A few months ago I took part in a Writing Jam on the forum, the goal was to write a short story about 5 chapters long, mark it complete, and have other writers critique your work in fairly. To me it took off splendidly and I had a lot of fun interacting with the community so I was rather disappointed it didn't continue on.
Which is why I've copy pasted the original to start it again.
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THE THEME IS SOMETHING BORN FROM SOMETHING LOST
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This process will work in four steps:
Theme Submission: People post in the thread ideas for a potential theme. This can be anything you want as long as it can be limited to a single sentence. Please keep in mind that it should ideally be something that, while flexible, gives writers a general direction to look toward to. Something like a single word might be a bit too broad, whereas a specific character start/motivation could be too specific for certain genre writers. The best advice I can give is that, before suggesting a theme, you consider what ideas you could come up with it.
Submissions should be limited to one theme per person.
The main reason why the themes should not be entirely vague is that, after the Jam ends, writers will have a lot more incentive to check out others' works to see how they interpreted the theme, and what direction they took with their story. For example, if the theme was just the word "horse", there's a million stories that could feature them. There's not going to be any connective tissue behind the submitted stories, and the fun of seeing where people took the initial idea is lost. If the theme is, on the other hand, something like: "A Ruler Becomes a Monster", that gives the general direction of the main plot point, while allowing for a lot of wiggle room. Is it a figurative or actual monster? Is it a fantasy ruler (king) or an etherial being governing over a universe, or an AI, or...? Is it told from the Ruler's perspective or someone else's? Etc., etc., etc.
Theme Voting: The suggested themes will be rounded up and placed in a poll in the OP, where people will be able to vote for their preferred theme. Theme with most votes becomes the official jam theme. In case of a tie or an incredibly close call, and if a large enough number of authors step up to say the winning theme simply does not work for them, I am perfectly willing to compromise and make it so that authors can choose between the top two themes.
That said, I would hope such a scenario does not happen, as I feel like it would take away a part of the fun.
Writing: After the theme has been decided, the jam "officially" begins, and will last for a month.
I am personally of the opinion that people should not post their entires or the chapters here during this period, but rather that people do it all at the same time of the deadline. Which would inevitably lead us to the last stage.
Entrants, however, will be free to post excerpts/tease their work/discuss their progress and woes.
Work Submission: On a given deadline, everyone submits what they made. The OP is continually updated with a comprehensive list of authors and their works. People can check out and discuss each other's works. As I said, I am sort of banking on the fact that other authors are more willing to engage in each other's work if they feel some inherent connection to them. I would also think that the number of applicants will not be as high, allowing for a sort of honor system where it's assumed everyone checks out each other's work, expecting the others to do the same.
There will be no ranking or rewards. I feel like that would go against the spirit of the jam, which is about productivity and engaging with each other's works.
Having said that, if the number of submissions ends up being insanely high (we're talking 20+ works), it is unreasonable to think every person would be able to read every word. Therefore, I am willing to install a voting system to declare the single-story people thought was the best.
The way it would work is that every participant would be able to vote for one of the entries only if they had publicly reviewed a certain percentage of the works (this would be determined in consultation with the entrants and based on the actual number of stories). Otherwise, their vote would not count. Obviously, people would not be able to vote for themselves.
This does create a danger of everyone somehow reviewing the same handful of stories, but, for the time being, that is an edge-case I am hoping will not come to be.
Either way, I would not be enforcing people to read a specific list of stories to allow for diversity. Again, goes against the general spirit of things and creates an awkward situation if the reader ends up not liking certain stories but still has to post a review.
All of that said, voting or no voting, feedback or no feedback, there is still the undeniable benefit of producing a completed work that may very well be checked out by people browsing through Tapas, not to mention can be shipped around the Forums in other self-promotion threads and such.
Some general notes:
If it was not made clear before, this is for novels only.
Everyone is allowed to submit a theme, regardless of whether or not they're joining. That said, I would prefer if you submitted them only if you intended to join, simply because some themes that sound cool are far more difficult to work with if you're the person that has to make something out of it.
You do not need to explicitly declare you're joining. Your participation is ultimately declared when you submit something at the deadline.
Works should be limited to no more than six episodes. With the average chapter limitation being to around 2.6k words, I think that gives you more than enough space to work with. I originally wanted to limit it to five, but I am aware there are people who want to add short little prologues that aren't high in word count and serve more as mood-setters, so there ya go.
This one is important: please try to have your works completed. If you don't finish in time, that's fine, go right ahead and submit; what I'm saying is that you should not end up with six chapters of what is ultimately a part of a larger story or a setup to something you will keep writing after the fact. Try to think about beginnings and endings from the very start. Your works should be their own, standalone work.
Your works should be standalone. Please try not to write explicit tie-ins to one of your existing works, unless it requires no actual knowledge of this other work. Fanfiction is fine, since I know a lot of the writing populace here is focused on it, but please keep in mind that people who are not familiar with the work you're tying into will likely not be able to engage.
Submissions here should be made explicitly as a result of the jam. What I am saying is, if you already have a pre-existing work that you feel ties into the given theme, that's okay, but do not submit it here. This will be for original works made explicitly for this event.
Timeline:
The way I see it, the timeline of events should be something like this:
March 5th-9th: Theme Submission [X]
March 9th-11th: Theme Voting [X]
March 11th - April 11th: Writing [X]
April 11th: Submissions [o]
The reasoning for the theme submission/voting period being only a week-long is that I don't feel like it should take that much time to come up with a theme, and even less time to pick something on a poll.
That's it from me! If you've got any comments/suggestions/potential changes, feel free to share! All of this was shamelessly stolen from the original thread
- Ghost Towns
- Something born from something lost
- A wish granted but at great cost
- A chance encounter
- Born without the capacity to love
We have some people's submissions now! Sorry for the slow update I've been run ragged recently and haven't even had the chance to update my own story.
@ratscout
@littlelilylee5683