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.

First message.
All the others are slugs!

Every story in this month's Writeoff should be about Strawberry Ice Cream. Lets get to it, ponies!

4661967
Slugs are cool

I wonder if anyone will enter Sweet Lesbian Horse Women as the prompt.
Edit: Seriously? Well, at the very least I'm prophetic.

4661972
I prefer snails.
Because when you scratch the initial S out, you get 'nail'.
With 'slug', you get 'lug'.

EDIT: Also, snails have a shell.
If you scratch out the initial S from 'shell', you get …

4661977
Doesn't that just mean "female ponies"? I'm pretty sure it does.

Anyway, I have no time, but I have ideas, so I'll be in if I can get enough other stuff done first.

4661968
Very appropriate complement to your avatar too, I see. :V

The front page of the group should be updated.

4661950

Ah, another event! Just the thing to bring me out of my writing stupor!

Totally not brought on by laziness and constantly playing Dota 2.

Hmm. I make no guarantees for this month. I'm working on a multi-part Equestria Girls story, and I'd like to get as much out as possible before Friendship Games. Still, I may crank out a few kilowords, depending on the prompt. We'll see what happens.

"Colts in Gardens"?

I see what you did there.

Red and Black

I searched for les mis memes and the internet did not fail me

Edit:

On My Own

(This song isn't funny. It's heartbreaking </3)

Incidentally, this is way better than that time I tried to get the lyrics of All Star into the prompt suggestions.

Short Story Contest

You know, you're supposed to fill in a prompt, not just the title of the contest.

So, it turns out that hitting "Enter" during prompt submission automatically submits whatever's in the box without leaving the page. I happened to be trying to type "It's", but my right hand was one row of keys to the right, so I ended up typing "Ot + Enter + s".

... So just in case anyone's wondering what the hell "Ot" is, that's just me and my derpy hands blowing away my only prompt submission opportunity.

Oh well, I've never done particularly well in prompt voting anyway. If anyone's interested, it was gonna be "It's a Magical World," cause I flipping love Calvin and Hobbes.

4662277
A quick google search shows that OT stands for occupational therapy.
Watch it win.

4662277
I am no

4662277
Oops!

I am not sure, but if you go to your personal page on the WriteOff site, you get the list of all prompts you’ve submitted, and you can cancel your current one by clicking on the X at the end of it. I suppose as long as voting is not open.

http://writeoff.me/

Okay.
Whut?

No seriously I want to know the story behind how this got into someone's prompt submission box and subsequently ended up on the list. It sounds like it will be entertaining.

4662306
a joke, after seeing TD's post above

4662310 This is much less entertaining than I had hoped

4662295
I don't know, I think I've kinda grown attached to it during its twenty minutes of existence.

In any case, though, I think it'd be a minor rule infraction to submit a prompt that people know is yours. Since I only had the one idea, there's not much point in going back and changing things.

4662322
Consider it an illegitimate nipper of yours!

4662322
Is it actually against the rules to reveal which prompt is yours? I don't recall seeing anything that says they uave to be anonymous?

Now if only I could remember any of the prompt ideas I've had since the last writeoff.

4662128
If anybody's still looking for good Les Misérables songs to prompt after, may I suggest:

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Beggars at the Feast

or

The Thénardier Waltz of Treachery

4662576
Here Hugo.

4662572
Huh, I could have sworn that prompt voting was also supposed to be anonymous, but glancing through the rules, I can't find any mention of it. Learn something new everyday, I guess.

4662576
I counter your suggestions with suggestions of my own:

Castle on a Cloud

One Day More

and

Night/Dawn of Anguish

Or, if you want to be silly about it all:

Work Song

Little People

and

Javert's Intervention

are three titles that are guaranteed to make absolutely terrible prompts. Personally, I think the last one would work out amazingly—I predict people writing perfectly unrelated, wonderful fics, and ending mid-sentence, simply posting

Perhaps even just placed randomly in the middle?

4662623

Take the titles of Hugo’s collections of poems:

The Contemplations
Rays and Shadows
Songs from the Sunset
Autumn Leaves
Innermost Voices

Add Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil and Canterlot’s spleen (slightly adapted here), and you’ve plenty of nice prompts.

4662576

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Unrelated story time.

A few years back, my brother decided to perform in a musical at his college. It was a independent production called Group, telling the story of a woman's therapy group, and all the various issues and drama that came from the people in it. (My brother played the lone male therapist, who was a bit of a narcissist and not very good at his job.)

For the musical part of things, they just used songs from different musicals, and fit them into the plot where appropriate. There was a particularly fantastic performance of Take Me Or Leave Me by two of the girls.

However...

Act 3 comes around, and the therapy group has blown up. There was lots of drama, and everyone walked out. So the scene opens on my brother, attending the group again the next morning, but there's nothing there, except...

~Empty chairs at empty tables...~

My brother launches into a well done but overly hammy rendition of Empty Chairs. The context is nowhere near serious enough to warrant such a dramatic song. The entire theater is absolutely dying with laughter, and my brother kills it. Probably one of the funniest things I've ever had the pleasure to witness.

Sadly, there was an equipment malfunction, and no recording of the musical exists.

TL:DR - I cannot hear, or even think about that song anymore without giggling.

4662742
First off, that's amazing.
But more importantly I've had Take Me or Leave Me stuck in my head for a week already and now it's guaranteed to stay there some more

While we're on Les Miz, lets all agree that our stories for this round will contain too much detail on the locations and include ten pages on the Equestrian sewers.

Man, I see some good ones in the bunch already. Inspiration might not abandon me this time.

For that matter, given the semi-musical nature of the show, why haven't we had "Earworms" as a prompt yet?

Yes! This lines up perfectly with a three day weekend! No-life it up!

What's with all of the Les Misérables themed prompts? Not that I'm complaining, I freaking love Les Misérables, but there are at least four. I should've look more carefully before submitting mine, so I could've done Castle on a Cloud.

I bet you could make a rap out of all the prompts.

No participation from me this time. Good luck and lots of fun y'all!

4662742 Heh.

Now if you can just make that song where the little boy dies on the barricade funny, I'll be happy.

4662258

I have to wonder if, maybe that's to have a contest labeled "Short Story Contest" the entire way though. So confusing... Would it be the Short Story Contest Contest?

[10:03:24 PM] William "Dubs" Antonelli: "Red and Black"
"Colts in Gardens"
"Nuggets of Wisdom"
"I am fine with my sweet lesbian horse women."
"Short Story Contest"
"Just Over the Sharp Spark"
"Ot"
"PE-PE-PE-PEPPERONI PIZZA"
"I Like Trains"
"Displaced"
"'BEST FRIENDS'"
"Or to save on postage, I'll just poison him with this - !"

[10:03:29 PM] William "Dubs" Antonelli: What the fuck are you guys doing

4663720

>Submit serious prompt.

>Check out everyone else's prompts.

>Question whether everyone else is doing it wrong or I am...

4663720 Ot!

4664071 Ot.

Sorry guys, but there's no chance of my participating this round. I might be able to carve out enough time for a contest entry, but there's no chance I'd have time to read, much less review, anything
Have fun!

4664126
I gotta say, it may be the same with me. I'm moving back into my dorm on the 28th, which means unloading and unpacking and dressing up my whole room. That's not to mention meeting my new roommate/hallmates and meeting with the various groups and stuff I'm in. I'm going to try my hardest to get an entry in, but unfortunately I can't promise anything.

4662024

The front page of the group should be updated.

Done!

time for prompt reviews!

Behind Blue Eyes - referencing a classic Who song, eh? I'm pretty biased towards them, but it's questionable if half the voters are familiar with the song at all. this is a pretty risky and experimental entry, and that might hurt its overall score unfortunately. Solid
Web of Intrigue - This could be a pretty good prompt, but feels too similar in theme to last contest's prompt. People aren't gonna be too enthusiastic over this, just because of the timing. Almost There
Whenever I See You - Sounds like it could be a good title for a story, but seems just a little too vague to work as a prompt. Needs Work
Red and Black - A cliche joke about OCs. Problem is it's just not funny enough to get people to want to write about this unironically. Misaimed
Colts in Gardens - Very clever. Even though it's a silly meta-joke, it's actually not too bad on its own. It gets points for being cute either way you read it. Flawed but Fun
Distant Shores - I can see this working rather well. Evocative, but doesn't have to be taken too literally. I can see this one qualifying. Top Contender

a pretty decent slate to start with. I'll try to get some more done later, but not promising anything.

I wasn't sure if I'd be in this round...

But I think I will. My IRL stuff is, as usual, taking longer and costing more. On the upside, that leaves me some time for writing.

4664313

Behind Blue Eyes - referencing a classic Who song, eh? I'm pretty biased towards them, but it's questionable if half the voters are familiar with the song at all.

I'm half the age that song is, and you're still managing to make me feel old.