[Feb 2016] - Fanfic - Voting Thread

[Eclipse]

I've already voted but I only voted for one story 

How many voted I miss seeing how many people have voted.

[xiagan]

12 users voted so far, btw.

[Eclipse]

12 users voted so far, btw.

So if you take the non writers who have voted it be round about 9 votes from the writers from the 13 submissions naughty writers 

[ScarletBea]

I've already voted but I only voted for one story 

12 users voted so far, btw.

So if everyone had voted for 3 we'd have 36 votes. I only see 31, so several people are like Eclipse and didn't use all of them

[Nora]

It's a hard month. I struggled getting involved with most stories. Besides a couple that were really lovely stories, this month's theme didn't capture my interest.
But so long as all writers vote I'll be happy. 

[m3mnoch]

I've already voted but I only voted for one story 

12 users voted so far, btw.

So if everyone had voted for 3 we'd have 36 votes. I only see 31, so several people are like Eclipse and didn't use all of them

i probably won't use all of mine either.  i've got two to clearly hand out.  but the next tier is like a 6-way tie.  i'm re-reading them all (for a fourth time) to see if i can find something that grabs me or a flaw that i can overlook.  but, in general, the ideas are fabulous!  it's really just parts of the execution that shouldn't really matter that are hanging me up.  i actually feel quite silly about it.

[Henry Dale]

I managed to get three but it required some rereads (and looking up who some of the characters were). Hard month to both write and read.

[tebakutis]

Voted, after much agonizing. I can easily say that three votes were not nearly enough. I really did like this week's theme and the stories that came out of it.

I wrestled with my votes for a good while, and ultimately, it came down to two main things - who captured the feel of the source material (limited, unfortunately, by what I've read) and who came up with matchups that just made me grin. Even with those, there were still far more than three choices, but I eventually got it paired down to three I could acceptably vote for. The gap between those and the others I liked is tiny, though.

So, folks, thanks for making it difficult. :p

[ScarletBea]

1 story - first
1 story - second
4 stories - third
all with a point between them

Anyone wants to use the last days to tie them all up?

[JMack]

1 story - first
1 story - second
4 stories - third
all with a point between them

Anyone wants to use the last days to tie them all up?

I could vote twice 
Any mods want to help with that?

[Nerf]

I voted!!!

Where's my sticker?

On another note, apparently I'm not familiar with fantasy, at least most of the popular works anymore.  I think that kind of affected my vote.  I wound up voting for all three of the Conan stories.

However it happened, Howard sure managed to create an iconic character with that one.

I will say as someone who has put up an entry in this one, I kind of find 1500 words... just isn't enough.  Unless you have a very specific thing in mind, it's just too short to set up something and put in all you'd like to say.

I guess that does favor skilled writers, but it also seems to me you have to have a very specific kind of story that can be wrapped up adequately in 1500 words.  If you use original characters, that's not a whole lot of time to introduce someone, some kind of conflict, and wrap it up.

Obviously not impossible, but it seems to me this kind of thing stresses coming up with an appropriate idea more than writing in a way.

And an appropriate idea for this kind of thing... well it is kind of a small subset of writing, that's for sure.

Still if they were too long, you will have less readers.  The internet isn't going to run out of bytes, but attention spans are pretty short with this kind of presentation, the one before the downloadable version.

[JMack]

I think the limit sort of favors "tomato surprise".
That is, stories where there is a set up and a specific punchline (twist, joke, betrayal) that comes pretty much at the end.

Hmm. Of my stories for the contest, let's note "TS" as tomato surprise.
A full TS comes at the very end as a big twist/joke

> Beach House: TS
> Wardu's Wager: TS-light
> Fair Trade: TS
> Linnathiel & Meriden: no
> One Rogue, Four Ladies: no
> Good Dog: TS-light
> The Sun, the Moon and the Morning Star: no
> Parting Friends: TS! (which makes sense, since this was flash fiction with only 500 words allowed)
> Space Opera: TS, big time.
> Lord of the Rings: TS-lite
> Leviathan: no
> The Library of Alexander: no
> Skeleton Walks into a Bar: not applicable. Just not.
> Trojan Horse: TS
> (not yet submitted Nightmare story...): probably not TS

So...14 stories: 5 full-on Tomato Surprises, 3 TS-lite, and 6 no

Not sure what this tells us, but it was fun to walk down memory lane. 

[Nerf]

Hmmm, does anyone know what was a typical word count of a short story back in the pulp days?

Obviously at one time magazines like Analog (the more famous name it had back when Campbell was the editor escapes me), and others used to be very important venues for published work.

I guess it is mostly technology that has changed things, and the short story is kind of a lost thing in publishing.  (Eric Flint has a discussion of this as an aside in his relatively recent writings on the Hugo controversy - well worth reading whatever your position on that was.)

But in the heyday, say 30's to 70's what was they typical wordcount in a short story?  The longer ones were called "novellas," and there wasn't some clear bracket range like 0-5000 words - short story, 5000-25000 novella, etc.

Offhand, from memory, I'd kind of guesstimate short stories being around 5000 words typically.

Anyone got any insight on that?

[m3mnoch]

oooh.  i don't have any insight, but that'd be fascinating to know.

[ScarletBea]

Hi, that's an interesting subject that deserves its own thread.
@xiagan, maybe you can move these posts to the Writers' Corner, or the Fantasy Books Discussion, in a new thread?

In the meantime I found these 2 old threads that might also help you:
http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/writers-corner/short-story-markets-how-important-are-they-for-new-writers/
http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/fantasy-book-discussion/how-long-should-a-fantasy-novel-be/