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.
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.
Last edited by oyabun; Fri, 06-24-2011 at 12:26 AM.
Thanks shinta|hikari for the sig.
What happens in case of a tie?
Peace.
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.Originally Posted by oyabun
If there's a tie? Tie-breaker round. Or both stories go on. I vote the latter.
"Leaving hell is not the same as entering it." - Tierce Japhrimel
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?
<@Terra> he told me this, "man actually meeting terra is so fucking big", and he started crying. Then he bought me hot dogs
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.
The path of excess leads to the tower of wisdom
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)
"Leaving hell is not the same as entering it." - Tierce Japhrimel
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.
Last edited by Buffalobiian; Fri, 06-24-2011 at 11:27 AM. Reason: spelling - kudos yuki.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
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.
Flaming is an unprovoked attack on another user. It is not "criticism that isn't nice".Several of the posts here have been flames.
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.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)
Anyway I posted my impressions of the stories and justified my (non) voting so I'll drop it.
<@Terra> he told me this, "man actually meeting terra is so fucking big", and he started crying. Then he bought me hot dogs
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.
Peace.
Fair point. Sorry to anyone I offended, then.
<@Terra> he told me this, "man actually meeting terra is so fucking big", and he started crying. Then he bought me hot dogs
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.
When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. ~Elizabeth West, Hovel in theHills
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.
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.
Five hours forty five minutes till end!
"Leaving hell is not the same as entering it." - Tierce Japhrimel
that's not what it says on my end, unless you're closing the poll manually instead of following the poll's autoclose time.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
From here, 1 hour, 33 minutes to go!
Peace.
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.
When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. ~Elizabeth West, Hovel in theHills
Winner #1: Firefly
Winner #2: Friendship
"Leaving hell is not the same as entering it." - Tierce Japhrimel
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?
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