Whichever the mechanics, I'm throwing my hat in for judging.

 

Why is Dhulli's sockpuppet still unbanned?

 

To infinity and beyond.

 

I'm keen on the team idea of Stojil's. Doing things as a group would also compel participants (those who say they'll compete yet never submit anything especially) to actually enter the comp properly. Teams could be grouped by participant preference, or by similar styles, or whatever. Much potential to be seen.

 

My main points were:

1)There will most certainly be multiple worthy entries.
2)There is little to no drawback in allowing multiple entries in the contest.
3)There are obvious advantages in allowing multiple entries in the contest.

The rest was simply an attempt at tackling the goob points raised by Silens Cursor.

So, to avoid crack and, in general, to make the story a better piece of coherent writing:

1)Admit multiple entries.
2)Let writers pick which story they want to write for after the "first chapters".
3)Form collaborative groups that can handle matters relative to the story-project on their own.
3)Make the original author, the team, the team leader or a group of judges decide who becomes part of the group and who doesn't if there are too many candidates, based on the ideas they pitch for the story.
4)Create a few rules to make the project run more smoothly.

The contest becomes team vs. every other team, instead of everybody vs. everybody. There are (many) advantages and (few) drawbacks to this, and I believe the former far outweigh the latter.

The main point remains, though: whatever the mechanics, multiple entries should be allowed in the contest, IMO. I really can't see why not.

 

Your idea, Stojil, would shift the contest to a team based competition that would discourage spontaneous contributions and destroy any comparability between the monthy entries.

How are you going to compare two contributions that are based on entirely different stories? Your pitch turns the idea of a competition into the concurrent collaborative creation of isolated story-lines that may or may not have a similar beginning. How does this increase coherence?

The contest, as it is, allows each contestant to contribute a piece to the overall story, and gives the community the ability to chose how the story is going to progress.

The idea is to have a communal story, with a contest each month for who gets to write the next piece.

If it's a team competition, how are you going to test your individual writing skills against those of the others if you write in teams?

Obviously the vote is going to determine which contribution the next ones will be based upon. If everyone votes for the convoluted crackpiece, then it's everyone's fault. If the majority of DLP want to chose a chapter that throws out everything from the previous chapter, it's their choice.

It's the authors task to write a compelling chapter that builds logically on the previous ones and is open enough for the following authors to build upon.

And yes, the first winner will provide the building block of the story. You'll have to take that into consideration when voting.

 

Perhaps, if all submissions were kept completely anonymous until the final votes have been cast then a lot of users may not notice which following submission is by the original winner.

 

I'm really intrigued by this, but I probably won't be entering, at least the first round. Too many other fics on the go at the moment, never mind anything else.

 

Did you really just say that, bitch? This one is either an idiot troll or has the potential to be awesome after mouthing off like that in her first month of membership.

I'm betting on the former, btw.

About the contest: Does this mean that this is the defacto monthly contest from now on, or will this one sort of be ongoing in addition to an actual themed contest for subsequent months?

I know I've only actually followed through on entering one time, but in the event the winning story here does not tickle my fancy, the chances of entering it later are going to go way, way down, and I can only assume others feel the same way.

tl;dr - a little clarification, please?

EDIT: @ World: Thanks.

 

I'll be taking part, just not in the first month. Starting stories is always worst area.

 

For the next few months, this will be the contest. We may shorten the periods at some point, so it'll be less than 4 weeks per chapter, and less than 1 week of voting.

If it becomes necessary, we might provide certain guidelines the chapters have to follow in order to ensure some progress.

 

...

Wut?

I have no clue what you said there.

I may be misunderstanding what you mean, but here are my answers, anyway. Feel free to correct my possibly wrong assumptions.

First thing first, many writing contests of this world don't have restrictions to avoid "entirely different stories" from squaring one against the other. Not every one of them has a precise theme you need to follow. I don't really believe that judges in those contests have such a harder time in "comparing" the stories in competition, which seems to be your point.

Secondly, this contest has a theme and it's Harry Potter fanfiction. I say it's restricted enough.

With "isolated storylines", I'm assuming you just mean "stories". Well, there's not going to be coherence (most probably) between two separate entries. But how is that different from the initial phase of the contest in vigour at the moment?

I doubt the submitted first chapters will be anything but "stories that may or may not have a similar beginning". Your question was "How are the judges going to compare them?"

Well, how are we going to do that, then? You can be 99% sure we're going to find ourselves in that situation, when we'll have to decide which single story wins and gets to be continued.

But anyway, I feel like you missed my point when I spoke about coherence.

The coherence thing starts mattering from the second chapter onwards and I don't think it's debatable that, if you have a predefined group of writers handling a single story from the beginning, there will be more "self-coherence" in the piece itself than if a different person comes in for every new installment and with little to no clue on what his/her predecessors had in mind.

I get it and I agree that it's an awesome idea and experiment of sorts. With the team thing I was simply trying to offer a solution to the crack-risk. I know it defeats the purpose of the contest.

 

Maybe someone could come up with a vague and general outline for the plot of the story, and it's up to the contestants to write it however they see fit.

Because, if I understood it right, and there is no communication with the ones from the previous month, little to no long term plotlines could be created.

 

If it's only going to be running for a few months - or at least only be competition governed for a few months - then there isn't going to be much of a long term plot anyway. Not everyone can churn out 20,000 words in a month per chapter, so I can't see the resulting fic being of epic length.

 

Perhaps the winner of the prologue/first chapter should have this privilege?

 

I was thinking more in terms of edits than initial writing, actually. A collaborative effort would be 'peer-reviewed' before it even saw the forums. But that's a good point. It would be diluted somewhat.

Meh.

 

I am intrigued by this idea. I do believe I'll be brainstorming.

 

Rare circumstances aside, the original writer will most likely have the best follow up, for obvious reasons. Why not make it so that he who gets his contribution added can't participate in the next round?