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SF's "Write Your Butt Off" II - Return of Writer's Block


Rapier
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SF's Write Your Butt Off! II Votals  

11 members have voted

  1. 1. Which submission will you vote for?

    • "The Heart of Dedication"
      0
    • "The Strength Within"
      5
    • "Simply a Hunter"
      0
    • "One More Time"
      3
    • "Perfected"
      2
    • "No One Is Iredeemable"
      0
    • "Going Forward"
      1

This poll is closed to new votes

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  • Poll closed on 03/09/2019 at 10:00 PM

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3 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Practice doesn't mean anything when no matter how much you do it, you still don't get much better, if at all. You can't be good at everything, after all.

Have you had a look at your older stories from when you first started writing?  Compared them to this one?

It's giving yourself credit where credit is due.  Your story IS well written (they all have been btw) and a great read.  But saying you're not really improving all that much is like shooting yourself in the foot.  Even small improvements are still improvements.  They might not be noticeable at first, but when you reach a certain point with all the incremental improvements you've made and you look back...

 

Trust me, you will notice it.

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4 minutes ago, TheSilentChloey said:

Have you had a look at your older stories from when you first started writing?  Compared them to this one?

It's giving yourself credit where credit is due.  Your story IS well written (they all have been btw) and a great read.  But saying you're not really improving all that much is like shooting yourself in the foot.  Even small improvements are still improvements.  They might not be noticeable at first, but when you reach a certain point with all the incremental improvements you've made and you look back...

 

Trust me, you will notice it

Well yeah, but that stuff was many years ago. Of course I'll be better now than when I was 15.

But at this point, it seems I've gotten as good as I'm going to get and I won't get any better after that. I got 1 vote the first time I entered. Then no votes. Then no votes. No noticeable improvement here to me.

We all have a ceiling at things, honestly. We're going to be better at some things than others, and worse at some things than others. It just depends on where that ceiling is and for what task. I just have to accept that my ceiling for writing may be rather low.

 

Edited by Anacybele
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1 hour ago, Anacybele said:

And I have no votes. I'm really surprised this time. Especially since you said mine was the best, Shoblongoo. I thought that meant you were voting for me, naturally. I also thought that the entry I submitted this time was my best one so far.

I'm not cut out for these contests I guess. Either my tastes are just vastly different or I'm simply not a good writer. It's not my main thing anyway, that's art. Don't get me wrong, I don't actually care about winning. I would just like a vote or two, as it would show me if I'm good/getting better.

When I looked at everything I just felt like I had to give the tip-of-the-hat to Rafiel on this one. I did like your piece--keep on pluggin at it. And remember: Brevity, Brevity, Brevity.   (Don't know if you've noticed, but most of the winning pieces have been under 2,500 words) 

Your biggest weakness every round is over-describing in paragraphs what your characters could tell us in--like--two lines of dialogue.

Slim it down. You got this. 

____________

lol I'm fine with zero votes for the round--sometimes you just gotta take the prompt and have fun with it.

I had fun with this one. 

I have noticed a trend looking over the sum total of everything I've written here. Working strictly in the FE fandom: everything I've written seems to correlate to the seriousness with which I take + the reverence with which I regard the writing of the source material I'm working with.

Tellius got a heady theological discourse on how persons of faith read their own beliefs and worldviews into interpretations of scripture.

Elibe got a complex morale dilemma: is it righteous to be complicit in wrongs if it means advancing yourself to a position where you can combat greater wrongs, or must a righteous man oppose wrongdoing wherever he sees it?  

Ylisse got a discourse on what it means to do justice under the law.

Fates got dick jokes + Elise throwing up on herself. 

 

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4 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

When I looked at everything I just felt like I had to give the tip-of-the-hat to Rafiel on this one. I did like your piece--keep on pluggin at it. And remember: Brevity, Brevity, Brevity.   (Don't know if you've noticed, but most of the winning pieces have been under 2,500 words) 

Your biggest weakness every round is over-describing in paragraphs what your characters could tell us in--like--two lines of dialogue.

Slim it down. You got this. 

Your choice. And not really your fault, it just kind of hurt when someone said my piece was the best and then didn't vote for it. I didn't know the circumstances behind that choice in vote though, so yeah, as I said, not really your fault.

The length limit is 10k words though, so that doesn't mean anything. Being more than 2500 words or even close to 10k shouldn't automatically make a story worse. Length means nothing here as long as it's within the limit.

That's fine for you to think that. But see, unfortunately, that is something I cannot change. I prefer description in places where another person might prefer dialogue. Otherwise, I feel I have too much dialogue. I actually am not sure I have enough description in my latest entry. There's a lot of dialogue in it. I like more of a balance.

Sorry, but I'm not sure I do.

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23 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

I have noticed a trend looking over the sum total of everything I've written here. Working strictly in the FE fandom: everything I've written seems to correlate to the seriousness with which I take + the reverence with which I regard the writing of the source material I'm working with.

Tellius got a heady theological discourse on how persons of faith read their own beliefs and worldviews into interpretations of scripture.

Elibe got a complex morale dilemma: is it righteous to be complicit in wrongs if it means advancing yourself to a position where you can combat greater wrongs, or must a righteous man oppose wrongdoing wherever he sees it?  

Ylisse got a discourse on what it means to do justice under the law.

Fates got dick jokes + Elise throwing up on herself. 

Lol this is perfect. Fates' writing is vomit. Nuff said.

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4 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Your choice. And not really your fault, it just kind of hurt when someone said my piece was the best and then didn't vote for it. I didn't know the circumstances behind that choice in vote though, so yeah, as I said, not really your fault.

The length limit is 10k words though, so that doesn't mean anything. Being more than 2500 words or even close to 10k shouldn't automatically make a story worse. Length means nothing here as long as it's within the limit.

That's fine for you to think that. But see, unfortunately, that is something I cannot change. I prefer description in places where another person might prefer dialogue. Otherwise, I feel I have too much dialogue. I actually am not sure I have enough description in my latest entry. There's a lot of dialogue in it. I like more of a balance.

Sorry, but I'm not sure I do.

I think what shoblongoo was trying to get at is that there is a difference between a long story and an unnecessarily long story. When it comes right down to it, the reader only needs so much information to comprehend what's going on. You don't necessarily need to tell them every little detail or action a character is doing or whatever. Like instead of saying "Amelia grabbed the gun with her right hand and with her left searched the drawer" you could say "Amelia grabbed the gun and searched the drawer". The latter one is shorter but it's all that's necessary to convey what is happening. There are always exceptions to the rule but that's generally the case. Now this is something I struggle with as well don't get me wrong and it's especially tough with action sequences believe you me. It's a balancing act at the end of the day. The same is true for dialogue. you don't need ton of dialogue to really explain what a character is feeling. Just the way it's written and how it's said can go a long way. One thing  that I've learned to when it comes to writing good and believable dialogue is to read out loud and listen to it. Cause that's what dialogue is a the end of the day audible speech so if you read it aloud some of its general nuances will be revealed(not sure if I explained that well but ehh).

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I've noticed that brevity is pretty important too. I don't think it's that it's an unspoken rule of the competition that you write something short. It's just the nature of having to read a ton of entries. I mean DCat mentioned that she skimmed mine towards the end. No shade. LOL XD I'm guilty of skimming every now and then myself mostly because I don't like reading stuff on a computer screen. I don't mind longer pieces myself. I tend to read massive novels in my free time. (....but now that I think about it, I do skim when I'm rushing to find a stopping place.....I should stop that. Nasty habit.)

I do think this will likely be my last entry here however. I've enjoyed the rounds I've been in, and this has really been my first time sharing my writing outside of a close circle of friends/classmates. So I got some good practice in, fought away some of those anxiety demons. But I think if I'm going to improve, I definitely need to stop procrastinating on my novel and seek out detailed criticism. At least I've got a vague idea of what my weaknesses are now. lol So good luck on future rounds, everyone.

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Remember everyone,

I mean self improvement too, but, you know...the voting is really just there to pick the prompt. If the written criticisms were positive, that's a pretty good meatball.

1 hour ago, Rafiel's Aria said:

I do think this will likely be my last entry here however.

Hope that goes the best possible way for you.

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1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

I think what shoblongoo was trying to get at is that there is a difference between a long story and an unnecessarily long story. When it comes right down to it, the reader only needs so much information to comprehend what's going on. You don't necessarily need to tell them every little detail or action a character is doing or whatever. Like instead of saying "Amelia grabbed the gun with her right hand and with her left searched the drawer" you could say "Amelia grabbed the gun and searched the drawer". The latter one is shorter but it's all that's necessary to convey what is happening. There are always exceptions to the rule but that's generally the case. Now this is something I struggle with as well don't get me wrong and it's especially tough with action sequences believe you me. It's a balancing act at the end of the day. The same is true for dialogue. you don't need ton of dialogue to really explain what a character is feeling. Just the way it's written and how it's said can go a long way. One thing  that I've learned to when it comes to writing good and believable dialogue is to read out loud and listen to it. Cause that's what dialogue is a the end of the day audible speech so if you read it aloud some of its general nuances will be revealed(not sure if I explained that well but ehh).

Oh, that kind of thing. Yeah, I totally understand that, yeah.

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I do wish Serenes has a voting system that allowed people to vote for more than one entry without free reign to vote for everything. Like graded ranking. Not just for stuff like this but for threads like "What's your favorite game" etc.

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11 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I do wish Serenes has a voting system that allowed people to vote for more than one entry without free reign to vote for everything. Like graded ranking. Not just for stuff like this but for threads like "What's your favorite game" etc.

That's actually a good idea, maybe we should use it and just trust that people won't vote for themselves?

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2 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

That's actually a good idea, maybe we should use it and just trust that people won't vote for themselves?

An easy way to keep that in check is to have an option for the person who starts the poll to see who voted for what, and if they see someone voted for themselves they either have to fix it or get disqualified.

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24 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

That's actually a good idea, maybe we should use it and just trust that people won't vote for themselves?

Well we're already trusting people don't vote for themselves as it's anonymous (and really why would anyone vote for themselves? There's nothing to actually win here).

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1 minute ago, Dragoncat said:

Next round we're allowing multiple votes! What do you say @AnonymousSpeed?

Wait, am I supposed to take over hosting? I know said I would but I didn't get any explicit answer to that.

Hold on while I try and make sense of the Ranked Voting Wikipedia page.

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5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Wait, am I supposed to take over hosting? I know said I would but I didn't get any explicit answer to that.

Hold on while I try and make sense of the Ranked Voting Wikipedia page.

Unfortunately Serenes doesn't support such a feature. Though I suppose we could just link to another site.

Edited by Jotari
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SF allows for multiple votes, and it's not like we're surveiling who's voting for themselves (although this is bad practice), so we could do that, I guess.

As for taking over this thread, iirc Rafiel's Aria asked first, but she said she'd do it if no one else candidated, then Anonymous said he'd take over the thread. Did I miss anyone else?

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3 hours ago, Rapier said:

SF allows for multiple votes, and it's not like we're surveiling who's voting for themselves (although this is bad practice), so we could do that, I guess.

As for taking over this thread, iirc Rafiel's Aria asked first, but she said she'd do it if no one else candidated, then Anonymous said he'd take over the thread. Did I miss anyone else?

Serenes allows for multiple votes, but not multiple votes that are graded. Ie, in the multiple votes system every vote is of equal worth, so you're not really electing a winner and more just adding a like to certain stories. Of course there's nothing inherently wrong with a system like that either.

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8 hours ago, Jotari said:

Serenes allows for multiple votes, but not multiple votes that are graded. Ie, in the multiple votes system every vote is of equal worth, so you're not really electing a winner and more just adding a like to certain stories. Of course there's nothing inherently wrong with a system like that either.

How would that work? Would everyone optionally give X out of 10 points to more than one person, or would they give half points to the others they vote for, or...?

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