HalcyonSpirit

When my design report goes to hell (aka gets submitted).

Yeah, next up is Poetry for May/June, then Freeform July/August, and back to Short Story in September/October. Every two months another competition starts, and it runs through that order each time. In any case... THE RESULTS ARE IN! 1st Place: Worn-Out Stilettos by Yousef Reda (SoulinEther) Runner-Up: The Puppetmaster by wouldntyouliketoknow Here's the vote spread: Worn-Out Stilettos by Yousef Reda (SoulinEther): 8 The Puppetmaster by wouldntyouliketoknow: 7 Leearjecht by M W: 6 Good job everyone, and congrats to the winners. Only 5 voters this round (including myself), so not exactly the best turnout for both the submission voting stages. Still, it was a good round. Can't stay and chat any longer, sorry. Design project is calling out my ass.

Alright, as of a minute ago, the official voting period has ended. However, I'm unable to count the votes because I'm in the middle of a time-critical assignment. So it looks like there's a few more hours left for you guys. I'll ignore the late timestamps on any PM's from now until I post the results. Oh, and I only have four votes so far. For shame, you guys. For shame.

Two days left to vote! Not including my vote, I've only recieved votes from three people! Where's the participation?!

Nar Shaddaa Streets wouldn't be nearly as annoyingly frustrating if two things were implemented: 1. Those damn snipers (and really all of the AI) needed to be programmed so that they couldn't see through walls. Seriously, they know exactly where you are at all times. The moment you put even a hand out into their line of fire, "Mission Failed Kyle Katarn has died" (You've been vaped by a shot to the hand!). 2. Using the leaning feature (as if you're peeking around a corner) allowed you to fire your weapon. (Side note: I'm not sure why they didn't allow that, but it would've made the game a lot less "run and slash" than it ended up being. The other guns would've gotten a lot more usage even after you got the lightsaber. As it was, there were only a handful of times I used a weapon other than the lightsaber, and it was usually either the E-11 Blaster Rifle or the Disruptor. I never touched any of the more advanced weapons.)

Yeah, I just finished playing through Outcast on Jedi Master difficulty today. Those beginning levels are a lot harder than the later levels. Oh, and the Nar Shaddaa Streets level reached the ranks of Nintendo Hard. Ugh. I'm always tempted to just skip that level every time I play through the game.

Well, with any luck they will, since I'm about to start sending out PMs to authors in this and the previous thread. I think I got everyone that's been active on the forum relatively recently... Not including myself or Imagery (for obvious reasons), it comes to 18 people. I think that's pretty significant for a competition that doesn't see much advertising and is done on a non-writing site. I updated the news section with this PM policy, which has been restated below: "As of this round, I am beginning the practice of PMing authors from previous competitions upon the start of each voting stage. I may do the same for the submission stages in the future; we'll see how the voting stage reminders work out first. If anyone receives a PM from me regarding this and does NOT want me to do so in the future, they can PM me asking to have themselves removed from the list and it will be done." By the way, does anyone know how to get in contact with the banhammered ZeaLity? Also, I changed the minimum entry requirement (again). I think this is the best compromise, and follows what we've done this time: "Competitions, to be viable, must have at least three (3) entries. Additionally, if a minimum of four (4) entries are not submitted before the end of the official submission stage, the submission deadline will automatically be extended one (1) week."

Offline, yes. Sometimes, anyway. College gets in the way a lot, and I only have one opponent right now so matches tend to get... repetitive. I should record a few more matches anyway. See what you guys think.

Sorry guys, nothing from me. Too much technical writing to be done for my design project. I'm also going to change the lower limit for submissions to 3 instead of 4 for the time being. We'll see how it goes; I'll change it back if it doesn't work out. We've got three submissions for this round! Please read them and vote! You have two weeks to do so! The Puppetmaster by wouldntyouliketoknow Leearjecht by M W Worn-Out Stilettos by Yousef Reda (SoulinEther) I'll be sending out PMs to current and former authors as reminders of the voting process in the near future.

1) Added pixie-ad to sig! 2) Will be donating soon; just need my next money-infusion to arrive. (Paying for housing for next year makes my wallet cry!) 3) What did you use to make the ad, Jill? If you still have the original files, I may be able to add that last bit about clicking it if you're too busy to do it yourself right now. Just an offer, if you choose to accept it.

If it was written in the timespan of the current round, there's nothing wrong with having a friend submit something. Naturally, we can't really know if it actually was written during the current round or not unless you say something (or it shows up on a Google search), so we generally go on good faith with regard to that rule. Also, I'm going to see if I can whip something up this weekend. It'll be a stretch to be sure, especially with all the work I still need to do, but I'm going to try!

A bit late, but all things considered it doesn't matter as much... Since we only have 3 entries at the moment, we're extending the submission stage to a week from today. So by 11:59PM on April 9th there needs to be one more entry or else we may need to scrub this round. Anyone think the minimum entry number should be 3 instead of 4? I was thinking about this earlier, and I think it might be better if it was. If it is changed, I'll have it apply to this round as well.

Which can be found here. http://www.global-trance.com/xhtml_djing.php Practically everything on there is good for working out in some form or another.

One week, actually. Don't expect anything from me, though. I've been too busy hunting for jobs and searching for apartments the past two weeks to do anything that isn't college-related. A week or two from now I should have lots of free time, but a week or two from now isn't now.

One week left! One week left until the end of the current round of submissions! Let's get crackin', people! *subtly reveals whip in hands*

Alright, I'm gonna preface this with the fact that I'm currently writing my own novel of sorts, and that everything I learned about writing I learned from experience, not from any classes. An outline is key... to a point. They're good on paper (*ba-dum-tsh*), but they have issues. One such problem with outlines, particularly if you're writing it before you've even started the story, is that they tend to become outdated really, really quickly. Sure, it's nice to know exactly where you're going at all times, and to have everything planned out so that all you really need to do is write the stuff in between, but it almost never works out that way in practice. One reason is because, as you're writing one section, an idea might come to you that works so much better than what you planned already, but completely invalidates a whole bunch of other plans around it. The main reason, though, is that in most novels, the characters are constantly in a state of development and change. You may start off with a good picture of who these characters are, but as the story progresses and they begin to change in response to events in the story, you get deeper into their individual mindsets. You can go so far as to become "one with the character," being able to see things from each individual's perspective. This is great because you can then make their actions that much more believable. It also lets you let them decide their course in the story... and the actions they would logically follow in a given situation often conflicts with what you planned to have happen. In such cases, you generally have to follow either what the character would do or the plan you already have, and doing the latter might require rewriting aspects of the story before and after the event just to make it work within the boundaries of the character's plausible actions. Either way, the outline you had would need to be reworked. I have a general rule of thumb for when I write: plan only two or three chapters ahead, maximum. What this does is allow you to have a course of action that you can aim toward in the writing, but allows you to be flexible enough that a sudden change in direction (caused by either the characters, or you coming up with a brilliant new idea, or both) won't completely screw things up. It also helps prevent you from writing yourself into a corner. Do make a rough sketch of major events that must happen, though. This isn't the same as an outline; rather, what you're doing is coming up with events that shouldn't be affected by the course of the story (such as a natural disaster, or something that happened before the story's present time, etc). You can also include rough ideas for events that do occur with the characters, but do not include details such as who's there, exactly how it turns out, etc. It gives you flexibility in what you end up doing with it, and when exactly it happens, once you finally reach that point in the story. The ending of the story is one such event, and general character backstories are another.

... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF! I knew I forgot something! I'll see what I can do, but I'm in the middle of working on my design project at the moment.

Oh hey guys, the March Short Story round has already begun. HAVE AT IT!

Out of curiosity, how much time do you guys spend playing each week? I'd imagine that being in a corp or alliance would make you obligated to be on fairly often, but I really have no idea...

Oh EVE... how I miss thee... I remember, two summers ago, doing the two-week trial with you and Author. Well, not exactly with you guys... mostly on my own and just chatting with you guys from halfway across the universe. But even so, it was interesting. I wish I could play again, but alas, I have no job and thus no money to spend on monthly subscriptions. Plus no time. It's saddening. What exactly are you doing with your alliance, Schwaltzvald? Like, what's your role?

This. This right here. Merit still played a majority role in my decision, but personal preference was a big factor too this time due to the sheer quality of all the entries. I think the vote would've been even closer than it was had more people actually turned up to vote. Personal preference did play a larger role in this round, a role that could've been canceled out with a large number of votes. So for the entrants who didn't get as many votes, know that your piece was right up there with the winners'.

Well, I'm back, and no more votes have been submitted. Therefore... THE RESULTS ARE IN! 1st Place: Waiting by HalcyonSpirit Runner-Up: Iron Desire by AJiLe Here's the vote spread: Waiting by HalcyonSpirit: 7 Iron Desire by AJiLe: 6 The Solo by Rophell: 5 Girl Stuff by M W: 4 Heaven in a Box by Random Hajile: 4 Twins by Jam Stunna: 3 To Be Human by just64helpin: 2 The Stone by Stove_Top: 2 Congratulations to everyone who participated in this round! I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the entries. There are definitely some quality writers on this forum. AJiLe, congrats on making Runner-Up; your entry was somewhat unique while retaining a bit of simplicity, and I like that in a story. As for the winner... well, shit. Color me surprised. Seriously, I was not expecting my entry to do well at all, let alone win a competition here for me for the first time ever. Thank you, it definitely gives me some more confidence in my own writing. I may actually have time between now and the start of the next competition to do some reviews of these entries. If you would like me to review yours specifically, let me know and I can make it a priority. I can post such reviews in the thread, or you can have me PM you them. Either way, just let me know. Good job everyone! I'm looking forward to the next round!

AnSo, the problem isn't with the board; your browser just hasn't updated the cache yet or something. I had the same problem; doing a hard refresh (Shift+Refresh, I think it was?) solved the problem for me. EDIT: Blast, beaten to the punch.

OK people... I'm disappointed. It's the end of the official voting period, and I've got 5 PMs in my inbox with votes. So I've got 6 votes in total, including mine. One of those votes was from someone who didn't even enter this round, and I know Rophell can't vote because he got ban-hammered. There were 8 entries, so two of you people didn't vote this round. This... is... UNACCEPTABLE!!! *boots them into the pit of writing oblivion* Alright, enough with the dramatics. For those of you who haven't voted yet (and I'm including all you people who didn't enter this round, too), you're in luck. It just so happens that I have a test tomorrow that I need to study for and a job hunt to perform on Tuesday, so chances are I won't be able to count the votes until after that. If you submit your votes before I come back with the results, they will be counted. Just keep in mind that I'm only doing this because I want more votes for this round. Note to self: Next round, send out PMs to all current and former entrants reminding them to vote.

Me too. We should hang out!