Time for Ceramic DM? (judge-free commentary thread NO JUDGES ALLOWED AS OF NOW :) )

[BSF]

Sialia,
I think the pic-pickers have been requesting permission to use pictures for the competition. However, I doubt the contributors would be as liberal with using them in a PDF for EN World. I think you are spot on with that. One of the reasons I need to clean up some of my stories is to break the reliance on the pictures. In some cases, this might be easy, in others, it might be difficult, and in yet others, there might be a better way to incorporate the important element of the picture while getting rid of the exact elements of the picture. Certainly some of the stories I have read have not really needed the pictures to work. As you said, by the finishing rounds, the craft of storywriting has advanced beyond the art that it was written around.

I do have to wonder how effectively we could all put together personalized wacky pictures for the pic-pickers to choose from. As an example, it would hardly seem fair to put one of your marvelous pics in a pairing that included you as an author. And, it seems like the people that would be most interested in contributing would also be some of the people most likely to compete. Perhaps we could find a way to create a common archive we could blind-submit to that would include the submitter information. Then, when a pic is chosen, it would come out of the archive and whoever pulled it could make sure it wasn't submitted by one of the two competitors?

I don't know, that sounds kind of complicated. But, if I was a programmer instead of Network/System Administrator, I would think about doing it.

As a complete aside, I think I can finally comment on one of the pictures you had in the last competition. I might email you about it. It took a while for me to really get over the emotional impact of that one.

 

[Piratecat]

Sialia,
I think the pic-pickers have been requesting permission to use pictures for the competition.

Not a chance, at least in my case. I yoinked them off of news services. I would have handled things separately if I thought there was any chance of these being published.

I wish that weren't the case.

 

[Zhaneel]

I asked Maldur some of these questions about the pictures. I don't think the pictures can be included. Which is unfortunate, because some of the joy of reading the stories was seeing the pics.

And I'd also worry about editing too much of the stories. The (original in my head) idea was to take what had been written, with limited grammatical/spelling editing, and publish as is. To be able to see what people can do in 72 hours. The edit I have of Vritra's Return is very different than the one that was in the competition. Sure, the pictures still would work [not that anyone receiving the story would see them], but it still very different than my 72 hour effort.

My suggestion would be the following:
Find all the final round competitions (winner & runner-up). Contact all of those authors for permission to consider the stories. Stories could be from any round of that competition as long as the author was in the Final round. A team of 3-5 people would look over the stories then availible and choose the top one for each author to be included [2 per competition, how many competitions have there been?].

Those stories, with minor grammatical & spell errors, would be published as the .PDF. My original thought was all money should go to EN world, but money to the authors wouldn't be a bad idea.

Zhaneel
Do we want to start a new thread about this?

 

[Delgar]

Is it too late to get thrown on the alternate list?

Delgar

 

[orchid blossom]

Is it too late to get thrown on the alternate list?

Delgar

You'll want to post your question in this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=92353&page=1&pp=20

The pepole in charge are no longer allowed in this thread, so they won't have seen your post.

 

[BSF]

Piratecat's The Arranger

Heh - Fun little story Piratecat. I enjoyed it, though I anticipated the nature of the narrator pretty quickly. The fifth paragraph was especially effective at evoking the correct conclusion. I am sure I can come up with a little more commentary, but I think I should sleep on it first.

 

[Piratecat]

That's what did it for KidCthulhu, too. I think the payoff is actually more satisfying if you reach that conclusion earlier in the story instead of later; more random little references make sense.

It was fun to write, in any case. I'm glad it was a good read, and I eagerly welcome any analysis and commentary (just spoiler it until Carpedavid has had a chance to post his story, so he doesn't have to avoid two threads.)

My weakest picture element was originally the mask, but in editing I think I found a way to make it integral (or at least relevant) to what was going on. Carpedavid-free spoilers:

Spoiler

I had looked at the cheerleader picture and said "Snulap Kpog? What the heck does that spell? Nothing! I can't do anything with this. But... hmm... it sounds vaguely Russian. What if it were a name? Sure, but why would a man's name be on the front of a bunch of cheesy-looking cheerleaders?" And then the whole story hit me in the head with a ballpeen hammer. The narrator's identity came about two paragraphs in, and that solved the rest of my logistical problems.

Then the trick was getting it all down before it leaked out of my head; nothing is worse than knowing you had a clever idea, but for the life of you not remembering what the heck it was!

 

[orchid blossom]

That's what did it for KidCthulhu, too. I think the payoff is actually more satisfying if you reach that conclusion earlier in the story instead of later; more random little references make sense.

Then the trick was getting it all down before it leaked out of my head; nothing is worse than knowing you had a clever idea, but for the life of you not remembering what the heck it was!

I also like to know what's up early in the story. I'm not much for big twist endings, I like to be in on it.

As for losing your ideas, last time I wandered around with a notebook and scribbled down all the ideas I had while working on a floorcloth.

I'll get you some useful commentary once I'm more awake and my brain is functional.

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

You won't get much useful commentary out of me this morning. Insomnia bad. However, I will say I really enjoyed it.

Spoiler

Looking at those pictures, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what 'architecture' was. The only thing it looked like was a pig pile of... well... somebody's *ahem* business. Definately an interesting use of it. Loved the use of the cheerleaders. I felt the use of 'juvie' fit to show you the narrator's character, but it almost seemed like a throwaway.

Overall, I really liked it. It did a good job of passing the time last night.

 

[Piratecat]

Spoiler

Looking at those pictures, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what 'architecture' was. The only thing it looked like was a pig pile of... well... somebody's *ahem* business. Definately an interesting use of it. Loved the use of the cheerleaders. I felt the use of 'juvie' fit to show you the narrator's character, but it almost seemed like a throwaway.

Yay, spoilers! In the mean time, google the National Sleep Foundation's website. I think they have a lot of useful information on insomnia.

Spoiler

I think 'Architecture' is actually a bunch of sand castings, where you take wet sand in your hands and then squeeze or dribble it out to form a particular pattern. It might have been done with a tube of some sort, although I doubt it.

I'd argue that 'juvie' is key to understanding a facet of the narrator's character. I didn't want to say "Then I taught a bunch of kids how to smoke." I'm hoping that the understated and oblique reference in the text makes people look at the photo and go "Ohhh, that's what he's referring to," and then trust the narrator's intentions a lot less. I wanted it so that the story wouldn't work unless you saw the picture, but I only managed to do that with 'juvie' and 'alphabet.'