Welcome to the 2024 Bitesize Competition - Week 8

Topic(s): Physical Interactions

What are physical interactions

A character doesn't exist in a vaccum, but a world filled with other people. The interactions between people are incredibly important. A physical interaction can be a simple a character gently placing a hand on another's shoulder for comfort, a passionate embrace between lovers, a tense push against a wall, a character brushing past another in a crowded room, a handshake to greet someone, a fist bump, a child playfully tugging on their parent's shirt, or a character flinching away from a sudden touch.
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Key points to remember about physical interactions in writing:

• 
  Context is key:
  The meaning of a physical interaction depends heavily on the relationship between characters, the situation, and the overall tone of the story.
  
  Body language:
  Beyond direct touch, physical interactions can also be expressed through gestures like leaning in, crossing arms, or avoiding eye contact.
  
  Sensory details:
  Describe the physical sensations of touch, pressure, temperature, and movement to bring the interaction to life.

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Word count: Under 1000 words

Bitesize writing competitions will differ from our typical writing competitions. When we do bitesize writing competitions, each small prompt will have around five days for everyone to write a scene (or even just a sentence). During the weekend, we will compare and review each others entries. If you have no interest in even wanting to write, don't vote.

Deadline: Saturday, November 9th at 11:59pm (23:59) PST​

Send your scenes/sentences to @Lindsey once you're done. You can have up to TWO entries. On the day they are due, I will post all the entries in a single post. During the weekend, we can discuss each others entries and how to improve them.

Voting Rules
We will not have official voting like normal competitions. Instead we will have a discussion on how to improve the scenes. If you wish, you can pick your favorite entry.

Got an idea for a future prompt? Put it in this thread!

 

CAN WE PLEASE CALL THIS Q4 COMPETITION?! IT'S FUCKING UP MY DAILY ROUTINE.

Background: I'm self-employed with multiple clients I manage/invoice on quarterly basis, and I had to update multiple incorrectly filled time sheets, because I forgot it's Q4 already, because I just posted to Q3 competition

 

I removed the quarter. Originally this was only going for q3, but its popular enough to continue

 

I was just checking how much time is left for entries, and saturday is nov 9th, not nov 10th. All previous bitsize comps ended on saturday, so people probably assume, but…

 

Whoops, yeah, meant to be the 9th.

 

Entry 1:
This started strong and ended quite weakly, in my opinion. There's a line between cute awkward and mentally challenged, on the spectrum awkward. And James crosses that line in the second half, he comes off as too passive, too disoriented, and a couple more adjectives.

(Honestly, the only way the ending paragraphs would have worked was if it turned out to be a dream sequence.)

I don't have any comments about the physical interaction aspect, maybe a bit lacking in JamesxLily but you chose to focus on Lily's interactions with her environment from James' smitten pov and that works rather well.


Entry 2:
Amusing. I even chuckled, but ultimately meh.


Entry 3:
It's interesting, this is the only entry that has most of the physical interactions be a result of magic.
There's a flow to this entry, accompanied by a nice description of the environment.
I'm a bit confused by the two rats, symbolism? Time turner? Is Sirius going insane prematurely? Or just Pettigrew being fast af boi! I don't know if that's the fault of the writer or the reader (yours truly).
I would have liked more focus on Dumbledore, he doesn't seem the type to be solely angry, and a tinge of sadness in his interactions would have worked very well.


Entry 4:
Solid. Bellatrix is in character, it's dark and tense. Don't have anything to critique.

Entry 5:
This one is mine. Critique away!

 

#1:

Hmm. I thought this was Snape at first because the initial paragraph gives kind of a serial killer vibe, but then it turned out to be James. I don't really know how to feel about that, to be honest. I'd always imagined James as a little more confident, brash. You know, kind of a charming dickhead. What we see here is a lot more hesitant.

Is it so hard or so unpopular to write braggadocio? It must be, because in these bitesize comps we see so little of it. I'm equally guilty of this, mind you.

The descriptions kind of hover on the border of being embarrassingly first-love saccharine, and I personally think that you should've absolutely sprinted past that border if you're going for that. The repetition of "She must think him a..." jarred the pacing a little bit, and if you're going for repetition I think you should do it thrice for proper effect. Lily seems mostly a collection of body parts rather than a person. I think Sirius might have called it a "stiffy" rather a "boner", but I'll leave the britpicking to others.

#2:

Same advice as I gave in one of the other recent comps: "he, his, his, he, he, he...": please, for the love of god, switch up how you start your sentences. I'm still convinced that this absolutely kills readability and flow.

Anyway, other than that: pretty amusing to have him think he's dying and seeing an angel but then it turns out it's Pomfrey. Beyond that, there's not that much to this. I guess Poppy is in character as far as I remember? Your descriptions of Harry thinking he's dying are one of the times that I think it's permissible to adorn your piece with some purple prose. By which I mean more prosaic writing, by the way.

Otherwise not a lot to comment on here.

#3:

Oh, hey. Don't see this scene depicted all that often, it's mostly just left offscreen. Neat. That said, I think your description of the fight scene needs work.

This paragraph is equally a bit of a mess. "facets glinting in subtle shades of the orange cast by the street lamps" is overly verbose and utterly disrupts the pace of it "racing" towards Sirius, the "inhuman roar" is hard when he's already roaring a spell, and for the relatively long description of it, "the mess" (which undersells things rather badly) vanishes in basically an instant.

I wouldn't have used "banished" and "vanished" so closely after one another, and I wouldn't have included the "circle of dust" either, to be entirely honest.

Ergh. Rubs me wrong.

Neat little detail that Sirius essentially accidentally called the cops on himself, but otherwise, I think you're pretty consistently putting emphasis on the wrong spots, which interrupts your pacing and hampers the writing just flowing. Sirius reads as nearly despondent, not insane with rage and grief as he should be. Dumbledore doesn't quite hit, either.

Finally:

Oh my.

#4:

Some people would pay good money for this service, you know. Not me personally, you understand, but, uh, anyway.

I think you're losing something here with not pointing out who it is that Bellatrix is torturing. It hits harder for the reader to know that it's one of the characters they know being tortured rather than just "a body", "her captive"... I realize that maybe it's on purpose that Bellatrix is dehumanizing her prisoner, but still.

In addition, I'm not really feeling Bellatrix's sadism that would push it to the next level. The baby talk is there and the talk about "having found the body" is there, but I'm missing a more personal touch, and the writing's kind of bare beyond just alternating "thing happens" and "Bellatrix talks".

I forget who it was, but some other DLPer had a fic that started with Harry being tortured by Bellatrix. I think it might've been Silens Cursor? Anyway, that traded the torture with moments of tenderness and even arousal to really fuck with Harry's head, and that stuck with me because it was a lot more fucked up than just normal torture. There's a lesson there, I'm sure.

#5:

Honestly kind of a basic opening. Too basic for my tastes, but what do I know? I'm just someone who received only rave reviews on my entry during the competition specifically about openings.

As I said for #2, I think that repeating "her" thrice is jarring and pulls me out. I'd have structured that bit more like this:

You've got some issues with missing punctuation, but really the bigger issue IMO that you've kind of got a problem of dual themes that you don't quite manage to get to mix. Your first theme is that Fred's not there and that's a wound of its own, and your second theme is that they've both gotten too old for this to be really necessary but they do it anyway as a reminder of when George was young and because it's soothing. Those two are separated by George jarring Molly from her introspection.

I think you'd've been better off by making the second theme the main focus and then having the absence of Fred run through the entire thing. For example, you mention a brotherly brawl, and you could easily have thrown in a "It wasn't the same with Ron," maybe. It's easy to make that too blatant and hammer on it too much, but you've definitely got room for more.

 

Entry 1
This short scene hits one of my many pet peeves regarding romance in fanfiction — mainly that a character, known for being quick-witted and flirting with everybody suddenly becomes tongue-tied and blushing when in presence of their True Love (TM), but I'll try really hard to get past that.

Sirius getting his licks in was on point, but:

This sounds too ungracious for internal monologue about your best friend, especially about good, barbed jokes.

The beaver part got a chuckle out of me, because I'm immature like that, so well done there. Using magic to tuck himself is a very small every day use of magic, which is always a win.

"as you should know" is always a major red flag in fanfiction, smelling of infodumps.

The following dialogue is very disjointed - that's probably a goal, to show how he's out of it, daydreaming about all things Lily, but it's too disjointed. Even if you focus on dialogue, it jumps all over the place - lecture on responsibilities, "come on", back to homework. It doesn't sound like a real dialogue, even if discounted the confusion.

This is a miss for me. Hands on hips sounds very motherly, the transition to daydreaming from reality is disjointed, and curved flesh sounds more like a transfiguration mishap than a sexy booty.

Would read: Sure, but I am bailing the moment more fucking blushing reappears.

Entry 3
Good duel: something more that a gunfight of lights, and a little description that feel well placed, like "uninspired buildings".

This is a fun idea, but the punch line (Sirius) is too weak. If you want to stay with name, he was The Sirius Black, or something.

The woman part was great, but again, the realisation (already seeing Marlene dead) was too weak, just tucked in between the hallucination and her death as an afterthought.

The repetition of "steel" is eh.

The final part is where this leaves me confused: if this is just a short piece about something in the canon, you can't have Shacklebolt (a friend, based on the dialogue) and Dumbledore there; if they were near Sirius, they wouldn't just let ministry ship him to Azkaban and it all falls apart. If it's not canon (Sirius not going to Azkaban without a trial), you should have tossed something in about getting to bottom of it all or something, because this just a leaves a taste of Bad Dumbledore in my mouth.

I feel this doesn't sound like Dumbledore, even as furious as he is. Can't put my finger on why, though, exactly.

Fucking yes. Yes, yes, yes. Fantastic end.

Would read: If I know it's just an intro, or there's something about canon going differently, yes. Overall fantastic first part of the first chapter.

Entry Four
Horrifying. Half mad torturer Bellatrix is very much in character, in my opinion.

There was a couple of spots I got taken out of it:

Not only is the she explained superfluous, the "explained" also reeks of authors so scared of "said", every character is asking, answering, explaining, replying etc.

There should be something happening before this - a tremor that makes a deep nick or something - for this part to make sense.

Horrifying, yet awesome.

This reads as if she was shaking the hair to me… And the whole shaking is too weak.

This is a second time the captive sounds muffled… why? Is there something in their mouth? Then you can't just stuck a knife there.

Also, sticking a knife in between lips sounds weird to me — especially tightly shut, what with teeth and all.

No.

She's full deranged now, smelling the hair, yuck. Also, I see the greasy there.

The "and" isn't connecting these beats very well.

Appropriately horrible, but the gargling is out of place. You gargle with something, so either she should take a mouthful of blood, or just remove it.

Would read: Not sure. Probably yes, unless it was a full grimdark "Diaries of mad torturer" type of thing. As a horrifying opening, I enjoyed it.

Entry Five

Not sure if it's just me, but dearie doesn't sound right here, from mother to son.

Unnecessary.

I think

The weakest part, I feel, were the dialogue tags, especially the "exclaiming with a huff". Compared to other parts, it was very out of place.

Heartbreaking. Also enjoyable and very sweet. Thank you for writing.

 

Looking at these entries, I think this prompt was too open-ended. I don't think anyone stuck the landing with a physical interaction that makes you feel something. Most these physical interactions feel secondary to the scene instead of the core part.

Entry One
This feels like fanfiction as it seems very unrealistic that anyone actually thinks this way. It's far too obsessive, and makes James feel like a caricature of himself. Moreover, the sudden twist from James showing the class his magic to Lily talking about the astronomy tower is too sudden and doesn't make much sense. No one would just blank out for several minutes after a girl touches his hand. It's awkward, and feels very, very YA in a bad way.

The upside of this entry is that you focused on such a simple physical interaction. A mere touch and how important that is. I do like simple things like that.

Entry Two
I like the idea, but I don't think it fits the prompt that well. Physical interactions between two (or more) people require actual physical interactions between the people. Where is this here? The only interaction is two sentences, which aren't even the focus of the story. This scene ends up focusing on Harry's physical feelings and not actual interaction.

That being said, I do love the emotional start, and you later find out it is just the flu. We've all been there man, it sucks.

Entry Three
Once again, what is the actual *physical* interaction in this scene? Almost everything here is magical, not physical. Moreover, I really don't like the idea of Dumbledore being the one to catch Sirius. I've always had a belief that Sirius was caught, confessed and sent to Azkaban before Dumbledore was even aware Sirius had been found. In your version, Dumbledore might be one of the reasons Sirius didn't have an official trial, especially as Sirius doesn't confess.

Now, if this is an AU, which it might be due to two gray rats, disregard my opinions on Dumbledore.

Entry Four
Not the most original idea when it comes to Bellatrix and a physical interaction, but it is executed reasonably well. Bellatrix is in character with her dialogue and actions. Now, I do wish you showed a little bit more about how she was feeling, not explaining her feelings in dialogue. The last three lines are the best, as it showed how she was feeling, a physical interaction, good characterization and a good dialogue line.

Entry Five
I love the idea behind this. Interactions between family members in a sweet, familiar way is comforting to me. However, I think this scene is too long for what you are trying to do. The scene needs to be simple, focused and sweet. This meanders. The story would benefit with a few strong lines that tug at your heart strings.

Lastly, I agree that the start was weak. It doesn't come into it's own until half way through. It does have a good ending though, with George and Molly sounding like their characters.

 

Entry 1: Should've just entered with wolfstar porn, played to my strengths.

I think I see James as that type of cool guy who completely loses the plot when he falls in love. Not that I wrote that very brilliantly, but the characterization is on purpose.

Entry 2: Loved it. Great build-up, great switcheroo.

I liked this, your story-telling structure here. And your rhyming here

Entry 3:

Bit too wordy for my tastes but plenty of gems. Interesting take on this scene, interesting in general to see it depicted. I'd describe Dumbledore differently, you don't set him up to possibly make Sirius tremble with awe/fear.

I seem to be entering another poetry phase based on what draws me in in these, you've got this that I loved:

Entry 4: Me again. I've written similar scenes before where it's gone more sexual, I regret not doing that because that at least really fucks with me when I read it back. Feels a bit meh now.

Entry 5: Very sweet, maybe a bit too sweet for right now. It's effective and if I was in a ifferent mood I think it's one that'd linger with you a bit after you've read it. Does that make sense?

I'd edit it a bit, cut some adjectives (no need to both nudge and do it lightly etc).

 

i don't think that's a thing outside of crackish romcoms and anime

 

Ha maybe, or maybe it's only a thing in more socially awkward countries? Feels like I've seen it plenty of times where I'm at, but I take your point that it did not work here/work the way I wrote it.