Lol, now that I'm almost done with my entry I can't help but feel somewhat reluctant to let go of creative control.

But I'll enter it anyway. Knowing me I wouldn't be able to write it to conclusion anyway. Maybe the desire for creative control will be a good motivation to keep me entering.

Assuming I win, of course XD

 

I've been finished with mine for a few days. I just took the first idea I thought of and went with it. It's only around 5k words, which I think is the perfect length for a chapter.

My question is, how will this thing be uploaded to the DLP C2 if each chapter is a different author?

 

Have someone (World, Raven, etc.) set up a DLP Colab account. Anyone who wins has they're ff name added to the author profile. And an A/N at the top of each chapter saying who won/wrote this chapter?

 

Mine's at 5k words too, just one scene to go.

Shit's fucking boss.

 

Arrogant. And I knew that someone would point out the loss of creative control, but when I saw you were entering, I was almost certain you'd be the one to bring it up (again).

Half-arrogant, half-jesting?

Either way, I'm looking forward to reading it, but I'd REALLY prefer you get your anorexic ass back onto Lords of Magic.

 

Well, 50:50 is a bit generous, I think XD

Just finished my first draft now. Comes in around 6500 words.

---------- Post automerged 22-02-2012 at 01:37 AM ---------- Previous post was 21-02-2012 at 11:37 PM ----------

Doublepost, but never mind.

Who decides the title of the story? Author of the first chapter?

Also, finished my entry and edited it. Will post it in the contest submissions once I have gathered the strength to run through it with BB Code.

 

I can't wait to see what happens with this thing.

I demand entertainment, DLP. Satisfy me.

 

A colab account could be created just like you have said, but to make things interesting, a "secret keeper" could be chosen. He/she sets a temporary password for each month's winner to post and answer any ensuing questions. Upon the post of the next chapter, the password is revoked, and new rights (password) given to the newest winner.

If it's not too much of a hustle... :cheers:

 

Why...?

(Filler)

 

Rough draft of prologue finished. Not too happy with it, but I'll edit and post it by the deadline.

 

I know that the round robin means that the course of the contests have been decided for the foreseeable future but did anyone ever put forth the idea of structuring the contests around plot ideas - like Master of Death Harry, Auror Harry etc - instead of themes?

Does the round robin have a set number of rounds? Like, does the story have to be finished during the tenth round or something like that?

 

If someone is doing a year 1 fic and just got through the sorting and a little more, this round robin could take decades.

-edit- just saw that VotN is submitting a story, so now we do know that this thing will take decades.

 

Ah well. I'm out. I don't know what it is, but something about these round robin competitions just doesn't settle with me. I'll be back once we're back to a more normal theme.

Good luck to the competition, I know you guys will put out some great stories for us here and as the pieces come together for the winner.

 

Sorry to hear that, Zenzao. Was looking forward to the competition. Was it that you couldn't finish your first chapter, or that you didn't like the idea of others continuing it? Your statement that it was the round robin format implies the latter.

Anyway, I have another question about the logistics of this.

Given that DLP is judging this as a community, is it going to be that the submission forum is opened up to everyone once the deadline comes (March 1st)? Or will there be a period between deadline and opening up?

 

For the most part, I couldn't finish my first chapter. I like about three hundred out of the two thousand words and the way it was going just didn't seem like it would hold up.

I'd be more than happy to let another writer continue the story it if I could just hammer out a solid concept, but I don't feel that what's there now is good enough to warrant continuation by me, let alone someone with more experience, and rushing to rewrite or even finish it as is would lower the quality even further.

The thing about the round robin is that I don't like trying to adapt my style to fit someone else's, and I do fear screwing up a good thing. What if, say, Joe won? I'd be so far out of my league that it would be laughable.

Most of you guys have your own ways and nuiances and such. I'm not good enough yet to try to match that.

 

Submitted, and with a couple days left to spare. If I had to read through it one more time, I'd rip my eyes out. Not my best work, as I just took the first idea I thought of and ran with it, but it's good practice. The whole point of this is just to get more people writing, and to introduce some (hopefully) quality writing into the (largely abysmal) fanfiction community. Hopefully everyone else gets their submitted in time.

 

How are we doing the judging on these? Comments on the story with scores (*/100) or some other way?

 

It might be good to have some judging guidelines/criteria. Something like...

1. Technical proficiency of writing - spelling and grammar (mark out of 10).
2. Elegance and vividness of description (mark out of 10).
3. Depth of characterisation (mark out of 10).
4. Authenticity of dialogue (mark out of 10).
5. Writing flair/unique narrative voice (mark out of 10).
6. Appeal of the world/setting (mark out of 10).
7. Originality of plot (mark out of 10).
8. Plot interest (mark out of 10).
9. Potential for branching plotlines (mark out of 10).
10. Ease of potential continuation by other authors (mark out of 10).

Adds up to a mark out of 100.

1-5 covers skill with writing excluded from context: the ability to write without error, depicting the setting with accuracy yet brevity, to make characters feel and sound real, and to have a distinctive narrative voice. So the maximum you can score on the basis of good writing alone is 50/100. This seems to be fairly correct - many times people have left reviews in For Review along the lines of "written well/decently, but doesn't capture my interest".

6-8 cover how interesting the story is on its own, covering plot and setting. Originality has been separated from general interest because an original plot does not necessarily equate to an interesting one. However, originality in plot is a virtue, so it is worth including in the criteria.

9-10 cover how interesting the story is in the context of a round-robin contest. It measures how likely the chapter is to pull in further entries, and how likely it is that those entries will have diverse story lines which diverge in interesting ways.

Edit:

What might be interesting would be to reduce each of those categories to a mark out of 9, then to have an 11th category (mark out of 10) which is a "wildcard" category, and corresponds to just how much you like the story holistically, independent of its components.

 

That might be over-quantifying it. Perhaps if something like that had been adopted in all of the competitions over the year, but it seems unnecessary now to enforce or even suggest to people who don't usually rate their stories like that.

The winning chapter will be instinctive for voters, just as it is when people rate stories. Introducing a 'holistic' category somewhat defeats the point - the end rating should itself be the 'how much I like this story' score. It will be a competition in technical ability only insofar as every other story in the library is.

Edit:

The problem with quantifying individual story aspects like that (as I'm sure has been said somewhere on DLP before) is that each individual aspect goes into the whole story. Segregating everything - especially into units of ten - will not allow for the fact that in some stories, everything can be fantastic but one thing that ruins the entire story. Be it character, spelling or lack of imagination in the plot, the fandom is full of stories that - rated via that system - would be in the library instead of turned away because of single aspects that (fairly) degrade the story. Except in that system, it would knock a point off out of ten, and if everything else was rated objectively we'd not have an accurate reflection of how good the story is. Now flip-reverse that - there are certain stories in the fandom that are saved by one or two aspects. By this system, they wouldn't be.

The real problem I supposed I'm having with it is that it implies the equality of each category, when in different stories the worth of those categories varies incredibly. And you can't say 'fuck the metrics' and decide character will be out of sixty in this one and environment only of six because it won't apply across the board - everyone values the categories differently. So what's left? Allowing people to change the scale themselves depending on story. Oh, shit, look where we ended up - back with a completely holistic final score, independent of an absolute potential worth for each criterion.