It's that time of year, people are going back to school (if they're YOUNG and GROSS) and the apathy of the summertime becomes but a fond memory. Instead of procrastinating on writing, the youth can now procrastinate on their schoolwork WITH writing while also becoming RICH in collaboration with their fellow Cystians, in the Summer's End Synergy Contest, in a beautiful surprise twist to close out the season.
Naturally, the reward for winning the contest is fortune, glory, and prestige.
However, to spice things up this time around, I've cooked up some bonus incentives in order to increase our numbers.
BONUS INCENTIVES! (No, they don't stack)
1. If there are at least 10 successful contest entries, the top five will receive 50 points, while all other valid participants receive 25 points.
2. If there are at least 15 successful contest entries, the top five will receive 75 points, while all other valid participants receive 50 points.
3. If there are at least 20 successful contest entries, the top five will receive 100 points and guaranteed story commendations, while all other valid participants receive 75 points.
Prompt: A recent event has caused the protagonist to go through a difficult change.
It's a pretty open-ended prompt, there are a lot of directions you could go with it. Just as long as you don't tuck any relevance of the prompt away hidden in one specific page in a sub-branch, you're going to be okay, I promise, just stop freaking out, just calm down.
I should also note that while anything above minimum site standards technically qualifies as a valid entry, any 3.01/8, 2000-word slop will be thoroughly looked down upon by my higher council, and I might just feed your points to @ISentinelPenguinI out of spite. Do yourself a favor, start early!
The deadline will be October 31st November 3rd at 11:59 PM (PST).
Best of luck!
I'm in. 200.
I'm in
I'm in.
Good luck to everyone!
I suppose ill join too.
I dont know what i was thinking, im actually a fool, smh.
lol, perhaps time will be the healer to my foolish nature. Im currently reading in moonlit waters, but once im done with that and finished reviewing it (halfway through). I think ill finally head on to reading some of your stories.
A ford story sounds fun.
are you joining then mizal?
hmmmm, lol. I expect you to deliver something, please?
Sign me up
After some internal debate, I'm in. How could I not contribute my efforts to such a worthy cause?
I think it's because the prompt is so broad. You can almost write about anything, which is both an advantage and disadvantage lol.
The Participants (So Far)
Suranna
Ford
Yummyfood
Clayfinger
WizzyCat
RKrallonor
granolagoth
mrcrimsonclean
Mizal
Orange
Marte
ItzSugar
MiltonManThing
Fabrikant
bezro
Abgeofriends
Cat2002116
Already deep in the shit, might as well go big or go home right?
Locked in, good luck!
damn that has to be the fastest entree submission ever on cys
Hah, you just called yourself out
Honestly? I'm inspired to try two entries as well. Since Clayfinger had most of his first story done before the contest was announced, can I do the same thing with one of my stories I've had sitting around for a couple years? I'm also working on a new one that was started after the contest if that helps.
What I mean is, after I finish the newer story I'm working on, may I use one of my older, pre-contest stories as a second entry as long as they both fit the prompt?
Not me, sadly I've been super busy, working, and then after working I'm studying. That grocery store job is so shit, I'm sorry I bothered, you were right. I've had many jobs before, but this job is an actual sweatshop job. It's such a time crunch, it's 1 person doing a 3 person job. Undoubtedly my least favourite job so far, the customers need to stop talking to me, they're assholes and im too busy to help, all they do is make me either go home late or feel like shit when I couldn't finish my work and force it on another staff member. Shite job, I'm just gonna give it a few more weeks and then quit I think. Not for me. Impossible workload. Realistically I'd have to not have my 30 minute lunch break to finish or even get close to finishing what they need me to do. Which is what the girl before me was doing lol
Today some old ass man with a cane was walking super slow, and blocking up the staff door, so I subtly squeezed passed him and I shit you not he said "what an ignorant piece of shit" Like wtfff, I'm just shocked at the nerve of some people.
Lol
locked?
He already joined, he was just going on about how he's going to get SHAMED due to his shitty job where he hilariously gets called named by old people.
No more three day work weeks! Lol
I think he just felt like I invaded his space, I didn't even touch him.
I just like to imagine this is all going on with everyone sounding like a bunch of cockney gangsters and chavs.
I'm surprised you even know about chavs and cockney accents. I do live more up North, so I do meet some people with more 'harsh' accents, like the scousers, one of my dad's ex wives was a scouser, VERY distinctive accent (think paddy the baddy pimblett). Chavs are something else, we call them road men here now and you can almost always spot them by the way they dress and talk, which once again, Is like another language. They're usually hyper aggressive - also known as lovers of petty crime.
My grandmother was from a small town in England. (Probably not as small anymore)
Also Briar's a chavette so we're quite familiar with them.
Plus she'd say all of you that live up north are a bunch of poofters and wankers.
Count me in! I already have a started story game that fits this prompt well. So I suppose you can count me in!
Wavering a bit, but I'm in. Hopefully, I will actually be able to finish something this time!
Clayfinger (DONE)
sitelung
benholman44
Payaso
fresh_out_the_oven
RKRALLONOR
you are being called out because we know you ain't done shit yet.
Still tons of time really.
Fuck it. I'm in. Also, I'll bet 225 points I can submit a valid contest entry. I figure that should be enough to motivate me to not slack off like I have in past contests.
Locked
Ok. 1,500 words in three days. Meeting my goals so far. Now all I have to do is resist the urge to procrastinate for long periods of time after I start off strong like I've done in the last two contests.
1,500 in three days?? That's like one page a day
500 a day, yeah. I know it's small, but I have this issue where I write a bunch in the beginning and then get burnt out and ignore it till the very end of the contest. I think by pacing myself I'll be fine. Besides, 500 words a day is the minimum amount. I'm planning to write more than that.
1) isn't that just Breaking Bad
Just write a breaking bad fanfic
Wait
No
Shoot
Daily word count!!!
Oct 3: 1331 Oct 4: 954 so far (2285 total)
... and now I can't edit my post.
Anyway, every page tells you the word count, so just add those together. Don't respond to this post (:
Oct 3: 1331 Oct 4: 1799 (3130 total) Yay, I reached and surpassed my total word count goal for today. Oct 5: Today was the final tennis meet of my high school career. I've been busy, I'm tired. But hey, I won! Also, 567 (3697 total) Also also, I'm past the "oh my gosh I'm so good at this look at me go" stage and to the part where I'm more like "oh my gosh I suck at writing and this is trash". Most of all, I SUCK AT DESCRIBING THE SETTING. In my brain it's just not important. I don't picture it, I don't care. I skip over that kinda stuff when reading half the time (makes reading Tolkien a lot faster for sure). But that's the #1 comment I get on all my writing– all they get is talking heads. I don't know what the classroom looks like. It could be any classroom, it doesn't matter! Why is it so vital?? (Wasted all these words and all this time ranting when I coulda been working on my story)
Not sure if you've read the article yet, but Mystic wrote a very good one that explains the exact situation you just described and how to overcome it. I'll leave the link in case you haven't seen it yet, and I hope it helps some.
As for lack of description in setting, I admit I myself have had that problem, and I prefer stories that have little to no description of a setting to give my imagination more license to visualize the story. I guess you could picture a scene in your head and write a few sentences giving a basic summary? Idk
https://chooseyourstory.com/help/articles/article.aspx?ArticleId=4345
Haven't read that, thank you!
Word Count Oct 3: 1331 Oct 4: 1799 (3130 total). Story is longer now than G&D!! ever was Oct 5: 567 (3697 total) Oct 6: :P (3697 total) Oct 7: 1069 (4766 total) Oct 8: 19 (: (4785 total) Oct 9: 0 (4785 total) Oct 10: T-T maybe just 500 a day wouldn't be so bad Oct 11: 818 (5603 total) Oct 12: 243 (5846 total) Oct 13: 154 (6000 total) Oct 14: Nothing, nada, zilch. Oct 15: 2830 (8830 total) finished variables. Wrote more words today than G&D!! has total Oct 16: 1144 (9974 total) Oct 17: 601 (10575 total) Oct 18: 1198 (11773 total) did some editing Oct 19: 479 (12252 total) Oct 20: 25 (12277 total) Oct 21: 2607 (14884 total) Oct 22: 216 (15100 total) Oct 23: ... Oct 24: 207 (15307 total) Oct 25: my bday :) Oct 26-29: hahaha Oct 30: 539 (15846 total) Oct 31 (original deadline): 29 (15875 total) lots of editing though Nov 1: 2244 (18119 total)
Only proofreading remains.
A small sketch of my main character I did instead of writing greater than 20 words yesterday!
What I didn't know that
Word count so far,
51,345 words
can I make it to 100,000k?
Probably not
But I wrote that over the last year or so
50k?!? Holy
mrcrimsonclean (SHAME)
Fluxion
Granted, the fact that Clayfinger was about 2/3rds done with his story beforehand slipped by my radar at the time (I think I interpreted it as a much lower fraction in a state of exhaustion), but his wasn't especially long, a good portion of the writing happened during the contest, and he's apparently working on submitting a second story in addition to it.
I'd really like not to encourage people to prewrite and sit on storygames waiting for contests to roll around, so yeah- just make sure most of the writing happens between the announcement and the deadline, and all will be well. Cheers.
I will never start. Ill just make up for my lack of participation`with indepth reviews instead.
I'm going to KILL you
I can't die yet. Arcane season 2 hasn't even been released yet!
#TeamJinx
I can fix her.
Can't wait to hopefully see warwick in season 2 and Viktor ASCENDING.
So Crimson just admitted to giving up. Alright I'll just mark him for SHAME now then.
Fair point
Apparently Fluxion.
Almost done!!!!
Same, though I haven't worked on it in 3 weeks, maybe I should get to finishing it up and proofreading for the 6th time.
I believe in you! Don't leave it all to the last minute, do it when you have time to do it well. (:
Two weeks left!!
Down to our last week.
Now would be a good time to start, if you haven't already.
Locked.
mrcrimsonclean AKA Crimson (SHAME)
Fabrikant (DONE)
Petros
Anthraxus
Depresbian
Thought it was obvious, you called attention to yourself.
Just think about how big the SHAME label is going to be if you fail...
Locked, good luck!
Dirty trick! My goose, it is cooked to blackened.
Certain mormons would disagree.
23 entrants not counting Crimson. I'm expecting roughly 13 or 14 entries, though of course hoping for that lucky number 15.
This rundown comes without looking at any of their profiles to see if they've even made a story, lol.
Suranna has failed in the past and has succeeded iirc. I think she'll do it
Yummyfood could submit something, but considering where he is in the pit it's not looking likely.
Clayfinger is obviously already done, but I heard something about possibly a second entry? Cool cool
Wizzy will probably submit an entry.
Mizal is also likely to submit, albeit it'll be very last second.
Orange is a toss up. Seems to be doing better as of late and I doubt he's willing to go back to the pit so soon— but old habits die hard.
Milton will probably submit an entry
Bezro is shamed, but hey so am I. Maybe he'll pull through
Abgeofriends looks like she's likely to actually come through, but ya never know. I'd say yes for this one though
Ben? I have no clue how he does in contests.
I'm gonna submit something! Yay me
Flux is shamed, but that's a recent thing, right? I believe in him
Petros is a pretty safe bet imo
Anthraxus is pretty 50/50. That's my gut feeling, anyway.
As for the noobs, I expect 2, maybe 3 entries tops.
I feel your pain Dep.
Rejoice, for the deadline has just become a lot less spooky! In other words, you get an extension.
The new deadline is November 3rd at 11:59 PM (PST). Enjoy the extra weekend!
I could kiss you, you bag-headed freak
Day of the Deadline
I appreciate you so much.
I guess I can wait a couple more days to start.
Might as well wait until Friday now.
Just enough time for the final adjustments, thanks.
That means I don't have to write anything until November!!! (jkjk... kinda)
Just make sure you have a blank one ready to go, I won't let you post it if the story game was created less than two days ago. (Learned the hard way)
Oh, I've started. I'm just saying there's no real rush to finish.
I've been proofreading for 2 weeks, making sure it all makes sense. And when I fix a plot hole, it feels like another one comes up. (Pretty frustrating) Other than that though I'm pretty much done!
I'm down to the ending of one final branch. I just have no motivation
Lost momentum over my birthday weekend and have since been struggling
That is exactly how I feel, happy birthday btw
:)
May i have the blurb for your story?
Me? or fresh?
Both actually!
I have the preview available for everyone to see on my profile! If you want to check it out.
I cant find it for some reason lol can you link it here please?
Define "blurb"
Like a summary or preview pretty sure
You dont know what a blurb is? I didnt know it was only a UK thing, but when you buy a book, theres a summary of what the story is about on the back cover.
I just didn't know the word for it
Avery did a video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3N8cnjXDb0
So you play as this dude named Teshi who lives in Historia, which is kinda a school but really an entire society. They make stories, and Teshi is a character. He gets cast as the lead in something and really hates it because he could actually die, so you've got the option to rebel at several points in the story. There's also the option to just go along with the plot and that was gonna be a while thing and has ended up being nothing too great.
It sounds stupid when I describe it and worse when I read it, but what's done is done.
Sounds very cool, can't wait to read it!
Sounds a bit like the movie Black Swan. At least in the potential to die during the performance.
Making me google so many things smh
I quite liked the movie. Definitely one of the most memorable endings for a movie ive seen in a very long time.
Id definitely reccomend you watch the movie if you need some quick inspiration to continue, or a way to enhance the ending, since it does seem to share some parallels.
Nothing makes you more productive than a 2-day deadline, At least I live in the EST timezone, so I get an extra few hours. Goodluck, I'm on the grind.
When it's 12am in the PST timezone, it's 10pm for me. But I plan on doing all of my writing today and using tomorrow just to proofread some more before publishing midday Sunday. I've really got very little left to go; I've made bracket summaries for the unwritten bits of both unfinished pages and simply have to translate them into the actual narrative.
I should have been working the whole past month; now I don't know If I'm going to finish. I should have made the story shorter and ended the paths sooner; now I have 70k words without a way to end it that feels fulfilling. Might have to make a part 2 or something later. Honestly the quality of writing is good, and the story is really solid. There are just a ton of plot holes I need to iron out, and I need a way to end it. Sounds like a tomorrow problem.
Done. That was quite a learning curve, but now my first storygame is published:
Link
(Please let me know if you find any issues.)
Orange (DONE)
fresh_out_the_oven (DONE)
Why is Rkrallonor as big as texas?
He called attention to himself.
Just accidentally deleted over a thousand fucking words of fucking writing. Love my life. Now I have to redo a whole fucking page. (:
By writing it :P I'll survive. I wrote it once and I keep doing stupid things to my pages. I saved over all my work with a nearly blank page. Actually when I realized what I had done I said "Fuck" out loud in a quiet classroom, so that was fun.
Just a lesson on thinking more before I do things that could potentially be really really bad.
At least it was a page I had recently written, and I still have the bracketed page summary. It was the longest of the pages I'd written... around 1032 words. All gone
I know I should do that, but after a while with no issues it seems unnecessary and I stop. Then I regret it deeply. And this the cycle begins again
You can do it. I know you can.
In high school I once lost an entire story I wrote. 30 pages front and back handwritten just gone.
Re-wrote it in one night just working off memory. Pretty sure I got everything the same other than one minor change I knowingly did.
Damn that sucks, will we ever get to see it remastered on a CYS format? To remember the full 30 pages is super impressive.
Nah, everything I wrote in highschool mainly involved various classmates at the time. So while portraying someone as a degenerate might get a chuckle, most of the humor is lost due to none of you actually knowing said person. (Sort of like if you went on about a member here on some other website. Might get a chuckle, but not nearly as much as it would here since everyone knows that person)
The story itself is more or less a Wizard of Oz parody though not exactly the same. Follows a girl who gets transported to a magical world that has a lot of sexual shit in it and hilarious hijinx ensue. Off the top of my head, Fornication Forest was one of the locations as I remember. Oh and the Buttfucking Beast of Syphilis Swamp. The story ended up being the first part of a trilogy (Last part was about 70 pages hand written front and back.)
Don't think a "remaster" would really work, but I DID predict the war against the aggressive transsexual lesbians decades before it became a horrible reality!
Anyway it was a different time (A better time of course). Nowadays if I was a teenager writing what I wrote in highschool, I would've gotten accused of sexual harassment, bullying, racism, sexism, whatever-phobia, etc. and gotten thrown out of the school.
For those of you wondering, I successfully rewrote the page and am once again done writing (and I closed all the open tabs then went through to make sure. All good).
Now for real there's only proofreading left
I just hit 77k words, and each time I feel like I want to finish it another branch opportunity comes up and I end up writing more and more paths. There are like 60 - 70 ish pages, I just need to find a good stopping place or it will go forever!`
Sixty pages and you have 77,000 words?? I had 62 pages and didn't even reach 20k. How many words are on a page???
too many
Here ya go.
No point in stalling any longer; I've never been a patient human anyway.
My entry, Re-election Campaign:
https://chooseyourstory.com/story/re~2delection-campaign
(Hint: It may take a few playthroughs to learn what's really going on in Cougar Valley)
True word count is much lower, maybe 70-80k. Variations on scenes makes it seem higher than it is.
I look forward to reading everyone else's entries!
Most of the stories this time around seem really long. I better not be reading 100 million words of ass
