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VOTE! Apocalypse Writing Contest

Your favorite story

  • A Brief Convo

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Ark Knight

    Votes: 2 13.3%

  • Community

    Votes: 4 26.7%

  • Desolate Fears

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Devil in the Detail

    Votes: 1 6.7%

  • Lycaon

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The Long Walk

    Votes: 6 40.0%

  • The Ultimate Revenge

    Votes: 2 13.3%
  • Total voters
    15
  • Poll closed .
mealstrom

mealstrom

Star
Registered
Assassin216 hosted an AWESOME idea for a contest. Here are the entrants. Even I don't know who wrote what (I intentionally ignored the names when I downloaded them) so they are in whatever order they ended up on my hard drive.

Remember that to participate in future contests you have to critique in contests you're not a part of.

Enjoy the following fire dropped by our BGOL fam!

A Brief Convo
Ark Knight
Community
Desolate Fears
Devil in the Detail
Lycaon
The Long Walk
The Ultimate Revenge

First Prize:
write_gold.gif
The Long Walk - Future2001
Second Prize:
write_silver.gif
Community - Damian Stone
Third Prize:
write_bronze.gif
ArkKnight - Echelon and The Ultimate Revenge - godofwine
 
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Not tryin to jinx but its pretty well assurred a 3 day poll will prolly net another 15-20 vote count.

Not hatin just statin.

As for me...lemme get out my reading glasses...props to the authors.
 
Lesane Crooks said:
Not tryin to jinx but its pretty well assurred a 3 day poll will prolly net another 15-20 vote count.

Not hatin just statin.

As for me...lemme get out my reading glasses...props to the authors.
Click to expand...

Assassin wanted the voting to end Thursday night, that's why I set it. They all gotta end some time and I get the feeling that anyone who hasn't voted within the first 3 days probably won't vote in 5 or 7.

Of course I've been wrong plenty of times so I definitely don't mind redoing the thread with a longer poll if Assassin is up for it. :cool:
 
I have a lot of reading to do. Glad to see this out. Can one of the mods make it a sticky for a few days?
 
mealstrom said:
Assassin wanted the voting to end Thursday night, that's why I set it. They all gotta end some time and I get the feeling that anyone who hasn't voted within the first 3 days probably won't vote in 5 or 7.

Of course I've been wrong plenty of times so I definitely don't mind redoing the thread with a longer poll if Assassin is up for it. :cool:
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Its all good. Prolly best to leave it as is. Maybe for future polls.. :dunno:

I just still have that feeling that some might put off voting until they read them all and that leaves only a select core of us interested enough to read them all in that time frame. Im already thru the first 2 so ill prolly be done in a couple hours..

I am just hoping for a more well rounded feedback this time around. I hope all my pessimism is proven wrong frankly.

Even still prolly a good idea to get on that sticky pronto.
 
Hey all, there's something I didn't think about: Colin Powell syndrome makes most people stop reading after the first few stories. Since these are in alphabetical order that can be bad for the people who's stories are at the end.

So to make these contests what they should be everyone PLEASE read all the stories. I'm going to start at the bottom story and work my way up.

As far as critiques go:
Since I don't want to influence any decisions early in the game I'm going to start writing critiques and saving them on my computer. Then on Wednesday or Thursday I'll post all my critiques. To be fair to everyone who put in so much work I'm going to critique each and every story. Some may not be long if there's not much to say about it, but there'll be something about each story.

A few things I'm going to be using for voting criteria (these are going to be the criteria for all my critiques and voting on all contests):
1. Spelling and grammar - we all have spell checkers on our computer. If you have a lot of accidental spelling or grammar errors it automatically drops your score a bit.

2. How well you stuck to the theme - if it drifts away from the theme a lot I'm going to vote it lower than one that stuck to the theme.

3. Originality/Coolness - I love a story that is original or creative or just makes me think "God damn, that is a cool story idea!" If it's original and creative it's automatically going to get a higher score for me.

4. How well it draws me in - This one is self explanatory.

I'm sure everyone will have their own, but those are the things I like to see in stories.
 
Lesane Crooks said:
Its all good. Prolly best to leave it as is. Maybe for future polls.. :dunno:
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That's actually a great idea. I think for my next contest I'm going to have a longer voting period to see if it gets more people in. I think I'm also going to allow multiple votes so people can vote for their 3 favorites.
 
mealstrom said:
That's actually a great idea. I think for my next contest I'm going to have a longer voting period to see if it gets more people in. I think I'm also going to allow multiple votes so people can vote for their 3 favorites.
Click to expand...

Maybe not 3. Maybe two (is there something that would keep people from voting for a single one 3 times), but 3 is too many.
 
Excellent stories.

Torn between two.


I hope I can get my reviews out in a timely fashion this time. I wrote them for the last contest and never even got around to posting em.
 
Dayum these stories are very good....it's gonna be hard to pick my favorite :smh:

Thanx Mealstrom for help me out really I appreciate it :yes:
 
nice... reading now... the competition is fierce... we have some talented writers on board... now to pull out my red pen...

evil grin.
 
godofwine said:
You can still post them. Go right ahead.
Click to expand...

c/s

Looks like everyone has stepped up their game this contest! Lots of good stuff. Can't wait until we can start talking about the stories. Still haven't voted yet - I want to finish them all first.


EDIT: Does anyone know how the multiple voting works? I would like to experiment with it for my next contest so I was wondering if anyone here has used it. Maybe I need to start a sample thread just to see how it goes.
 
I started reading the stories at random... didn't want to burn myself out and not read some of the bottom stories...

Read all the stories.... Critique all the stories...
 
mealstrom said:
c/s

Looks like everyone has stepped up their game this contest! Lots of good stuff. Can't wait until we can start talking about the stories. Still haven't voted yet - I want to finish them all first.


EDIT: Does anyone know how the multiple voting works? I would like to experiment with it for my next contest so I was wondering if anyone here has used it. Maybe I need to start a sample thread just to see how it goes.
Click to expand...

The best way to test multiple voting is to start a poll on the main board about anything. "Which of these girls are hotter? Chick a, b, c, or d?" You can test it yourself by voting on girl A twice or 3 times. If you can vote for the same girl 3 times, multiple voting probably wouldn't be the best thing to do on this board. We'd have one story with 10 votes and another story with none.
 
Whoever wrote Community did a really good job :yes:

My only criticism is the readability....should of indented each paragraph other than that it was good

Congrats


This should be sticky.......imo
 
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future2001 said:
Not a dig against anyone but some of you didn't proofread...
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I proofread a ton of times. The first two times I came up with small spelling errors like words missing an S or words that were misspelled but were actually words so spell check didn't catch it mar instead of mark. Just small stuff. I need to get my laptop cleaned. Some of the buttons don't register when I type. I would get a new one, but I would have to get one with Vista so I am holding out. I'm glad I didn't wait until the end this time. I was basically done in the first two days. I spent the rest trying to shrink it.
 
future2001 said:
is the narrator in lycaon a little kid?
Click to expand...

Nope,Lycaon is the name of my book,Im planning on writing 5 books on it if not less depending if I have alot of ideas which I do but it takes place 50 years after the events the final book...


Sorry I didnt give too much information but I wanted to keep that for the books...I originally had seven pages but got rid of them...:smh::smh::smh:

I got the most of the books mapped out already..

Currently working on it now....btw
 
nice... just asking... there was alot of "you see this"... "you see that" in the story... gave a little kid feel.

and I don't blame ya for keeping your books underwraps... its too easy for the human mind to use things it remembers for other things...
 
future2001 said:
nice... just asking... there was alot of "you see this"... "you see that" in the story... gave a little kid feel.

and I don't blame ya for keeping your books underwraps... its too easy for the human mind to use things it remembers for other things...
Click to expand...

I'm going to revise it and make it a bonus later on...I'm disappointed how it turned out I may put some of the stuff I had back into the story.
 
What happened to 1-3 pages :dunno:

About 50 single spaced pages to read here, only one person actually stayed within the parameters...
 
I breezed through all of them quickly last night. I'm going to go over them all again, though, hopefully tonight. All the stories are unique and original, but 3 of them immediately hit me, to the point of saying "damn, that's good". Making a final decision will not be easy. Awesome!
 
Don't mean to be negative but this is why we need to limit the entries to 4 every week, seems counter-intuitive but it is actually a win-win

I feel like the no child left behind mentality is going to be a breeding ground for mediocrity in the field of review, critique as well as story quality..Know your audience I think this is called "pathos"

This is just my opinion

mealstrom said:
Hey all, there's something I didn't think about: Colin Powell syndrome makes most people stop reading after the first few stories. Since these are in alphabetical order that can be bad for the people who's stories are at the end.

So to make these contests what they should be everyone PLEASE read all the stories. I'm going to start at the bottom story and work my way up.

As far as critiques go:
Since I don't want to influence any decisions early in the game I'm going to start writing critiques and saving them on my computer. Then on Wednesday or Thursday I'll post all my critiques. To be fair to everyone who put in so much work I'm going to critique each and every story. Some may not be long if there's not much to say about it, but there'll be something about each story.

A few things I'm going to be using for voting criteria (these are going to be the criteria for all my critiques and voting on all contests):
1. Spelling and grammar - we all have spell checkers on our computer. If you have a lot of accidental spelling or grammar errors it automatically drops your score a bit.

2. How well you stuck to the theme - if it drifts away from the theme a lot I'm going to vote it lower than one that stuck to the theme.

3. Originality/Coolness - I love a story that is original or creative or just makes me think "God damn, that is a cool story idea!" If it's original and creative it's automatically going to get a higher score for me.

4. How well it draws me in - This one is self explanatory.

I'm sure everyone will have their own, but those are the things I like to see in stories.
Click to expand...

Again don't want to be divisive maybe not my place BUT I don't think you should be putting this voting criteria numbered list up and announce that you are saving your critiques...I think people need to get critiques in early too much emphasis I feel is on the voting

Maybe I alone feel like this, but now I am on the sidelines looking in this is what I see
 
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you can't have a page limit and a word limit that exceeds it. Most of us went by the word limit... three pages won't contain 2500 words...
 
I got all 7 stories open on my browser right now. I won't vote for my own story so I'm re reading each story and seeing which grabs me.

Style and Grammar... Coolness... Sticking to the script... and over all is there even a story there... will grab my vote...

not gonna rush the vote...
 
3 pages wouldn't contain my story as I wrote it. I did it kind of like how it would be done in a book with the paragraphs and all. I wanted to make it more readable. If everything runs together to makes it very difficult to read and many times people give up.
 
Les W said:
Don't mean to be negative but this is why we need to limit the entries to 4 every week, seems counter-intuitive but it is actually a win-win
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The only problem with this is that if only 4 people can enter per contest then a lot of people are going to stop even trying. Look at how many people get left out of the contests now - if even more got left out then more and more people would start to get less and less interested. IMO the answer is to get BGOL used to reading more, not cater to those that don't read.

I think a big problem this time around is people just plain not sticking to the limit. If people are expecting to read 1500 words or so, but then get double that then they're going to lose interest. It's also my PERSONAL opinion that if you can't keep your story within the contest limits then you either chose an idea that's too big for you are proving you don't have the writing skills to refine your product to the contest size.

Les W said:
Again don't want to be divisive maybe not my place BUT I don't think you should be putting this voting criteria numbered list up and announce that you are saving your critiques...I think people need to get critiques in early too much emphasis I feel is on the voting

Maybe I alone feel like this, but now I am on the sidelines looking in this is what I see
Click to expand...

I can't win for losing! Last contest I didn't post my voting criteria and got reviews out the first day. I got a lot of PMs telling me why I was wrong for both of those and that I needed to delete my posts until a few days later. Now I post my voting criteria and wait a few days to post my reviews and I get the same thing. :lol:

I know you're just giving your opinion Les and it's all good. There's nothing wrong with it. But there's no way to please everyone. So I want it known up front what I'm going to be looking at with the stories, so that way when I post my reviews/critiques people can see why I voted the way I did. I encourage everyone else to post their criteria too.



The great thing about this is we're all going to have different ways of doing things and different things that are important to us with the stories. That means every contest is fair when it comes to the winners. We all have our own ways of voting, critiquing, writing, etc. I will read the stories, I'll put in my vote, and I'll write my critiques. It'll all get done eventually in whatever order I have time to get them done.
 

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