This thread is meant for a continuation of discussion on The Fantasy Contest because the other thread got really long.
Contest Theme: Swords and Sorcery / High Fantasy Deadline: August 1st
Stories are NOT automatically entered! You should post in this thread with your intent to write a story for the contest. If you post your intent in the next week and then come through and actually release something, there will be a 15 EXP point reward. You don't have to post your intent, you can just publish a story and then afterwards tell us that you're entering but you won't get the 15 point reward.
On August 1st, each person who has entered the contest (and anyone who hasn't, but who wants to vote) will read ALL of the stories. No one is allowed to vote on just a few. You have to vote on ALL or NONE of the stories. If you enter a story, you really should participate in voting. The reason you can't vote on just a few is that if you're a person who leaves exceptionally high or low ratings, the stories you vote on will be affected either negatively or positively with respect to the other stories.
Voting will occur by sending your votes to me. You will send your opinion of MY story to a delegate (we'll choose who closer to August) so that it's anonymous still, and you don't feel intimidated to rate how you feel about my story. That person will send me the votes for my story and I'll tally an average. I think we'll probably just give a mark out of 10 for each story. Infinite story rates on three categories (Creativity, Enjoyment and Technical Aspects) but in my opinion, only enjoyment matters. If a story is more creative and better written, you'll enjoy it more and that will reflect in your mark. You will also be expected to leave approximately a paragraph in comments for the author, this can be left on the comments section or messaged with your rating if you'd like it to be anonymous.
Afterwards, we'll all vote on the person who left the best comments (if you submit your comments anonymously, you forfeit the chance to win this vote) and the winner will receive a prize.
S&S/HF?
Swords and Sorcery and High Fantasy are both subgenres of the genre of Fantasy. Your story needs to qualify as one or both of S&S or HF to be eligible for the contest. We'll be fairly lenient but here are some guidelines:
S&S - Revolves around a swashbuckling hero. HF - Occurs (at least partly) in a completely made up world.
Note: Harry Potter would be considered High Fantasy because the world of witchcraft and wizardry is completely made up, even though it occurs alongside and within the real world. It's a hazy area but like I said, there will be leniancy.
Note: Sci/Fi is not Fantasy for the purpose of this contest. Just replace robot with elf xD
REWARDS
Contest Winner: 200 EXP points and hopefully the contest trophy. Contest Second Place: 50 EXP points Contest Third Place: 15 EXP Points All Contest Entrances that Confirm Their Participation in the next week: 15 EXP points Best Commenter: 50 EXP points
OTHER RULES
Judging: Votes will be normalized so that stories created by the most generous judge won't be penalized by not being rated by that judge. All entrants should rate all entered stories (besides their own). It would be a good idea to read/rate as they come out and then record what you gave it so that you don't have an insane amount of reading to do at the end. If you do decide to do it this way, I would suggest skimming through again at the end to make sure your opinion hasn't changed.
Multiple Entries: Go for it! Although, time might be better spent writing one awesome story instead.
Co-Authors: Are not allowed. Entries should be solo-projects.
Entering a Story: When releasing a story for the contest, you should tag it as FANTASY CONTEST (it's a new tag). Also, post here just to ensure we don't miss it.
Entering Old Stories: Nope! Although you could have had the idea before the contest started, the story should have been written specifically for the contest. This is an honor system.
ENTRANTS AND ENTRIES (will likely end up being revised later down in the post)
BONUS POINT ELIGIBLE ENTRANTS (17) 3J October Sunshine Zikara Spartan Erudite Ugilick Seaton731 Mokarran Leviathan DRBickham Romulus madglee ArmoredHorse jkulibert2 JackThaedos Fergie ADDITIONAL ENTRANTS (10) Magicman Dracortez Methodkid Retro64 Deadly_Sinner66 Cat2000 Mizal Sethaniel Mr.Xcentrix jlwelch (The Search for the Craxil) Current Entrants Amount: 27 Continue to signup if you're interested! The first story has come in! Make sure to tag entered stories with the 'Fantasy Contest' tag. Thanks :)
it shouldnt be a problem, but i have no authoraty here.
i have no intention of taking his thunder, but im fairly certain it shouldnt be a problem, if i can offer temporary reasurence, then I shall. i am however quite certain i could be wrong it this call, so left a nice little diesclamer. sorry about the misspell by the way.
Agreed. I guess I should have thought your post was redundant, I just didn't. Apologies!
its fine, im difficult to offend or irritate. I realy apreciate the apology though.
No problem, gotta apologize where it is due. Otherwise I look like a dick--, nevermind too late!
i lauged quite loudly when i read that. ^^
very clever sir, very clever
I'm entering. Guess I gotta take back that collab request though.
Ide actually like to request an extension on the time limit. Is this possible?
Just to revert the name back to normal.
Just for the record, I've got no chance of finishing Apprentice in time for the deadline (despite making it like a hundred times smaller than Devil West), so I might just enter a smaller story which will be unlikely to win the contest but it could be interesting either way.
(Putting this here because this bizarro forum software won't let me reply to the OP.)
After not being able to touch it for a month due to life happening, and spending some time yesterday and today looking over my outline to give myself a little reality check, I'm regretfully announcing my withdrawal from the contest.
I had some ideas about salvaging the situation by just posting my partially finished entry, or else 'finishing' by writing the rest as a linear story, but in the end decided against it.
It's been a long time since I've gotten this excited about a writing project. I love the characters and the setting and the plans I made for where it's going, and I don't want to weaken the final product by rushing or tossing it up half-finished.
The story is called Shadow of a Bloody Moon, and if anyone's interested in reading a demo of sorts, I have the first part (30-40 pages or so, ending right before the main branches begin) up at IS: http://www.infinite-story.com/story/5933/
I'm going to keep working on it and I am going to finish, but at my own pace so that I can keep the level of quality up where I want it.
Oh, seriously? Well, maybe in that case I can manage it then...no promises, but we'll see.
Has no one else finished theirs either yet or what? Now I don't feel so bad if so. :D
hey, how do u vote for stories do u just click on it and click vote or...........
I'm sorry but I want to leave the contest. I won't be able to finish my storygame because i'm going to india for a few months, so I'm not going to be able to finish my storygame or read and judge the other ones. I hope this isn't a problem.
No, i'm going to help in my aunt's orphanage there. I'm leaving today. Bye!!
May I join the contest?
It does not allow me to reply.
I am joining the Fantasy Contest.
I think she needs to prove she's real first. If not then she could mess up the contest by giving her first account an unfair advantage.
Oh also would it be possible for me to read the contest stories?
I won't have time to rate and review all of them though.
Cool74 are you writing a story?
Anyways, I wanna ask if I could be a voter for the upcoming contest. Is it too late?
Do we have to write a review after reading?
Yes, apparently we're not the only ones having procrastination problems, so 3J said it'll probably be Sept. 1st now.
:D I dont feel so hopeless now!
:D ...Wait... probably? :|
HUZZAH! (hehe) Hooray! Thank goodness, I was afraid I was going to submit my story without an ending. :/ Yippee!
I'm still probably not gonna finish in time, but at least this delay gave me the motivation to get back into the story and finally write the piece I didn't want to (still have no idea why I didn't want to).
I'm with Killa_Robot, I've started work on my story again, even though it's unlikely that I'll finish it in the next month. A little more motivated now, though I'm not sure how long it's going to last.
We'll find out on Sept. 1st.
Unless it's like extended until November 1 (unlikely) I don't think I'm going to be finished in time.
That happens to me, too, though not when I published my really short storygame with the exclamation marks. The only cure is time.
Nevermind! It works now hurray!
<a href="http://www.chooseyourstory.com/Story/Shadow_of__a_Bloody_Moon.aspx">Shadow of a Bloody Moon</a>
Enjoy!
Honestly at the pace I'm going I won't be done till the new year, I did an additional 50 pages with the extension but that's like a small dent. Unless I pick up the pace when school starts.
Then again I never officially entered the contest anyways, so....
Hah, don't be complaining about your pace, I only wish I could write 50 pages in a month. Being so uncomplete like this I doubt my story's going to do all that well, but I was seriously starting to get the impression there weren't going to be more than a handful of entries (and after all those people posted too, shame on us!) so I figured if nothing else I might as well help pad the contest out a little, and hopefully get some feedback about how my story's general style and direction is going to go over early on.
The latter might be a bit much to hope for though; I didn't even realize you could rate stories here without leaving a comment. (So far I know that out of two readers, one hated it, but that's not very helpful if they don't even explain why!)
I don't really think a 3 constitutes a hate. Just means they didn't like it lol.
Shame. Shame on all of us who said we would do the contest but won't. I know I won't have anything out by the date, and I feel terrible about it and the fact that there isn't even a good reason as to why I haven't been able to type up one storygame in... four months? Four or five. No reason at all, much less a good one.
Which is the reason I never officially signed up. I didn't think I would make it in time. When I write I can't force myself to, everything just has to sort of come out on it's own.
Okay! After the amount of time given (and an extension) I have finally finished my contest entry! It is called Wolf Spirit!
I can't wait to read it, but I'm going to wait until every entry is in before reading all of them and commenting on all the stories all at once.
I already have so many pages...but it has been so much fun that I can say sure that I am only about 45% complete....well, was about 91% complete, but I added new casings which wouldn't make sense if I didn't add more. >.<
Yeah - don't cancel it! You already gave an extension, I think if they can't finish it til then, well . . . they should just turn in what they have. If you give an extension, then I could unpublish and fix the story, but that wouldn't be fair to the others either so . . .
There's only one other story apart from your own that was actually submitted if I'm not mistaken. That story seems to be as complete as it's going to be.
I think one of the biggest issues is that we have no idea how long everyone else will actually take or if they even plan on finishing it. Maybe getting those who still plan on finishing it to post in order to confirm that they actually will would help.
Then punish them if they don't follow-through :D
Here are the people that signed up:
3J October Sunshine Zikara Spartan Erudite Ugilick Seaton731 Mokarran Leviathan DRBickham Romulus madglee ArmoredHorse jkulibert2 JackThaedos Fergie Magicman Dracortez Methodkid Retro64 Deadly_Sinner66 Cat2000 Mizal Sethaniel Mr.Xcentrix jlwelch (The Search for the Craxil) Greencloud Thefliesaredancing TooMuchSpace
However, some of them haven't been on for so long, I don't think they're coming back. So here's the list I think would be the end result:
3J October Sunshine Zikara Spartan Erudite Ugilick Seaton731 Mokarran Leviathan DRBickham Romulus madglee jkulibert2 Fergie Dracortez Methodkid Deadly_Sinner66 Mizal Sethaniel Mr.Xcentrix jlwelch (The Search for the Craxil) Greencloud
Here are the definates that will respond this week and who haven't been seen for a while but might come on:
Definate replies:
3J October Zikara Erudite Ugilick madglee - maybe jkulibert2 Fergie (Wolf Spirit) Deadly_Sinner66 - maybe Mizal jlwelch (The Search for the Craxil) Who I haven't seen in a while:
Sunshine Spartan Seaton731 Mokarran Leviathan DRBickham Romulus Dracortez Methodkid Mr.Xcentrix - has said he was busy, so I don't know Greencloud
So, did I miss anyone?
I actually forgot, but Mizal submitted his/her story in a demo form already. Given an increase in time I'm sure he/she would try to finish it.
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Trying to get more entrants by extending the deadline'll be like trying to reach a limit in calculus. As time goes on, the incomplete stories will get closer to 100% completion, but they will never actually reach it. If the contest is extended, no matter how many times it is extended, I doubt that we'll get many more finished stories. It's not like people haven't had enough time to write the stories. I believe that if people actually WANTED to finish the stories, they would be finished already. What's preventing their completion is that other things are more important in those people's lives than writing these stories, and those things aren't going to just go away. In fact, new important things may pop up in the mean time and cut in line ahead of the stories during whatever extensions you grant them.
Just shame those who don't submit a story and award participatory medals/points to the soldiers who actually completed their stories I say.
If this deadline really is the last then everyone should just get a penalty of like -1 or -2 end score and hand in what they have when it ends.
I mean in terms of completion mine is no where close to where I want it to be, however it's still just as long as many of the stories out there now.
Many of the completed stories I should say.
In the last thread (possibly this contest thread, actually), JJJ set the limit at four entries. Just pointing it out; he might change his mind.
As for the contest, I'd probably... extend it, simply because some people are halfway through writing their stories now and cancelling it now would make their storygames ineligible for any follow-up contest. Consider me biased because I don't have an entry in myself, but I think it's hardly a contest win if there's only three or four entries to compete with.
Deadline is today.
So...what's happening?
JJJ is still deciding between cancelling and extending.
30 entrants, and we have 2 completed stories, after a one month extension. :)
Technically there's three if you count the demo one.
What's your decision, 3j? Don't cancel it, that wouldn't be fair to the people that worked hard to actually make an entry (all of us) and then the 3 of us that actually finished.
I think that people who said they'd enter and then failed should lose points. And I'm one of them. Silly slacker bastard that I am. Real life harms me.
I think everyone should just hand in what they've done. If there's no extension that is.
Everyone who failed should lose a certain number of points (say, 10), and the people who submitted a finished story should get to split those points amongst themselves.
Since we have only 3 entries, how about we just have one 1st place prize (no 2nd or 3rd) and lower it to 100 points. That way there isn't that much reward since there wasn't much competition.
True. I guess we'll just have to wait until 3j gets back from vacation.
He's*
I would enjoy it too if I were him.
I don't think having only two stories to compete with constitutes a contest win, but that's just me. At the same time, cancelling the contest and having the current entries (and in-progress stories) ineligible to enter in later contests would be an injustice, so an extension is the only sensible option, until we have six or seven entries.
I suppose that's fair. But if we keep adding extension after extension and they don't come in, it'll be a waste.
New Years seems like a bit of a stretch, though, don't you think?
Christmas is like a week off from New Years. Not only that but I'm sure everyone will be quite pre-occupied around that time.
If it's going to be extended to around new years then around Jan.5th is probably a fair date. Let everyone do their Christmas stuff and New Years then a few days to make sure their story is finalized.
Which stories are complete? Can someone link it.
The Search for the Craxil by: jlwelch ~ http://www.chooseyourstory.com/story/The_Search_For_The_Craxil.aspx
Wolf Spirit by: fergie14233 ~ http://www.chooseyourstory.com/story/Wolf_Spirit.aspx
Shadow of a Bloody Moon ~ http://www.chooseyourstory.com/story/Shadow_of__a_Bloody_Moon.aspx
Oh yeah, Shadow of a Bloody Moon is by Mizal
So is there an extension?
Bump of Justice!
Only 3j can say for sure, and he's been gone for a long time. :(
I'd have to vote for the Craxil.
If I had to pick one I'd go with The Craxil, though the member who wrote it is no longer active and I don't think three entries is enough competition to warrant a contest win. Give out the first, second and third-placed points I reckon, as they actually did put the effort in to finish writing a story in time, but no trophy.
I second this. The trophy wouldn't make anyone proud if there wasn't any competition! (unless they're the greedy kind)
Oh well. If one of the author's is gone and one doesn't care, suppose it doesn't matter!
I don't really mind what happens. but I'd like to know because I want to work on Wolf Spirit and make it longer like some other comments suggested.
And that reminds me, I read it but I still need to write a proper review.
Might have to be Thursday though, I've wasted sooo much time screwing around on the computer these last couple of days while stuff piles up around the house, I'm going to see if I can bring myself to actually turn it off here in the next few minutes and go clean or something...maybe...we'll see how strong my willpower is :D
haha, okay. just PM me and I'll send you the link later.
