Writers' Study Chat and Feedback - Ask all your questions here!

[Alwyn]

Yes, that's the plan. It would be good to see more entries in the MAARC - we have four, if we get two more we can run a regular competition.

[Edit to add] When the polls for the Writers' Study Yearly Awards close (which is happening now), it's customary for Writers' Study staff to move them into the ink caves, where the votes are counted by a specially trained team of Writers' Study imps. I'm mentioning this just in case anyone wonders where the voting threads went. After that, the next step is to post any tie-break threads which are needed.

[Second edit] We have a triple tie-breaker for the Creative Writing of the Year category, as the top three nominations received an equal number of votes. Your vote in this tie-breaker will decide who gets 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in this category. As in previous years, after the end of the tie-break poll, the awards ceremony will be posted. The awards ceremony won't necessarily happen immediately after the poll closes - this depends on how long it takes for our imps to finish decorating the venue, polishing the awards and cooking for the traditional celebratory feast.

[Alwyn]

Thanks to everyone who voted in the triple tie-breaker for the Creative Writing of the Year. Following our custom, now the poll has closed, the poll thread has been taken below to the ink caves, for the counting of the votes and the preparations for the Awards Ceremony. When the votes have been counted and the preparations completed, the Awards Ceremony will be in the Writers' Study General Competitions area.

[Edit to add] The Awards Ceremony is now open. Everyone is invited to join me on the Awards Ceremony thread, to celebrate the writing of our nominees and winners!

[Alwyn]

We have four entries for the MAARC LXXXVII. Thanks to everyone who entered so far.

If we can get two more, we can run a full competition. It would be great to see more entries.

[Derc]

Oh man, this thing is still up? I already did two two campaign during it. Perhaps you need to directly message potential candidates, or just go along with 4 submissions. I mean, this thing is up since July, and the last submission has been in October.
If it is still up in a few weeks, I need to edit my submission. What is about to come is much better than the CiG campaign.

In all honesty, I think MAARCs (and MCWCs) should be made smaller in case you want to launch them more than two times a year. Or there needs to be a new idea how to encourage writers to join in. Or perhaps the time of great competitions is just over. Dunno.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Is there a reason why six entries is considered a full competition? I mean, I've been here a long time, and I don't know/can't remember why that's even a thing. Maybe we should just run the competition with a minimum of three entries, and rejig the points around again. Or overhaul the whole thing in some way, and come up with a new competition structure. I don't think competitions have run their course, but what we have now has obviously gotten stale.

[Welsh Dragon]

I agree with Derc and Hitai, I think the MAARC rules would benefit from a bit of an overhaul.

In my view it's more important to have the competitions regularly several times a year than it is to have 6 entries. If we have say at least 3 entries after a month I think that should be enough to run the competition with full points. And I think we should aim to run these at least 6 times in the year, even if that means running them with smaller numbers of entries each time. That way there's a greater level of interaction, as people enter, see their entries voted upon and receive their rewards, encouraging them to go back and write some more for the next month. Writing is like a muscle, it atrophies if not used regularly. By encouraging people to write regularly they'll want to write more, which will also help them as writers as the more you practice the better you get.

I'd also consider changing the requirement for an AAR to have received two updates to just one update. Not only would this I believe have the effect of encouraging more people and especially new writers to take part, but it would also open this competition up to people who want to write about a particularly cool thing that happened in their game, without committing to writing an ongoing story. If you look at the "How Is Your Current Campaign Going? threads" I've been running over on Reddit this year, I regularly get a dozen or more AAR's every month, ranging in length from a few lines to whole short stories. Imagine if even a quarter of those writers were entries in the MAARC, we'd have a much greater range of entries which makes it easier to run these regularly.

Just my two pence.

Also a Merry Christmas to you all, and here's to a Happy, Healthy New Year!

All the Best,

Welsh Dragon.

[Alwyn]

Thanks, all, for your helpful comments and ideas. I'm happy to look again at the competition rules and to make changes, if that's what people would like.

I'll start the current MAARC this coming weekend.

Hitai asked why six entries are needed for a full competition. (When I started entering the MAARC, five entries were needed for a full competition; this changed to six.) The minimum number was changed because writers asked for this change. If I remember this correctly, their view was that it was becoming too easy to get Writers' Study Competition Medals, as the MAARC ran fairly often with five or six entries at the time. Obviously, we're in a different situation now.

[Turkafinwë]

Happy New Year gents and lassies! May this year prove bountiful and more free than the last!

[Alwyn]

Happy New Year!

The MAARC poll is up, everyone is invited to cast your two votes.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

The MAARC LXXXVIII submissions thread is also up, ready for whenever you've posted the required two updates!

[Cookiegod]

Whups Vid deleted.
You are all welcome.

All the best,

Cookie

[Alwyn]

Thanks to everyone who has voted in the MAARC, the poll is still open for those who haven't voted yet.

If you'd like to enter an AAR competition and missed the current MAARC, the submissions thread is open for the next one.

[Turkafinwë]

Hear ye, Hear ye, all faithful.

Long has this been awaited. No more. Months ago these poets three gathered their best material for thine scutiny.

Haste thee to the poll and cast thine vote in the Third Writers' Study Occasional Competition!

[Alwyn]

Thanks to all who have voted in the Poetry Night competition and entered the MAARC LXXXVIII. If you haven't yet, there's still time.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

Allow me to add even more to the excitement!

In addition to voting in the Poetry Night competition and entering MAARC LXXXVIII, you are also encouraged to submit your entries for Tale of the Week 297: Troy!

We all know the story - Hector gets dragged round the walls of Troy by a hollow wooden horse, while Achilles - in an early version of shooting yourself in the foot - stabs himself in the heel with an arrow. But the title's just there to inspire you, so feel free to put your own spin on the story, or tell us a story inspired by the famous siege instead of directly about it. At the moment there's only one entry, which will make voting very tedious, so we could use a few more submissions.

[Turkafinwë]

The Third Writers' Study Occasional Competition: Poetry-Night has concluded its vote. Go check out the winner and join in the festivities here.

[Alwyn]

You'll probably have noticed that TWC has been affected by database errors recently. GED investigated the problem and found that we have accumulated more user groups and sub-forums than the forum software can handle. Hex are removing user groups and sub-forums that we can live without, for example in Content we've removed two user groups. Hex have removed some sub-forums which we don't need in staff areas of the site and this is continuing.

As part of this continuing effort to reduce database errors by removing sub-forums we can live without, I'm planning to remove the Writers' Study Grand Archive. This is used for storing old competition threads, duplicate AARs threads (when someone's opening post accidentally appears twice), and AARs which the author wanted deleted. (When an writer asks Writers' Study staff to delete their thread, we suggest archiving it instead, in case they ever want it back). I'm proposing to move the old competition threads to the Writers' Study Competitions Archive, move the old AAR threads to a Content Staff archive and remove the Writers' Study Grand Archive. I don't think this will cause any problems - I can't remember needing to into the Grand Archive to look something up - but if anyone thinks of a problem which it would cause, please let me know by the end of March.

[Kilo11]

Sounds good to me. I can imagine myself now and again wishing I could dig through there (sometimes I peruse old things for fun), but the daily improvement to site health is definitely worth anything that might be lost by cleaning house like this.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

Voting has begun in Tale of the Week 297: Troy. Choose your favourite and help us pick a winner!

[Alwyn]

Yes, please vote for your favourite story in Tale of the Week!

Meanwhile, March 15th, 2021 is the 10th anniversary of the release of Shogun 2. Shogun 2 fans may want to have a look at the various activities to celebrate this anniversary. There's a 10th anniversary poll, a Shogun 2 art competition, a Japan-themed picture competition and the first of our 10th anniversary reviews.