Signal boost: Original fiction (non-MLP) Writeoff · 8:40am Oct 22nd, 2015
Just a quick plug for those of you who don't follow the Writeoff Association closely: There's a new competition this weekend for original fiction!
(Also prizes! Not big ones, but coffee money is a nice supplement to the feedback and/or egoboo of the process.)
More details, and a basic summary of the Writeoffs, below the cut.
The basic idea of the Writeoffs is a rapid, anonymous, peer-judged competition. The prompt is being voted on now and will be announced in approximately 24 hours, and then everyone will have a 72-hour writing window in which to create and submit stories anonymously to the Writeoff website. Stories must be between 2000-8000 words, although future rounds will also include sub-1000-word minific competitions. (In an attempt to be too clever by half, it's being called a "Novel" round — this does not actually refer to the length of the story.) Although the Writeoffs have historically been MLP-based, this round explicitly is designed for non-MLP fiction of any genre.
When the writing period ends, all stories are presented stripped of author information, and read/reviewed/voted on by the public and fellow authors. (Each entrant is assigned a "slate" of random stories to read and rank against each other, favorite to least favorite, and anyone who wants to register an account can request a slate as well.) The accompanying discussion and review thread historically gets filled up with reader feedback on the stories along with constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement — many participants, including myself, consider this the real core of the Writeoff experience, and the competition a sideshow. Posting reviews of the stories that you read on your slate is not mandatory, but strongly encouraged.
One note: Writeoff head RogerDodger has indicated that there will be an option to unpublish your story after the competition is over. (I know that's a big deal if you have plans to later edit and sell your story.)
Why you might want to enter the Writeoffs:
- To force yourself to create a story in a tight time limit.
- To get a range of reactions and advice from thoughtful fellow authors on that story's strengths and weaknesses.
- To quickly expose yourself to a broad variety of writing styles and qualities (as well as critique on those styles), learning from others' successes and mistakes. Seriously, it's like a writing workshop.
- Internet points.
- The world will end if you don't earn $15.00 in the next two weeks, and you're too proud for Patreon.
Why you might not want to enter the Writeoffs:
- You have a social life. 
(It's not THAT bad, really, it just turns about one week per month very writing-focused.)
- You don't feel you can do good work on a deadline. (Everyone entering has the same problem — you'll do better than you think. But the time limit has provoked some debate in the past and isn't likely to change.)
- The stress of your writing being judged. We're required to maintain anonymity until it's over — it can be difficult to watch people misunderstand your story and not be able to speak up to defend it until later.
But I've been doing this for over a year now and still enjoy it! It's been a fantastic crucible for my writing. Happy to answer questions about it!
Writeoff website * FIMFiction group * Contest discussion thread
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Really hoping I can get time to enter this one. Torn about what genres to consider, though. If I go with SF/F and it turns out well, it'd be fun to try shopping something around. I don't know that I actually want to limit myself to SF/F, though.
I'm not not not not not not not not not not not not going to enter.
There. That should be sufficiently obfuscating that no one figures out whether I'm in or not. Anonymity!
Payday today yay
I have absolutely no creativity when it comes to things I have to make up :C I need that base to start on, that stable foundation from which to build my skyscrapers! You can't expect me to make towers out of dust
Though, it is significantly easier to make dust of towers.
Maybe next MLP event, I'll get back into it, it's been too long, I miss the Writeoff crew
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You are going to enter, I counted. :V Not that I needed to...
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Should have added more nots...Ah, I mean,maybe I miscounted, it's not like my name isoh, shoot, it is, uh--Smokebomb!
I'm of divided opinion. On one hand, I really really want an original fiction write-off, to generate original stories, for an anthology by ponyfiction writers.
On the other hand, Roger's short writeoff time periods result in half-baked stories. And then, after the story has sat for a month, the authors are hardly ever willing to change them.
I'd meant to start my own writeoffs, with a long enough writing time that people could write good stories. But the Perl code that the writeoff uses is damned complicated. (Not Roger's fault. The Catalyst framework is really weird. Clever, but there's no good documentation of it.) Now I can't do that.
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You say "limit" yourself to SFF as if it isn't objectively the coolest genre.
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I hear you there. I liked your plans and I still want to see that succeed. Ultimately, I think this is a step in the right direction, even if it's not the perfect one, and I don't think it's time to give up.
First of all, at least this gives ponyfic authors a direct community-linked incentive to write original fiction in general, which will increase the output of the type of story you'd like in your anthology (questions of quality aside). This might give you the opportunity to cherry-pick from among the stories which you thought were already well-executed, or express interest and give authors a genuine incentive to edit to the standards you'd like to see. And unless you've burned your bridges with Roger, you could check with him about pre-empting one round of the Writeoff for the sort of competition you'd like to see. The "polished" round wasn't added to the regular rotation, but I bet there would be a lot of interest in a one-time or time-limited special event, especially if it had a built-in pitch like "Winners of this round will be collected into a book for publication".
Without disagreeing, I think that's a problem orthogonal to the Writeoffs.