Challenge 1082
Like Water Over a Troubled Bridge
In Jeffrey Greene’s The Naked Face:
- How did the custom of anonymity — with masks and the avoidance of names — emerge in this alternate society?
- How might speakers — especially those of the same gender — be identified in dialogue without the use of names?
In Patricia Ann Bowen’s This Just In...: The purchase of a book, especially, is a speculative venture when the work is as yet unfamiliar. Might a feature like Bewildering Stories’ excerpts suffice as an alternative to the “free thirty pages” rule?
In Gary Clifton’s Hurricane Willie and the Swingers:
- The art of writing dialect does not consist in randomly misspelling words. What kinds of words are deformed, and in what ways?
- Explain Kratzert’s choice of relaxation, at the end, after the case has been concluded.
In T. J. Young’s How to Massage a Deal: Why might Denton say that he is morally justified in diverting the scam from himself to his ex-wife? Would omitting any single quirk from the ex-wife’s description raise doubts? If she does accept the scam, can Denton say in all innocence that it’s not his fault?
Charles C. Cole, The Day a Rabbit Crossed the Road: The rabbit was a squirrel in a previous draft. What might encourage the change?
In Edward Ahern’s The Dog Whistle: A “dog whistle” is normally a summons that cannot be heard by humans. What justifies it as the title to this particular poem?
In Robert Witmer’s The Rattle of Bones: Rolling Dice on a Burning Bridge:
- What does the title mean?
- “To mask or not to mask” could refer to a cultural conflict dating from the pandemic of 2020. What other conflicts does the poem refer to? How does the poem benefit by not identifying them explicitly?
- Who “whistles Dixie through twisted lips”?
What is a Bewildering Stories Challenge?
