Well, then. I look forward to this.
Ah. "The Next Generation".
It's workable.

I look forward to what people come up with!

Does this one not get the prompt listed up top?

>>RogerDodger

Ah, that makes sense. I hadn't realized it hadn't started yet.

Next Generation WriteOff?

I know it's for the FiMFic contest, but this format seems interesting. I like to have more time to think about the story and to write it.

/tosses hat in ring

>>Monokeras
WriteOff 2G.
WriteOff 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Writeoff Episode II: Attack of the Rogers.
WriteOff Zeo.

>>Dubs_Rewatcher Writeoff : We Might Actually Be Able To Publish This Commercially

>>Dubs_Rewatcher Lord of the Writeoff: The Prose Towers

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
>>georg
Lol, those are amazingly amazing

Might as well try?
WriteOffnado: The Second One

>>moonwhisper

We've only had:

One "polished story" Writeoff, and that was just a week or ten days of writing time. A whole month makes me positively giddy in anticipation.

Mike

>>Baal Bunny
Try not to fall!

The annoying thing is I have the perfect MLP story for this prompt.

>>billymorph
You could still write and post that on Fimfic.

Well, time to get crackin'. I'm determined to submit something for this, and I have an idea...

Woot

I've been working:

On the story for nearly three weeks now, and I think I've finally figured out what the title is!

How's ev'rybody else doing?

Mike

>>Baal Bunny
Not well. I think I’m out. I've 1,600 words written, no time to carry on.
Sorry, guys. Maybe I’ll upcycle my story for a future OF SS WriteOff.
Good luck to the contestants!

I'm out, I fear. I have a decent story but I'm not enthusiastic enough to finish it.

Good luck to all!

>>Trick_Question
You still have several days, and don't forget about the mentors channel where people are available to help you work through whatever problems you're having with it.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>TitaniumDragon
>>Not_A_Hat
>>RogerDodger
>>Monokeras
>>moonwhisper
>>DATA_EXPUNGED
>>georg
>>007Ben
>>MLPmatthewl419
>>billymorph
>>MLPmatthewl419
>>Southpaw
>>LeahRose1212
>>Baal Bunny
>>Monokeras
>>Trick_Question
>>Pascoite

In response to multiple requests, the deadline has been extended by a week!

>>GaPJaxie

So:

Do those us who have our stories finished now get a special gold star/happy face on our permanent records? Or is it more likely that we get to spend the next seven days fretting over comma placement? :)

Mike

>>GaPJaxie
woooooh!
That's great news! Thank you!

>>GaPJaxie
Oh my goodness, thank you so much!

>>Baal Bunny

It's the second one.

Commas are proof that Satan exists.

>>GaPJaxie

I've felt:

Much better about punctutation since undergoing my first semicolonoscopy. But that's neither here nor there, really...

Mike

Welp, I'm in. I shouldn't have needed that extension, but I did.

Time for editing tomorrow, hopefully.

>>GaPJaxie Thank you for extending the deadline. Unfortunately for me, I'm out. I gave it a very hard try---After 9k+ words, though, I realized there are too many issues to resolve within the limits of time and word count, not to mention the pain of drawing water from stone... I'll definitely be reading and commenting, though.

I didn’t think it would happen, but I am in.

Squeezed under in the last six hours! Gotta thank GaPJakie for helping me with some technical difficulties— HIm/her is a really nice Probable!Human being.

I'm probably not going to win because I went through a million false starts and this was written in about a week. But I finished something under a deadline (and finished a solid story in one week) and I'm glad I've made it a little father. Can't wait to read what everyone else did!

Terribly, terribly nervous. I've never done this before.

Here we go...!

Edit: hang on a minute, we still have slates! Does that mean there's a popular choice award?

Looks like a healthy field. Can't wait to see what people imagined.

>>Miller Minus
According to the rules, the general voting determines what finalists the judges see.

>>Pascoite
Oh, okay. LAZY BUMS

According to the rules, the general voting determines what finalists the judges see.

Seriously? 19 stories is hardly a herculean judging effort. If you're judging based on a set of criteria, and handing out money for it, every story should be read by a judge. Relying on populist ranking from an algorithm combining partial slates is dumb.

>>Oroboro
The rules were made before Jaxie knew how many entries to expect, and there will be more finalists than prizes at this point. Those borderline cases may be affected, but it's very unlikely that a story the judges would have awarded a cash prize to wouldn't make it out of the preliminary round. I've seen numerous times where Gardez has said a story didn't deserve to be eliminated after the first round, but I can't think of a time he said such a story should have medaled. This way also encourages feedback from voters. Look at all the contests run on FiMFic and how few critiques the entrants get.

>>Pascoite
For the record, my comment was said in jest. I agree with this method.

>>Pascoite

The rules were made before Jaxie knew how many entries to expect

And? The contest I ran last year had 55 entries to it. Every single one was still read by a judge. Anyone who didn't win and wanted feedback after the fact got it.

This is what you sign up for when you agree to run and judge a contest. Be prepared for the stories your audience is spending their time and effort to give you. If you get more than you expect, you suck it up and do it anyway. (And maybe snag a few more judges if you really need to.)

I'm all for community participation, but it shouldn't be used in lieu of actual judging.

>>Oroboro
So you run your contest your way and let Jaxie run his contest his way. I don't see what you're so angry about. It's not going to change who gets prizes, and everyone's still going to get feedback from a judge, community or official, unless any stories don't get comments at all. In fact, these stories are likely to get feedback from more people. The judges also didn't want to have to commit to reading the whole slate before they knew how big it'd be. If that wouldn't have been a problem for you, then fine, but it's hardly something to make a value judgment about. It's not going to change a thing among the prize winners. You don't even say why it's so important for every story to be read by a panelist judge. There's nothing wrong with the community screening out things that judges would have screened out anyway and save them the time. Only a few borderline cases will come out different, and screening processes in contests are nothing new. You make it sound like it's a self-evident thing that a contest must be run one particular way.

The contest was also set up well over a month ago. Why are you just now getting pissed about it?

I received my entries. It's my first time being here and my first time doing this. It seems a little tough, but I have a weekly fic reading day on Wednesdays for a while now, so I will take time tomorrow and read those entries and rank them.
I'm very interested in seeing what's there.^^

Okay, site complaint, having to spam "Add another" to get all the candidates into the voting box is annoying.

Well done to all of our finalists! With nine days to go, final reviews will be up soon, and then we'll have our top-3 winners.

And to everyone else, grats on getting out an original story! It's a big and scary step for many fanfic writers, and a challenge you have overcome. Remember that stories that didn't make the finals are still eligible for the secondary prizes, like Best Worldbuilding.

Sorry for my silence thus far in the contest; I've actually written comments about all of the stories (even the non-finalists) and will be posting them after we post our Official Prize Post. I just didn't want to tip my hand early. Cold in Gardez, GAPJaxie, and I all had a lovely discussion about the stories today, so you all can expect the final awards post to go up shortly after the contest ends.

For those of you who haven't read through the finalists yet, I hope you enjoy them.

As we're just an hour or so away from the final reveal of who wrote what, I thought I'd post my thoughts on all the stories. I've been hoarding them in a word document for a while to avoid influencing CiG and GAPJaxie before they'd read them, but as everyone has come to their decisions already, I figured I'd post them.

Thanks to everyone who entered the competition!

The rankings are out now, so everyone knows the rankings.

The algorithm messed up though, because two were in a statistical tie, but in discussion, the judges agreed on the rank ordering. :| So BIT OF CLARIFICATION HERE

#1 was indeed The Fixer by Admiral Biscuit. It was a unanimous decision; we really loved this story.

#2 should have been There Is No God by Miller Minus

#3 should have been To Drive the Cold Winter Away by Baal Bunny

The rest of the rankings are correct.

Congratulations to our winners!

GAPJaxie has a blog post prepared, so that will be going up sometime later today, including with the three runner up awards.