Third Round Feedback - Leo

It has been one very long edition of Indifiction Workshop this time, but the entries haven't made it any easier for the three of us, Radha, Medha and I, to pick winners and in the process, judges for edition 4 of this initiative. In the end, discussion, meets and calls later, each of us decided on our favorite four posts of the workshop, in random order, and based on that, decided the top 3 overall. I also would like to apologize for not being able to give a detailed response to most of the entries as December has not been very good to me, with a couple of accidents and then some personal issues I needed to sort out as well.

Well, I'm not very good at building suspense, so will get straight to the announcement. 

The winners of the edition are Rajrupa Gupta, The Fool and Nabanita Dhar, all of whom had all three of our votes. 

All three of us found Rajrupa's story to be excellent, and gave it a vote with the narration as well as the interweaving of the two POVs. I feel it was a simple story done well, both characters being sketched nicely and not diverting from what I felt the plot would bring about. It needed some proofreading for grammar and typos, but as I read the story in flow, it didn't stand out prominently enough for it to be very major.

The Fool opened the edition with his take, and immediately set the bar high. The standout of his narration perhaps was the technique he used to gel the different POVs. The story had small things play a big part, almost like a secondary dialogue if you would. The sub story to bring out the different aspects to each character was good. The ending perhaps could've been a little longer, but it was a different way to do it, and it worked. 

Nabanita's strength we felt was her character sketching of Sandhya. The start was good, and her narration (except for some typos and punctuation) was also quite nice. I quite liked the story till the ending. I felt the five years later part could've been avoided. It could've been left to the reader's imagination. 

While deciding the winners, the others who came into consideration but just missed out were Diwakar and Rahul. 

Diwakar's was excellent. Well constructed, well narrated, and a nice ending scene as well. I agree with Radha when she says that the story had a good back-story and poetic overtones. It was something I felt while reading too. What I felt held him back was Sandhya's character. The illness is something perhaps that can't resurface when she sees the photo, but that is in essence what I wanted in the plot, the illness to resurface. Also, I think the headings to each part maybe could have been left out.

Rahul's narration and character sketching was flawless, and had a good back story too. It was what I felt when I read it as well. What held it back for me is that I couldn't feel that Sandhya and Deepak were in love with each other, and again the headings also sort of detracted from the feel of the read overall.

If Deepa's post was eligible to win, she'd have a vote, but it wasn't and on retrospect, a secondary character was made more prominent in the narration so that was one thing that detracted. Renu did a grand job on the interlinking of POVs and also bringing out good character sketches and the point in the plot that the two were deeply in love with each other. A little better narration would have possibly got her even a top three I feel. 

Thanks all, and congratulations to the winners.