APRIL 2012 CHALLENGE - "Abandoned"

[Angry Fanboy]

To begin, thank you so much to everyone who had a hand in my winning the March writing challenge on my first attempt, it really is a bit of a Cinderella story and I'm extremely grateful to people for their votes and their praise. Special thanks to JESPAH and MILO BLOOM for giving me something to compete with!

I've chosen "Abandoned" as the theme for the April challenge, hopefully keeping things deliberately vague in order to provide anyone wishing to enter with sufficient scope that they wish to take part.

An abandoned starship, Starfleet or otherwise. An abandoned space station. Perhaps an abandoned planet home to vast unoccupied cities. An ancient abandoned artefact floating in space. An abandoned person. A Starfleet officer left behind. Who knows!

I won't bore you with any rules as such, obviously it must be Star Trek but other than that I certainly won't get too autocratic with people willing to spend their time and effort writing a piece for a challenge I've set.

Shall we say the end of Monday 30th April as the deadline?

Thanks in advance to anyone wishing to enter!gl

 

[Count Zero]

Well, I hope this will find some takers. The theme certainly offers a lot of possibilities. One more thing: you should probably add what timezone you mean when you say te end of April 30th.

 

[jespah]

It was great fun and a well-deserved win, Angry Fanboy.

On to the next one!

 

[Darrell Pitt]

Hi all! I'm new around this section of the quadrant. How many words should the piece of writing be?

 

[Angry Fanboy]

The end of the 30th April in whatever timezone people may be is fine with me, COUNT ZERO, I'm not too worried.

DARYLL PITT you can make it as many or as few words as you wish if you're willing to put the time in and enter.

Shall we say more than a hundred and less than a hundred thousand?

 

[Count Zero]

By the way, don't forget to post your story in the winning entries thread stickied at the top of this forum, Angry Fanboy.

 

[Darrell Pitt]

The end of the 30th April in whatever timezone people may be is fine with me, COUNT ZERO, I'm not too worried.

DARYLL PITT you can make it as many or as few words as you wish if you're willing to put the time in and enter.

Shall we say more than a hundred and less than a hundred thousand?

lol that allows for some scope, I suppose.

 

[Supernuke]

Looking forward to contributing to this one!

 

[Gul Re'jal]

I think some maximum word limit should be imposed. If you get too many too long stories, there might not be time to read them or read them all for the voting.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I cannot recall a TrekBBS contest without a word limit.

 

[Sandoval]

So even though virtually every monthly challenge only garners two or three entries of a couple of thousand words, because no word limit has been imposed for this one we will suddenly be inundated with so many 50,000 plus word novels that there won't be sufficient time to read them all?

Does that even seem remotely realistic?

The drama queens in here...

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

So even though virtually every monthly challenge only garners two or three entries of a couple of thousand words, because no word limit has been imposed for this one we will suddenly be inundated with so many 50,000 plus word novels that there won't be sufficient time to read them all?

Does that even seem remotely realistic?

The drama queens in here...

I have a 93,000 word story that could be said to be about abandonment. Unfortunately however it's already posted here.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

So even though virtually every monthly challenge only garners two or three entries of a couple of thousand words, because no word limit has been imposed for this one we will suddenly be inundated with so many 50,000 plus word novels that there won't be sufficient time to read them all?

Does that even seem remotely realistic?

The drama queens in here...

Even one 50K word story would be too long to read fast, unless someone has whole days off. And believe me, I've seen an entry for a challenge at another place that could qualify for a short novel. I've seen it happen, so I think it's better to prevent it. If I haven't seen it, it probably wouldn't even occur to me to think it could happen

 

[Count Zero]

The drama queens in here...

Please tone it down. This is needlessly bordering on a personal attack. I think we're able to discuss this rationally.

I'm pretty sure there have been challenges without word limits before. Mine didn't have any - unless I'm totally misremembering it.

 

[Admiral2]

I'm pretty sure there have been challenges without word limits before. Mine didn't have any - unless I'm totally misremembering it.

That's entirely possible. I don't remember one without word limits myself, but I haven't entered every contest.

So even though virtually every monthly challenge only garners two or three entries of a couple of thousand words, because no word limit has been imposed for this one we will suddenly be inundated with so many 50,000 plus word novels that there won't be sufficient time to read them all?

Does that even seem remotely realistic?

First, there was a time when these contests got as many as twelve entries, and I firmly believe one of the factors in the loss of entries is the ever increasing word limit. Fan fiction writers will use all the room you give them. Give them 3000 words, most will write 3500 and beg forgiveness. Give 'em five thousand, they'll write 6000. Give 'em 10,000, they'll write 11,500. If you leave the word count open-ended, it's entirely possible that whatever entries you do get will be between 20,000 and 50,000 words, and all the contestants will say is "But there was no word limit!"

This is about psychology. The entrants will try to meet the word limit, but doing so causes it's own problems. Many of the writers here have their own running fan series, and many of their chapters require a chunk of their free time to write, so they see a 10,000 word limit as a goal they have no time to meet. They won't think, "I can write 3000 words and be under the limit." They'll think, "I'm too busy to dedicate 10,000 words to a contest story." I'm not saying it's logical. It just is. We're not Vulcans.

Personally, I'd like to see the contests get back to 3500 and 5000 word limits because the other point is perfectly valid. There are some readers who won't even look at the stories until voting time, then read all of them in a bunch before making their decisions. Even if you only get two 50,000 word entries, that leaves the judges reading the equivalent of a moderate-sized book before they even go near the poll. That means the poll has to be set up for days at a time, leaving us always starting the next contest late. I find that asinine.

The drama queens in here...

On this issue, I'm with them. Call me what you like.

 

[Count Zero]

There are some readers who won't even look at the stories until voting time, then read all of them in a bunch before making their decisions. Even if you only get two 50,000 word entries, that leaves the judges reading the equivalent of a moderate-sized book before they even go near the poll. That means the poll has to be set up for days at a time, leaving us always starting the next contest late. I find that asinine.

I think it's pretty much self-regulating. If your entry is way too long people won't read it and you won't get many or any votes. So, it's in any author's own interest to write a story that's of reasonable length.
Of course, if someone's interested in making the creative challenge also about being especially short and to the point, they're free to do so when they set the challenge. We once had a challenge where we were supposed to write only an extremely short piece (I think the limit was 100 words). But I don't think we need a word limit for its own sake.

 

[Sandoval]

Okay, let's try to do this in stages...

First, there was a time when these contests got as many as twelve entries, and I firmly believe one of the factors in the loss of entries is the ever increasing word limit.

Regardless of 'there was a time when...", contests these days almost invariably have only three or four entries. No disrespect to Angry Fanboy, but this one will be no different and 'abandoned' as a concept will not prompt a dozen entries.

Fan fiction writers will use all the room you give them. Give them 3000 words, most will write 3500 and beg forgiveness. Give 'em five thousand, they'll write 6000. Give 'em 10,000, they'll write 11,500.

The last contest had a word limit of 10,000. Two of the three entries were 1,700 and 3,000 words.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusion about the accuracy of your statement.

If you leave the word count open-ended, it's entirely possible that whatever entries you do get will be between 20,000 and 50,000 words, and all the contestants will say is "But there was no word limit!"

Again, taking the last challenge as an example, a 10,000 word limit garnered one 10,000 word entry, a 3,000 word entry and a 1,700 word entry.

The overriding factors limiting these 50,000 word novellas that you so fear are the time and effort people are willing to expend, not the word count imposed.

This is about psychology. The entrants will try to meet the word limit, but doing so causes it's own problems.

As above, most will not try to meet the word limit, and it isn't about psychology.

Personally, I'd like to see the contests get back to 3500 and 5000 word limits because the other point is perfectly valid.

Win a challenge and you can impose the word limit. Angry Fanboy won this challenge, so he gets to chose.

There are some readers who won't even look at the stories until voting time, then read all of them in a bunch before making their decisions. Even if you only get two 50,000 word entries, that leaves the judges reading the equivalent of a moderate-sized book before they even go near the poll. That means the poll has to be set up for days at a time, leaving us always starting the next contest late. I find that asinine.

So don't read the challenge entries you don't want to read.

The simple solution here is that if you consider them excessively long, don't expend your time reading them.

The drama queens in here...

On this issue, I'm with them. Call me what you like.

If the cap fits...

 

[Saito S]

Been a while since I posted in here - things have gotten a bit crazy for me lately, as I sort of figured they would. Though the "what if" concept didn't really work for me as a writer, since I don't write the pre-established characters, as a reader (and a Trek fan) I enjoyed the entries, especially Angry Fanboy's. I didn't vote because I just wasn't visiting this forum at the right time due to being so busy (I actually read all the entries after the voting closed), but he won anyway so it doesn't really matter. "Abandoned", hm... I might be able to put something together, the ideas are swirling a bit...

I think Count Zero is basically right, in that if someone really DOES write a 50k+ length story, there are going to be a number of people who might have voted for it, if only they'd had time to read it. And granted, I don't know the history of these challenges all that well, but based on what I've observed, it doesn't seem all that likely that we'll get very many such stories. Personally, the only time I'd even try to write fifty-thousand words in one month - let alone succeed! - is during NaNoWriMo. I understand why people are saying a max word count is a good idea, but I don't think it's an absolute necessity. Without that max limit to shoot for, I think I'd probably end up somewhere around the 15k-ish range; long, but not insanely so. That said:

Personally, I'd like to see the contests get back to 3500 and 5000 word limits because the other point is perfectly valid. There are some readers who won't even look at the stories until voting time, then read all of them in a bunch before making their decisions. Even if you only get two 50,000 word entries, that leaves the judges reading the equivalent of a moderate-sized book before they even go near the poll.

As I said, I understand the reason for word count limits and have no problem with the contest having one, and each month's winner is free to set whatever limit they want to. But I personally feel the opposite when it comes to the kinds of lengths you are talking about. Anything below 5000, and I probably won't even bother in most cases. That's just not how my inner writer operates. As far as reading, I'm much more likely to enjoy a 3-5k story written by someone else than I am to write my own of that length, but even so, I still think that generally speaking, stories that are a bit longer than that (8k+, at least) simply allow more time to flesh things out and usually make for more compelling reads.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

I think it's pretty much self-regulating. If your entry is way too long people won't read it and you won't get many or any votes. So, it's in any author's own interest to write a story that's of reasonable length.

But if there are more people like me--I haven't read all stories, so I don't vote--then no one gets a vote

 

[Sandoval]

But if there are more people like me--I haven't read all stories, so I don't vote--then no one gets a vote

They do, just not your vote.

So are we all agreed that not having a word-limit for this challenge will not in fact prompt us to be swamped with 100,000 word novels and tear the Fanfic forum asunder?

Good good...