TotW Commentary Thread.

[Alwyn]

What kind of Tale of the Week prompts do you like? Are there ones which stood out for you, which you particularly enjoyed? If so, I'd be interested to hear what made them particularly good.

As you (hopefully) know, only the use of the key words is required - your story can use the picture and theme as inspiration, but it doesn't need to refer to them at all. As I see it, one way to look at TotW is to see it as an opportunity to take key words that were written with one type of story in mind, and to write something different and unexpectesd, where the connection to the theme is subtle (or where there isn't one). For example, in TotW 287 NYPD, the writing prompt suggested a present-day police drama set in New York, while isa0005's winning tale was a science-fiction story in a Hong Kong bar. In TotW 285 Haunted, the writing prompt pointed towards a ghost story for Halloween, and Hitai's winning tale was a love story with a ghostly twist.

[Kilo11]

Honestly, Alwyn, the prompts I've "most liked" have had little to do with the prompt, and much to do with the inspiration I had at that time. I mean, sometimes the words catch your eye and something forms up quickly, and sometimes not. I think there is just so much subjectivity about how one approaches a prompt that it's not really possible to create a "good" or "bad" one. At least, that's my feeling on the matter.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

I just think that there is little issue any individual prompt could bring; it's just that sadly fewer and fewer people are interested

[King Athelstan]

I honestly don't care about the prompt, I'll take anything and roll with it, for me it's just been a matter of available time, as can be reflected in my activity on TWC in general

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

For what I meant I think Kilo hits it closest; it's not that certain prompts are wrong, so much as the declining overall time of writers here and limited inspiration can make it necessary to perhaps refresh the idea in trying to draw some users out.

I feel bad out something boring and uninspired, but if that's what it takes to get things moving I might give it another shot.

As a writer in no position to hand out writing advice but who's heard from people who are, getting out something awful for the sake of writing beats criticizing yourself out of doing anything at all, which just continues the cycle of death.

[Kilo11]

As a writer in no position to hand out writing advice but who's heard from people who are, getting out something awful for the sake of writing beats criticizing yourself out of doing anything at all, which just continues the cycle of death.

This! A million times this! Just writing, writing anything, is the most important thing. And yeah, we all churn out some good ol' fashioned garbage from time to time (except me, of course; all my things are literary genius ), but the main thing is just getting it out there. Partly that is to get the ball rolling for other people and projects, but also to get it rolling for yourself. And from much experience, I can say that the best way to get past boring, uninspired, or trite writing and stories is to write those things. Get them out of your head and onto paper (or into pixels), and then when you have them in front of you you can see all that's wrong with them and improve. But if you don't blather a bit you're just being a critic without producing anything. Even if the only target of your criticism is yourself, that's still a sucky attitude. Create something, and then you can put on your critic's hat. And not a minute sooner!

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

I think it's also worth saying that this competition was originally intended to run every week. That isn't possible these days, because there's less activity on the site, but it gives you an idea of what the competition was aiming at, I think. It's a competition where you can write something short really quickly, as compared to the other WS competitions, where producing an entry will almost certainly take longer. If you feel you can write something that qualifies for the competition, please be encouraged to submit it.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

Rip TOTW

[Kilo11]

Rip TOTW

Dang. I was about to write something up and post it, and then reply here with a defibrillator gif. But then I saw I already entered into this TotW Someone else needs to come join us!

[Bande Nere]

Dang. I was about to write something up and post it, and then reply here with a defibrillator gif. But then I saw I already entered into this TotW Someone else needs to come join us!

I would love to but starting from the next TOTW as I've already read everyone's piece on the current one and that's a no-no

[Akar]

I feel like that should be done away with in lieu of a "no plagiarism" rule. With so few participants I can't see it being an issue anymore. Especially if it prevents people from participating who otherwise might.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

I think it's more a problem of a vicious cycle. Interest declined so it stopped being something that ran once per week because of site activity in general dropping. People then end up seeing it as something that is more "special" due to its relative rarity and requires more time and effort than they're willing to put in. As a result, it takes even longer to find the minimum entrants and then interest declines even further until we are where we are at now.

People don't realize it is supposed to be something you can whip up in relatively little time even if in better circumstances you could put more time into it, and rather than put out an entrant that isn't completely perfect, they instead don't submit one at all. It's a self-defeating principle.

[Kilo11]

I agree with Geg. It is just a nasty cycle, and one which I think can very well be broken, especially as the core chunk of writers who had this rolling hot like 2 years ago are mostly still regulars. I mean, if you think about the Writers' Study folks who are around, there are still a couple dozen pretty active regulars, and that should be more than enough to get the ball rolling again. I think it is just what Geg said; people thinks it needs to be special and really evocative, so they hem and haw, and then don't send anything at all. Just take a half hour, bang something out, and post it. When all is said and done, readers and writers will be happy just to see something.

@David: I think that is still fine. I usually try not to read first, but only so as not to poison my own inspiration well with others' stories. But as Akar said, as long as you're doing your own original thing, it really doesn't matter whether you've read them already or not. What do the WS staff members think about this point? Could we amend the rules to reflect the spirit of that point, while removing the restrictiveness of its wording? Something like changing this:

If you are a contestant you are honour bound to not read other contestants' writings until you have submitted yours.
If your entry is found to be substantially similar to another entry your submission will be disqualified. This is at the discretion of the competition organiser(s).

to this:

If you are a contestant you are honour bound strongly encouraged to not read other contestants' writings until you have submitted yours, and you are honour bound to not utilize others' ideas.
If your entry is found to be substantially similar to another entry your submission will be disqualified. This is at the discretion of the competition organiser(s).

Would such a thing be acceptable?

[ggggtotalwarrior]

As a current entrant I'm totally fine with anyone who has already read my entry making their own just to get this prompt run.

[Kilo11]

As a current entrant I'm totally fine with anyone who has already read my entry making their own just to get this prompt run.

As the only other current entrant, I second this opinion. So you read our things already? Who cares? I want to see what spin you put on the tale, regardless of whether you've read ours or not!

[Bande Nere]

Oh wow, ok then! I'm sorta working on the aar now but I'll try.

To be fair, I'm not against "forbidding" pre-reading others work, more for the risk of unvoluntary plagiarism(or the opposite, trying to stray as much as possible from the others work as to risk the flow of your own)

I'm(obviously) a newbie here, I probably read the TotW before even thinking of participating. Or really understanding it.

Soo, thanks for letting me participate and I'll start working on it as soon as I have a minute!

[ggggtotalwarrior]

Awesome!

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

I would love to but starting from the next TOTW as I've already read everyone's piece on the current one and that's a no-no

Hi, DavidBN! It's great to see you over here in TotW.

I'm going to pass this on to Alwyn, as he's Writers' Study Director. The rules do currently say that contestants shouldn't read the other entries before submitting their own, so I'll need to check with him about this one.


For obvious reasons we're not going to let the contestants just decide on whatever rules they want to have. Sorry about that, but it's one of those precedents that will cause us trouble sooner or later if we allow it to happen. I mean, what happens when you don't all agree?! (This is a rhetorical question, by the way. I already know the answer, and the answer is "Writers' Study Staff end up having to sort out a mess. )

[Bande Nere]

Hi Caillagh de Bodemloze,

To be perfectly clear, I'd rather wait for the next TotW than for that particular rule to be changed...

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

Hi Caillagh de Bodemloze,

To be perfectly clear, I'd rather wait for the next TotW than for that particular rule to be changed...

Don't worry - even if the rule is changed, there's no pressure on you to enter this competition. Or any future competition. If you want to wait and enter the next TotW, that's absolutely fine. If you decide not to enter the next TotW but to wait for the one after that, that's OK too. Obviously we'd like you to enter TotW. More entries would be a good thing. But everybody gets to choose which contests (if any) they want to enter; it's always entirely up to you.

It's good for us to review the rules of our competitions every so often, though, so your initial comment was a useful one - we might not have reviewed this rule just yet without it. Thank you!