Welcome to this new WriteOff round!
(More to come in a few minutes, pals)

Here's hoping I get to participate in this round.
^ ^

Yessssssssssssssss.

I finally remembered to check my email for the notification, haha.

Here's hoping I submit something!

I wasn't expecting an original contest quite so soon. Bring it on!

I oddly didn't get an email notification. I guess I'd better tell Roger...

EDIT: Stupid spam folder...

Been a while since I did anything in the way of original fiction. Seems like a good opportunity to try it out again!

Well I'm excited. I've definitely been this excited before, but just when I was thinking about soliciting prompts to get some writing practice what shows up in my inbox? A contest with stupendous timing.

I'm excited. I missed the last Original round, and I'm really itching to write something fresh and new.

Coming back to reclaim my title...

...If I can even find the time to write this weekend :V

Pokemon GO?

Wasn't there a Pokemon GO story back in July?

Snrk. Now we've got prompts that aren't even words. Whoever did that one, I salute you.

... well, I would if I knew the unicode :|

Let's do this thing. :EmojiThatWorksOnFimficButNotHere:

>>horizon
:RainbowWishesYouWouldGetYourShitTogether:
:TwilightChokesOnAPear:
:ApplejackHasATingeOfPensivenessAtTheDesuetudeOfAnOldPloughshare:
:FluttershyDidntWantToHurtABitchButYouLeftHerNoChoice:
:PinkieDidntReallyThinkTheJokeWasFunnyButSheChuckledAnyway:
:RarityHasEyesSoLargeThereIsNotMuchRoomInHerHeadForAnythingExceptFashionDesign:
:CelestiaWatchesYouMasticateWithBigMoistCowlikeEyesThatHaveSeenTheHeatDeathOfBillionsOfUniversalInstantiations:
:LunaFindsItWouldTakeSlightlyMoreEffortToPetrifyYouThanToSummonThePatienceToListenToYouDroneOnAndOnAboutYourStupidLANPartyForTenMoreMinutes:
:SpikeIsJustGoingToSitInTheCornerAndWeepQuietly:

WRITER FIGHT TOMORROW!

I'll sharpen my pen and go to bed early.

>>Posh
You're probably thinking of this story of mine from the End of an Era round. Pokémon GO was mostly there for a few jokes and to justify the rest of the story happening, but as far as I know no other stories have used it at all.

Yet another chance to spill out my organized nonsense.

Alas, I will almost certainly not be able to participate in this one. My weekend is looking to be quite full. :<

I'm just going to leave this here, because... well, it's fitting. To me, anyways! (And unrelated to whatever plans I may have.)

True story: Just woke up from a dream in which I was writing an entry titled "Ursine Lisa Flees To Pakistan."

Mostly sharing that so that I'm not tempted. It even fits the prompt. <.<;

Edit: Gods, I hope someone does though, it would be hilarious. (Says the bad-idea dragon who was, like, the only person to enjoy all the bad meta jokes in the "Just Over The Horizon" round.)

Edit 2: I'm now regretting speaking up and depriving myself of my most fully formed idea. :raritydespair:

Also, déjà vu.

I'm out, folks:

I've finally decided how I want to revise "Fiddlers Three," my story from the last original fic round, and the Rainbow Dash/Fluttershy story I've been mulling over lately fits the prompt for the Flutterdash Group's current writing contest so well, I'm taking it as a sign. I'm figuring the pony story'll be 25,000 words or so and the contest's deadline is Oct. 3rd, so my writing schedule's pretty much filled for the next few weeks...

Have fun!

Mike

>>horizon

Gosh, I would totally write that. But whenever I sit down to write something serious that isn't about ponies, I clam up and default to just writing something about a talking bear.

If I did that this time, I'd just be cutting out the middleman. Heh.

True story, Bonnie was originally about Fluttershy's bear gaining the power of speech and falling in love with Diamond Tiara.

I want to enter, although the story idea I have may be too long for this prompt or I might write it too short. Beware!

>>Posh You've got the title for that too. Diamond Tiara's Hairy Scary Bear

Welp. I have a trade show this Sunday, and possibly jury duty on Monday…
I shall try.

Gods damn it, now I wake up from another dream which would make a great story but which doesn't fit the prompt.

My dreams are taunting me. 😞

… and so much for going down to the coffee shop to settle in and write.

http://imgur.com/FxJwvpF

http://yubanet.com/Fires/auburn/

Dear universe: WHAT THE HELL.

I'm not making any progress on anything fitting the prompt, but I do have a murder mystery and a ghost running around my head trying to fit together. If I get that written before finals I'll call it a win.

Freebie if anyone still needs a plot: Time travel.

The good news is: I finally got an idea from a prompt for a story I find worth writing.

The bad news is: I'm only 1k words in, and at my current rate of 250 words an hour, I'll never finish in time. Better put in the turbo, I guess, yikes!

At 1200 words so far, but I have to switch gears now to other tasks. If all goes well, I’ll have a story in on time tomorrow night.

I have an idea, little over thirty hours, a playlist of ambience music, a whole bag of multiple types of nuts and raisins... Also, the kettle just finished boiling.

Lᴇᴛ's ᴅᴏ ᴛʜɪs

So, after almost 2/3 of the writing time goes by, I get an idea that I like. It's not a particularly long one, but this one might cut it close...

>>Bachiavellian
Scratch that about this one not being that long. I was originally planing for a 2,500 word long story, but my outline's gotten a hell of a lot bigger than I expected. Walp, tomorrow's going to be a busy day.

Erf....

So, I'm just now free to write. I have a general idea for a story. And I have, at most, five hours or so of writing time. That comes out to 400 words / hour to reach even the minimum story length...

So, do I go for it... Or call it a lost cause and go play Kerbal Space Program? O.o

>>TheCyanRecluse
No harm in trying!

Argh, life just had to get in the way. My schedule only just freed up right now. I have a pretty fun idea for the prompt, but I dunno if I can get it done and edited in time. I'll give it a shot!

Just really starting now. Got about 100 words in yesterday night, with what little time I had to spare, and have had other commitments all day today. I think my idea's pretty good, just hoping the execution will work out. Good luck to everyone else!

YAY! I'm over 2,000 words!

Now if only I didn't have two more scenes to write before the story makes any sense, and I'd be done! Oh well. I've still got two hours to write! That should be plenty, right?

..... Right?!? O.o

Kung Fu me, I got a good idea, but I had no time, and I don't believe I can do it justice. I only managed to spend three hours on it, and now I am tired, sleepy, and have to be to work in a few hours so I don't think I'll have time to edit it, short piece as it necessarily became to accommodate my awful powers of scheduling.

Oh well. I guess I can try, right? I mean, what does Yoda know anyway?

Writes entire story on day one.

Edits a tiny bit on day two.

Internet is completely gone on day three, and the file is stored on google docs.

Crap!

Well, I guess a small editing pass is better than nothing. *uploads with phone*

Ooookay! I managed to finish.... Something.

Unfortunately, I'm exhausted, and have work tomorrow, so I have to head off to bed now.

I might have, at most, a half hour tomorrow morning to reread, review, edit, and polish this... thing. Then I'll have to run off to work.

So, my heartfelt apologies to the poor souls that will have to read and review this unedited mess. It is far from my best work, but given my time constraints... Well, I'll take pride in the fact that I got anything in. :>

I have entered! Beware the obtuseness!

Submitted!

If anything, I hope you guys think my entry is interesting to read :>

So, my allergies were killing me and I took a Benadryl. Bad call. I'm as tired as a corpse right now. So now I'm wondering if I can power through my last scene now, or if I can wake up early enough tomorrow to get it done then.

Decisions, decisions...

EDIT: Done, and dying. See you guys in the morning.

Approaching the end; mostly polishing now. No jury duty tomorrow after all. I think I will make it!

I've been either writing, thinking about writing, researching stuff so I don't write utter crap, or procrastinating on writing for the past 16 hours. It's 6:46 a.m. here. Another round of coffee, hope the sunrise will help me keep breathing and typing. 3 more scenes to go, just glad I already wrote the ending. 7 hours will have to suffice. If I can do it, you can do it. Go!

I must have spent an equal amount of time writing as I did watching informative videos and being disappointed in government agencies.

Anyhoot, I managed to finish my submission. Hopefully next time I can start writing earlier.

I wish all of you the best!

>>ZaidValRoa
Me and you both. I need some look overs but it's just great that I can write just for fun again.

Welp, just finished. It's really late and I'm tired, and all I can hope is that my story doesn't reflect that. Once again, good luck.

Made it! Will check back tomorrow to see how many typos I missed.

Well, I had some rough patches at about 10 pm and at about 2 am, but huge-for-me doses of caffeine pushed me through those walls. Got another hour to go before submitting at 5 a.m. (and taking a catnap before work at 9), and I'm on track to get this final scene finished by then ...

Ideas I didn't use:

- "Long" being a Chinese dragon, interpreting the prompt as "The Dragon Road Home", and cribbing heavily from The Journey To The West and other Chinese mythological sources to weave a tale in which the heroes have to get a carp to the Dragon Gate and ride their new friend down the river.

- A thinly fictionalised tale about getting stuck in traffic after that fire I posted the picture of.

- Urban fantasy in which the hero(es) are travelling through the Realms of Faerie (cf. World of Darkness RPG stuff, Dresden Files, etc) and have to stabilize their path by invoking various mortal memes to unspool the road in familiar and navigable shapes, prominently including Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" ("miles to go before I sleep...")

By the looks of things, there was even more of a time crunch than usual this round. I guess that puts us all on level ground, at least.

Good luck, you lot!

Oof, only 22 stories. Looks like everyone else was struggling as much with the prompt as I was.

... waaaaaait ...

21 authors. Someone bein' all naughty. :trixieshiftright:

2 stories down. Whew. Looking to be a much stranger round this time. Hmmm....expect reviews soon.

So I really liked this prompt.

More's the pity real life conspired against me this weekend. :/

>>horizon As a native Kansan, I was a little surprised not to see the original classic 'follow the road home' story of the Wizard of Oz somewhere in there. There was a lot (and still is) of fanfic stemming from that series.

>>wYvern
So, after scraping at the 6k word mark, and still not having written one of the climaxes, I experienced what I can only describe as complete literary blackout: All I could write was the most trite, telly crap. With 4 hours to go and absolutely exhausted, I thought about pushing through, but in the end, I decided against finishing something in a way that would make me hate it.

This was a horrible experience to be honest. I guess it serves me right for not having written prose for almsot 2 months before this event. I'll need to schedule regular writing time to stay in shape. That revelation in itself may have been worth it, but it was an experience I never want to go through again.

Is everyone just doing long reviews now?

>>Remedyfortheheart
That seems to be the case.
I won't complain, the more detailed feedback, the better. Though it makes me and my one-paragraph impressions feel inadequate.

>>Remedyfortheheart ...I usually do longer reviews in the SS rounds, tho?

>>ZaidValRoa
I am a newb here, but I say, don’t denigrate your efforts. There isn’t a minimal word count for reviews, and short and pithy writing can communicate as effectively as long and methodical writing. Also, some of us have more life to deal with than others, and hence less time to devote here. Do what works best for you and don’t feel you have to apologize.

ETA: Just to be clear, I am saying nothing against those who take the time and effort to construct a detailed critique. Let us each work according to our lights, time constraints, and abilities.

>>ZaidValRoa >>GroaningGreyAgony
All other things being equal — as an author, I would rather have a long review than a short one, for the same reason that I would rather have five reviews than one.

But I would much rather have a short review than nothing at all. If you're intimidated by writing long reviews, a single paragraph of your reaction to the story is still a valuable and appreciated gift. In fact, there are some ways in which the shorter reviews are more useful than the longer ones, by staying focused on the overall impression rather than getting lost into the details.

And if you feel like you only have one paragraph's worth of useful feedback, I would much rather have one useful paragraph than four paragraphs of 75% padding.

In rounds like this one where the review thread has been pretty quiet, the other advantage of short reviews is that they spread the love around wider and faster. It was only within the last hour or two that we collectively got each story its first review (thanks, !Hat). I'll try to bump the numbers up myself, but it would be great to see more people flexing their feedback muscles. ^.^

>>horizon The pleasure is (unintentionally) mine. :)

Before I review the next story on my slate, I want to talk a little bit about my writing process (for reasons I'll make clear in a bit) — how I get from "idea" to "story" — and to do that, I need to talk about wilderness navigation.

A story is a journey through the wilderness: a route that takes you from your starting point to your endpoint. An idea is a place. A great idea is like a mountaintop — a spot with inspiring views that can serve as a navigational aid and a high point of your journey — but an idea is not a story because it's not the same type of thing as a story.

This might sound obvious — for example, even though "Ursine Lisa Flees To Pakistan" is a perfectly serviceable idea, it's 1,995 words short of being a Writeoff submission — but it's a principle a lot of people seem to forget once the actual writing starts, especially when the time constraints of the Writeoffs kick in. Here is a thing I see authors often do: start their trip by pointing to the nearest cool-looking idea, charge directly toward it (occasionally getting lost in the woods until they're able to stumble into a clearing and get their bearings again), flinging themselves straight through swamps and deadfalls and brambles, and then reach the top and enjoy the view for a bit before pointing toward the next cool idea and charging off in another straight line, mentally crossing their fingers and hoping there's not a 50-foot cliff in the way.

As any wilderness navigator will tell you, this is the worst possible way to climb a mountain.

This is not to say that you need to plot your story to death. The opposite end of the spectrum is the person who spends more time planning the trip than they actually do on the journey — taking a compass and ruler to a topographic map to optimize the climb, and pre-programming GPS waypoints at 500-foot intervals — and the big problem with that is that the routes which look good on the map aren't necessarily the easy ones with the great views. No map has sufficient resolution to show you all the deadfalls and brambles and the little 10-foot gaps that are just big enough to make the route impassable; the only way to find those is to get out there and run into them. And if your climb requires strict adherence to your preplanned route, then being forced to skirt around what initially seemed like a minor obstacle can lead to some hard decisions about whether to completely throw out your map and re-plot your route, or to plow through the blackberries and accept some bloodletting and clothes-shredding as the price of sticking to the plan.

But there has to be some planning. The lowlands between you and the mountain are where most of your journey takes place, and that's where the obstacles are which are hardest to see from ground level. (The swamps and lakes and river fords, if you will.) You can make your trip spectacularly more pleasant with even a little bit of forethought.

To plot a story from an idea, then, the first thing you want to do is figure out your approach. Take that high point and start mapping out its contours. Survey it from a couple of different angles and feel out some interesting vistas and further landmarks. ("Ursine Lina Flees To Pakistan": Alright, we've got a bear named Lisa. Technologically uplifted animals, or magical werebears? Who's she running from? Why go to Pakistan?) Don't stop there: this is where you're starting to move from places to routes, so you need to look for gaps and connections, figuring out where the steep and the thorny parts are. ("Hmm, 'Lisa' is very much not a Pakistani name … that means that it's going to be weird if I make it her home." / "For that matter, bears aren't native to deserts. Matching the prompt by having her trip to Pakistan be a homecoming feels like I'd be kind of writing myself into a corner. Well, what if she's the American daughter of a Pakistani scientist? That's sketchy but workable. Maybe if I try a totally different approach? … Hey, what if Lisa isn't the one on the road home? What if someone's chasing her, and it's that guy who's heading home?")

I'm doing the ULFTP example totally off the cuff, by the way. You don't need to spend hours on idea-gnawing (though I generally do, and I credit my Writeoff success in no small part to that). The important thing is to stop focusing on your ideas, and look at the implications of your ideas. A story is about character and conflict and theme and tone and a whole bunch of things that idea is almost irrelevant to, and it's in thinking about implications of implications of implications that your trip to the mountaintop ends up with you eating lunch at this awesome little spring just off the ridgeline with a gorgeous view both up and down. ("Pakistan as a place of safety … man, that's just screaming some cool AU steampunk Caliphate Earth, or maybe post-apocalyptic, with the superpowers bombed into glass and third-world countries rebuilding from the ashes. Ooh, hey! If it's post-apocalyptic, then nuclear winter might alter climate enough that Pakistan has become temperate or even wintry. Dude. What if Lisa's a polar bear?")

And then once you find that cool little landmark and realize that it's nicer than the peak, having mentally mapped out the area gives you a much better idea of the characters and challenges that get you there. ("I've been assuming Lisa's fleeing a person, but what if she's fleeing from up north … Siberia? … because it's gotten too cold? So her challenge is survival against the elements. And then her traveling companion, the one who's going home … if it's too cold for even a polar bear, he must be in constant danger of death. He's gotta be relying on Lisa just to stay alive. Does he resent that? So there's this potential dynamic of they don't like each other, but they need each other. But then what does Lisa need from him? And how is he using that as leverage, and how does she react?" etc.) It all builds on the implications of the things you pin down — worldbuilding, basically, but not so much worldbuilding as recursively figuring out the terrain of all of the elements you add. For settings, how did they get that way? For characters, how did they get where they are, and what do they want, and what will they sacrifice to get it?

The other big benefit is that thinking about it in terms of those contours makes your ideas adaptable — you're not just putting down a line on the map, you're building up a mental picture of the terrain, so you can recalculate on the fly if you suddenly realize as you're halfway through writing your story that actually this other idea is so much more cool than the one you had planned. If you know what your character's going to do, then things get weird if you toss in a cool idea that makes that action nonsensical. But if you know what they want, then you know how they change when the situation changes, so you can throw as many twists in the path as you need to keep stakes high and conflict boiling.

And that's story.

Top five of Georg’s second Round Micro Reviews for the new stories on my slate The Long Road Home: Scores are letter grades for Plot, Technical Work, and Characterization mushed together, with an E for stories I find particularly Enjoyable. Ranked by how I like them, not necessarily how perfect they are on the score. (and posted all at once, from top to bottom so they line up on the chat.) Late *again* for this. If I ever get wings and a horn, I’ll be the Princess of Procrastination. And from what I’ve read, I won’t be in the finals this time. Darnit, guys!

NO REPLY


“I think it’s time.” an empty sigh escaped my lips. It had come down to something I feared and had been avoiding since it happened. My dear childhood friend. If only you could see me now. As sure as I was that my appearance and constant success would surprise her. Yet all I see in the mirror is a man pondering how Sarah would have grown up if we were never separated.


So here I stood in front of her grave. Words failing to say anymore with a sealed envelope in hand. It took everything to hold back my grip from crushing the sealed note held inside. Instead my body settled for a rather tight pinch between fingertips. It was so hard to let that letter go, let alone talk to her. It had been years and I’m sure her spirit would haunt me for avoiding it for so long. I wouldn’t blame her, she was rather energetic and craved my attention always.


Reading the words on the gravestone I could feel my eyes trying to pump out tears that had long since dried. It didn’t stop my whole being from aching and wanting to flee. To hide behind my desk and act like it never happened. This, was reality. This was her fate and I couldn’t handle it before. It took me to forget her to remember what was so good about her in life. So for the final time I wrote one last piece. It didn’t matter if she read it or not and I knew I was never going to get the reply I had worked so hard for. It didn’t matter to me anymore. For that will come when I welcome my own end with open arm. No rush to meet it, even though my heart pounded to speak with her. For now my last poem laid there upon the stone that sat right atop of Sarah’s body. A simple poem.


“Fame and fortune don’t mean a thing if there’s nothing to love.

Every ache and pain couldn’t match the loss I’ve received.

For every memory we spent I will never deny ever again.

For it’s you who I love, and life canl never be the same.

So it’s with great sorrow that I finally bid her farewell,

Waiting for that fateful day when we cross paths

Until then, I understand there will be no reply.”


The world had gone dark. Unfamiliar territory rose in place of the graveyard I had been standing in. Could it be that it was just my whole heart uncomfortable with leaving her side? Or that the world was now opened in front of my eyes? Just when I thought it couldn’t get harder than to see her, leaving her for the final time stung the most. Knowing that her absence will haunt me, I could only move forward. For life continues. For some people unspoken words is what we live for.

---

Woo-hoo! Hey not bad with only ⅓ of a story written! Truth be told this story was suppose to be much much larger! Unfortunately I had started writing very late and had less than a day to complete this. It was a rather large script and I had been craving to get this done, so I did. In the end I wrote what I wrote with half of this story shaping up to be how I wanted to be while the other half suffered as I feared the upcoming deadline. So for now I’m happy it had an effect while perplexed at the reactions for this story. So thanks for the following people for taking the time to read my piece. I do hoped you enjoyed it and I look forward to more of your critics in the future.


Scramblers And Shadows - I’m just gonna guess this isn’t your cup of tea? You hit the nail with the intro but seemed to ignore the details of being in an individual’s personal life. I tried making it more intimate with the character in question but if the events of his life bored you I can understand. This type of drama isn’t my favorite and thusly I failed to really create any passion in writing it. It really did get tiring of the same effect over and over again, which is why it’s suppose to be shortened to lessen that blow to the reader. Trust me we both read stories that would drag on a lot longer for these types of scenarios. Was the added ending here good enough for you? It was suppose to be the end to the story.


ZavidValRosa - Wow! You’re very passionate about things aren’t you? Ooooh! Come and see me sometime, big boy! Now! Don’t mind the flirting pretty pony. I’m happy to see you truly enjoyed this tale. I agree with you that it could have been more and some points were vague. Though that’s how the story was built to be, to be vague until the unveiling of the problem that had been hiding under everyone’s nose. Minor details I thought should be obvious but I guess more detail was needed to get certain things across. A therapist encourages growth and adaptation to situations in a person’s life that affect the way they live. That phrase is meant to hint that the good doctor was trying to get our main character into moving on with his life, which his mother most likely explained already that it’s a traumatic event that’s causing the obsession. Same goes for you this should have been the ending but alas! I never did put it in.


Not_A_Hat - Yes it did! Yes, you can. It’s much harder than other profession, but you can indeed make money off of writing poems. Also he never forgot about her. Keep in mind he writes for her and looks for a single woman’s approval, not thousands of others. The unspoken words we sometimes crave in life is not dependent on how many people or how they praise us, sometimes it’s just one person whom we look up to. Actually the memory loss was suppose to trigger an epiphany. Something to enlighten him that he was mourning for too long in denial rather than dealing with the reality of the harsh cold truth. Also one more thing, money can give you everything. If you read back he took the job to continue his writing for that one girl, which was suppose to trigger more insight on how much he loved her. I guess these points didn’t come out well enough and that they needed to be looked over. For now I need to stop assuming and make things clear! Roger that!


Crimmar - Yay! This one is my favorite comment! Crimmar! Love you! Yes it’s unfortunate that he lost his job via untold and unofficial means with probably a letter of termination saying “that’s that folks!”. He kinda got the job in the same way. Just out of the blue. I figured the story hinted that his work ethics were rather abnormal and that he was being taken advantage of because he was purely a writing machine. Another thing is he really didn't care for the job and it wasn't a important factor to him so why would it be in his journal? The purpose of the company was to portray the world in how things continue to revolve around a single person and how humanity itself cannot fathom one person’s troubling life. All in all it’s that fact that I wanted to point out. For no one is special. I agree on the ending. It was suppose to be a much bigger project, but oh well! Life goes on right? Why cry for me when you can just read my stuff?

So this was a fun round. I’m so glad I got this out of my system. This one idea has been screaming in my head for over a month now. I got what I deserved and expected no less. Excellent analyzing guys! Glad we could share this experience together! For now I hope you four look forward to more of my work, cause trust me! I’m starting to get the flow of things here and my style is changing to suit your tastes. So here’s to brighter days good-reads and heart-filled writing!

Well, that was a blast. See you all next time!