Hello all!
Now, we've all seen the voting for the February write-off going on, right? If you've chosen to take part as a writer OR a reader, you know how the process for voting goes. Have any of you magnificent people stumbled upon gems while you were voting? If so, maybe you should recommend them here!

actually for me, most off the ones iv read are quite bad. i read this one about derpy thinking she had an invincible butt. it was as bad as you probably think it was. i think this whole composition would have been a lot better if instead of giving prompts, they did it iron chef stile and gave you a sort of "secret ingredient" that you have to include in your story, and you get bonus points for using it originally (for fics, it could be like use X character, make it X type of story, ect)

263660 - frankly - not really. There were 2 nice stories but definitely no superstars. To be honest, I expected to have serious problems with choosing the very best from the superb but it was the other way around - most of them did not 'click' for me... :(.

266828
Kinda seemed that way to me too. For me I guess the stories just seemed... rushed. Maybe its just that the authors didn't think their subject through enough, or they simply didnt have enough time. Regardless, you're right. No one really shined for me either.

Angel of friendship was quite good. I thought that one was very well written and even touching.

268297
Sounds great. Thanks! I'll check it out! And at least SOMEONE enjoyed the voting.

I think I liked Eternity and a Day but nothing really stood out. At points it seemed like a chore.

Most stories I read... I disliked it. That's why I spend so little time on them.

My favorite was a story about two sisters that both sold flowers and then accidentally set Everfree on fire. It looked fantastic.

I got tired of forest fires.

270720

Reason number one why prompts are a bad idea for writing contests: All the stories tend to blend together after reading the fourth with the same idea. They're much more suited for teaching writing than exemplifying it, what with creating a constrained environment and all.

As for the general discussion, I gave up on trying to vote after the third draw of mediocre stories. I couldn't even ethically vote on those six, none of them were really worse or better than the others.

270860
I agree about the prompts. I would have done things pretty differently.

270860

I felt like the vacation prompt had the most potential. You can have them going ANYWHERE on vacation, really. Still, a lot of them ended up being very similar. My story actually focused on what went on in Ponyville while they were all gone, so I feel like I had some originality there.

There's even a lot of room to be creative with the "creatures attack Ponyville" one. Those tended to be serious and grimdark, though.

The forest fire really didn't have much to go off of. Fire starts, fire is bad, fire needs to be put out, fire is put out.

Alright. I have to agree that the prompt idea was NOT the best for a write off. I know for a fact that when an author has the freedom to create as they see fit, and not have to work with an already constructed idea, they can really shine. Thanks for all the feedback on this thread so far!

I hated the prompts.

I had the idea to write something that had nothing to do with the prompts, and then, at the very bottom of the story, I wanted to add "Oh, and afterwards some creatures attacked ponyville after a fire started on the nearby forest, all of that while the elements of Harmony were in a vacation."

Problem?

Prompts are necessary so that everyone has the same limited amount of time to write a fic. You can't prepare something for weeks in advance. Still, there's the problem of some of them being very limited in scope, like the fire.

When they were suggesting prompts I had the idea for "write what happened during a canon episode from the point of view of a background character/a main character who was not present." I feel like a prompt like that would have given us stories with all different settings, characters, and plots.

Well, this was the "February" Write-Off, so maybe they'll have another one that goes better.

271877
Troll logic is OH SO SWEET, isn't it? :) YAY FOR TROLLING!
272645
My good man, I say that people like YOU, should decide what the prompts should be. If great authors like such as yourself were able to form some sort of committee for the prompts for the next write-off, maybe they would be more enjoyable. But hey, thats just my opinion.

I see no one saw my entry.... No wait! Yes! There it is!

But my overall opinion of the competition:

The prompts were necessary to keep a general basis of the stories the same. Although it may have been boring to read the ideas over and over again, it overall kind of had to be that way.
Fire in Everfree was a nice prompt. Monsters attacking Ponyville was reasonable, although most people can't write down an entire story of monsters in 10K words. But I found a good one about sphinx(ges). The vacation was just a bad idea to pick. There's no way for somepony to write an entire vacation in under 10K. It had potential because they could go anywhere, but I guess most of the author's decided not to be imaginative.

Not only that, but people just don't know how to edit. Honestly, it's a competition, look over your own story for spelling/grammar. It's not that hard. And there were some stories I saw with over 10K, but I don't know....

Overall, most of the stories weren't as good as I hoped, but there were some pretty darn good entries. And there were some with beautiful writing, but not a good plot. I can't wait for the top ten to come out.

After reading lots of the stories that were posted, I came to the realization that if I had actually finished my story in time, I might've won.

Yeah, some were that bad.

281901
That is an saddening fact my friend. Hopefully people will learn from this experience. Hopefully...

Lots of them sucked horribly. At the same time, I'd think that the winning three will be worth it.

I'm assuming that no really good authors were in this competition. Probably new writers and ones looking for money.