"Dream A Little Dream Of Me": ENTRIES LIVE! · 10:59pm Sep 25th, 2015
Sweet stars, people. You are NOT going to make this easy.
All told, I received 23 entries into the "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" competition — ranging from detective whodunnits to haunting prose to free verse to rhyming couplets ... from accusations of murder to chronicles of suicides (or not) ... pointing the hoof at a surprising range of townsfolk, some unexpected canon characters, and sometimes even at the Nightmare themselves. The entrant list spans from a Who's Who of ponyfic down to an author with 2 3 followers (and let me just say, knowing what they wrote, that you should start tracking Monarch Dodora now and beat the rush).
I could tease some of the entries directly, but I'd much rather shut up and let them speak for themselves — and let all of you get right down to browsing through the entrants, and get the same "holy crap this is cool" tingles of discovery that I did as the submissions drew unexpected connections and uncovered overlooked facts and put together some remarkably elegant deductions. Not to mention looked damn good while doing it.
So, without further ado:
>> Dream A Little Dream Of Me: The submissions <<
Now, let's talk a little bit about judging.
1. Reader's Choice award
I am adding a new prize to the competition, for the entry that gets the most popular acclaim which has not already won a prize — so now we're going to have four winners instead of three!
This involves simply tallying up reader votes. Everyone — including competitors, since this is being done with Writeoff-style anonymity — can cast a vote for their favorites! Details are in the first chapter of the collection linked above.
I've had a few folks offer prize support, and/or I can throw in a prize of my own (probably picking from the same list I posted earlier); I'll try to get that settled before judging ends, but there WILL be a prize involved.
Let's give everyone four days to read and vote. Voting will close at 5 p.m. PDT Tuesday, September 29, and I'll announce both the judged winners and the Reader's Choice winners that evening.
2. Official judging
Part of my dilemma in picking the coolest entry is that I wrote the story with a "right" answer in my head, and I want the best final chapter, whether that comes to the same conclusion I did or not. As such, I've recruited some thoughtful critics to help me look at all of the submissions with fresh eyes (I haven't told any of them my original solution), and provide a broader set of opinions on submission quality.
My gratitude goes out to Bradel, Bad Horse, Filler, and Professor Plum for agreeing to help out! We'll put our heads together over the weekend while the rest of you are chattering back and forth about the submissions.
3. And a thank you
To all of you. Everyone who enjoyed Pony Island and gave me incentive to make this contest happen — and to our 23 entrants, who braved the wilds of pony poetry armed with nothing but their wits, and managed to carve out a little piece of logic and beauty from the jungles:
AugieDog
BlazzingInferno
Cold in Gardez
Coolmrfreeze
DeluxeMagnum69
Dubs Rewatcher
Everyday
Fahrenheit
FanOfMostEverything
FDA_Approved
Foehn
Grand_Moff_Pony
journcy
KitsuneRisu
Monarch Dodora
Not_A_Hat
ponichaeism
Skywriter
Spectral
Titanium Dragon
Trick Question
Windfox
and last but not least, Zergling Drone #4853 
Aw, man, now I'm embarrassed.
...
My entry is likely miles away from being either right or best. BUT, I had never written a serious word of poetry (or really ever considered doing so) until this contest came along. So if nothing else, I can say I tried something new, learned a bit in the process, and got to share a stage with a truly esteemed crowd. :)
Thanks for putting this on, Horizon. :)
Well, I left notes on half of them (#1 - 11); I'll get to the rest this weekend, I think. So far, there's three pieces l I felt did a really good job with the mystery - interestingly, all three of them had very different takes on what happened, though two of them decided that Littlemoth is a changeling and felt scared because she killed the REAL Littlemoth and was terrified someone would find her.
So far, in no particular order:
Ranking as mystery solution – these solved every major puzzle in the piece. as far as I could tell:
The Gems Glitter Like Blood in the Sand
I the Dream/I the Dreamer
The old stallion calls me
Three favorite poems:
I the Dream/I the Dreamer
Shame! Shame!
I never meant for this to happen
Of course, maybe some pieces in the second half will point out logical flaws in the first half of the pieces, so who knows?
3420183
I'm with Skywriter on this one -- every piece of art you make is worth celebrating, because you've automatically done better than people who didn't try.
I'm glad that this got you to broaden your horizons!
Not to mention, you're opening pathways in your brain and exposing yourself to new techniques that will have carryover effects into other stories you write in the future! Reading poetry is a hard sell for most people, but I firmly believe that writing poetry is an excellent exercise for prose authors, because it helps you to be more mindful of the way that words interact with each other.
3420645
What about the zergling one though =(