GotWoot Story Contest - Preliminaries - Round 1

[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.