Hmm, I've got results from the short story I send off to a magazine as an competition entry. Sadly, they've not chosen mine, but they've given it a score, which is actually quite helpful in judging what needs work. Re-reading I know it's not my best work and I can see it needs improvement.
OPENING: 10/25
TITLE: 10/10
CHARACTERS: 15/25
ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 15/40
DIALOGUE: 15/25
PLOT: 18/30
ACTION/PACE: 10/25
LANGUAGE: 16/30
ENDING: 20/20
Total: 124/230
Score guide: 164+ strong contender, 150+ recommended/short-listed, 140+ find a market, 130+ highly commended.
Now I just needs to meet those standards and re-enter for next month's.
Oh and I am back from Barcelona. It was a great holiday!! Loved it. Great food, great place, great things to do. We stayed at a hotel just off of the Diagonal, and saw quite a bit. Les Ramblas was quite an entertaining place, with some interesting street performers. It was also where our favourite restaurant was, Ambos Mundos - I totally recommend it. We did a lot of exploring, watched Flamenco dancers with their band on Friday, which was pretty impressive. We visited various places to look at, like Gaudi's stuff, such as Sagrada Familia (the Cathedral he designed which is still being built) as well as some of the buildings in the city and Park Guell, all of his designs. They're very interesting too look at - he took a lot of inspiration from nature and his architecture is just genius. Park Guell of course was simply beautiful and the Cathedral awe-inspiring. And of course, we had to visit the Dali Museum to look at his art-work too, some of it was simply bizarre.
But a visit to Barcelona, you have to see the La Sagrada Familia, it's an immense piece of work, it's probably been in construction for a 100 years, a picture won't do justice, but here's one anyway:
And coincidentally, Barcelona were playing Madrid at football, though we didn't get tickets to watch, but from what I could tell of the partying I heard from my hotel room, that Barcelona won.
