Event overview | Review spreadsheet

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.

The scoreboard has now been separated into genre and format. This event is the first in the "Novel" genre which is, in regard to genre, a complete free for all.

“Novel”

Question, out of curiosity : How does this interact with scoreboard functionality?

4795353
I couldn't think of a more fitting word and figured it would be funny if we one day have a "Novel Novel" contest.

4795351
Looks slick.

Will be interesting to see what folks come up with here.

4795355
There's a global scoreboard (all genres and all formats), a scoreboard for each genre, and a scoreboard for each format in each genre.

The exact mechanics of decay haven't been implemented yet. The logic will be: on the global scoreboard, scores decay each event; on a genre scoreboard, scores decay each event in that genre; on a format scoreboard, scores decay each event in that genre and format. Essentially, whichever scoreboard is being viewed, the score will have decayed once for each event that matches the scoreboard's criteria.

Are you sure it's appropriate to host the discussion thread here? Since this is supposed to be generic, there’s a slight chance of some moderator gnashing his teeth.

4795374
FIMFiction is going to eventually transition over to general fiction. I doubt that any site moderator cares what we do on the forums as long as we don't eat up too much space.

4795374
I'll work something out if it becomes a problem.

4795376
Is that really going to see the light of day? I mean, it's been floating around for such a long time I was wondering if it had not gone out of the window.

4795377
But anyway, you must be right. I suppose as long as we just discuss stories, and do not post them, it’s all right. By and large, a lot of blogs here have little to do with MLP, and they exist with the benediction of the admins.

4795379

Every tenth post I'll write something about ponies. Should keep us in the clear.

4795388 thread not pony enough

4795390

Edit: I just realized their spelling.

4795388
We Pinkie could Pie also Rarity proceed Twilight like Sparkle this?

Lemme get this straight: this contest is "free for all" as in "original fiction allowed and no need to be pony"?

4795408
Yup.
Original fiction contest.

4795412 All my YES!!!

>new writeoff
>writing starts tomorrow
>desperately need to do research for a Friday meeting

Original fiction? Hot damn.
Shame I'll be without computer all weekend.

Will there be minific novel competitions, too?

4795429
Note that the writing period doesn't start until 2300 PST on Thursday, so you won't be missing out on too much writing time doing your research for the Friday meeting.

4795436
Even at 3 AM, TD is still lucid.
Dragon minds are sometimes baffling.

This could be good...

I have a feeling if anybody decides to do pony here, they probably won't score as highly as completely original entries (and perhaps rightly so).

What about other fanfiction though, I wonder...

4795474
I agree with 4795480 in that fanfiction does not equal original fiction. You can have an original concept for a fanfic, but you're still borrowing from the fandom's universe that you are writing the fanfic for. Original fiction means it is entirely from scratch, so establishing your setting, characters, and everything else around those domains are your main priorities.

>AKA world building is my fetish.

I am so hyped. I love writing original fiction.

Well, I'm definitely not going to be joining in this one. Sorry guys, but one writeoff per month is my limit. Have fun!

4795474 4795480 4795493
On the other hand, if you ever wanted to try filing the serial numbers off fanfiction, and wanted to see how successful you were...

(That is, altering fanfiction characters and universe to be unrecognizable to other people, then writing about them.)

4795360
My first thought was that 'novel' has very strong connotations with the long-form of literature, and that we here should aspire to be a little more clear about things like that. Then I checked with the dictionary and was reminded that 'novel' has many applicable definitions that suitable for the situation that can be generalized as 'a thing new or original.' As such, I can now accept 'Novel Short Story' without gagging, but I posit that 'Fiction' (or, if in jest, 'Fictional' or even 'Fictitious') would be more apt...
</navelgazing>

I'm really not sure what people will want to read. It's hard enough learning how everyone judges the fanfic rounds.

this one's being put on such a high pedestal, it makes me more anxious that I won't be able to come up with an idea.

4795547 Or </novelglazing> Windowpane from the Lunaverse begins to date Trixie. Will the Representitive's life ever be the same again? Or will shards of broken glass litter their future together?
Or </noelgazing> Twilight Sparkle received a beautiful crystal ball for Hearth's Warming, but every time she looks into it, all she can see is Rainbow Dash, far away in Cloudsdale with her family over the hollidays.
Or <NorTelgazing> Trixie receives a rather strange request from Northern Equestrian Telecommunications to travel to a far-away town that has just lost their cell tower. For some reason, they want her to stand on a hilltop and wear a strange device on her horn until the tower is fixed.

I knew there was some discussion over this, but I didn't expect it so soon.

My curiosity, it is piqued.

But by participation, it is questionable.

Oh, this will be interesting, I'm really curious what people will write with almost no limitations in place. let's hope that my dry spell will be broken before it begins.

I am looking forwards to this!

... Probably won't do quite that well, but I still look forwards to it!

How much can I advertise this? Is it okay if I try to get a flood of random short story writers to join in? Or are we keeping this low key for now?

I am slightly confused by this. Does this 'novel' have to deal with ponies or doesn't have to deal with them and focus on a new story all together? Because I have a story in mind for the next writeoff but am unsure if it will fit into this description.

4795841
Get as many new people as you can.

I'm also looking to host writeoffs in other genres (and fandoms, subgenres, subfandoms, etc.) if you can find people interested in that.

4795878

subgenres, subfandoms, etc.

Just how deep will your rabbit hole go?

4795889
It's rabbits all the way down...

I have been thinking about this ever since someone mentioned in the other thread last week that there would be an original fiction competition, and I have realized that I have no idea how to write original fiction. Everything on my current ideas list is too closely connected to ponies to be turned into a non-pony story, and I haven't been able to come up with any other good ideas or settings or anything. Hopefully the prompt will give me some inspiration, but there's a good chance that I won't participate this round. We'll see.

And 4795351, I really like the new look of the scoreboard.

Thanks to Georg for letting me know this was happening, seeing as the "Schedule" thread still says next context November 7.... =P

No idea if i'll be able to participate anyway, as I'm pretty sure my weekend is taken up with NaNoWriMo preparations (like figuring out what the heck my antagonist is up to), but we'll see.

4795862 The "Novel" contests are Original Fiction, so no ponies! At least, no ponies that are the intellectual property of someone other than yourself. I assume having a pony, or even multiple ponies in your story would be totally okay so long as they weren't, you know, My Little ponies. But I personally wouldn't advise it because... well, it's nice to have a change now and then, right?

>original fiction writeoff
>writing period is over homecoming weekend, a.k.a. the one time I'll get to see a bunch of graduated friends this year, a.k.a. the weekend I already have plans to not be sober during any part of

;-;

Not for this contest, but I suppose if we ever do a "All fan fiction welcome" style contest, it might be necessary to allow for some sort of story metadata to be displayed, so people have at least a vague idea of what they're dealing with.

4796034
I don't know that a random grab-bag of fan-fiction contest would be a great idea, because it would lose out on one of the best things about fanfiction, which is added context.

Unless the goal was to write fanfiction that was accessible to a general audience...

4795878

Alright, I put up threads on /r/Fanfiction and /r/Writing so far. Let's see if anyone is interested. :)

By the way, how do rights for this competition work? Can authors take down their stories after the competition so that they may then attempt to publish them in professional magazines?

4796076 There's a lot to be said about making fanfiction accessible. It certainly takes a skilled hand.

I know I've had luck getting my non-pony affiliated family members to read my pony stories. And have known people who are really into fanfiction whose media they've never actually consumed. Sometimes good writing is just good writing.

I've also seen it come into play for fanfiction contests at conventions and the like, where the judges have to go over stuff from every corner of fandom. They make heavy use of wikipedia summaries.

4796125
I need to write up a document addressing content rights. Right now I don't claim any, which I've been told is technically a legal problem for me since I should have a license to publish the submitted work on it.

Can authors take down their stories after the competition so that they may then attempt to publish them in professional magazines?

They can, and I'll implement a means for people do so themselves, but it wouldn't servce much purpose. Once something is on the Internet, it's there forever.

4796148
Thank you so much for this Roger. This was one of the reasons I was hesitant on joining the original fiction contest.

Another one of these? Roger, are you trying to kill us?

In all seriousness, though, sounds fun! I'll try to throw something in if I can.

Uh. Incidentally, all this stuff about fan fiction has given me an idea for the setting. Let's hope the prompt fits in.

Cool.