Alright guys, entries are posted. If by any chance some come in to me in the next 20 minutes before midnight my time, I will include them, otherwise we're all locked in. Please vote on the entries with this format:

Original Concept:
Characters:
Plot:
Pacing:
Setting & Atmosphere:
Grammar & Mechanics:

Just copy/paste and use it like a ballot.

 

A week.

 

To be honest I think Cheddar has me beat on offering constructive criticism.

 

Two things:

1. We only had five entries, and I'm willing to offer all of the contestants a game as a prize if they want one. I think we might offer to keep people anonymous except for the winner, so let @Xiph0 know you're okay with me knowing who you are. I'll probably ask for your Steam information so I can look at your wishlist.

2. Thoughts on revamping the scoring? It's not set in stone just yet, and I can't promise that staff will take suggestions into account, but after reading/reviewing/rating all five submissions I had my own thoughts on it. Going to ping others who have reviewed so far: @Halt, @Jarizok, @Eimim, @BTT, @Sorrows, @ScottPress, @Zombie, @Anarchy, @Oz, @Shinysavage

My thoughts:

There wasn't a designated spot to rate on adherence to the prompt. I think that should be part of the 'original concept' voting block in the future.

Characters, Plot, & Pacing seemed the most important to me. I found myself wanting to weight those higher.

Several stories did have grammatical or mechanical issues, but as these are often rushed drafts of stories for the competition I found that mattered less than the other categories. Setting and Atmosphere I did find important, but I also felt like they could have been weighted lower.

What do you all think about this for the next competition?
Your thoughts will be appreciated, though I'm getting near 6000 posts and I'm going to save the 6000th for something, so we'll see how much most I post here for a day or three.

Plot
Does the story have a beginning, middle, and end? Is it an original plot or simply a rehash of canon? A character driven story is fine, but even in that case there is usually a viable plot.
Pacing
Is the story too slow, never getting anywhere? Does it move so fast you want it to slow down and show the setting more? Do you get bored and start to skim? Is it easy to take a break from reading or are you pulled along for the whole ride at once?
Characters
Are you invested in the characters? Do they feel in character? If not, does the story provide enough reasoning for you to accept that they are legitimately different from their canon counterparts? Do you get a good sense of any original characters or do you dismiss them?
Other
A few points to consider here, but essentially it's everything else from the earlier categories. How was the grammar? How were the mechanics of the story? Did they use strange POV choices that you couldn't follow or tack on adverbs to every dialogue tag? Did you get a good sense of the setting and atmosphere? Anything particularly exceptional or boring there? Did they include the prompt in their story?

Or is there a better way you guys can think of to split it up? I do like having categories that are each rated on a scale of 1-5, rather than rating the story itself from 1-5 (which makes it easier to have a tie), but apart from changing that general concept I'm all ears.

 

I don't care if it's kept out of 30 - I'd like to keep it out of at least 20, but I don't personally care if it's 20, 25, 30, etc.

Plot and pacing are quite different to me personally. I'll argue to keep those separate, but you could probably convince the other staff who would convince me. I admit that a lot of guidelines on writing and whatnot group them together - but I feel that's because in a polished, professional work they go hand in hand. But we're dealing with fanfiction, and I think that those two areas are more separate in terms of rating hobbyist writing.

So I'm not staunchly opposed, just opposed. But if that's the case I don't want it to end up out of more than 20, because I feel the important bits (plot and pacing) would get more diluted with other categories.

For me plot is about the plot points in a story - what happens. It doesn't matter if it's bogged down by tons of description, adverbs, and boring monologues on the nature of life. Is there a beginning, middle, and end? Does something happen or change? Was it interesting?

For me pacing is about the rate at which the story progresses. I can read a horrible story with good pacing, b/c I don't get bored while reading. It might not have a plot at all even, but if it's fun to read anyway? This category is where most of my own guilty pleasures fall - stories that have good enough pacing that I keep reading despite a myriad of other issues.

I do NOT want to add a sticking to the prompt category out of 5 - for me that's a yes/no situation, you either included it or you didn't. I want to fold it into an existing category.

Edit: Motherfucker I posted again right after I said I wouldn't - 5999!

 

Why not take the median or average of total points awarded out of thirty, and determine whoever wins by that. You've got a lot of numbers floating around, but realistically, everyone should have the same number of participants in regards to voting on a thread.

That might be too restricting though. But I think it has some merit, maybe something better can be determined from there.

 

I've given this a bit of thought in the past re: scoring systems. The problem with a scoring system that has a breakdown is that 1) Not all categories are of equal weight and 2) the importance of each category is kind of subjective and 3) a category's importance is not linearly related to quality.

What I mean by 3 is that with exceptionally bad mechanics (or bad any category really) can only go as low as 1/5 in this system, but can in fact kill the story for people with that alone. The worst you are at one category, the more exponentially it kills the story. So this kind of scoring is biased in favor of stories thay are bad in one area but good or average in others.

Second is the question of averaging scores or totalling scores. Total scores is immediately problematic because a bad story with ten low reviews will beat out a story with one good review. It becomes about getting the most reviews, not the most good reviews. Averaging solves this, but only works when you jave enough people voting. Otherwise it becomes much easier for a story with few reviews to win (when in fact, the low review count is indicative of a problem - the hook isnt good enough). Here it becomes about getting a few good reviews over many good ones with some average ones because it's easier to win that way. In the case of totalling, we'd need a way of ensuring each entry gets the same amount of reviews (this becomes very hard to scale up as we have more entries). For averaging, there would have to be a minimum amount of reviews to keep thing's sort of fair and prevent one review wins from becoming a thing.

I also think that moving forward competitors shouldn't be allowed to vote if an averaging method is used. While I like to think that DLP wouldn't look kindly on vote manipulation, the possibility does exist. With an averaging method especially, it's easy to tank someone's score with a bad review.

Seyllians idea of an NBA style voting is simple and works well, overcoming a lot of the problems I see inherent in the current system, with the drawback that it doesnt quite force voters to think in depth about the various elements that make a story.

Re adhrence to prompt, I actually voted on this via the original concept bit but I agree that it should be clearer in the future and it is important.

 

A question for people is how do you think these stories should be archived?

Personally I think they should have a title and possibly a date/competition number. Keeping them as Submission X wound generate too much interest once the competition has passed and it will get confusing quickly.

Perhaps something like: [Story Title]-SC1-12/17

With the relevant prompt stated at the top so people know where the authors were aiming. This thread could be modified to include links to this competitions entries since after a few they are going to get majorly mixed up if people are still allowed to comment after the competition ends.

Another question is whether people think that the stories should remain anonymous after competitions end? It could be that the authors are named when the results are announced. Or should it be an opt/out (or opt/in) system, where names are attached when the story is archived unless otherwise requested. Or we can let people claim them if they wish.

 

I like the idea but would suggest going SC1 - title instead so it's immediately clear to what story comp an entry is to lessen possible confusion. Very good suggestion though!