging.

You can read my entry, "The Level", here:

http://dennisvogen.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-2014-nyc-short-story-submission.html

Anyway, I spent almost $50 to enter the contest, but for a good reason: they have professionals review your story and give you criticism, advice, etc. And I just received my "review," and it... well, it makes me kinda mad.

I want to share it and see what you think. This is the EXACT e-mail, verbatim, copy and pasted, that I received:

> ''The Level'' by Dennis Vogen 898 - WHAT THE JUDGE(S) LIKED ABOUT YOUR SCRIPT - .....................This concept is disturbing and unsettling, and once the opening section takes the plunge ("I didn't mean to kill her baby"), the chase is on, so to speak; there's an instant curiosity created in the reader's mind that propels him forward. What's also well done is the succinct rendering of the back story -- The Level, what it is, how people die.//The last section is taut and leaves the reader with a strong impression...............................I like the dual narrative here. ........................   WHAT THE JUDGES FEEL NEEDS WORK - .....................On a smaller note, these symbols: ))) and ((( -- seem to mark section breaks. Standard section break symbols, unless a magazine asks for specific ones, are *** or #. Just an FYI.//The section which begins "I went to the club by myself" -- is flashback, but because it's rendered in the past tense, like the rest of the story, it's difficult to know where we are in time. In general, if a story is penned in the past tense, then anything that happens before the time of the story -- such as flashback -- should be written in the pluperfect.//The opening feels a bit ungrounded -- who is "they?" And what type of world are we in? Post-apocalyptic. It eventually fleshes out, but at the beginning, it needs to be crystal clear where we are.........................…...A few too many 'info-dump' sentences. Needs cleaning up and a percentage of content sliced off it to tighten what remains...................... <

WHAT?

I got a tiny amount of criticism, especially since I didn't make the top five.

I paid FIFTY DOLLARS for that?!

On top of that, the review (and this has happened to me before...) is fundamentally wrong on most of its levels (pun intended). I can take criticism. Honestly, I can. Most of the time. But this is ridiculous.

So I sent them an e-mail back.

Here's mine:

> Thank you for the feedback.

Of course, I have to respond to one of the odder criticisms. :)

I was criticized for using "(((" and ")))" as breaks in the story, and also criticized for not making it clear which parts were in the past or in the closer present.

But that's what the ")))" symbols are. First, they're symbolic -- like sound, or sonar waves. Second, when you see the "(((" symbol, it means it's a flashback, and the ")))" brings you back to the present tense of the story.

I thought it was fairly apparent, or at least kind of cool, but it went unnoticed and became a criticism; if you could tell me how to make that mechanism more clear, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you so much for your time. This was a really fun experience.

D <

I thought sending that back would be enough to make me feel okay about it, but it doesn't.

So, am I absolutely crazy? To be upset that I got a tiny review with almost no criticisms, yet I didn't make it to the next round? And that I paid good money to get some kind of feedback?

Your free feedback is requested below.

- D