Writeoffs — with a twist! · 7:01am Jun 13th, 2017
So, I've repeatedly plugged the Writeoffs before. (If this "Writeoff" thing is news to you, I urge you to click one of those links — which contain much more comprehensive sales pitches for how they can improve your writing, make you friends, gain your stories popularity, and cure cancer.) I'm speaking up because it's that time again: on Friday, an MLP:FIM Short Story competition is starting, and it's time to brave the wilds with a 2000-8000 word fanfic.
But!
There's a twist this time: It's not just for authors! The Writeoffs have added in an art round before the writing starts, giving participants a chance to try their hands at some more visual media!
The way this round is different is that, if you want to join in the art round, you have until early Friday morning (American time) to create a piece of visual art based on the current prompt "Under the Sun." (Both art and writing rounds are optional — you can enter one but not the other if you like.) Once the art is posted on Friday, the task of authors is to choose one or more art pieces as their inspiration, and use the art as their prompt rather than the phrase directly.
What counts as art is pretty wide-ranging! Traditional paintings/drawings are popular, but in the last few art rounds, we've had everything from photomanipulation to vector creation to multi-panel cartoons to memes to photography. (That one was me. It won a silver medal, and then I posted a lengthy and amusing retrospective about the embarrassing circumstances behind its creation.) Even if you're not confident in your art skills, there's a special medal for inspiring the most stories, so you can still get bragging rights out of submitting something rough!
In conclusion: Come join in the Writeoffs, and try something new!
(I covered the Writeoff's basic structure in previous posts, but I'll try to answer questions in comments. The Writeoff site's thread for this round is a great place to ask for help or clarification, too.)
I can art about as well as I word, but this sounds pretty sweet.
Maybe I'll draw something. It's been a while.
derpicdn.net/img/2015/7/2/928230/medium.png
--Sweetie Belle
I really want to get back into the Writeoffs, but I have a collab with a pressing deadline hanging over my head. We'll see how it goes.
After all the times I've argued to Roger that writers need more than 3 days to write a story, I felt insulted that the artists get 4 days to draw a picture, but the writers still get only 3 days to write a 2000-8000 word story.
4569979
I've just started:
Thinking of it as a "first-draft" contest, myself, but then I'm wunna those nuts who loves the editing and rewriting process.
Mike
4569979
We could have seven days to write a story and an upper limit on how many we could submit. Mais non.
4569881
The rating limit can vary. It's usually T.
4569882
Y'all better look out imma gonna enter some straight up masterpieces.
4569979
Gotta agree here (Since you deleted the other) on the grounds that, well, we're not seeing Art submissions that took 8 hours of SAI or Photoshop painting, typically, we're usually seeing 30 minute doodles (Which are fine, but!)
4569979
4570054
Well, the art segment is four weekdays versus three weekend days, and that distinction does matter to a lot of people. (Even with four weekdays to create art, I was almost unable to submit last round's photo, because I needed an uninterrupted block of good daylight for travel and the photoshoot.)
But, yeah, this is an issue that has been raised in the past. There was a week-long "Polished" stories round way back in 2014 to test whether that would improve the Writeoff experience. It wasn't done again, so consensus seems to have been that people preferred the shorter format, but a fair amount has changed since then so it might be worth pitching again.
In particular, I personally would support an expanded timeframe for Original Fiction works, because in going back and forth between the OF and pony rounds' entries, the average quality of an OF story seems to be noticeably rougher. (They're just harder to write — there's a lot more things to juggle when you have to build your world and characters from scratch.) In particular, I feel like my own OF stories end up with significant flaws relative to my average ponyfics, and yet against equally strong competition, I have an unbroken OF medal streak and wide swings in my ponyfic finishes.
But frankly, if the art round seems too long, then maybe that's a thing that needs to be addressed. 🤷 I don't have strong opinions. (cc: 4570121)
I think it would be awesome if as a result we had 3 stories in the featured box at the same time all using the same picture.
4570142
4570161
Honestly the issue I see is we're still completely dedicated to '1 event at a time' which further limits the Window of what we can do, because Pony is now an 'Every 6 weeks' event instead of ever 4, and for me ever since OF became a thing quite frankly I've come to hate it because it limits my opportunity to participate in what I want to, but when I tried to raise that issue ages ago I was beaten into submission and gave up.
4570142
You can check the thread, and there is at least one other thread I started later bringing it up again. IIRC there was never a consensus in favor of the shorter format, if consensus means "a majority of people who stated an opinion said they preferred the shorter format".
4569979
and prompt-writers are given one whole day to come up with a 2-5 word prompt! how's that even fair?
4570265 Don't even get me started. Prompt-writers get all the mares.
4570261
Links would be very helpful. Not trying to blow you off — just, before posting my comment I spent over an hour browsing through the Writeoff Association FIMFic forums, and the last few pages of the old "Title Drop" thread (which is where I'd expect discussion of the round's format merits to have been), and I drew a complete blank on discussion of the "Polished" format. That's why I hedged on the consensus thing and didn't link anything.
4570323 Yeah, but I don't have the links at hand either, and I'm not going to search for links to continue to beat that dead horse here.
So now Cold in Gardez gets to win twice!?