Autumn 2024 Short Story — Writing Battle
It’s that time again!
Writing Battle is here, and I can’t say a darned thing about it other than that I participated. I wrote a 2,000-word story and submitted it to the contest.
It'll be peer-judged over the next month. I hope to clear the peer judging with this story and move into the finals. I’ll know more sometime around Dec. 8. We’ll see how it goes! Fingers crossed!
2024.11.19
Okay, it’s debrief time, so I’m free to talk about my story, The Baker of Bogwollow. The cards came as a surprise.
I wasn’t prepared to receive Cozy Fantasy, and — I must tell you — my heart sank. If anyone’s read my commercial work with Aevalorn Tales, cozy fantasies are my jam, and I was terrified (absolutely terrified) to enter a competition like Writing Battle with a cozy fantasy. I wasn’t sure if I could take the rejection, especially if I used my own characters in the story.
I thought about redrawing the genre card in hopes of receiving a Cemetery Tale (a strange genre that encapsulates both a setting and a genre), but the likelihood was risky. I could only redraw the genre once. Knowing my luck, I’d land True Crime, and I disliked the idea of writing another Espionage after coming off of a failed 3rd round NYCM with The Last Train Out of Vienna. I felt a cozy was my best choice out of the options.
So I made myself a deal …
I wouldn’t use Elina Hogsbreath. Every idea that came to mind featured Elina, and I just couldn’t put myself through that. It’d break my heart.
I would write in my style and base the story loosely in my Aevalorn Tales setting. I needed to conceal the fact I wrote the story, so I didn’t add Bogwollow to the map until after the 5th round of peer-based judging. You can find Bogwollow to the south, in Aevalorn Wilds, near the coast.
I would write about a new character and not subject myself to owning a cursed character disliked by peer judges on WB.
Black Premonition
Okay, I’ll be honest.
I’ve resolved the story will die a terrible, tragic death and be beaten out by things that aren’t a cozy fantasy.
There’s no initial disqualification round with Writing Battle — everything that gets submitted competes — even if it doesn’t meet the genre. I fear my little cozy will be matched against high-fantasy, folklore, or bedtime stories and be voted down in the peer-based judging round (sigh).
Definition of a Cozy Fantasy
Let’s start by defining the genre. What is Cozy Fantasy?
I’ll paraphrase. Cozy Fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that typically features a small, close-knit community, often in a rural or small-town setting, and a focus on characters and their relationships rather than epic battles or world-saving quests — a contemporary example is Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes. Cool, except that wasn’t the definition Writing Battle used.
Sigh — you see my problem. Not much distinguishes a “Cozy” from a Fairy Tale, a Fable, a Romantic Fantasy, or Folklore. It's sad because I write in this genre and appreciate the recent headwinds made by Travis and other authors. I feel Max (the admin of Writing Battle) has done a disservice. If you feature a genre, remain true to its meaning; otherwise, you dilute it and its relevance — what makes it unique.
Strategy
I wanted to avoid Seng of Titan’s fate from the last Writing Battle. I wanted to write a simple, straightforward story without talking over my audience's heads. A female protagonist to connect with a majority of WB’s readers; a male antagonist; four acts; no special vocabulary other than the term faewood, to add a sprinkle of fantasy to the prose.
The main character, Griselda, is obviously on the spectrum and suffers from profound grief. I wanted to build some empathy/sympathy for the character. Maybe the reader knows someone like this in their own life and recognizes her behaviors.
Stories that evoke strong emotions play well with peer-based judging and create connections (more Cat than Orange), so I delved into connecting the reader to the main character in the third act.
I wanted fantasy readers to feel at home, so there are many subtle references to halfling mannerisms, traits, and society. I recycled some names from my own cozy fantasy work. I also wanted to feature a different setting for my story that likely wouldn’t be in others — the story takes place in Bogwollow, a halfling hamlet in a swamp. At the same time, I wanted to avoid the familiar tropes of a cozy: cats, fairies, tea … I did include a scone, though; I couldn’t help myself.
I wanted themes to be relatable to the real world so readers would probably recognize things like an urban vs. rural divide, the difference between something made from scratch vs. made artificially (like AI vs. writing things by hand, for example, or slow food vs. fast food), the ruinous nature of capitalism, and the connection of community.
Execution
My first draft was 4,700 words; the competition was for a 2,000-word short story. I want to explore many aspects of that first draft in a future Aevalorn Tale, but I couldn’t keep its details in the submitted version. Editing the story, I felt I’d removed so much charm from the piece that I almost considered starting over. I was satisfied with the final version even though it wasn’t how I wanted to write it.
Grief and Introversion
The story’s takeaway centers around Griselda. A deeply introverted teen, she’s sad and entrenched in grief. Her mother, Muriel, cared for her very much and shielded Griselda from the discomforts of the world outside the bakery. Still, Muriel didn’t foresee a time when Griselda would have to function independently, and Muriel’s death is a surprise that leaves Griselda and the community in the lurch. Griselda must contend with her grief and process it, work through it, as the community wonders why she’s not … fully baked … so to speak. I try to show this with Pleasance Featherby’s upturned nose at the beginning, mistaking introverted withdrawal from a troubling subject for apathy.
Still, I tried to show Griselda as any ordinary teenage girl flattered to receive attention from an attractive male — Bran — as they met eyes in the market. I also wanted to show she’s capable of speech but chooses not to, so the end wasn’t a complete shock to the reader. She’s not dysfunctional. She’s just introverted, unsure of herself, and afraid of the whole world that she’s been sheltered from by her mother.
But above all, Griselda grieves. She is gray (gris, French) and fights a battle. It’s a feminine name of Germanic origin that means "gray battle". It comes from the Ancient Germanic words grēwaz, meaning "gray" or "aged," and hildis, meaning "battle" or "fight". Griselda fights back against the pie box’s influence in the community and resolves to bake a loaf of rye bread, something real, something loved — she sings it a lullaby, loving it like a child — for Oswyn. She’s the hamlet’s baker, an apprentice, sure, but it’s something only she can do.
The battle for Bogwollow’s soul is her processing through grief by baking in the bakery. She returned to be with her mom — figuratively, warmth in the kitchen — and threw everything Muriel was at baking bread for Oswyn. Acceptance arrives at the end and an acknowledgment that nothing’s wrong with her — she’s something well done — by drawing a line between her mother’s words and the community’s reassuring touch. Griselda is ultimately accepted just the way she is. She’s a valued member of the community.
The Villain
Bran is the edible broken coat of the seed of a cereal grain left after the grain has been ground and the flour or meal sifted out. That just doesn't sound very good. It’s also bland if you’ve ever baked with it, and nothing quite rivals the look of someone receiving a bran muffin.
Really? A bran muffin? Is there anything else on the shelf? Like rat poison? I’ll have that rat poison instead, please.
My bland villain is a capitalist, and I disliked making him a halfling — in the original story, he was fae, a trickster — but I didn’t have the space to write him as anything other. Bran is my charmer; I use his body language and dialogue to reflect his seedy underbelly. He exploits the community’s vulnerability (they lost their baker) to sell trinkets, peddling convenience and instant gratification, displacing things like hard work, labor, and love.
One of my betas asked, “Is he a halfling?” recognizing how unlike a halfling Bran is. He’s got the greed of a human, something I attribute to where he hails from (a city called Aedryn), which I placed outside of the Aevalorn Wilds where I try to suggest “okay, he’s not really a halfling.” If he’s not fae, then he’s more influenced by human culture, by Gaelwyn Men.
Reception
Well, we won’t know the peer judging results until December 1 or something, so there's more to come. I hope it makes it to the next round for finals. I think it needs to score 7/10 to move into the finalist rounds. Although I’m still pessimistic about it being squashed by something that isn’t a Cozy Fantasy, I still hope it’ll get through. More soon!
2024.11.29
The peer judging is done. The story scored 6/10 and received an Honorable Mention. It needed 7/10 to proceed to the final round.
I thought the story performed well, although it underperformed against a cliche-ridden story in the fourth round. Happily, that story and the others Baker lost to were fantasy cozies.
I have a running theory about peer-based judging’s preference for embellished descriptions that I think I’ll try to tackle in a blog post. I need to collect some thoughts first.
