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quote:Would people be interested in making this a regular thing? Hell, I loved the old contests. I would certainly make a yeoman's effort to participate. But I think—personally—the old format was more helpful. I ran the last such contest along those lines and only four people entered, I think I killed the trend! I'll explain for the benefit of any of our newer members, when we were doing them a lot a coupla years ago, the prompt format was 'theme/genre', 'line', 'image', 'story element', and our goals were to incorporate all four of them. Here's an example of one I remember: Theme/Genre: Female revenge story Line: "I wish they had never invented self-confidence." Image: (an image was posted) Story Element: The horror of being struck mute suddenly For whatever reason, I thought those sorts of prompts were more interesting, but that's my brain. Although I suppose anyone who wishes to start a contest and offer a prize can choose whatever drat format they like. :p
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Jan 9, 2015 17:24
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I'm going to make this easier on myself since I've already got notes on all your stories. Does anyone NOT want a crit?
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Jan 9, 2015 20:57
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Icon-Cat posted:Hell, I loved the old contests. I would certainly make a yeoman's effort to participate. Not a fan of the restrictive rules though I suppose I've assigned my share in the past. I reckon pick one of those (mayyyybe two) and have at it. Writing a good story is intrinsically a better thing than writing a clever story that acrobatically inserts a bunch of bizarre rules.
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Jan 9, 2015 21:15
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I also like long formats with less rules. Should try out that thunderthingy one day though...
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Jan 9, 2015 22:08
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No Gravitas posted:I also like long formats with less rules. Should try out that thunderthingy one day though... 
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Jan 10, 2015 01:09
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sebmojo posted:Not a fan of the restrictive rules though I suppose I've assigned my share in the past. I reckon pick one of those (mayyyybe two) and have at it. Writing a good story is intrinsically a better thing than writing a clever story that acrobatically inserts a bunch of bizarre rules. I agree with this. Granted we both failed to submit like shameful pieces of poo poo, but still.
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Jan 10, 2015 01:15
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I promised you a post-mortem, so here it is. Don't read if you don't like seeing how sausage is made. Things started pretty poorly. I had no idea what to write. My first attempt was at comedy. Remember "Salad days"? Yeah... I figured that I'm not going to win no matter what I do, so might as well have fun. I put myself in a 12-year old mindset and got to work. Something about snow melting being a bad thing. The snow is the ancestors, etc... quote:"Our ancestors have forsaken us! We are all cursed now.", the chief said. Ugh... Yeah. I'm so sorry. At least it fit the season theme well. By early December I had 1000 words, all of it poo poo poo poo poo poo. I almost gave up on submitting. It was all in very awkward prose. You see, I read a lot, but it isn't reading of the kind you imagine I would do. I'm too impatient to read whole books. I read mainly wikipedia plot synopses and tv tropes. I do it a lot. As a result I can cook up a decent plot. I cannot write a good dialogue or a decent description for the life of me. Mainly the "he said", "she said" bits, but also other things. Add a third person to the conversation and it gets even worse. Throw in a description and I'm toast. Time to get clever then. How does one write without descriptions and dialogues then? One person talking was pretty much exactly what I wanted. Because I don't read much actual texts, I honestly had no idea it was a cliche. Actually at first I had two people talking, but it wasn't working too well. Down to one person talking now. This did not work well with comedy at all, of course. In parallel, I got a new idea. I often come up with short paragraphs of silly writing that I randomly put into emails. In conversation with someone who was considering becoming a gun instructor I wrote (translated from Polish, so it may be a bit awkward): quote:I know that when our civilization ends and bands of murder-fighters will be fighting for scraps of oil, cigarettes and candy, then shootaparters will be very needed to stop the easterners from robbing the villages left and right. And then the instruction of shootaparters will be the most important thing, a priority, a matter of first weight, almost as important as gathering wheat or milking cows. And milk is our last hope. It is hard, but our scientists are trying to make oil out of milk. And this is why the shootaparters must defend our milk silos and their teaching is important. So teach shooting! Milk is serious business in "my" "home" part of Poland, just so you know. This tiny bit of sillyness caught my imagination and I ran with it. This killed the funny aspect of the story, but I was ok with it. I still was on the fence about submitting, but if I already have 1.4k words, might as well. I got a few small compliments on random garbage I spewed every now and then, so I thought to be daring and take my lumps. I was afraid it wasn't a great fit for the topic, but with a bit of wiggling it worked well enough. Submission time rolled in and I was over the limit. The one-sided conversation allowed me to cram a bit more content than I would have been able to manage otherwise, but it was still too much. Chop chop chop, but in the end this probably made things better. I sent it in. Then I read some of the other entries and thought that "The day summer died" would probably carry. I noticed many dialogue-only submissions and I felt kinda silly. I thought I'm being so clever here! Then my proofreader had a go at my work. Yup, not winning anything here, this is a non-starter and a terrible shame. I got sad about my entry and almost requested it to be pulled from the contest four days ago. Glad I didn't. Apparently I'm a terrible judge of my own work. In the end I had a lot of fun with this. To be honest I still laugh at my childish proto-submission too. Thanks for the contest and for all the kind words! Probably gonna self-publish this sucker in some form. I wanted to hold off with publishing my writing until I have a novel ready, but might as well. Can't hurt! I think of it as a dry-run for the future, better pieces of writing to publish. Somehow for the past few years I have gotten quite a few compliments on my writing and this contest only pushed me further along towards giving writing a more serious go, something I was already considering and working on a tiny bit at a time. Not quitting the day job yet though... Not yet. One more thing, I'd love to offer critique, but I haven't ever done this before and haven't read many critiques. I think I will just listen this time around. Sorry about that. Thanks everyone! EDIT: Apparently "Salad days" is many things. I meant this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1-NpyaOWV0 No Gravitas fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 04:09
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Congrats to No Gravitas, Libliuni, and Morning Bell. That post-mortem was pretty interesting.  (Also, you should totally join Thunderdome. It got me to start writing instead of talking about writing, and even though my stories haven't ever risen above mediocre I like to think I'm on a general upward trend. The critiques are pretty awesome.) Seconding the idea of making these things more regular - I need to make up for my complete soggy failure. 
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Jan 10, 2015 06:00
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Compared to No Gravitas, my own post mortem is pretty boring. It was literally: 1. Having a vague idea 2. Inspiration strikes, some notes are scribbled down in my notebook 3. Writing 4. Proofreading 5. Pulling out a chopping axe because I went over the word count limit like a rocket on fire
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Jan 10, 2015 17:59
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Post-mortem: I used to have a big thing for goth babes so I drafted up a story about one and then re-wrote it completely for the second draft and then edited it a lot. Starting a story is always a blast but I struggle with endings a lot. I still don't know how goths manage Australian summers.
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Jan 11, 2015 02:45
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Post-Mortem: I was being a dick to Muffin.
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Jan 11, 2015 06:35
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post mortem; gently caress muffin
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Jan 11, 2015 08:01
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These are mostly my judge notes, I can possibly do some more detailed crits on request Icon-Cat Decent writing, there are moments where I can genuinely hear the narrator’s voice. Seems like it might go somewhere interesting but doesn’t ultimately do much of anything. It felt very much like a love letter about being poor in New York or something. December Octopodes Clunky writing. The concept was a bit too wacky to me, but Jack was fairly charming. The ending wasn’t an ending, and was in fact kind of an infuriating combination of a deus ex machina and a pointless cliffhanger. There’s just so much in this story, and it oscillates between being wacky and serious in a way that didn’t sit quite right in my palate. Morning Bell Pretty entertaining. Felt like a YA novel condensed into a short story. Not much going on below the surface, but it kept me reading. Writing was a little clumsy in places. A straightforward crit for a straightforward story. Libluini I admit, I’m not normally a fan of wading through primitive descriptions of common human stuff. But Muffin liked this so I decided to read it with a more sympathetic eye. I think your protagonist is alien but sympathetic. That’s good. It’s easy enough to suss out what she’s seeing, but the perspective does feel very animal. An intelligent animal, mind you. Unless it’s some kind of feral child? I was imagining a sasquatch the whole time. Near the end, it reads like you switched to the human’s perspective in the middle of the fight scene inside the building? That was jarring. The writing was good in places, but kind of bland in others because you had to take more pains to clue the reader in to what your protagonist is seeing. Pat This is ridiculous and weird and fun and I think I like it. That said, it just kind of….ended? And the narrator’s time in Japan was super glossed over. The problem was that I wasn’t really left with a strong impression about whether or not the protagonist would succeed in his next venture. This was quirky enough to be memorable, but the plot was kind of underdeveloped. hotsoupdinner Cute, but predictable. The narrator and his friends all sound waaaaay too old to try to do something like this. It’s one of those stories that I keep reading just to see if it will turn out exactly like i think it will. And it did. There’re some good thoughts in there, what with the narrator and Jeremy both having dads who aren’t around for Christmas, but any thoughtfulness is buried under the sheer predictability of the story. I think the writing was ok, but the voice was way too old for the plot. No Gravitas So like Muffin I was almost dreading this piece at the beginning. Oh great a moody, preachy one-sided story, thought I. But this unfolded like a good movie. The characters were well done. I genuinely felt emotions when the narrator revealed that he’d helped Stanislawa get away. There were a few wandering bits, but honestly this piece was one that stuck with me. It has merit beyond being an acceptable entry in a fiction contest. Chairchucker You’re not gonna read this crit but w/e. This is the chairchuckerest story that ever chucked a chair. The dialog-only thing was kind of annoying, but it was simple enough to follow at the “fantasy” part. Beyond that, it’s mainly just a person riffing on fantasy tropes, leading up to the joke about the boyfriend (?) wanting to have a threeway. Meh. Not as bad as some of the “serious” attempts, but still pretty unimpressive by chucker standards. It’s one of those things where I’d find it funny if it were the only thing I was reading I guess. Sadistech This one has its problems, but it was also one of the more memorable pieces from this contest. I feel like the two characters were very strong (aside from the whole -/= thing, I thought it worked kinda, but if this were something you were going to send off to a mag or something you might consider taking a different approach i dunno) and the concept was interesting enough to keep me reading. That said, not *much* happens, and it’s very much dependent on the idea being compelling enough to justify the read. I say yes, but I could see how someone might also find it a little plodding. I genuinely enjoyed it, though. 22gears Wow a lot of this story focuses on that Cash guy’s erection. Like multiple paragraphs. I guess this is supposed to be the wry banter that happens between cool-headed dudes doing dangerous stuff, but why so many words about a penis. Really now. Other than that, I was somewhat bored by descriptions of dudes doing boat stuff. There’s too much dialog, too little description, too many characters, not enough to make me care about any of this. I had trouble making myself not scan. I sense you have a really good eye for technical detail, and the right kind of reader might dig this. You possibly have a future in writing hard scifi. But maybe don’t include as many boner-related situational jokes mmkay?
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Jan 12, 2015 08:32
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