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    It Came From Beneath the Slush Pile
    It Came From Beneath the Slush Pile
    It Came From Beneath the Slush Pile
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    It Came From Beneath the Slush Pile

    By Holly Lisle, Katharina Gerlach, Bill Bush and

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    About this ebook

    20 Kinds of Stupid: An Anthology of Idiot Heroes and Ridiculous Heroines

    twenty fatally flawed flash stories by Holly Lisle and students

    If there’s one thing more fun than writing awesome stories, it’s occasionally indulging in the worst excesses and writing awesomely bad stories. Holly Lisle and a group of her students put all of the most clichéd, badly formed, and just plain wrong techniques into as few words as they could, and gathered them together as a way of leading by (horrific) example and illustrating why sometimes, the rules really are there to help (and yes, run-on sentences are bad too).

    For learning should always be fun.

    This anthology contains stories by Holly Lisle, Bill Bush, Erica Damon, Danger Dave, DB Eldridge, Ava Fairhall, Peg Fisher, Katharina Gerlach, Gloria Hanlon, Madison Keller, K.V. Moffet, Ruth Sard, Laura Thurston, Tom Vetter

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Bookworm
    Release dateOct 20, 2016
    ISBN9781536529883
    It Came From Beneath the Slush Pile

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      Book preview

      It Came From Beneath the Slush Pile - Holly Lisle

      Table of Contents

      vignette

      Foreword

      OFF by Holly Lisle

      Jordan Williams by Bill Bush

      The Snake Pit by Erica Damon

      Johnsons's Power Fantasy by Danger Dave

      The Thing That Almost Happened by DB Eldridge

      Violet Orbs and a Chiselled Jaw by Ava Fairhall

      Auburn Gold and Manly Musk by Ava Fairhall

      Romancing the Stone Soup by Peg Fisher

      Chaos in the Kitchen by Katharina Gerlach

      Cookie Thief by Katharina Gerlach

      Passion in the Tundra by Gloria Hanlon

      The Stream of our Lives by Gloria Hanlon

      Fired by Madison Keller

      A House With No Name by K.V. Moffet

      The King's Blade by Ruth Sard

      The Evacuation by Laura Thurston

      The Interrogation by Laura Thurston

      The Fugawi Go Somewhere Else by Tom Vetter

      Auto Erogenous by Tom Vetter

      Well, DOOM It All Anyway by Committee

      Invitation

      Why We Took Holly's Courses

      Bonus: Bad Advice for Aspiring Writers

      Much Better Stories by Holly Lisle's Students

      About Holly Lisle

      About the Authors

      About the Publisher

      Copyright

      It Came From Beneath the Slush Pile

      20 Kinds of Stupid: An Anthology of Idiot Heroes and Ridiculous Heroines

      fatally flawed flash stories by

      Holly Lisle and Students

      If you find this book helpful, you may pass it on under a CC license (no altering).

      If there’s one thing more fun than writing awesome stories, it’s occasionally indulging in the worst excesses and writing awesomely bad stories. Holly Lisle and a group of her students put all of the most clichéd, badly formed, and just plain wrong techniques into as few words as they could, and gathered them together as a way of leading by (horrific) example and illustrating why sometimes, the rules really are there to help (and yes, run-on sentences are bad too).

      For learning should always be fun.

      Copyright 2016 Holly Lisle and Students

      Go here for the Table of Contents

      Dear reader,

      buy legal e-books, or do you really want to give your money and possibly your valuable data to a hacker?

      If you suspect this book has been pirated, go to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

      Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Now, have fun with the story.

      Katharina Gerlach

      Foreword

      4-word = word, word, word, word

      No, we won't go into territory that silly. The stories in this anthology are meant to illuminate the importance of making your stories the best you can. We're highlighting clichés, stupid heroes, idiot heroines, flowery writing, lack of proofreading, lousy grammar, and plots with more holes than Swiss cheese.

      But there's one thing all the examples in this book have in common: they still are stories. A story differs from other texts in subtle ways. For example, it has a story arc that connects the characters and conflicts. A text like this: Susie went to school. Tom bought a football. Elaine prepared lunch for the kids. is most definitely not a story.

      After each story, its author will let you know its major faults (which are not always all the epic fails there are). If you really want to learn from this anthology, try spotting them first.

      There are at least a few examples that seem good at first glance. Take Holly Lisle's story OFF as an example. If this were a scene from the murderer's point of view in a murder mystery, it would give a good glimpse at his/her deranged psyche. But since it is meant as a full story, there's a lot wrong with it. But that's normal and nothing to be afraid of.

      I remember German bestselling author Andreas Eschbach saying that every author has to get rid of lot of bad writing before the good will emerge. So, allow yourself to write badly and learn how to spot places where you can improve, and then never stop improving.

      Until then, enjoy the silliness in these pages.

      signature

      initiator of the anthology, publisher, and forum moderator (and insanely fond of Oxford commas)

      OFF

      Holly Lisle

      I wake in the morning, already depressed by the snoring, stinking bodies all around me. Booze bottles litter the room, needles are everywhere. I try to stand, but my head throbs. I try to remember, but nothing is there. I think I will know who I am soon, but if I don’t…

      …No. I hear the elephant. The elephant is singing, and I walk toward the song, and the song is all about the children, and dancing. And there is a gun on the counter and a gun in my hand, and the sound of a shower is the sound of singing, the singing elephant, so I go toward it and I shoot I shoot I shoot and the elephant falls in a sea of red and water and the song is not about children anymore.

      Carrots in the kitchen. Carrots, which are the devil, and which are dangerous, and I drop the gun and hold the carrot, and stab around me at the sleeping snoring bodies and wonder at the color as they turn into carrots too. Carrot stew. Carrots to carrot stew.

      Street cars all gone leaves on the tree have faces and eat each other and in the midst of eating, puke, and I laugh at the puke because it is the perfect picture of who I am what I am what I will become. All day is night and and all life is death and the street cars far below were eaten by giant bugs eating each other and finishing each other's thoughts and the world must end must end must end…

      …I wake in the darkness and the elephant is not singing, and the bodies are not snoring, and the carrot in my hand tells me that I must eat it eat it eat it and

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