Event overview

Please refrain from saying anything that might compromise your anonymity. Doing so is grounds for disqualification. It's recommended you do dummy reviews of your own stories should it otherwise be easy to deduce which you wrote.

'Ere we go again.

Cannot enter. My weekend is already booked solid.

oh man oh man

A dozen helpings of nope this time too. A single weekend to do 2000+ words isn't something my work schedule will let me do

Oh god, already? D: I still say we need to do these every five weeks, or every four weeks from the end of the previous contest rather than the beginning of it.

Also, I notice the 8k word limit. Trying something new?

I might be able to make this one, but I might also have to abstain from reviewing. My schedule crosses the event horizon just around when the writing is supposed to end.

I'm in unless the prompt doesn't give me any good ideas.

One thing about the prompts already submitted do pique my curiosity. A few seem to break the "not lock participants into certain characters, settings, or plots" rule; is there some kind of official enforcement of those rules, or is it left to the discretion of the participants?

3615629
I think the current pace is okay. While it's four weeks between events, it's eight weeks between short story contests (and between minific contests). If you enter only one or the other, they might seem too far apart.

That said, if a substantial number of people would rather there be five (or any number that isn't four) weeks between events, then I could change it to that.

Keyword: substantial. Changes to the schedule won't be made lightly. I like keeping things consistent so that people can manage their own schedule with the assumption that write-offs fall at predictable intervals.

Regarding the wordcount: It's a short story contest. Once you start approaching 5 digit word counts, it's time to rethink your definition of "short".

The other reason is that the 10k+ wordcount stories get abnormally high scores. One explanation I have for this is that the people that don't like the story don't read it through to the end, and therefore don't vote on it. This is supported by the fact that the longer stories have fewer votes on them. So in a way, I feel like those not-so-short stories have an unfair advantage.

3616081
I like the present schedule; it feels good to me. But I'm crazy. I like them nice and frequent.

The length seems reasonable enough to me. I have yet to compete in a full-length contest though.

Looking forward to it. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with something good.

3616081
Okay, that seems a good reason to try a shorter wordcount. Well, that and keeping the overall word total down if we get another 30+ entrants. :) (Which I'm betting we won't, with no prizes offered.)

3616652
The far higher minimum size will likely do far more to limit the entrants than the lack of prizes. In the minific events I'm able to enter 3-4 fics, in the short story ones I was never able to submit more than one

I can only promise to try, and then fail miserably.

I can't make this one. Going to a festival over the weekend and my travel table is crap for writing.

I'd love to join in on this one, but I really don't know if I can put out several thousand words in three days. I can usually only get out 500ish words per writing session.

Oh snap, an 8000 word cap. That's new, but certainly not unwelcome. Personally, I think it'll help me to keep out much of the fattening I tend to add while writing.

3616852
That's a bummer, I hate it when I can't make a writeoff. A festival sounds awesome though.

3616853
I'd say give it a shot! You never know what may happen. And if you don't finish it then so what? At least you tried. There's been a handful of writeoffs that I gave a shot but didn't finish in time, and none of those I regret attempting. So why not, eh?

If nothing comes up this weekend (a pretty big "if" with a two month old baby) I might give this one a shot if I like the prompt.

Welp, I voted on the prompt. There were some good ones.

Let's see what gets picked.

For the time being I'm going to brainstorm every prompt that I think might have a chance; I need to refill my ideas book anyway

Only today did I come up with a story I really want to write. Too bad I've already voted. D:

3620379 Maybe you'll get lucky, and everyone else will get your telepathic message and vote for the prompt you need.

some good prompts! i'm sad that i was a grapefruit and missed submissions though

3620379
You could just write it anyway if it doesn't get picked.

3621380
That's the failsafe plan, yes. :V

3616081
My main objection to the four-week schedule is that I've been basically losing a week to each comp, in between the writing and then obsessively handcrafting reviews that are 4x the wordcount of the actual writing I did.

The simple solution is for me to be more realistic about reviews, rather than gripe about the writeoff schedule. And I definitely do appreciate that the writeoffs are forcing me to produce and finish at least one story per month.

3616853
Suggestion: Give NaNoWriMo a try this November. Whether or not you finish, it's an eye-opening experience. When you have to keep up a sustained pace of 1,667 words per day, and you throw away all of the excuses about producing polished work that keep you slaving over the same words over and over and throwing out the bad stuff, you learn an incredible amount about the process of writing.

Also, there comes a point at which your muse kicks into overdrive, your inner editor is at peace with writing crap, and suddenly good words start pouring out. My personal favorites out of all the stories I've written have come out of the NaNo variants I've done where I've tried to write a short story every day, or write 50k of short stories in a month.

3623152
This looks really interesting! I do have the ideas for a couple of longer stories that've been marinating for a while. Maybe this will help me stop feeling intimidated by the thought of starting these projects. Just a quick question: Do you think making a big ol' outline helps with this event, or should I try to keep things more loose and flexible?

And I think I'm going to go ahead and go with 3617037's advice. I mean, I did join the writeoffs specifically to help streamline my writing process. Not much point if I'm going to chicken out as soon as the wordcount starts rising.

3623408
That's the spirit!

So... what happens when there is a tie in the prompt voting? "In Case of Emergency" and "There's Magic In Everything" got 18 votes apiece.

3624002
Coin toss?
Edit: Oh, there we go. "There is magic in everything." Not too bad ^^
And so we go.

3624002
According to the FAQ, one of the tied prompts is chosen at random. When that will be, I don't know.

3624016
Already has been, apparently. "There Is Magic In Everything".

Seems like There is Magic in Everything won.

3624020
That'll do.

/me is ashamed to admit that he couldn't figure out what prompt won... until coming here and THEN realizing that the event name changes to the winning prompt!

Oh man. I was tossing around a few ideas in my head that would work beautifully for … half of the other high-voted prompts, actually, but for this one I'm drawing a blank. Well, I've got a day to brainstorm before I get any writing time!

3624090
Well, if there is magic in everything, then you can write about anything, as long as you work your magic

(Being only half facetious here; it's among the prompts I wanted to win because, in a scenario that is described as "the magical land of Equestria," it's hugely open, and that before even going beyond the literal meaning of magic.)

Hmm. A lot of ways one could read this one. Especially when taking the "Friendship is Magic" equivalence into account. This is going to be fun.

3624347

A lot of ways one could read this one

Fun activity: look at some episodes and figure out how to make them fit the prompt. Hint: about anything you could rename "X Is Magic" probably fits, so many episodes would only need a slight focus tweak

Augh, this prompt is awful. D: The other one that tied with it wasn't much better. Time to ignore it and write random shit!

So can't really figure out a story that fits with the spirit of the prompt, mainly because I can't figure out what the spirit of the prompt is, so just gonna write the story I've had sitting in my ideas collection for a while and pretend it fits. If people can't figure out which one I wrote, then I guess it did fit :/

3624347
> There's magic in everything … especially when taking the "Friendship is Magic" equivalence into account

Oooh! I've got a perfect story idea! A pony makes friends with a rock!

…

… it's kind of sad that the show has moved so far beyond satire that I have to pick and choose my punchline.

3625034
Yep, your destiny might be rocky here

... I regret nothing

Okay, I'm stuck with blanks in all six chambers for this one. Seriously, how is it that a prompt can sound so promising up until the moment you're locked in with it?

Oof... I've got something of an idea, but I'm not so sure...

I was really hoping for that "High Class, Low Style" prompt.

3624646
I settled on something after all. :O

3625642
For the record, I was gunning for "Trust".

3625674

This was my first time submitting a prompt, and I was happy to see that my "Every New Day" submission actually got some votes.

I came up with a couple things for this. We'll see whether or not I do both.

Time to see what rolls in from the ole noggin.