Art:Author's Author Deathmatch
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Introduction
What is an Author's Author? Sort of like a Man's Man, only more literary (and less homoerotic). An Author's Author brings tears, laughter, and knowledge to their readers. An Author's Author has mastered short, medium, and long fiction, and spins convincing tales with each. An Author's Author can turn any story into solid gold, can help us transcend space and time, and can, with a few short words on a page, change the reader forever. An Author's Author is adept in any genre, however obscure, esoteric, or overdone. An Author's Author is the epitomy of literary strength, experience, and chutzpa. And one very lucky Author's Author will walk away from this event with a shoulder friend to call their own, amongst other goodies. There's just one question for you to answer: do you dare compete?
Basic Description
The Author's Author Deathmatch (or AADM) will happen in three rounds:
- Shorts (either Bulwer-Lyttony, or nanofiction)
- Mediums (short stories, plain and simple)
- Longs (novellas)
The only rule? Your story has to be about pirates. Not necessarily Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, and not necessarily an adventure story, but within the general theme of "the golden age of piracy". Of course, there will be a few twists and turns along the way, just to keep you on your toes. :)
A word on inclusions
You are expected to "build" on the story given to you. You are not expected, nor required, to write exactly the same story. Add new events, add new characters, add subplots and exotic settings. How "true" your product will be to the source material is entirely up to you: you may wish, for example, to include the short story in your novella verbatim, as the first (or first several) "chapters". On the other hand, you may wish to only make vague allusions to, or exclude altogether, the occurances and events from the earlier works. This is entirely up to you and at your discretion. The exception to this rule is if your story so far includes Bulwer-Lyttony. If it came from Bulwer-Lyttony, your entry must start with the Bulwer-Lyttony component, verbatim.
Wordcounters
JudgeBot includes a built-in word counter. If you believe JudgeBot's word counter is in error, please PM me your entry and I may add it manually.
Shorts
Shorts: Bulwer-Lyttony
If you choose Bulwer-Lyttony for your Short entry, you have a simple task: write the opening line to a story. You see, Edward Bulwer-Lytton isn't an especially important or notable novelist, but he did give us one thing: the words "It was a dark and stormy night." You're out to repeat his task. You can use as many letters and words as you like, but your entry absolutely must be one single and gramatically-valid sentence.
Shorts: Nanofiction
The other option for the Shorts round is to attempt nanofiction. This is both more flexible and more restrictive than Bulwer-Lyttony. See, if you do nanofiction, you get 99 words to use as you see fit, and not a contraction more. You can have as many sentences as you like. You can have as many characters as you like. You can include dialogue. Whatever. Just keep it to 99 words or less.
Shorts: How to Enter!
Shorts will be accepted from the 4th of November through to the 18th of November. To submit a short, go to the JudgeBot interface and follow the directions. Please use your forum username when you are prompted for one so we can PM you further instructions if you move onto a subsequent round!
Shorts: Judging
Entries will be judged through judgebot. Only the entry's title, type and text will be shown to the judges. Your username and other information will be kept private. Each judge will assess each entry on a general scale from 0-5. The top 30-40 entries (depending on how scoring breaks down, and aiming for as close to 35 as possible) will advance to the Mediums round.
Shorts: Corrections
When you submit your Short, you will be asked to enter a username and a password. Remember this password: the password is how you will edit your entry down the line if you wish to do so. You can edit your entry at any point up until when judging starts (about a week into the first round), whereupon editing will be disabled.
Mediums: Short Stories
Short stories are something of an old YPP chestnut: fully half the writing contests run fall into this vague category. For our purposes, your short story should be 1500-4000 words long. Beyond that, it's completely up to you.
Mediums: A word on endings
Completeness is a fickle thing. Y'see, if your short story doesn't have an ending, it leaves something to be desired. While it's definitely possible to write around this, and some excellent writings have been produced to that end, it's not something I expect you to accomplish. So, let me state unequivocally, you are allowed to finish your short story. However, remember collective responsibility. If your story shafts the person who picks it up into an awkward or unfortunate position, that wasn't a very nice thing to do. If you're a very nice person, you'll leave a flexible ending, perhaps making it more like the ending to a chapter in a novel(la) instead of the ending of a story. If everyone behaves very nicely in this fashion, it just serves everyone in the long term, doesn't it?
If you do get stuck with a story with a rather complete conclusion when the time comes to assemble your novella, don't worry too much. Remember, nothing has to be chronologically sound: you can re-arrange events, and you get to add literally thousands and thousands of words between the beginning and the end. The judges will be instructed to consider the short story when judging the novella, but 40 000 words provides a lot of room to maneouver, especially when the base material may be as short as 1500.
Mediums: Timing, Judging & Special Instructions
Starting in this round of play, you are no longer writing your own story. Everyone who moves onto the second round will instead be assigned someone else's first-round submission, and have to rewrite and continue the story that's already developed. This is decidedly evil, but should be very effective at preventing people from "writing ahead".
For this round of play, you will have three weeks to write your entry, and it will be judged, by each judge, with the following criteria:
- Up to 25 points for authorship (Is it a good story, overall? Is it enjoyable to read? Would you read this story for pleasure?)
- Up to 10 points for nitpicking (Starting at 10 points, take off one or two for especially glaring or painful errors or segments.)
- Up to 10 points for creativity (Did you see that coming? Is the author taking you places you never thought you'd be?)
- Up to 5 points for technical elements (Spelling, grammar, paragraph structure, etc.)
The top 4-5 scoring entries (depending, again, on how scoring breaks down) will move onto the Longs round. If there is a tie, I (PTG) will add single points to the scoring totals to determine who moves on.
Longs: Novellas
Ah, the novella. Novellas are about halfway between a short story and a full novel, and in our case will be 15 000-40 000 words long. (Yes, that's four zeroes.)
Longs: Timing, Judging & Special Instructions
Same deal as Mediums: you're writing someone else's story. Yet again, you will be assigned someone else's work from the Mediums round and expected to develop and build upon it. Stretch it, mould it, tear it apart, shatter it into a thousand pieces and glue them back together.
For this round of play, you will have as long as you need to write your entry (Ideally in the neighbourhood of 5-8 weeks. If one entrant is straggling and holding the rest back, the host reserves the right to set a firm deadline and guillotine any entrants who don't have stuff in yet. This firm deadline will be at least 8 weeks from start of round.) It will be judged on the following criteria:
- Up to 75 points for authorship. (Did you like the story? Was the ending satisfying? Does it flow well? Is the style of prose enjoyable or grating? Did you want to keep reading, or were you tempted to print the story out and keep yourself in toilet paper for a month? How well did the author use vocabulary? Was it in any way repetitive? Did it feel like a story?)
- Up to 15 points for nitpicking. (Starting at 15 points total, deduct points for things you found particularly glaringly missing or wrong with the story. Please consider length: there will be more nitpick-fodder in a longer story than a shorter one, and adjust your judging accordingly.)
- Up to 30 points for creativity. (Consider the story and characters in a vacuum. Are they original and meaningful, or trite and contrived? Did the author just phone in their story, or did they put a lot of effort into undercurrents and come up with important things to say?)
- Up to 20 points for inclusion of Shorts and Mediums elements. (How well has this story progressed from Shorts to Mediums to Longs? Do you feel the author's made a good job of incorporating the elements? Are they flowing and flush with the rest of the story, are they thrown in as an afterthought, or are they ignored altogether?)
- Up to 10 points for technical elements. (Spelling, grammar, formatting, correct use of words, flow, etc.)
The top scorer will win the day, and the prizes. If there is a tie, the judges will be given one additional point to assign to either story to hopefully break the tie. If there continues to be a tie, I (PTG) will break it.
Prizes!
Prizes are far from set in stone. I intend to explore "story-appropiate prizes" with the OMs, for the top end of the spectrum. (At least the top 5, hopefully as deep as the top 10. If you complete a novella, you deserve something substantial, and even just short stories, at this level of play, represent signifigant achievements unto themselves.)
However, I can say the following:
- Everyone who makes the Mediums cut will receive a tasteful Navy-Grey ribbon trinket, in recognition of their achievements and contributions to literary life.
- Everyone who ascends to the Longs round will receive, instead of a plain old ribbon, a Maroon-Purple fancy ribbon, in recognition of the bloodsport nature of the deathmatch.
- The ultimate winner, in addition to their "story-appropriate" prize, will walk away with a red octopus familiar.
Quitters Don't Win
Regretfully, I must set in place the following rule: if you fail to complete any round of competition, you are inelegible for any prizes, including those you have already "earned". That is to say, if you win a plain ribbon for moving onto the Mediums, but you don't complete the Mediums round, then... no ribbon for you. You must contest every round you're elegible for, or you forfeit all prizes.
