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Ever wonder what happened to these stories after the Writeoff? See: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/800295/writeoff-and-fimfic-stories
>>horizon
Calling it now: horizon writes for one hour, still takes bronze.
blah blah no time blah blah
Calling it now: horizon writes for one hour, still takes bronze.
So I don't want to stank things up too much with personal stuff, but I guess I'll do a little: I've not been in the best place with my anxiety for the last few of these, which has limited and/or skewed my participation. My goals for this one are (1) just to participate, and (2) to do so from a place of deeper authenticity.
Greetings friends, and welcome to the inaugural contest of Friendship is Short Shorts! I’ll be your host for tonight’s entertainment. Most of you know me—my name’s CoffeeMinion—and a lot of you have heard my sales pitch for why it makes sense to have alternate lengths for FiM contests.
“But CoffeeMinion,” someone’s bound to say, “I haven’t heard the sales pitch!”
Let me do it for you this way: everybody knows there are three parts to writing a Minific entry, right? The first part is brainstorming it, the second part is actually writing it—but the third part is taking a hacksaw and cutting things out of it to try to get your perfectly functional 1100-word story down to 750 words so that you can submit it.
Or maybe the writing part doesn’t resonate for you. “Surely I have not had trouble fitting my Minifics into 750 words,” some of you say. All right, fair enough—but what about all those minis you’ve reviewed where 9/10ths of the feedback looks like: “Wow, this has some great potential, but it feels really compressed / the conclusion is rushed / it needs another scene / etc.” Wouldn’t it be more enjoyable to read a slate of stories that aren’t all overstuffed?
“Now hold on Mr. ‘Coffee Minion,’ if that’s even your real name,” a few are bound to protest. “Surely you can’t fix the problem of people overstuffing their stories just by adding more words? Surely they’ll still push the limit, regardless of whether that’s 750 or 1250. The fundamental problem is that people need to be telling stories that work with the word count, not against it.”
To which I say: “Stop calling me Shirley THAT’S WHERE YOU COME IN!”
I would argue that the FimFiction community in general, as well as the FiM Writeoff community, has amply demonstrated their ability to write toward a “sweet spot” of 1000 words where the stories are both short and satisfying. And yes, let’s address the elephant in the room: that’s also the minimum publishability threshold for standalone FimFiction stories, which also motivates my views. But I’d argue that 1000 truly does work well as a target unto itself. We’re collectively brilliant at Minifics, except inasmuch as we generally end up cutting and cramming at the end—so why not take that basic concept and just relive a bit of pressure at the upper end?
Here’s the thing, though: I could be wrong. Maybe everyone really will just plaster themselves up against a higher limit, and the stories won’t be any better.
But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think everyone who participates will have the chance to spread their wings a little more and write some flank-kicking short shorts. And I think they’ll also enjoy it more on the back-end when the higher limit makes it that much easier to transplant these stories from the Writeoff site to FimFiction.
I think it’ll be a win-win for everybody.
But to make it happen, I need your stories, your comments, and your reviews. You guys already know how to make a Writeoff awesome; please join me now in making this one awesome!
“But CoffeeMinion,” someone’s bound to say, “I haven’t heard the sales pitch!”
Let me do it for you this way: everybody knows there are three parts to writing a Minific entry, right? The first part is brainstorming it, the second part is actually writing it—but the third part is taking a hacksaw and cutting things out of it to try to get your perfectly functional 1100-word story down to 750 words so that you can submit it.
Or maybe the writing part doesn’t resonate for you. “Surely I have not had trouble fitting my Minifics into 750 words,” some of you say. All right, fair enough—but what about all those minis you’ve reviewed where 9/10ths of the feedback looks like: “Wow, this has some great potential, but it feels really compressed / the conclusion is rushed / it needs another scene / etc.” Wouldn’t it be more enjoyable to read a slate of stories that aren’t all overstuffed?
“Now hold on Mr. ‘Coffee Minion,’ if that’s even your real name,” a few are bound to protest. “Surely you can’t fix the problem of people overstuffing their stories just by adding more words? Surely they’ll still push the limit, regardless of whether that’s 750 or 1250. The fundamental problem is that people need to be telling stories that work with the word count, not against it.”
To which I say: “
I would argue that the FimFiction community in general, as well as the FiM Writeoff community, has amply demonstrated their ability to write toward a “sweet spot” of 1000 words where the stories are both short and satisfying. And yes, let’s address the elephant in the room: that’s also the minimum publishability threshold for standalone FimFiction stories, which also motivates my views. But I’d argue that 1000 truly does work well as a target unto itself. We’re collectively brilliant at Minifics, except inasmuch as we generally end up cutting and cramming at the end—so why not take that basic concept and just relive a bit of pressure at the upper end?
Here’s the thing, though: I could be wrong. Maybe everyone really will just plaster themselves up against a higher limit, and the stories won’t be any better.
But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think everyone who participates will have the chance to spread their wings a little more and write some flank-kicking short shorts. And I think they’ll also enjoy it more on the back-end when the higher limit makes it that much easier to transplant these stories from the Writeoff site to FimFiction.
I think it’ll be a win-win for everybody.
But to make it happen, I need your stories, your comments, and your reviews. You guys already know how to make a Writeoff awesome; please join me now in making this one awesome!
A brief note for the new folks:
Welcome! Thank you for submitting your story. I'm sure I'm speaking for everyone when I say we're glad to have you here.
Now that the stories are in, people tend to go through and offer reviews and/or criticism. Just as there are different kinds of stories, so there are different kinds of feedback. The goal is typically to keep this constructive and useful, though be aware that sometimes that doesn't happen.
Feel free to contribute feedback if you want! Be aware that others are doing so as well. Whatever you do, please make sure not to compromise your anonymity until your story shows up with your name next to it in the Gallery. There's no special notification of whether your story made it to finals or not, other than to check that view.
Also be aware that the Writeoff tends to draw some very established and talented participants, so please don't get discouraged no matter how things turn out. Someone's going to have to come in last place no matter how strong the field may be. Competing for Horse Points (TM) is certainly diverting, but the more important thing is to keep growing as an author.
Now get out there and start reading & voting!
Welcome! Thank you for submitting your story. I'm sure I'm speaking for everyone when I say we're glad to have you here.
Now that the stories are in, people tend to go through and offer reviews and/or criticism. Just as there are different kinds of stories, so there are different kinds of feedback. The goal is typically to keep this constructive and useful, though be aware that sometimes that doesn't happen.
Feel free to contribute feedback if you want! Be aware that others are doing so as well. Whatever you do, please make sure not to compromise your anonymity until your story shows up with your name next to it in the Gallery. There's no special notification of whether your story made it to finals or not, other than to check that view.
Also be aware that the Writeoff tends to draw some very established and talented participants, so please don't get discouraged no matter how things turn out. Someone's going to have to come in last place no matter how strong the field may be. Competing for Horse Points (TM) is certainly diverting, but the more important thing is to keep growing as an author.
Now get out there and start reading & voting!
Hoo boy, so this one finally shows up on muh slate. Hey Roger, it’d be awesome if the “add another” button selected a bit more for stories that weren’t at the top of the review count! I think it’s a safe assumption that the “add another” crowd are more actively interested in spreading the love than in dogpiling, and doling them out one at a time via the button seems unlikely to create inadvertent dogpiling.
Genre: Scroll of Jimmy Rustling +1
Thoughts: I didn’t go into this fresh. How could I have? It’s been at the center of one of the bigger firestorms I can remember during my time in the Writeoff. As such, I fear pissing off any one of many camps by so much as touching it.
...but here I am anyway, so lez do dis thang!!
The tl;dr is that I’m going to end up rating this highly. The subject matter is not really to my taste, and part of me wonders if this edges out of the contest’s T-territory and into some light M-territory. But IMO it does so in a way that’s clearly at least trying to have gravitas and seriousness rather than being exploitative. I’ve read at least one of the thematically similar stories that (person?) mentioned (somewhere?) above, and I think an important difference from a content-perspective is that this story is being clear and unambiguous about presenting the transgressive stuff as bad. I don’t think Dash could’ve been much clearer in her views on that (see also: THE TITLE). The doctor was fairly wooden and I can’t say how sound their procedure was or wasn’t, but I think the point with making them fairly bland was to keep the spotlight fixed on Dash and her struggles, pursuant to the theme of “monsters.” As such, despite brushing up against subject matter that could very easily be a hard “NO” for me (for reasons that Andrew more or less articulated), I actually felt moved to feel some measure of compassion for Dash. And yeah, I thought this was Dash; and though I’m usually no fan of it, I thought the story’s swearing worked. The story suspended my disbelief long enough to persuade me that this is a Dash who has to grapple with a lot of very dark things in order to be who we see in public, but who gets up and fights that battle every day because she wants to do what’s right, as best she understands it. Messed up or not, that desire has gotta count for something.
And from a purely technical perspective, this is clean and very Well Written (TM).
Tier: (God help me) Top Contender
Genre: Scroll of Jimmy Rustling +1
Thoughts: I didn’t go into this fresh. How could I have? It’s been at the center of one of the bigger firestorms I can remember during my time in the Writeoff. As such, I fear pissing off any one of many camps by so much as touching it.
...but here I am anyway, so lez do dis thang!!
The tl;dr is that I’m going to end up rating this highly. The subject matter is not really to my taste, and part of me wonders if this edges out of the contest’s T-territory and into some light M-territory. But IMO it does so in a way that’s clearly at least trying to have gravitas and seriousness rather than being exploitative. I’ve read at least one of the thematically similar stories that (person?) mentioned (somewhere?) above, and I think an important difference from a content-perspective is that this story is being clear and unambiguous about presenting the transgressive stuff as bad. I don’t think Dash could’ve been much clearer in her views on that (see also: THE TITLE). The doctor was fairly wooden and I can’t say how sound their procedure was or wasn’t, but I think the point with making them fairly bland was to keep the spotlight fixed on Dash and her struggles, pursuant to the theme of “monsters.” As such, despite brushing up against subject matter that could very easily be a hard “NO” for me (for reasons that Andrew more or less articulated), I actually felt moved to feel some measure of compassion for Dash. And yeah, I thought this was Dash; and though I’m usually no fan of it, I thought the story’s swearing worked. The story suspended my disbelief long enough to persuade me that this is a Dash who has to grapple with a lot of very dark things in order to be who we see in public, but who gets up and fights that battle every day because she wants to do what’s right, as best she understands it. Messed up or not, that desire has gotta count for something.
And from a purely technical perspective, this is clean and very Well Written (TM).
Tier: (God help me) Top Contender
Hey guys! IMO this prompt is a great opportunity to advance the concept of being a bit lenient with stories that don't line up with it in a super-obvious way. That is unless we all want to read stories about:
1) Ponies/Technicolor Humans Lying
2) Rivers
3) Ponies/Technicolor Humans Lying While Traversing Rivers
I know this isn't rocket science and most people are probably cool with this anyway, but I feel like it's worth putting out there for discussion, as I could see this prompt being somewhat restrictive otherwise.
1) Ponies/Technicolor Humans Lying
2) Rivers
3) Ponies/Technicolor Humans Lying While Traversing Rivers
I know this isn't rocket science and most people are probably cool with this anyway, but I feel like it's worth putting out there for discussion, as I could see this prompt being somewhat restrictive otherwise.