WotW Round II: Discussion Thread

Delusions of grandeur strike again I'm afraid.
Need I repeat English from 3rd grade?
Be prepared to laugh at my expense,
You need make no recompense,
whenever it is my story will be posted.
(I edited it while toasted! )
Now that I have finished off the red wine,
The lone vote for this story shall be mine.
Bottle empty that once held cabernet sauvignon;
No longer will this rambling post go on...

How can I compete with that?

I guess you'll see

Just wanted to say good luck everyone. I hope everyone has fun writing their stories & reading others' stories. Thank you, everyone, for sharing your stories.

So now we know we're voting for either Ayos or speculative this round. Guys, this is supposed to be anonymous. I have a feeling Dekoa staggered the entries big time and didn't just go down the list from top to bottom on purpose. I'm glad I didn't see this thread before I saw the voting thread. =/

Nine people voted for the first voting round that was now closed. I wish (and hope) more people would vote than that. If the same people are voting on a semi-constant basis with their literary preferences in mind the voting seems like it might be skewed in the end. Oh well, it's not like we can force people to read. There's already a sticky ;_;

Spoiler:

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The fact that I voted in both doesn't invalidate my point

I think it was closed early accidentally, but it seems we all know which way the votes are going anyway. However people can still vote, I think - you just have to post, and bold which one you're voting for.

Also you have to remember, that not many people come by the Creators Cafe. I wish more people would, but they just aren't that insterested. If you want others to participate, I ask that you please bring them along.

If participants could put a link in their sig that might help grab a few more interested folk; I just added one to my siggie...

Signature advertisement integration completed. I a lot of people are aware of it, but just not willing to bother with it (like my lazy ass last year, what a lurker I was) It'd be cool if we could get like an announcement for it in the irc chat channel, and maybe just like the subforum in general moved to Community Commons, where it might garner more attention from the average upper forums poster.

I don't see why we couldn't get a sticky at the top of the forums either. It's been done for way less important things, and this is meant to be a community event.

Good luck with that, guys. Last year I practically begged everyone I knew to come in and vote, and hardly any of them did. I made several journal entries about it and finally, Sassafrass just came right out and told me that she couldn't bear the thought of reading all this amateur work, and explained to me nicely that GFF is comprised of a bunch of cavemen who would rather sit around staring at threads that haven't been updated in two days than read and critique our stories. (She didn't use those words, but that was the point she was trying to make).

*sigh* I'll fake everyone out by making a journal entry called "MY BIG OLD BOUNCY BOOBS" or something, then link people to the contest. Won't work, though.

Alice, I think that could actually work! Of course, I think that if you did that and they found out that this was just a writing contest with their flys open, then I don't think they are willing to come back to just read.

Also Drex was able to put up a Stickied thread in the Comm. Commons.

I think it's unanimously agreed that our prompts suck. What do you guys think about these, or something like these? Obviously, the decision to use these (or similar ones) rests on Dekoa, but I thought I'd throw this out there for discussion.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/5/4wiencek.html

Some of those prompts seem a bit too detailed, but I would rather have them than the one I got.

Ugh.

I don't think the prompts suck, I think they left a LOT of room for flexibility, which I like. One thing I'm a huge fan of is picture prompts, by the way, and I think that might be cool for the people advancing to later rounds.

However I think it can also be unanimously agreed that so far, the contest is kind of disappointing - at no fault of Dekoa's, though. People not participating, confusion, etc. However I'm kind of thinking of it as somewhat akin to American Idol: these are the first rounds, you're gonna see a lot of people that suck getting eliminated quickly, and you're gonna see some people with a lot of potential getting eliminated just as quickly, but as the contest progresses, some awesome stuff will come out of it.

Haha, I actually liked the prompt I got. Some of the prompts in that link were ridiculous Alice.

Originally Posted by McSweeny

A wasp called the tarantula hawk reproduces by paralyzing tarantulas and laying its eggs into their bodies. When the larvae hatch, they devour the still living spider from the inside out. Isn't that fucked up? Write a short story about how fucked up that is.

Seriously lollin' here.

Oh, and since Dekoa has not responded to the PMs I sent, I want to throw this out there. My story is due later this week and is already written. The word count is at 2,940, about 340 words over what he considered the "tolerable" limit or whatever. I asked him about it and since his first response where he was basically like NO THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM I haven't gotten any word back.
Seeing how a lot of people are way under 2,500 words anyway, does anyone else find this particularly intolerable? I just don't see the point at randomly hacking away parts of a finished story in the name of a lesser quota of words. If I do cut away 300 words, it's barely half a page less in length and the supposed word limit rule is so that people will bore over the longer story and they'll just vote for the shorter one. Seeing how the majority of the voters are the writers, getting fed up with reading an additional half of a page seems ludicrous. If I submit something that has stuff obviously cut out and am then criticized for something not making sense due to the missing material, that also makes very little sense to me.

What does anyone else think about this?
It's not like it's two or three pages longer, it's THREE HUNDRED WORDS

I guess i should explain what happened with the prompts this year.

Remember that prompt saving technique i mentioned earlier? Well it essentially involved the prompts not being prompts as such, but we would give each pair of writers titles for their stories, and they had to write a story based on that title (obviously). Each of the prompts were titles that i came up with, and each pair was to receive one. Eventually Dekoa just stated that he didn't like the idea, but wanted to use my titles as prompts. I don't think it was the greatest way to use them, as i was hoping he would flesh them out a bit, but nothin' doin' i guess.

I guess i'm somewhat responsible, so there's my explanation.

Is there much difference between writing to fit a title and writing to fit a prompt?

Well I guess the main difference would be the requirement of the title or not. I just wrote what I felt about the prompt.

Jesus, in the time it took me to type that rant there were two more posts.

Part of the challenge being presented here is writing a GOOD short story, within the limits outlined. For most authors, it's harder to write a good, complete story with a lesser amount of words, hence the reason that people are allowed to be way UNDER 2,500 words, but not so much OVER.