Event overview | Review spreadsheet

Note for newcomers: While many participants choose to review others' entries, doing so is by no means required nor expected.

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.

Oh wow, I checked for this like ten minutes too early. XD

Edit: I have just submitted a prompt that, if I were to write the story for it I want to, everyone would accuse me of not using properly. :V Oh, life.

Probably not participating in this one because Uni, but have fun everyone!

4250517

Please refrain from saying anything that might compromise your anonymity.

I am not Trick Question. Or Spartacus.

Submitted my prompt. Not sure if I'm participating this time though. Too many things to write and too little time to spend. D:

4250577
Yeah, but are you the one who was asking about the cutie marks? (S5 Premier spoiler)

My participation in this depends entirely on my ability to can even. Let's see what the ol' prompt machine spits out.

4250634
Hay you. We're all equal here. Nopony asks about that sort of thing any more than any other pony.

= = =

4250632
Not to mention digital masterpieces, like this one they just created:

http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/467197/beautiful-modern-medicine-fanart

...and yes, I mean plural they.

Prompt in. I'm actually away from tomorrow until saturday night, so I won't have much time to work any entry I make.

4250707 You need one of these.

Prompt submitted!

My prompts always get high votes. I think I've ranged between 2nd 1st place and 5th so far.

The short story competitions always completely devour my weekend, but I love 'em anyway. Let's see how this one goes!

If anyone wants a warm-up before the competition rolls around, I'd just like to remind folks that there's about 48 hours left to submit a story (400+ words) for the upcoming Versebreaker anthology. Several of you already have, for which I am pleased and grateful.

4251507
Yes! Commissioned a piece at Babscon and was very happy with it.

If there isn't at least one story about Gilded Glamour, I will be sorely disappointed.

None of these really grab me yet.

And my own's kinda a joke, so if it gets picked, I'll be chagrined.

Oh gosh it's that time again already. Oh dear.

4252225
How times fly when we chat it all up in the Skype chat.

Not sure if I'll be competing in this one. Submitted a prompt anyway, though.

Oh boy my first short story contest

This'll be fun

maybe

I guess I can throw a story in. Just how long will it take until we know when the prompt is up?

I really hope the "Down With Equality" prompt doesn't get picked.

4252619
Prompt goes up at 2 AM (EST) on the 10th, my friend.

4253552 Thank you, though not sure how I can compete with many veterans but it will depend on the prompt I guess.

Also, since were on the subject, when we finish a story for the prompt are we allowed to get a prereader in helping tune the story or are we not allowed that?

4253552
Psst, don't mention prompts you don't want to get picked, people have a tendency to be trolls as far as the prompts go.

That's how we ended up with Title Drop and Closing Time.

Goddammit who keeps putting up "A Glass Case of Emotion"?

"You Can't Have a Nightmare If You Never Dream": Good line from the episode, would make a better story title, methinks.

The one that's really sticking out to me as a "what?" is "Literally 1/2 Platitude". Like... something is half platitude and half...???

Also there's a lot of "beginning/end" prompts, what's with that?

Eh, I only voted for two. :B One of which was mine.

Cast muh votes!

C'mon good prompt, daddy needs a new piece of featurebait!

I'm a bit surprised to see that there wasn't a single namedropping prompt, like "Over the Bad Titanium Dragon-Horse" or something. I'm also surprised that no one submitted "Field Work in the Fields" as a prompt.

I admit, I'm strangely enamored with "Eschatological Pastries." I'm not sure how many distinct stories we'd be able to get out of apocalyptic baked goods, but the premise amuses me.

4254148
I still don't understand the joke behind Closing Time. Seemed like a fine prompt to me.

Literally cannot this time. Sorry, guys. And no, people trying to convince me isn't going to change things. I haven't done my taxes, I need to crank out two very solid days of research before I meet with my thesis advisor Sunday afternoon, and I've got a tutoring client with two assignments due early next week who needs some emergency help because I've been out of town for a couple weeks. And I have to teach. And I've got a 16-hour date. And I'm giving you these excuses so hopefully PP won't be all like, "No, I don't accept it, you have to write one!"

I can't. I really can't. I'm sorry. Hopefully I'll be back next time.

4254608
Ask PP how he feels about Closing Time.

4254762
Well, good luck with all of that.

Of course, when we see your name on the author list nonetheless, we'll all know what happened.

4254802
Those are some great outliers (other than the 0/0/7 story, which doesn't surprise me. Too bad it wasn't a James Bond crossover).

I swear those stories have to have had bots spam them.

What's it with all the prompts about beginnings and endings? And five prompts starting with "The" back to back?

I'm almost wishing for "The Elements of Style" to win so I can write a meta story about a pony in his or her first steps towards writing fiction (or rather, so I can post the one that is in my bag of unpublished stories )

Kinda sad that I feel obliged to avoid some of my favorite ones because I fear they would cause a deluge of very similar stories...

Edit: Wait, the start is half a day later than usual? I have from the middle of Friday to the middle of Monday to write? Yay

Jeez, prompt submission wasn't open long, was it? Only a day? Why so short? I didn't see the announcement for the contest until just now and it was already too late to submit the continuation of my Team Rocket prompts. Anyway, I'm swamped with video and audio editing (I have three chapters of the Pirene audio book sitting waiting for me to edit, ugh. why I gotta be so scuzzy?) so I probably won't be in this one. Maybe if the prompt really speaks to me and I'm super inspired, but I doubt it.

4254802
Me too.

Meeee tooooo.

4253596 You're free to get a pre-reader if you like, but good luck writing a story, getting someone else to give you constructive feedback, and revising it all in 3 days. It's a little against the spirit of the thing, maybe? But it's not against the rules.

4254529 The name-dropping ones show up in the minific rounds.

Another short story contest? But I haven't finished editing my entry from the last one I participated in!

Woe is me.

4254762
Yeesh, sorry to hear that

Wait, you have to teach? That's simple enough:
"Watch this TV show, and write a report on the representation of {class subject}. Extra credit will be given for keeping quiet while I type."

Question: how the hell do I keep up with and navigate these writeoff threads? They accumulate thousands of posts, and I find it hard to navigate that much thread. I had trouble finding particular reviews in the last one, and I was never quite sure whether I'd caught up with all the posts I hadn't read yet. The former would be easier if I had TD's review spreadsheet, but I forgot what page that was on and it thus couldn't help me.

4257137
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZsXaatc516DXnbD6Y876ZC2_FHMDiB3TporqncXAiA4/edit#gid=0

Hope that helps. Happy thread-spelunking!

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4250517
Speaking of review spreadsheets, I made one preemptively for this competition. It can be found here.

If you're not on there yet, feel free to add a column for yourself.

4257137 Click on the timestamp on a post to get a URL directly to that post; bookmark it. Then you can pick up right where you left off.

4256873
I haven't finished editing my entry from the very second writeoff ever, get in line :V

4257137
Check them multiple times a day. :B

I might do this one, seeing as I'll actually have free time this weekend.

If Daredevil and Game of Thrones don't hold my attention for an eternity, maybe.

*spies one of the prompts"

Well, might as well get it over and done with. Was bound to happen eventually.

So for some reason, I thought the writing would start Saturday at 6pm UTC, and that we'd have one week to put something together. And now suddenly, I'm looking at only three days, one and a half during which I won't even have access to a computer. This'll be fun.

4259408

Ooh, welcome to my world of working weekends and thusly being like NOOOO I HAVETA thingy thingy whatsit etc. And yet I have managed to keep this up since August! It's all about Iron WILLPOWER

I feel compelled to mention that the Erection in the prompt pool is not my prompt Erection. It is somepony else's Erection entirely.

You all can stop PMing me about my prompt Erection as the Erection is not mine.

I can't tell you which erection prompt is actually mine because I think I'm not supposed to, even though I don't think the rules say that, and also I probably forgot already because drugs.

(I hope it doesn't win, though, because I really need to sit this one out.)

4259621
Well, if "Erection" isn't yours, then we can help you out by guaranteeing that your prompt doesn't win simply by voting for "Erection."

I see no unintended consequences in this plan.