What do you all think of this as a poll option for a prompt?

Write your "Chapter 1" intended to be part of a larger work.

Love it? Hate it? Would be our first prompt that didn't require a completed story to be presented, but I expect a lot of us have these lying around out there, or at least ideas for some.

And who knows, maybe it would encourage people to write longer works that continue on past the comp.

 

Or it could be a testing bed to see if your idea has merit instead of just sitting on something and not putting it out there.

I like the idea. It gets rid of the restrictions of some of the prompts and opens you up to an avenue getting something done when you normally wouldn't.

 

Because people don't use WBA like it should be used anyways. I'm not saying your wrong, but the idea has merit. The goal here is to stream line the comps so that they can work better. I think that prompt ideas while cool and give a good base line for delivery, are also restricting. I see this as a compromise.

The prompt ideas thus far have either been too narrow or too broad. There is no in between. The more moderate prompt ideas feel like they'd been similar to the TGYH shit from back in the day. So its a fine line we're treading either way.

 

@Nexis - My creativity responds better to specific prompts as well, but people have seemed to prefer the wider ones so far. I'd personally prefer things like "Time Travel, non-Harry POV" to just "Time Travel" for example. Or perhaps "Azkaban Breakout" to "Azkaban." I'd like a prompt such as "Muggle Studies Field Trip" or something else specific that I probably wouldn't write otherwise, and I enjoyed that prompt about breaking into Snape's office or whatever it was even if I didn't finish a story.

More specific prompts fire up my creativity by forcing me to run scenarios that make the prompt fit within something that I personally want to write.

But I see why people prefer the more generic, broad prompts as well. It gives you more freedom to perhaps write a story you've wanted to write anyway, even if you didn't know it at the time. The prompt just provides a little direction and there you go - some more quality fanfic for the fandom (hopefully).

That's why we have the poll I guess, because I don't want to force a specific type of prompt on authors.

@Zombie I'd agree that the prompts have often been too narrow or too broad - I'll try to get one on there each time that does a better job of straddling the line, but I'm not that sure where that line is sometimes. But I think most will still vote for the less specific prompts.

...hmm, that's a point, actually. This came up some during the "Death" prompt but we can relax some about the prompt. It's meant to be a guide. Yes, I consider it being used well as part of my judging criteria. But the goal is to get more good stories out there, not to triple down on using Death.

Prompt useage matters, it just doesn't matter more than other criteria that go into writing a good story. AT least for me. Some people may choose to make it count more.

But ultimately the goals here are to get people writing, get people writing better after feedback, and get solid stories into the fandom. Prompts are meant to guide us into having ideas to write for these purposes, since without a prompt to focus on it can be that much harder to just come up with a random idea.

 

Dany's dragons are pulled from Westeros into the first task of the Triwizard tournament!

 

Harry dies in chapter 1.
Alternatively, write a 50k long fic of Harry piecing it together, all for Dumbledore to be able to answer his questions satisfactorily at the end. Fade away with him chewing on a lemon drop with a sinister smile.

 

Rwby style Harry Potter, so I can pass off my fic as a comp entry