Original Fiction Competition Launch!

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#76
You might want to hold off on the printing of the books (not like were moving at breakneck speed though.)

Meinos mentioned he would get a professional editor, so we should probably wait to hear from him on that end first. We do want this to be as good as it possibly can before we get stuff printed.

Also, make sure that you post scores. We need those last hundred points!

Magellan:
Chapter One and Two:
Going back, there were indications that Magellan was a bad guy from the start. It's out in plain sight, but it was slipped in rather obliquely amid the chaos Eleazar was causing. Well played. Didn't really notice any major grammatical issues, but then there weren't any the first time around either. I'm also noticing a power vs. finesse vibe between the mages this time around.


Chapter Three and Four:
Re-reading it, it seemed a lot clunkier than before. You didn't really have time to develop the magic system extensively, but it felt like you were putting a lot of lore and principles into this part. It's easy to skim over it to read the action, but going over it once more it detracted a bit from it.


Overall: The magic system seems to be a bit jumpy. Sometimes they say words, others they only need to think them or gesture. You've got the four elements, space, time, holy creatures. demons... it's all over the place it seems. There's nothing wrong with magic being able to do everything, but it needs development for that. It got especially bad at the end when they were duking it out. Seemed to get a bit more technical

Grammar: 18/20

Characters: 34/40
Again, I feel there should have been a few more characters for them to interact with. Nothing major, but we only see them when they're at each others throats. It was well done, but there's got to be more to them than the conflict.

Plot: 32/40
Again, I really like the plot, but the magic system just seemed a bit off, and given that it was a major part of the story...

Total: 84/100

Next two will be done tomorrow! I fucking promise!!!
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#77
Considering how .... delayed things have gotten, I'm rather impatient about everything now. Basically, I decided to try and make the book myself. Got this far;

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hUO-_8S9Mzke8wTv1T_V7lsxz5MU7HL7HzeOFJrWVto/edit?usp=sharing

Before I found out that Google docs does NOT create a "Table of Contents" with page numbers. Seriously google?!! What's the point of having a documentation system if you won't let people use page numbers? Instead, I get links. Not a bad thing, but useless for physical printing.

No editing was done with the story. Spent about 3 hours getting things that far along before I realized the 'limitation' my Google landlord imposed down on me. It's back to MS word now. Will probably have a full draft ready tomorrow.

As for my score ... yeah, that will come in tomorrow too.

-chronodekar
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#79
Can't really decide how I should mention the score/points in the story. But I've run into another issue. Have a peek;



I'm sure everyone will agree that this looks ... dull. To remedy the situation, I would like to ask all the authors to suggest chapter names. While those responses are awaiting, I'll try putting in my own chapter titles and we'll see where things go from there.

-chrondekar
 

violinmana

(Hardcore) Gamer
#81
For a short story anthology, I don't think you need chapter numbers, unless the author specifically wants you to. You should just have titles of the stories, with the author's name next to it prefaced with a "by".
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#82
-sigh-

This is taking waaay more time that I'm comfortable with. Quite frankly, I'm losing enthusiasm. There are just (effectively) 3 authors to whom I promised a printed copy of the anthology.

Do you mind if I be a douhebag and go back on my word? Instead, I'm willing to sponsor (upto) USD $20 each, worth of STEAM goods (close to my planned cost for printing and shipping). Considering that there's a sale going on, you might find something you like.

@ [H-Man] , [Halibel Lecter] and [QE1] what do you folks say? (will send you 3 PMs about this).

Assuming you agree, I need you to add me to your STEAM friends list (my STEAM id - http://steamcommunity.com/id/chronodekar ) and the list of games you want (with costs tallied up).

The douche,
chronodekar
 

Fellgrave

Well-Known Member
#85
Yes. The contest ended back in October.
 

sinewyk

Well-Known Member
#86
Shouldn't someone remove the stuff in the "Announcements" on top of every page then ?
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#87
Has anything else noteworthy happened here since?


Anyways, probably time to get this all in order. New year is here, so it stands to reason that this needs to be done.

First off, the official winner!

Final round of judging was a disaster, so it is being disregarded. That means the total scores are...

Well, son of a bitch, Meinos never judged Halibel's Story as far as I can tell. That... complicates things. Dropping his scores from the other stories puts Halibel in the lead, but I have no idea how he would have scored it at all, so I don't know if that would be. Going to PM him to see if he wants to score it now, and give him a week to see what happens.

So, prizes are once again further delayed, which means I have time to contact the donors and see if they are still willing to contribute. Do participants still want a prize, or should we save it for the next round which will hopefully go far more smoothly?

On the publishing front, do we really want to do this? Overall, this didn't go anywhere near as well as I hoped (mostly on me, but there were other issues as well.) The shortness of the anthology is one issue. Would it be better to simply combine the stories from this run with the next?

...Yep, this has pretty much been a disaster the whole way through.
 

Fellgrave

Well-Known Member
#88
For the publishing, I'd say merge the two rounds, if you do it at all. That will give you time to work out prizes and such. Of course, considering I wasn't a participant in this (yet) my opinion may not be particularly valid.

And speaking of, any idea when the next round might be?
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#89
sinewyk said:
Shouldn't someone remove the stuff in the "Announcements" on top of every page then ?
A-hem. As your local representative I have only this to say officially; Red Tape. That's why we haven't taken down the notice yet.

UN-officially? We're just lazy. That and wata is preparing for the logo contest, ... I think.

-chronodekar
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#90
Fellgrave said:
For the publishing, I'd say merge the two rounds, if you do it at all. That will give you time to work out prizes and such. Of course, considering I wasn't a participant in this (yet) my opinion may not be particularly valid.

And speaking of, any idea when the next round might be?
Next round? Hm... I was thinking the next round could start in June, so that students have some free time, and hopefully the extra sun will motivate us or give us the illusion of more time to write.

Depending on participation in that, there could be a third round in October.

Thinking of trying the two month proposal, and considering ditching the weekly requirements. Still have plenty of time to consider it and hear what you all think.

Probably need another judge too. Don't know if Kaen is up for it.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#91
I would like to make a website with the stories posted as the prize, but don't think I can spare the time for such a venture.

-chronodekar
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#92
I do have the time to do that, though I'll need to learn a bit more about how to make a website. I don't think I want to make that the prize, but it's a step in the right direction.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#93
zerohour said:
I do have the time to do that, though I'll need to learn a bit more about how to make a website. I don't think I want to make that the prize, but it's a step in the right direction.
No, I mean it's something that has me ... upset about the last contest. It's hard giving prizes online to a world-wide community. One would think that an online-only STEAM game would be simple, but noooo. The participants don't have enough internet bandwidth to download a game. What about an amazon.com gift? They don't deliver in a certain country.

I hate to admit it, but giving something tangeble as a prize just isn't going to work. Both, the headache of sending it AND receiving it.

Which is why I think a website would be better. We all complain about how horrible the quality of stories on FFN are, don't we? I think making a new site (fanfiction or just fiction) with good quality stories is worth bragging about. It doesn't even need to be a proper website. A blog would probably do (for starters).

...

Actually, that in itself would be an interesting experiment. Why not make a blog where we collect quality stories written by TTF members? The member can't post a story directly, someone (or more) would edit the story for grammar ... etc and we'd need to get the author's permission, but a central place for QUALITY stories has a certain kind of appeal to me. Interested?

-chronodekar
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#94
Well, no word or scoring from Meinos, so the Official Winner is Halibel Lecter.

Congratulations Hali!
 
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