Competition - Total Write-Off

pickarooney

It's an open draw for round two so that will have to wait until Monday. Meanwhile there's still a lot of voting to do in round one.

pickarooney

We're half-way there with another contestant through to the quarter finals and one making his/her way tearfully back to the dressing room.

pickarooney

Five safely through now and that wraps up the results for the week. From now until Monday, we need people to vote on the remaining stories.

Antilles

Some real gems submitted so far!

pickarooney

More Votes Please!
6, 7 and 8 need your feedback.

Antilles

I think people might be running out of steam after a week of coming back to read/vote. Maybe the next round should all be released at the same time?

Oryx

The next round will be shorter so it shouldn't matter so much?

Turtyturd

Gotta say I am surprised by some of the results so far, especially the one between Pink and Yellow. Not that it was a bad result but I was expecting that to be one of the closest match up after reading both of them.

pickarooney

The quarter final draw and list of themes will be up tomorrow. The themes will be books of the bible.

Antilles

Um, what? Any chance we can change that to something less... religion-specific?

Mr E

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Slow Show

Well I guess it's a challenge...And it would be quite interesting to see what people come up with.

Memnoch

Not a fan of the theme either. Don't even know what the different books are, never mind having a clue about them.

pickarooney

The first round was religion-specific too and nobody complained.

Antilles

Yes, and if a significant proportion of the people taking part were likely to be followers of the Greek gods, that might have been a problem too.

I had no problem with the "seven deadly sins" idea because it is a very generalised idea. Using specific books of a specific religion that certain people would be familiar with is not generalised.

Oryx

I like the theme. Exodus. Genesis. Revelations. Etc. It doesn't have to be a religious story. The writers take the name (whatever one it is) and do what they like with it. Could be very interesting.

Blush_01

Antilles wrote: »

Yes, and if a significant proportion of the people taking part were likely to be followers of the Greek gods, that might have been a problem too.

I had no problem with the "seven deadly sins" idea because it is a very generalised idea. Using specific books of a specific religion that certain people would be familiar with is not generalised.

Well the last round didn't exactly see many people following the whole Greek Gods thing. I don't remember reading any stories about:

1: Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt
2: Ares, God of War
3: Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest
4: Lyssa, Goddess of Madness / Dionysus, God of Ritual Madness
5: Athena, Goddess of Wisdom
6: Hephaestus, God of Fire
7: Hestia, Goddess of Home
8: Asclepius, God of Healing / Panacea, Goddess of Healing

I know the above might be over-egging the pudding slightly in terms of making my point, but I don't see how books of the new or old testament, colours of the rainbow, breeds of cattle, seasons of the year, brands of car etc. make any difference. They're a theme or a guideline, not a set plot.

Antilles

Blush_01 wrote: »

Well the last round didn't exactly see many people following the whole Greek Gods thing. I don't remember reading any stories about:

1: Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt
2: Ares, God of War
3: Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest
4: Lyssa, Goddess of Madness / Dionysus, God of Ritual Madness
5: Athena, Goddess of Wisdom
6: Hephaestus, God of Fire
7: Hestia, Goddess of Home
8: Asclepius, God of Healing / Panacea, Goddess of Healing

I know the above might be over-egging the pudding slightly in terms of making my point, but I don't see how books of the new or old testament, colours of the rainbow, breeds of cattle, seasons of the year, brands of car etc. make any difference. They're a theme or a guideline, not a set plot.

The themes weren't "Artemis," "Ares," etc, they were the respective gods' areas of influence: "The Hunt," "War," etc. Unless I'm misunderstanding Pickarooney's post, the theme next time around will be the various books of the bible, rather than their themes (whatever the hell those themes are).

Aoibheann

But surely there's a lot of excellent titles from the books of the Bible? Exodus, Genesis, Lamentations, Songs (well, Song of Songs), Revelation, Proverbs, Kings, Chronicles, Numbers.. Not a single one of them has to have anything necessarily to do with religion, so I honestly don't see a problem, and I'm 100% atheist! :P

Antilles

Ok fair enough, it looks like I'm outnumbered. I'm still not comfortable with it but if I only ever wrote about what I was comfortable with I'd be a piss poor writer.

Next round: chapter titles of Mein Kampf

Blush_01

Antilles wrote: »

Next round: chapter titles of Mein Kampf

That'll make for interesting reading for us, because there are so many to choose from, and they're so broad you could have pretty much anything. Might even work for the next Total Write-Off first round - we could even have a full "Mein Kampf chapter titles Total Write-Off" because of the number of chapters.

I know you were being flippant, but it's not a half bad idea.

I'm excited to see what the remaining competitors will come up with in the next round. I'm impressed with the takes people have had on the themes thus far. Well done everyone!

Congratulations to everyone who has got through to the next round, and commiserations to those who didn't get through the heat, a lot of the competitions were very close as a reader, and it was genuinely disappointing to see some really good stories (and therefore writers) getting knocked out so early.

Once again, thanks Picka. Top mod!!

Oryx

Em, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out some of the qualifiers here. Yizzer givin the game away lads!

Antilles

Does secrecy matter once the specific round is over? I can see why it would count during the rounds but between them is there a reason not to discuss who qualified?

Oryx

I thought it was meant to be anon right to the final result.

Aoibheann

I guess it's because it'd be kind of pointless to continue on with codenames if people have already given the game away! :pac:

Mr E

I didn't want to say anything earlier, but I think I know most of the quarter finalists now.

At least with the codenames, the anonymity is preserved.

Antilles

Mr E wrote: »

I didn't want to say anything earlier, but I think I know most of the quarter finalists now.

Unless some people are so ashamed of losing in the first round that they've built up a series of posts to give them impression that they actually qualified, and they'll continue doing that right up until after the final, at which point the winner will be declared and the whole thing will come crashing down around them and they'll have to leave boards.ie in disgrace and shame, never to return.

pickarooney

Here are the line-ups for the four quarter-finals.

1. WHITE vs COPPER. Your theme is Numbers

2. ORANGE vs BLUE. Your theme is Genesis

3. PINK vs CYAN. Your theme is Exodus

4. BLACK vs RED. Your theme is Revelation

The word limit is approximately 1500 for this round and the closing date will be 23.59 BST on the 18th of June. I'll be in Ireland from the 8th to the 18th so rather than give a tight deadline I'd prefer give a few days extra even if some of you will be waiting ages after submitting and the rest will still not have started on the 17th.

Oryx

Antilles wrote: »

Unless some people are so ashamed of losing in the first round that they've built up a series of posts to give them impression that they actually qualified, and they'll continue doing that right up until after the final, at which point the winner will be declared and the whole thing will come crashing down around them and they'll have to leave boards.ie in disgrace and shame, never to return.

Take more than that to make me leave boards

BuddingWriter

Hi guys,

I've only just come across this as I'm a newbie around here but what a great idea! I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the start of the next one.

Is there somewhere the entries can be read?

pickarooney

There are eight threads with the first round entries on the first couple of pages of the forum. The threads all being with Total Write Off: and have polls attached.

FewFew

This is a really good idea. I'll also be looking out for the start of the next one (though if someone was on PM duty that'd also be swell )

Mr E

Picka - how about an ad hoc competition for the new people (and the first round eliminations from the write-off)?

2 weeks to do it, you pick the topic (same rules as the old variations on a theme).

No point in having people sitting around for a few months waiting for the write-off to finish.

pickarooney

I'm thinking of something a bit more mental, a winner stays on kind of thing, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be. A good writer could end up accidentally writing a novel

Antilles

Two writers enter, one writer leaves!

Two writers enter, one writer leaves!

Two writers enter, one writer leaves!

pickarooney

So how about this. Bear in mind the objective is to get as many people involved with as little downtime as possible...

First day: the first two posters to reply to the thread go into the chamber. A theme is given. 24 hours later they post a short piece (c. 300 words) and 24 hours after that voting (by the thanks button) stops and the next challenger steps up. Challenger picks the theme and off we go again.

Now, it would require that at least one person, not necessarily involved, be on the thread at the deadline to check the thanks counts and early submissions would have to be allowed, but that could all be part of the fun - if you're finished a couple of hours early you get more time to get votes so there's an extra inventive to write fast. If you keep winning, you have to keep writing; if you fail to submit the challenger automatically becomes the champion. A bit like conkers or boxing, the goal is to string as many wins together as possible. The champion can put a challenge in his/her sig.

There'd be no anonymity in this as it would just be unmanageably by PM.

Oryx

I like the idea. One twist which you could consider.. The challenge could be one continuous story, rather than a new theme every day? Or a different theme but you had to tie it in to whats gone before.

pickarooney

I thought about that, but most people hate collaborative ideas. On the other hand, it would be in the champion's best interest to write something continuous so people will vote for it if they want to read on.

Mr E

I love the idea, but I'm not sure about the strict time limit. If I don't have time to mull over it, edit and tweak, it invariably turns out to be crap.

On the flip side, I think readers would better appreciate finessed stories (as opposed to having to read rush jobs that were submitted to beat a strict deadline). The standard so far in the T.W.O. has been phenomenal because people had time to fine tune.

pickarooney

I was going to give a positive answer to that but it just made me realise a huge flaw - as a challenger you can come up with whatever theme you want and write at your own pace then you get to pick the theme and issue the challenge. Only a really good writer will be able to beat someone who has had preparation and can pick the theme.

Essentially, I as just looking at this as a sort of time-filler - there's a lot of down time between rounds of TWO and a full-on VOAT would be a bit much for me and would suffer from people not entering because they're already writing for TWO.

Of course, you can always just write a story and post it up for feedback without the competition element

Mr E

pickarooney wrote: »

Of course, you can always just write a story and post it up for feedback without the competition element

It's the competitive element that makes me write. Before TWO, I hadn't written anything since the last VOAT.

Not a bad idea though. I have a few ideas rattling around that I'd like to flesh out, but they'd probably be better for Write Club.

pickarooney

If you have a few different ideas you could knock up 300 words on each and see do any of them beat whatever is up there.

If anyone wants to give this a try, say so and we'll kick it off. Worst that can happen is it's an abysmal failure!

Mr E

Fair enough!

pickarooney

I just re-read a few of the flash-fiction pieces from VOAT 3.5.
You guys are well able to produce a good story in a day (or 25 minutes).

Also Starring LeVar Burton

I'll give it a go (although gotta know asap if its going ahead, as I'm in work from 6am - 4pm tomorrow, so would really need to know in the next hour or so)...

EDIT: Count me in regardless - as long as the deadline is 24 hours, I'll be able to do it after work if I have to...

darkestlord

Count me in.

Blush_01

I'd love another flash VOAT. Immediate gratification. Depending on work I'd totally be in. Was working 14 hour days last week and the week before, this week has been grand so far but who knows.

I'll pencil myself in for a flash if you do go ahead with it again.

angelll

Stick my name down for it too

pickarooney

Come up with a name for it and I'll put up a thread.

Also Starring LeVar Burton

pickarooney wrote: »

Come up with a name for it and I'll put up a thread.

The Gladiwriter (and that's the last time I shall ever reference a Russell Crowe movie)...

The Battle (simple and not very imaginative, but does exactly what it says on the tin)

Ronseal (also does exactly what it says on the tin)

Two Writers Walk Into a Bar... (would be a great name if the competition was entirely comedy orientated, but alas...)

The Elimination Room (personally I'm a fan of this one, since all competitions are to be held in the same thread, unless I'm mistaken)

Fight For Your Right to... Write (Beastie Boys coulda been on to something there)

Writer's Block (not an actual suggestion, I'm just out of ideas)