[Apr 2016] - The Last Contest - Discussion Thread

[JMack]

I was about to freak out. I just got here and what? I really was about to get upset, waiting for this one because I couldn't come up with an idea for the last one. You got me. Time to start brainstorming!

It's great to have new members for the writing contest!

[eclipse]

I'm actually struggling to come up with an idea... It's a broad topic, where you could go biopunk, cyberpunk, steampunk, post apocalyptic, anything so long as it's bad and in the future.

So here you go @Eclipse, found you a poe based one to tune up to my standards :




 

It's good to see the balance restored in the world 

[Henry Dale]

Nearing the end of my entry now and I feel it has strayed a bit far from the subject. Maybe if you bend your mind a bit, you can say it's somehow very negative/distopian. Oh, and it's totally not scifi or fantasy...
Maybe I need to review my entry/have it reviewed before I actually enter

[ScarletBea]

Nearing the end of my entry now and I feel it has strayed a bit far from the subject. Maybe if you bend your mind a bit, you can say it's somehow very negative/distopian. Oh, and it's totally not scifi or fantasy...
Maybe I need to review my entry/have it reviewed before I actually enter

Yes, maybe

[Nora]

Well, this contest isn't only SF/F is it? We often submit things that are more under the realm of the wider "speculative fiction", no?
I mean, nightmare for example had stories that were fantasy (like the first one) and other purely speculative, like my own...

[xiagan]

The division into (sub)genres is helpful for marketing and for recommendations, but never for writers.
So if the contest theme isn't specifically a genre (SF, grimdark, ...), you are free to write what your inspiration makes you write. If it is way too far away from F/SF, the voters will let you know.

[Henry Dale]

The division into (sub)genres is helpful for marketing and for recommendations, but never for writers.
So if the contest theme isn't specifically a genre (SF, grimdark, ...), you are free to write what your inspiration makes you write. If it is way too far away from F/SF, the voters will let you know.

Awesomesauce, going for the finish line in that case.

[Henry Dale]

Double post, but hey *cheers* I'm in.
It's a hell weird depressing story but I like standing out from the crowd

[Blackthorn]

Having a hard time making my idea seem dystopian instead of post apocalyptic. It seems like the two are so similar to one another that it comes out all wrong.

Anyone else having this issue?

[Nora]

That's normal I think. Dystopian is a bad form of society. So it can be many things. It can be cyberpunk, biopunk (what I'm going for), post-apocalyptic, or pure speculative fiction... So long as you give a view of how society works and is bad, you should be in the theme. At least as far as I understand it. 

[Blackthorn]

That makes sense. I was under the assumption that to be dystopian the society was supposed to be bad  because of  pollution or government  involvement.

My idea has a bad society but it is distinctly lacking much society at all if that makes sense.  So it seems like I some natural  disaster caused an apocalypse because I can't figure out a reason for society to be awful. The story just  says it is awful and doesn't elaborate as to why.

[Nora]

You could give inner examples.

In various Dystopian books, society is bad in more or less subtle ways : reading is forbidden, having children is forbidden, any human or animal or plant that doesn't fit the perfect image is to be killed without reproducing (that's an anti-mutant solution in a post nuclear apocalypse book), in brave new world the image of the family is seen as repulsive, kids are grown in factories, and people are drugged up for happiness, in soylent green,

Spoiler for Hiden:

people are so over packed the MC walks over dozen of them living on his appartment's stairs to get home, and the food they're fed by gvt is made out of people, dead of whatever cause but also harvested during the frenzies that occur during Soylent distrubtion

I reckon you can just pick a couple of things you think are nasty and weave them in your story?

If you don't have much of a society, it could be a return to brutal tribalism with the tough guys taking power and enforcing some nasty rules?

[Blackthorn]

If you don't have much of a society, it could be a return to brutal tribalism with the tough guys taking power and enforcing some nasty rules?

That is pretty much what im going for....depending on if I go with an action scene or not. It just gives me an end of the world feeling. But Ill just go with it and let everyone else decide if it fits their idea of dystopia.

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[Nora]

If you don't have much of a society, it could be a return to brutal tribalism with the tough guys taking power and enforcing some nasty rules?

That is pretty much what im going for....depending on if I go with an action scene or not. It just gives me an end of the world feeling. But Ill just go with it and let everyone else decide if it fits their idea of dystopia.

That's the game isn't it? 

I'm listening to Ghost In The Shell's OST as I write, and it puts me in the best writing mood, I might be done by today. My world is very much akin to it too, cyborg heavy.

[Blackthorn]

Well my submission is in the works now and im afraid it is going to grow In to a much larger work.
As though I need more half baked projects