Honestly, though, to my eye it has exactly the same problem, which is that it has exactly the same vibe. I’m aware that I could be a motivated reasoner here, and it’s pretty subjective, but things that jump out at me:
Thin metaphors for emotional stuff just sort of declared, gish gallop style
Random “poetic feeling” descriptors that just make me feel nothing. Like, why was his breath “futile”? Someone may disagree but to me that doesn’t add anything; the feeling doesn’t sync with anything.
A melancholic vibe that’s totally full of hyper-concrete objects standing in for emotions
All this is pretty standard flash fiction fare, but in good (or even decent) flash fiction there’s a lot of more ordinary stuff to pad around it. Here it’s just a faucet cranked to maximum.
Thanks for running the experiment!
Honestly, though, to my eye it has exactly the same problem, which is that it has exactly the same vibe. I’m aware that I could be a motivated reasoner here, and it’s pretty subjective, but things that jump out at me:
Thin metaphors for emotional stuff just sort of declared, gish gallop style
Random “poetic feeling” descriptors that just make me feel nothing. Like, why was his breath “futile”? Someone may disagree but to me that doesn’t add anything; the feeling doesn’t sync with anything.
A melancholic vibe that’s totally full of hyper-concrete objects standing in for emotions
All this is pretty standard flash fiction fare, but in good (or even decent) flash fiction there’s a lot of more ordinary stuff to pad around it. Here it’s just a faucet cranked to maximum.