GotWoot Story Contest - Preliminaries - Round 1

[Sapphire]

Hi all!

GotWoot members have each written their own original short story.

Vote on your top two favorite stories!

If you participated in the contest, you have to vote, but you can't vote for yourself.
Therefore, you have to vote in every voting bracket but your own.
Please read ALL of the stories before you vote!
If you only vote for one story your vote is automatically discarded.
Pick your FAVORITE two (or at least the best two), trolling the other vote screws the other contestants over. If you do this I will know and hate you forever.

Preliminary rounds 1-4 have 4 stories each. The preliminary groups were completely randomly chosen. The top two stories from each bracket of the prelims will move on to semi-finals, then the winners of semi-finals will duke it out in the championships!

Authors will remain anonymous until the final results are declared!

Voters should give personal feedback below to our budding or seasoned authors!

The voting period for each round is 72 hours.

ROUND 1 - FIGHT!

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Pastebin Mirrors
The Game (http://pastebin.com/hf91LUC4)
The Man With A Thousand Dicks (http://pastebin.com/LPEdudSU)
Friendship (http://pastebin.com/EgXNuqck)
Firefly (http://pastebin.com/d1spTQDd)

[Sapphire]

Firefly - Well written and suspenseful. I want more. I want to know what happens next, the background of the characters, how they got there, etc. I hope this one moves on, because I want more.

Friendship - Sentimental, well written, AWW factor. Solid story.

Thousand Dicks - ......................................Completely nonsensical. Okay, I'll go back and admit this was actually funny. Damn you author #2!

The Game - The transitions are a little hard to swallow.
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PS - I see that someone only voted on 1 story. You can't do that because that unbalances the power of the votes. Vote on the top 2. PM me your second vote.

Restarted poll because people... yeah.

[shinta|hikari]

Firefly - I didn't have any idea of what the premise is about, if it is indeed based on something. It was a bit traditional in terms of writing style, but it was well executed.

The Man with a Thousand Dicks - I chose this one because the other entries were pretty weak. That, and the last line about reaching the 500 word limit cracked me up. At least this one was interesting despite being vulgar and inane.

[RyougaZell]

The Game - The grammar is very weird... which makes the plot very hard to follow. The transition towards the World Leaders heavilly assumes you understood what is going on.

The Man with a Thousand Dicks - Funny speech and with good grammar... yet a terrible plot. Make me laugh though. Time jumps for the lulz are very bad though.

Friendship - Very well written. Not the best of plots, but It works. Easy to read, follow and maybe even relate to the character. Best of all? Start and ending. And maybe a setup for future plot.

Firefly - It seemed solid at the start... but the 'what?' ending isn't really satisfactory due to the cliffhanger. It would work as long story though.

[Sapphire]

I liked the beginning portion of The Game. It sort of reminds me of Gantz.

[shinta|hikari]

I think the main weaknesses of The Game were the story length and grammar errors.

[Uchiha Barles]

Man with a thousand dicks: I laughed 1000 times.

Firefly: I wonder what's so infuriating about the firefly and monkeys story

The Game: Grammar errors aside, that story needs to be longer. There still seems to be something missing to relate the gamers to the events happening in the world. Has a lot of potential.

Friendship: Too damned adorable.

[enkoujin]

"The Game"


What's going on?

That sentence describes the entire story for me. What is going on here? Where was the conflict? What's The Game? Reading this felt like I was reading the book description on the back of a book. If there was some real content, it could be more interesting. But with a 500 word-limit, the author couldn't have brought out anything good with a few passages.

"The Man With A Thousand Dicks"


“How… How did you manage that?!”

That's what I would like to ask the author - were you inebriated or on illicit drugs when you wrote this story? I'll admit that it is amusing and funny the first time around, but the story will "limp and saggy" later in the rounds. This was one of the only stories here that actually had a plot. I don't like this story that much, but I wouldn't be surprised if this won the contest.

"Friendship"


I was always a loner in school. That's because nobody shared in the same interest as me, which happens to be video games.

What?

I liked the calmness of the story, but it was pretty pale. The story can be summarized in three sentences:

Guy, who likes video games and has no friends, meets a girl who plays Pokemon. They play together. Eventually, she moves away and leaves the guy with a new game.

It was more ordinary than #14 from Archangel's "Them Bitches" thread. It was like reading someone's Note on Facebook. Boring, little or no conflict at all. It wasn't deep at all. Unless...

This story was actually about two people who are competing for a single purpose (victory). They battle each other using their Pokemon, which symbolizes each persons' arsenal of skills. Taking notice that they were playing beneath an old tree. Because the age of the tree is undisclosed, one may infer that this refers to the Tree of Life. Since this is all about Pokemon and evolving, the Tree of Life here was specifically the scientific (biological) Tree of Life. How this relates to the story is how two people grow apart, branching away from themselves are still kept together by friendship. Or, one may interpret that the game buried at the tree symbolizes friendship and that the Tree of Life gave birth to friendship amongst the other branches that competes with one another.

Unless the author was aiming for this kind of interpretation, the story was still pretty boring.

"Firefly"


Silence.

That's what happened after I read the story.

I didn't know what to think of it. As far as I know, I haven't heard of any stories that involved monkeys and fireflies, so I'll take it at face value.

My interpretation was that Lucas' action on the end was like a firefly compared to monkeys. Fireflies indicate uniqueness in dark places as they can create their own scripts or light that makes them different from other insects and organisms. Monkeys are generally unseen and looked down upon on humans, so in this case, it looks like Lucas was the firefly among the ten soldiers and Roger, who betrayed him. The author may have alluded to the fact that since fireflies have their own lights in the dark, these lights can be seen as ideas - which writers have plenty of in quantity.

Then, I thought why ten soldiers? I thought about each soldier representing the Ten Plagues, the Ten Commandments and thought that the history behind the garrison was a place of rebellion against conformists that wanted Lucas' team dead. Then the author talked about Roger being eight feet away and I couldn't find any deeper meaning at all behind this and gave up.

It's a pretty good story. More background could have been given, but the ideas were so abstract that the average reader can't really see anything out of the story because they'll just see the story as a bunch of soldiers gone "AWOL", one being captured and tortured and eventually gets killed when he lunges at a friend who betrayed him.

[Sapphire]

Puff-kun & Lucifus accidentally chose only 1 story, their second choice was Man With Thousand Dicks.

[twofacedkitsune]

I tried to evaluate the stories based on what I thought their intentions were--

*Firefly - I assumed this was a fanfic of some sort (because of its references to outside things), and evaluated it on that premise. The writing was pretty good, and it read smoothly. If it is in fact a fanfic for something, I felt like my understanding kind of suffered from being unfamiliar with the source material (e.g. the monkey/firefly story). If it wasn't a fanfic, it might benefit from sharing a little more info with the audience (not character backgrounds, etc. - since I think it works better if the audience doesn't know too much - but more like the monkey/firefly story, what the whole betrayal/saving incident was about, etc.)

Friendship - The writing could have been better, but I was probably drawn into this story the most. Short, simple, it didn't try to do much, so it was able to tell a complete story without leaving the reader feeling like they're missing out on something big. I almost voted for this one.

*Thousand Dicks - I didn't have any expectations when I read this, and I found it to be kind of interesting actually. Albeit kind of crude, it was kind of refreshing to read a story that didn't try to force suspense & intriguing dialogue, manipulate the audience with emotion, etc.

The Game - I think people mentioned the transitions, etc. already. The story felt really fragmented, and I wasn't able to get a clear sense of what its intentions were. It's saving grace would probably be its awareness of world events, but even on that note, on some levels it seemed like a cautionary tale, and on others, it was kind of indulgent. So I guess it felt like it was going in all sorts of directions in multiple different levels.

[Lucifus]

Bah, I kinda accidentally voted on only one. PMed Saph my second choice.

The Game - I feel as if the transitions mentioned before were done entirely on purpose. For me, it wasn't bad or as jarring as others seem to have found it. In fact, the sudden transitions was the stories saving grace to me, and had they not been present, I would likely not have enjoyed the story half as much as I did. Also, the atrocious grammar, I feel was also done on purpose? Otherwise english was not the authors first language. Regardless, it added a much needed sense of something 'alien' going on with the participants of 'The Game'. That said, if these transitions weren't on purpose.......

The Man with a Thousand Dicks - This one was definitely the most comedic of the bunch, with no true plot; but that seemed to be its selling point. The author did a good job of portraying a sense of light hearted/slice of life fun with no strings attached.

Friendship - It was certainly adorable, no question about it. However, it wasn't very descriptive; and didn't exactly paint the surroundings very well for obviously what was far more realistic a story in comparison to the first two. The author did a good job of portraying the innocence and feelings of the characters, however the presentation was a bit bland. The stories aim was to be simple, yes, but there should have been something more to grab the readers attention, and to give them something to ponder about/remember.

Firefly - Well, what can I say. Very descriptive and well executed presentation, with a mysterious hidden plot no less! Well done sir! Your well on your way to becoming a full blown author!

[8thSin]

The Man With A Thousand Dicks - Really enjoyed this, stupid title, but very effective character intro with good focus on the protagonist that makes it a easy read. I also liked the extra snippet of comedy, and thinks author#2 is the only one who really knows what he's doing in this contest.

Friendship - I wouldn't say the ending was predictable, but a bit too corny. I think the oak tree was too obvious of a setup with the way the author wrote it. But well, hard to hate this kind of orthodox seishun. Also hopes this was not written by one of our editors.

Other two... pretty much scanned through them. Need better intro to grab audience's interest.


Almost forgot, they should be in the same font + size next time... Maybe some authors picked certain styles on purpose, but changes reading experience way too much. Should be a pure story contest.

[Edort4]

Im not able of writing things like this so criticising them fells bad and unjust but when I start I cant hold back so no offense meant.

The game: too slow paced and very vague. maybe for an intro of a larger and more filling story could be valid but I dont get anything from it.

The Man With A Thousand Dicks: something similar to this came to my mind when I was in middle school. Grown past that.

Friendship: light and nice read calling basic human feelings. Even if the ending wasnt much of a surprise (and hating pokemons to death) I must say that I liked this one. Solitude, friendship always a catch.

Firefly: The most serious attempt at narrative novel made. Good start with great cliffhanger. Nice use of descriptions, conversations and thoughts. Favourite by far.

P.S:All this leaving aside that it looks that for some people reading 2 thousand words seems quite a feat.

[Sapphire]

Other two... pretty much scanned through them. Need better intro to grab audience's interest.

WHY WOULD YOU ADMIT TO NOT ACTUALLY FULLY READING THE STORIES???????????????? Your votes are disqualified.
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Kokujin forgot to select his second choice so I'm waiting on that.
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2 more days to vote then round two. Please hurry guys!

[shinta|hikari]

I think what he says makes sense. He actually tried to read them but lost interest. While I do not find the act admirable as a judge, it does speak about the ability of the written work to invite the readers to continue and finish it.

[Sapphire]

That's the equivalent of tl;dr to me. Read the stories or don't judge.

[RyougaZell]

I agree. Those that vote need to read to the end. Even if its painful. Like the grammar issue in one of the stories... it hurt to read it... but it was read to the end for the sake of the contest. If it was a question of just reading it would be understandable to glance away... but voting? I don't think so.

[Edort4]

For godsake it takes 1 minute to read each of them I have seen larger posts. He couldnt get past the intro? of a short story? the first 20 words!! At least bother to end them if you are going to vote something a fellow gotwooter wrote.

[shinta|hikari]

In reconsideration of the brevity of the entries, I would have to agree with you guys.

[KitKat]

Good entries. Here's my thoughts.
The Game - interesting premise but desperately in need of an editor to clean up the grammar. Having even one proof-reader might have brought this story up to being able to compete more equally with the others.
The Man With A Thousand Dicks - The writing style was witty and engaging, but the subject matter too crude to endear this story to me.
Friendship - like others have said, it's a simple predictable story and the writing is nothing special, but I felt like in writing this the author made themself vulnerable to write a story about a friendship they either have experienced or hope to see in their own life. Just speculation on my part, but if so that takes courage and that has my respect.
Firefly - I think this was my favourite of the round. The barrage of outside references was somewhat confusing, but it was suspenseful, well-paced, and had a good gritty thriller-novel flavour. Also, I love well placed moments of randomness.

[8thSin]

WHY WOULD YOU ADMIT TO NOT ACTUALLY FULLY READING THE STORIES???????????????? Your votes are disqualified.
Not gonna lie just to make my vote count.

I guess my phrasing was pretty poor. I did get past the intro paragraphs, but they weren't really registering in my head because I didn't find them all that engaging. I know is a pretty harsh criticism, but since this is a contest, I'm not gonna hold them back.

[XanBcoo]

Not gonna bother voting since I couldn't get through 2 of these stories.

I don't understand why everyone is saying the 1000 dicks story is so funny. Maybe I'm being curmudgeonly but Jesus whoever wrote that was trying so hard. Why that story would be funny to anyone is beyond me. It felt like one of those "Epic/Superhero/Disaster Movie" scripts. I'd love to see the author actually attempt some form of humor rather than expecting the relatively tame shock humor to carry itself.

The other story I read was Friendship, and while it was definitely the most cohesive and competently written story, it reads like a first draft. I'm guessing whoever wrote it spent 30 minutes recalling a touching memory, went to check for typos, and submitted it. I can't vote for it because it displays a serious lack of effort.

Really disappointed with this bracket. I hope the next set has something worthwhile.

[Sapphire]

How come you couldn't read Firefly? It was good!

[XanBcoo]

Boring and really heavy on the dialog. I tried to read it again and only got a paragraph further than last time. I read the end and it just was not interesting. At a second glance it suffers from the same "1st Draft" syndrome that the rest do.

I can see why it's doing well, though.

[Sapphire]

What's the second draft look like to you, then? :O

[XanBcoo]

About half as long. Entire chunks of dialog removed. Unnecessary descriptors and "thesaurus words" taken out.

Most of it is filler alluding to a background that's not important to the story. The author is trying to establish a relationship between the two principal characters and making a mess of it.

[Sapphire]

Completely disagree. The story didn't seem like enough to me. It needed more.

[XanBcoo]

Completely disagree. The story didn't seem like enough to me. It needed more.

That's my point. It's a page and a half of nothing. It's style over substance and the style is so cliched that it's about as boring as the last few Pierce Brosnan Bond movies.

If the author wants to produce something that will leave an impression by the next round, they need to ditch the fanfiction-style writing and practice timing and brevity.

Edit: I'm not trying to be rude. I think it's just clearly a product of a rush job and provides no incentive for the reader to pour through 2 pages of filler dialog.

Edit 2: I was trying to be rude about the 1000 dicks story. That one just plain sucked lol monkey cheese penis penis penis.

[RyougaZell]

I don't understand why everyone is saying the 1000 dicks story is so funny. Maybe I'm being curmudgeonly but Jesus whoever wrote that was trying so hard. Why that story would be funny to anyone is beyond me.

Personally it wasn't funny because of the sake of being funny. I found funny because it was terribly bad. It failed to deliver making it funny. Not a good funny though... but a sad one.

[Ryllharu]

I voted for The Man With A Thousand Dicks and Friendship, because I did not care for the other two.

I'll try to keep the criticism constructive.

"The Game" - Needs work. Wasn't particularly original, but wasn't done in a clever way either. There isn't anything wrong with a lack of originality in premise, but the last four sections read like a Mad Libs with the countries/factions filled in. A more unique approach to each of the four could have been taken and it would have been much improved for it.

"The Man With A Thousand Dicks" - I don't know why, it is certainly intentionally vulgar and absurd, but somehow it just works. The eccentricity of it all just...worked. It flatly calls attention to itself with, "Premise," "Random time jump" and "Fuck it, I'll just throw these in," sections. It's stupid, immature, but for whatever fucked up reason, it flows well. I enjoyed the Absurdist style of the whole thing, honestly.

"Friendship" - Everything about this story is bland and ordinary, but there isn't anything really bad with it either. It's a slice of life, and while longer than it probably needed to be, it was very well constructed. It had nearly everything the short story format needs, exposition, complication, a pseudo-climax, and a resolution, but it didn't really rise up, have a definitive moment or a concrete climax. Reminded me a little of John Updike's "A&P" for some reason, but without a strong climax.

"Firefly" - Every line of this story screamed, "Trying too hard," to me. While it tries to be engaging, gripping and dramatic, it comes off disjointed, melodramatic, and somehow a bit dull. Where it falls flat is because it takes too many ideas and throws them in a stream-of-consciousness manner instead of developing any single one of them. Focus on a few concepts and run with them rather than taking what seems like a very small cross-section of a much larger exposition and flinging it at readers.

[XanBcoo]

"Friendship" - Everything about this story is bland and ordinary, but there isn't anything really bad with it either. It's a slice of life, and while longer than it probably needed to be, it was very well constructed. It had nearly everything the short story format needs, exposition, complication, a pseudo-climax, and a resolution, but it didn't really rise up, have a definitive moment or a concrete climax. Reminded me a little of John Updike's "A&P," for some reason, but without a strong climax.

"Firefly" - Every line of this story screamed, "Trying too hard," to me. While it tries to be engaging, gripping and dramatic, it comes off disjointed, melodramatic, and somehow a bit dull. Where it falls flat is because it takes too many ideas and throws them in a stream-of-consciousness manner instead of developing any single one of them. Focus on a few concepts and run with them rather than taking what seems like a very small cross-section of a much larger exposition and flinging it at readers.

Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at. Thank you.

I think it will be good if the author does a serious rewrite.

[Sapphire]

Hurry and vote guys! Poll closes tomorrow at midnight.

Know a member of GotWoot who hasn't voted yet? Force them to read the stories and vote!

[Yukimura]

Skimming all four I didn't particularly like any of them so I decided to read them all in their entirety and find the two I disliked the most and vote for the other two. The Thousand Dick one read like a long joke not an actual story and didn't seem like it deserved my vote on principle. I do admit it elicited some chuckles for audacity though. The Game sounded more like the prologue to a video game than a full-fledged story and that didn't sit well with me as there wasn't much of an attempt to flesh things out. So by default Friendship and Firefly got my votes.

[Dark_Sage]

All right, time for me to review this shit. Let's start with Friendship.

This is one of those posts you'd see on 4chan.

Format for a successful 4chan-type post: Nostalgia aimed at people in their late teens, early twenties. Story involving an awkward male (audience pandering of course, considering the main readership). Descriptively believable, but too well manufactured to be plausible. Somehow ends in Forever Alone or That Was My Only Love or something that brings the audience back into relating to the author.

If I had my hard drive here with me, I'd bust out my 4chan/threads folder and show you this type of story in its previous formats.

Here, let's madlib one.

Nostalgic childhood interest: Yu-Gi-Oh! cards
Love interest name: Selena
Common meetup location: Park bench (Makes no fucking sense, but it's romantic somehow)
Reason for her disappearance from my life: Cancer

The story writes itself, guys.



I first met Selena when I was in the third grade. I had just moved from (fuck it, let's go Luxemburg) Luxemburg and I was new to everything. Selena lived next door and we became fast friends. She was always crying and I constantly picked on her for it.

But we were friends nonetheless.

In the fifth grade I became a big fan of Yu-gi-oh. Selena didn't see the appeal, but she saved up enough money to buy a generic deck. We would always play the game on a park bench outside of school.

We played throughout fourth grade. She never had enough money, so I would occasionally give her cards to build up her deck. Her favorite card was the first card I ever gave her - the Dark Sage. It made no sense for her to put it in her deck, but she always did. She said it was her "lucky card".

A year passed and we slowly stopped playing the game with each other. She moved to a different school at the start of fifth grade and her parents told me that she was too involved with her studies to play with me.

June 5th, her parents came over and had a talk with me. It was then I realized Selena hadn't transferred schools at all. She had been in the hospital for cancer treatment. That day, she had lost the battle against cancer and her parents felt I should know.

I didn't know what to do. I was numb, so I just took it at face value and didn't cry.

A month later, I went to the school playground. For some reason, and I don't know what came over me, I looked underneath the bench where we used to play.

There it was. A single card - the Dark Sage.

There were only three words written on it - I'll miss you.

I started to cry.

Simple. And fucking stupid. If you liked this, you're gullible and probably a boring person.




Firefly

Generifantasy. Absolute tripe. It's Riftwar mixed with Dragonlance mixed with elementary writing. I think I wrote something similar in the fifth grade, except there were goblins and wizards instead.

It was hard to read because I just felt so embarassed for the author. I envision him as a 30-year-old overweight, jobless Nintendo fan who can't even write bad fanfiction.

Terrible, terrible writing.




Thousand Dicks.

The author clearly tried too hard while at the same time not putting any effort into it. It has absolutely no redeeming value besides a few jokes which end up falling flat against the tepid backdrop of the story as a whole.

"Stream of consciousness" is right, and as a result the flow is insufferable.

It doesn't know what it wants to be, which combined with the juvenile "Hurr, hurr dicks are funny" plot is a recipe for failure.




The Game was the best entry in this godforsaken contest. The English was shit, but the story actually resonated well because it wasn't forced, and despite being unoriginal, it wasn't copy/pasted from a better source. It actually had the most effort put into it, despite it having seemingly been crafted in thirty minutes, max. It's readable if you ignore the last half.


None of these stories deserve a vote and I pray to your god that someone has the slightest bit of talent necessary to make something that's even moderately readable in the next rounds.

[shinta|hikari]

I think you guys are being too harsh for a contest held for members of a forum that isn't about writing.

[Sapphire]

That Dark_Sage story was beautiful. :(

[Dark_Sage]

I think you guys are being too harsh for a contest held for members of a forum that isn't about writing.

Writing is easy. It's not my fault the writers are morons.

[Sapphire]

I'm going to erase Kokujin's vote until he tells me his second one.

[Cal_kashi]

Are we going to be able to start round 2 concurrent with round one?

edit: thanks for the info, I remember their being some questions of concurrent rounds, so was inquiring to what came of it.

[Sapphire]

Round 1 ends at the same time round 2 begins, which is exactly 24 hours.

[oyabun]

I thought you are gonna overlap the rounds sapphire?
BTW I think that you should not allow re-submission of stories for the preliminary rounds.

[shinta|hikari]

What happens in case of a tie?

[Sapphire]

I thought you are gonna overlap the rounds sapphire?


I was considering it, but I decided against it. You can wait 24 hours. Also, people are having a hard enough time reading 4 stories.


What happens in case of a tie?

If there's a tie? Tie-breaker round. Or both stories go on. I vote the latter.

[XanBcoo]

I think you guys are being too harsh for a contest held for members of a forum that isn't about writing.

If the stories we read are objectively terrible, we can't fool ourselves into thinking any differently. Why should I vote that someone has a chance at winning a prize for their writing if their story reads like something they crapped out in 10 minutes?

[Edort4]

Not trying to flame or be a troll. I didnt participate in the contest cause my writing is bad, and maybe other people arent aware of the same flaw at their skills, but lets try to at least keep the criticism at a friendly tone no?

Not everybody can crap out in 5 seconds like some artists do at their posts. I see that we have tons of experience at gotwoot about short story contests? or maybe we all are book editors, or even writers! How rare that just barely a dozen of the lots of best selling writers that lurk this place took part...

Too many PRO cirtics in my opinion. I find it unnecesary to give opinion words like: serious lack of effort, plainly suck, writers are morons, they crap out storys. And some other highly elaborated arguments.

[RyougaZell]

Personally I've never attempted writing an original story, only fanfiction, but I know how mind-breaking can be to write something. Criticism should be used as a way to improve the author... not as a flame. Several of the posts here have been flames.

[Sapphire]

Not trying to flame or be a troll. I didnt participate in the contest cause my writing is bad, and maybe other people arent aware of the same flaw at their skills, but lets try to at least keep the criticism at a friendly tone no?

Not everybody can crap out in 5 seconds like some artists do at their posts. I see that we have tons of experience at gotwoot about short story contests? or maybe we all are book editors, or even writers! How rare that just barely a dozen of the lots of best selling writers that lurk this place took part...

Too many PRO cirtics in my opinion. I find it unnecesary to give opinion words like: serious lack of effort, plainly suck, writers are morons, they crap out storys. And some other highly elaborated arguments.

Personally I've never attempted writing an original story, only fanfiction, but I know how mind-breaking can be to write something. Criticism should be used as a way to improve the author... not as a flame. Several of the posts here have been flames.


This.


And I want the people who flame like a mofo (Xan) to post a story so I can arbritrarily decide whether or not their harsh and brutal opinions are worth anything! (Like Dark_Sage just did)

[Buffalobiian]

Alright, I felt like shit, but read these anyway before the deadline because I said I would. It actually made me feel better.

In the order that I read them (because they were lined up that way):

The Game

It's unfortunate that this one suffered from the word length requirement. I would go to say that this one's the most original one of them all. The grammar was jarring only at first, but it gave way soon enough. Perhaps I'm too used to reading/listening to incorrect English and just automatically making sense of it.

I'm not entirely sure if it's intentional. These guys are like alients/other-wordly beings, from what I gather. It wasn't as hard to understand as some people were making it out to be. Superior beings threat this universe like a game - they decided to play starcraft on Earth by taking over the minds of world leaders.

I didn't vote for this one though, because it wasn't really a complete story in its own right - and this is a story contest. The sudden change of rules is to blame for this decision. Sapphi made it seem like these stories were going to be competing for the top at tbe beginning, but then changed the rules so that these stories can be modified, developed and expanded. So am I to choose the story that I think is the best story, or the best 1st chapter of a book that I want to see come to fruition?

I chose the first simply because that's what I thought (and the writers thought) the contest was going to be about.



Thousand Dicks

Fun, perverted.. and err, dicks? Not much going for this one, but nothing that bad neither. I totally didn't think that thousand-dicks main character was going to sound like a pirate/highland fellow, so that kind of came out of the blue for me. I was expecting a womaniser smoothness to his way of speech. But it did make me laugh and managed to establish a tiny bit of characterisation (the whole Sexism Hate thing).



Friendship

So what if this used the nostalgia factor? It doesn't matter what the author used to capture us as long as it works. Dirty marketing that hooked you in is successful marketting. (Damn FF5 upgrade killed my AU spellcheck..). Arguments that this was simple doesn't really stand. This was the best story based on structure alone.

It had an opening, and introduced a problem.
It developed on how the problem developed or started to be resolved.
It amounted to something (even if I won't call it a climax)
It was summed up nicely in the conclusion and left you with a thought.

Formulated? Sure.
Fixed in structure? If you say so.

Who cares? It works.

It was also the most refreshing story due to the writing style. It was simple, direct and to the point. Many fanfics suffer from writing in a passive way, spending too much time and too many words to paint a picture in a way that stops the story from flowing (if it's even developed on at all). Ryll commented on this already. (It's not "bad" to write this way, just don't overdo it.)



Firefly

I don't really get the reference. Only at the end did I "think" that the betrayed were the monkeys and the fireflies were... the 'hunters'? I commend the effort, but it didn't pay off on me, as much as I tried to. "Not enough of a story" would be a good way to describe it. If I was choosing a "which piece would I like to see expanded on" vote, that would be a different story.

I'd be happy if the author could either post publicly or PM me privately about any references that could help me understand this one more, if any.



So.. yeah, I voted Friendship and Dicks. The first was a clear winner. I had to really think hard about what I was going to prioritise to make my second choice - I based it on overall enjoyment.

[XanBcoo]

Not everybody can crap out in 5 seconds like some artists do at their posts. I see that we have tons of experience at gotwoot about short story contests? or maybe we all are book editors, or even writers! How rare that just barely a dozen of the lots of best selling writers that lurk this place took part...
You have misunderstood what I am saying. All of the stories read like a first draft and are sloppy, wordy, and clumsy. I don't expect them to be good after a first draft. Nothing is good after only 1 draft.

The proper way to improve a draft is to make sure that the elements you have chosen are working to their full effect. It does nothing to improve the story by adding more words.


Several of the posts here have been flames.
Flaming is an unprovoked attack on another user. It is not "criticism that isn't nice".


And I want the people who flame like a mofo (Xan) to post a story so I can arbritrarily decide whether or not their harsh and brutal opinions are worth anything! (Like Dark_Sage just did)
I didn't even want to post in the thread because I knew - I knew - that if anyone presented any criticism that wasn't coddling, that someone would reply "Well let's see you try!". Thanks, Sapphire.

Anyway I posted my impressions of the stories and justified my (non) voting so I'll drop it.

[shinta|hikari]

I think the criticisms you pointed out were actually spot on. I just think that saying it nicely is easy enough, and will probably motivate the writers to do better next time.

I personally look forward to your future reviews of the submitted works, so please provide us with your opinions in the succeeding rounds as well. If I had to choose between your harsh comments or no comments from you at all, I would choose the former.

[XanBcoo]

I think the criticisms you pointed out were actually spot on. I just think that saying it nicely is easy enough, and will probably motivate the writers to do better next time.

Fair point. Sorry to anyone I offended, then.

[Cal_kashi]

XanBcoo's dilemma is why I have not commented with my full thoughts on the stories. OTOH, by now I really have nothing to add as all my criticisms have been addressed by one commenter or another.

[KitKat]

Just as a clarification between criticism and flaming here, when you criticize a story make sure you're just criticizing the story. When you attack the author instead of the story (i.e. "This story sucks balls therefore the author is a useless sack of sh**.") that is definitely flaming. Please keep your comments and criticisms relevant to the story and the writing and don't use them as a thinly veiled method of lauding your own superiority over others. Let's help our authors to improve so that even if you disliked what they wrote in this contest, perhaps they'll learn from it and write something you really enjoy the next time we have a similar contest.

[Ryllharu]

As far as I'm concerned, criticism can be as harsh as you need it to be (leaving out personal attacks), but the key point in criticism is telling the author how they can improve. Solely complimenting is useless, as no story is, nor can it ever be, perfect. Solely making negative remarks is also useless, as it doesn't build on anything.

Criticism can be absolutely scathing, but it needs to be followed up with something constructive. Suggestions for improvement, grammar corrections, and so forth.

[Sapphire]

Five hours forty five minutes till end!

[Buffalobiian]

that's not what it says on my end, unless you're closing the poll manually instead of following the poll's autoclose time.

[shinta|hikari]

From here, 1 hour, 33 minutes to go!

[Cal_kashi]

Since voting is over I'll leave my impressions.

The game: First off, and most obviously the English is very poor. However, I'm actually quite used to reading work emails that are written with very similar grammar/tense/plural/etc issues and decided straight away I wouldn't take the mistakes into account when ranking, as English clearly wasn't the author's first language. That said, The Game struck me as a good start, but needs elaboration on how/why the various heads of state were acting funny. Also, it felt like it lacked an ending, that it was cut off before the ending in fact. I mean I can see where it's almost certainly going to go, but the way it ended left me feeling unsatisfied.
I found the story a creative use of common ideas and themes, as well as a new or different twist on those fore-mentioned themes. A a whole there is a good idea here, if a poor execution. While considering the poor execution I also got the impression that the author worked very hard. I felt like he/she really gave it all they had, and I appreciated that.

The Man with a Thousand Dicks:
Again a creative story, at least in the sense that it didn't use archetypal themes, ideas and plot devices really in any way shape or form, excluding the "good guy slays towns bad leader" scene, that frankly seemed to be injected into the story more than an intrinsic element. I did find fault with the flow of the story. The various sentences felt more like a news reporter factually restating the events of a story for the viewers tuning in, than it felt like a narrator spinning a yarn. I'm not sure if this could be solved with the creative use of segues or if in fact a full re-write is necessary. Again the story felt incomplete, mainly for this reason. All the elements, characters, plot are there but it needs more glue keeping them together such that the distinction between a story and a report is more evident. In this defect I found the story to be childish, either the effort wasn't put in or the abilities of the author are lacking. This is all the more disappointing because the author clearly has some skill for description AND plot.

Friendship: Childish tripe. The story flowed and felt like a fifth grader recounting their summer vacation. Further the plot as a whole felt common and one dimensional. Also, the word Pokemon was used far, far too often. To be honest this story had little redeeming value either as entertainment or exposure to prose. I'm not really sure how this story could be made better and still be this story.

Firefly: My favorite in the bunch. There is a great story here dying to make it's way out, and like the first elaboration is needed. Unlike the first, however, the elaboration is necessary to make sense of the ending more than to gain a sense of fulfillment. Good descriptions, a quick original plot, the author has a talent for writing. Still though, the story felt rushed both as an impression that it was written in too short of a time and that it tried to cover too much in too little ground. It seems like we are at a climatic or critical point in a much bigger story and if we had read that the characters and situation we find them would make sense. As it stands though, to use a cliche, more questions are raised than answered. That this was too short (in several ways) aside, this story was the most entertaining and the easiest to read.

Edit: I want to note that I did my best to examine and critique as many elements of the story as I could, and to express my thoughts in the least offensive way possible while preserving the impressions that I had.

[Sapphire]

Winner #1: Firefly
Winner #2: Friendship

[Lucifus]

Quick question, shouldn't Dicks be the runner up or were our second votes discounted? Or perhaps there were hidden votes for Friendship as well?

[Sapphire]

I edited the vote count to account for yours and Puff's second votes.

[Lucifus]

Ah, I see. Yet I count ten votes for Dicks without mine or puffs names. Should the final score not be 12?

Edit: Nvm, I see Friendship has a total score of 13.

[Sapphire]

Don't pay attention to the names, pay attention to the numbers. I have to go into the database to edit anything else.

[kokujin-kun]

if it matters anymore, I tried to vote for Firefly and The Man With A Thousand Dicks

[Sapphire]

Ohshiiiiiiiiiiii-

Well if you tried and some shit happened, that's a whole other story.

Now friendship and dicks are tied.

[Lucifus]

Sounds kinky. So how do we resolve this bad boy? You show me yours, I show you mine.

[DeadlyOats]

How do I vote? Just say what my choices are, or is there a button for me to click on?

[Sapphire]

The voting period period for round 1 is over. Go to round 2.

[SeanW]

Since I'm commenting on ties, it's only fair I do so here as well as in round 2. If nothing else it might give people food for thought going into the semifinals.

But really, this tie is a no-brainer. Dicks sucked. It was a completely juvenile idea, with completely random development and structure. The writing itself, at the lowest technical level (spelling and grammar), is fine; there are some nice turns of phrase. But in the end it's a competently sculpted turd of a story.

Friendship suffers the same basic flaw as Live Arm in round 2: the author cares deeply about Pokemon, and by gawd, you'd better too, if you're not going to have the pants bored off you. But boring as it is, it's written well enough. So in a tie-breaker I'd vote for it.

[DeadlyOats]

I disagree with you, SeanW. Even if you did not like either story, I disagree with your reasoning for why "Friendship" should get the tie-breaking vote.

Even though, Thousand Dicks was a gaudy story, it was well told, and it was humorous. Even the punchline - in fact there were two punchlines. 1) Chapter 37 is titled "The man with the magic compass." Nowhere is a magic compass mentioned until the very end of the chapter. It made me laugh out loud, because that was SUPPOSE to be the subject matter of the chapter, but another matter was explored, instead. 2) The final line about no one understanding why he made the comment about the 500 character limit made me laugh too. Yes, it was a very silly tale, but I didn't have to ask too many questions. Although, there were a few questions. We are not told why the mayor was evil. What made him evil? But then again, it may have been "covered" in the "previous chapters", so the author may be able to get away with not telling us what made the mayor evil, and why he was on Shinji's hit list.

Friendship seemed like a sappy story about friends, and making friends, but a second reading makes you realize you don't have enough information to understand the reason he has no friends - except for the girl. You are left to speculate. Why, precisely, is he a loner? Was it a traumatic experience? Why doesn't he make any effort to participate in other activities where he may encounter others and form friendships? I like watching anime, but I do other things and meet with people, BECAUSE, not all of those other people will watch anime with me. Not having friends because all he does is play Pokemon is not a strong enough reason to not have friends. At the end, he remembers her fondly, but he's more excited about the game she gave him as a goodbye gift. Where is the longing for her companionship? Where's her present from him, eh? If she had time to dig a hole in the ground and bury a present in it, he had time to get her something too - and actually present it to her before she moved away. Maybe, burying the present was her way of saying, "All you cared about was Pokemon!" But I'm just speculating. The point is, that so much was NOT covered in the story that I could speculate, and had to ask all of those questions.

Additionally, there was not enough character development nor enough conversation between the two to make you care about their friendship. I agree with you, that all you read about was their common interest in Pokemon. Here I go, again, with my questions. Who is this girl? Is she in his class, or a different one? Did they eat lunch together? They had a whole school semester to call one another and visit each other at home. None of that happens in the story, so it either did NOT happen, and he IS a serious LONER, or it was not adequately covered in the story, and it is missing from the story.

Because there is not enough to describe the building of the friendship - aside from playing pokemon, and only at recess, and only at school - I can't really buy into the story.

Thus, I think the tie-breaking vote should go to Thousand Dicks.

[Lucifus]

At the expense of criticizing Friendship, I really believe it was an incredibly bland read. This is not to say the plot, story, characters themselves were bad.

Just, out of the four, had it not been required for me to read all four stories, I would have stopped halfway. It had absolutely no bite to it. Nothing whatsoever to hold the readers attention.

The characters interaction was cute, but they were so bland, devoid of detail, why the hell should I give a fack about them?

Sorry to the author if this sounds harsh. Just address it in your next revision. =P

Give us something to make us want to read your story. Even the game had some character to it, badly written as it was. I wanted to know, what was happening, what was going on. It made me curious.

Now as for dicks, like the above stated, it did its job perfectly! Juvenile and crude as it was, it made me laugh! And author obviously gave a great deal of attention to presentation and structure.

Now regardless, these are just personal opinions divided among three people. There is a reason both stories are tied as they are interpreted differently by each reader, and both have their ups and downs. We need a tie breaking round. ^_^

[Sapphire]

I'm going to pretend to be someone who knows what she's talking about and start giving a bit more personal feedback on stories for the semi-finals. Also will help me think about how I can improve my own writing:

Friendship: I read in an book that friendship is also competition. One may feel a sense of comradeship, but there's also so many other emotions. When two people have a moment, they both have their own desires, and those desires are due to the personal histories of the characters, which in turn, create their individual personalities and how they interact. If you can portray all this in writing somehow, you've made something compelling.

However, doing this in any way other than in sincerity may come off as manipulative.

Every person wants something. To portray a want or desire - especially one that conflicts - is what makes a compelling story in my opinion. The level of detail and focus you put on the individual moments of your story should depend on how fast you want the story to be paced.

I personally think I write best when I am in some sort of emotional state. Then, I'm not merely writing what's happening, but I'm using all these details to try to truly express my feelings. This adds a layer to the story that I think readers pick up on. It might be the edge you need.