Writeoff competition this weekend · 5:42am Dec 9th, 2016
I just finished posting two minifics, We Only Live Twice and Moon Bright, over into my Horizontal Lines short-fiction collection. One's about Bon-Bond's unusual approach to romance, and the other's about the ground's-eye-view of Luna's reformation. You should enjoy both (and they're only a few minutes' read), but because they're both products of the Writeoffs I wanted to take this opportunity to plug something important.
If you're in a writing mood, the Writeoff Association is hosting an Original Fiction short-story competition this weekend. Check out cool non-pony stories from some of the fandom's top writers! Compete for non-pony-tastic Internet points and pixelated medal icons! And (much more importantly) get gobs of valuable feedback from a lot of smart readers about what works and what doesn't!
Now, I know that we're all here because of a shared enjoyment of MLP. Original Fiction rounds consequently don't get a lot of attention — which is understandable, but also very much a missed opportunity.
Because the fact is, MLP fandom has a ridiculously strong and close-knit author community, but the show won't be here forever. If you like writing and want to keep it up even after Hasbro moves on, there's no time like the present to take advantage of our fandom resources to build up your skills and broaden your horizons. Shifting from fandom-based writing to original writing means setting aside the crutch of pre-established characters and setting; while fanfic exercises many of the most important writing muscles, there are some important lessons it can't teach.
As such, if you're willing to give and receive some constructive criticism, the Writeoffs can be a fantastic little writing-workshop-in-a-can. (Not only in teaching you lessons for your next stories, but also in helping you refine the ones that you assemble for the competition. If the endless parade of Featurebox hits that have started life in the Writeoffs isn't enough evidence for that, then you can read Cold in Gardez's eloquent case for the Writeoffs. I don't want to reinvent that wheel here.) And Writeoff-style feedback is very hard to get for original fiction! Here on FIMFic, you can reasonably expect your readers to speak up about the things they liked or didn't like, but the wider publishing world doesn't have a similarly centralized place for feedback (except perhaps scattered Amazon or Goodreads reviews), and so the sort of engagement that helps you learn and grow is worth its weight in gold.
In conclusion, set aside your weekend and get a short story written. It may mean pushing yourself out of your ponyfic comfort zone, but there's no better way to leave it.
The way it works:
About six hours from the time of this post, voting for the prompt finishes and the round's prompt is announced. Participating authors get 72 hours to produce between 2000 and 8000 words (check writeoff.me's submission page for a countdown timer, or create an account and log in there to see all of the deadlines in your time zone.) Once you're done writing, submit that story to the Writeoff site under your account name there, and stay silent about it otherwise; it gets posted anonymously so that your fellow authors (and the public) can rate and review it based only on the quality of the writing.
(It's technically allowed to submit an MLP story into an Original Fiction round, but expect it to suffer in the scoring as readers penalize it in order to evaluate it evenly against stories building up their world and characters from scratch. But if you're clever about filing the serial numbers off, you can get away with it; Quiet Boy and Moon Horse won a gold medal in an Original Fiction round.)
During the week-long judging period, reviews and chatter accumulate on the story (and in the general discussion thread at writeoff.me). Every entrant is given a slate of other stories to read and rank from best to worst. You're expected to maintain anonymity about your entry during this period. When judging ends, the top stories advance into a "finalist" round to give everyone a chance to do more reading and choose the winners; non-finalists are de-anonymized at that point and their authors can claim them and respond to feedback. When finalist judging is over, everyone's identity is revealed.
If you've got questions, ask over at writeoff.me or here in comments. Hope to see you participating!
Writeoff is great. The people involved are great.
Join in!
I won't fall for your Changeling plots, you Anarcho-Changelingist witchcraft weaver
I'll see what I can do. Or, perhaps more fittingly, what I cannot do.
Can confirm, the Writeoff folks are pretty great. Plus the chat server is warm and welcoming and also full of great people.
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No no, anarcho-syndicalist changeling-witchcraft weaver. The anarcho-changeling witches believe in a sort of Laveyan theory of unfettered magic by changelings. Anarcho-syndicalist changeling-witches believe in a trade-union-like self-organization of practitioners of changeling magic (of all races). Very different things!
But it would be cool to see you in the
revolutionWriteoffs!4333552 that feel when you actually are in ironic comrades or something
We'll see
Finals on Monday. Another time
I won't!
I've been setting up the big Act II climax for the magical squirrel novel, and I can't submit any part of it to the Writeoff without compromising my anonymity. So I'll be sitting this one out again to write instead about owls and badgers and tengu and a big semi-formal Spring Break party that goes explosively awry.
Mike
Yeah, okay.
4333881
That's a reasonable excuse. Go write!
4333582
You, on the other hand, should be ashamed. Prioritizing the academic career that might end up determining your entire future over speedwriting a short story?
4333943
Yeah, cool.
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(And £30,000 in debt, but that's another matter.)
Well, studying for finals and (at last) playing all the way through 80 Days. I regret to say I returned to London 20 days late.