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Someone remind me of how bad Shame is.  I'm having trouble motivating myself.  (I blame the cold for eating my brain cells).  A week ago I was all fired up to write this story; I couldn't sleep the night I read about the contest because the story just wanted to get out.  Now I'm languishing in this horrible writer's doldrums.  I need some wind in my sails!

(Maybe I'm just bored and lonely.)

Just think of the beautiful feature trophy that you could win if yo-   

Oh wait I just remembered your competition.

Well you see shame isn't all that bad, I mean a hundred points is nothing honestly. Cysid sucks at rock paper scissors anyway.

Yeah.  All that competition is worrisome.  No, I'm not being sarcastic; my writing in general is rusty, and I've never really written much in 2nd person before, which puts me at some disadvantages. ;)

I'm not even doing this in second person. Didn't feel like it'd work for my story. :/ E: Because of who the protag is in history

I felt it was more important in my story, because I'm going for more of a consequence based, emotional story rather than a puzzle oriented story.  Though it might just be because that's how all the old CYOA books were written.

If it makes you feel better, I haven't even started mine.

Only a tiny bit better; I don't tend to pick myself up off of the flaws or misfortunes of others.  Though I fall into that from time to time.

Well, you did have another natural disaster and some weird robot philosopher to keep you distracted, haha!

Here's the current list of those SHAMED.

http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/writing-workshop/message/23273

Obviously a bunch you don't want to share a pit with!

I'm sure you could make other arrangements. By now Thara must be getting awfully lonely in that cell...

So, generally speaking, is it less Shameful to finish and hand in a mediocre story than it is to turn nothing in at all when it comes to the contests?

If you turn in a bad story, it's either going to get unpublished eventualyl anyway, or you can shoot it in the head yourself after the contest is over.

Not turning anything in is worse.

'unpublished eventually' is really, REALLY unlikely to happen to a story by anyone who can type a coherent sentence and writes more that 300 words tbf.

People publish games less than 300 words total?

If it's one of those "hidden meaning" type stories with like one sentence per page then yes.

I don't think I've seen an example of one of those, so I'm not sure what you mean.

A example would be the train story that Wibbons parodied a while back with the original eventually being deleted. Though I think you actually started posting like a week after that happened.

I'm not sure who Wibbons even is.  And that either means my timing is great, or awful; I'm just not sure which. :)

Wibbons is WouldntItBeNice.

WIBN = Wibbons

Ah, okay.  It's a nickname then.  Thanks.  (Some of this just isn't intuitive.)

People don't want to type out the unnecessary clunky and long WouldntItBeNice, so someone (Tim36D?) have me that one. It caught on.

Sent = ISentinalPenguinI There's a few others, but mine and Sent's are probably the ones hardest to guess.

How interesting. I recently played part of an interactive fiction game called Exit/Corners, where the main antagonist is called Sent. Then the game lost my save data several times, and I lost interest.

Well, you could definitely do worse than 'Wibbons' for a nickname. :)  Actually, it's kinda cute, like a character in a children's cartoon.

Not so often now that JJJ added in a 48 hour delay between creating and posting. But stories well under 1000 words made by those unfamiliar with concepts such as 'grammar' within the first couple hours of joining used to be really common, and we still get them occasionally.

Yes it's much much more preferable to turn a story in even if it's rushed. There's always the option to unpublish it after the judging (not that I've ever done this >.>) to edit or expand it (I have definitely never done this.)

Participation is more important that perfection, and you dodge SHAME and get your points back plus the 25 pt bonus just for turning anything in.

Hm.  Perhaps I should branch less and get to the originally envisioned end faster and rework it after.  On the other hand, it's only the 8th, so I have time.  On the other, OTHER hand, it's December and most of my family lives in the same city with children and Christmas is coming...which means time can get cut short at a moment's notice.  Plus I have my own son.  Hmmmm.  Decisions, decisions.

The first one sounds the smartest if you're unsure how much time you'll have later. Get a workable story together and you can always go and graft more branches on when you're able, and it just removes a lot of stress. Scrambling at the last minute is never any fun.

Brings back the old college days though.   But you're right.  I should just finish up the paths I already have going, even if it makes it smaller.  I'm not too proud to do takesy backsy.

See new link in Contest thread. Minimum effort, minimum time saves one from SHAME. Very low bar.

Wait im still shamed 0_0, I thought I got out with one of the ballads.

You did, but then you joined Berka's contest and didn't turn anything in.

Could have escaped by entering End's children's story comp, or the LGBT one instead, but no you chose to lay around and prove all the stereotypes about Mexicans are true. Every single one of them.

The children contest would have been wayyyy to easy for me to win and I made way to many paths on the lgbt contest which caused it to implode on itself.

You'll all see though when I get that fat and beautiful feature trophy and start shamlessley bragging for a month. Redemption is coming.

Still there :( oh well 

I would participate in stuff but then I'd be twice shamed \o/

And oh, didn't I get out with the ballad thingy?

Grab that Golden Age collapse prompt, write something quick about Atlantis. That was a good suggestion, surprised no one went with that.

E: or do Asgard

You can do it! You could crank out something passable even just over this weekend. Get as excited about finishing a storygame as you are about Adam Jensen being a clone!

X'D quick? I'm never quick tho.

Or get as excited as a fat girl with a chocolate cake and no one to share it with.

My chocolate cake >~>

I'm pretty sure you have less mass than a damp towel. You could probably use some cake.

I've actually gained a bit. 108 pounds x'D

I still can't stomach too much food >~< 

That's so tiny!

It's a sign of nobility.

>referring to stuff from 3 years ago

Well, I've been here a bit longer now, and I still only recognize MAYBE a third of those names.

I wonder if there's any correlation there.  Hmmmmm.

Mynoris, I believe that you can do this. I've been looking forward to your story-game so don't let me down! 

Awww, that's sweet.  I think.  But apparently anyone can look at any game they have a title for.  I had my sneak peak or whatever turned off, but then I thought, maybe that wasn't a good idea, so I just turned it back on.

Turning sneak peek on is what lets people look at the stories. Yours is accessible right now just so you know.

If you don't want anyone to be able to look at it, you leave sneak peek off. (You might know this already, but I wasn't quite sure what your intention was from the post sp just an fyi)

Oh, yeah, sorry.  I understood the meaning.  I was just debating over whether hiding the story was a good idea or not.  At first I felt like it should be hidden so people didn't look at it before it was done.  Then I thought that if people were interested enough in it to want to look, I shouldn't stop them; they might be kind and point out some critical flaw that I wouldn't catch on my own.  Or something.