If you think it sounds like a good idea, go ahead and say so here (thereby indicating your willingness to watch for such requests and volunteer), and we'll leave it here for that purpose.

Also, if you think it's a good idea, and you have something that you can describe in a sentence or two that you'd like feedback on, go ahead and post that here, too. (It is to be hoped that you will be willing to volunteer for someone else's story sometime, later.)

If you don't think it sounds like a good idea, then don't post here, and let the topic die a deserved death.

The main difference is that this topic is for one-shot deals.

Groups are supposed to be for a year and require more commitment, as well as give and take.

Some reasons I'm willing to even give this a try are

1) to see if the one-shot experience will help people see that a group is even a better deal,

2) to help those who aren't able to make a group commitment,

3) give critiquing experience to people in a less formal situation.

Sometimes, when someone gets specific about the kind of writing they do and want to read in a group, it takes a little longer for there to be enough people for the group.

I like the essential format that you laid out, I just don't relish the idea of reading through three full pages of one line story ideas freely interspersed with various comments on them, in no particular order. I very much like the idea of having those one line descriptions ordered by how recent the discussion is, with a hyperlink to each one.

Thoughts?

JP
Edited in
Oh, and count me in!

I suppose I should have laid down more ground rules in my original, topic-starting post, but I was still just asking for yeas and nays then.

So to be more specific on to procedure:

Only short works (novel submission packets should be analyzed in groups just as novels should be) can be synopsized here, and they should be synopsized in no more than two sentences.

Any volunteers should contact the author directly via email--there's a button provided for just that purpose with each post. The author can then decide, presumably on the basis of posts people have made here at Hatrack, which ones to send the story to. (An author may say to anyone, "Thank you, but I think I have enough volunteers now.")

All discussion of the story should take place in email as should all arrangements for feedback. We don't need to know who is involved or what they say.

TTFN & lol

You post a 2 sentence summary, essentially asking for a personalized crit group. This way you get interested takers right off the bat, pretty much assuring regular feedback.

Cool idea -- my vote ie aye!

Do you really think we need to start another topic for that?

My only request to everyone would be to please, please, keep the critiquing and brainstorming private, don't fill up the thread with lots of stuff ancillary to the purpose. A simple here's my idea/synopsis and perhaps a simple I have enough responses thanks, will do. At least as I see Kathleen envisioning this (though I know things have a way of evolving on their own).

A wealthy immigrant (the Baron)in a small postwar Georgian town owns most the property, the bank, the mill, etc, and pretty much runs the place. The story follows the sherriff around as the abuses of the Baron against the townfolk mount and climaxes when the good, kind, down-home, peace-loving people destroy the Baron and leave him hanging in a tree.

One sentence paragraph, how about that? Anyway, I stopped keeping up with this thread some time ago, so it wasn't until I was thinking about it because of recent things that I revisited it, only to find that the first story summary ended the topic! Why didn't anyone respond, anyway?

Anyway, if you want another story idea, how about a far future galactic or intergalactic civilization that uses controlled wormholes for near instantaneous interstellar travel? This futuristic human empire is held together by a near religious cult of humanity, or of the Empire itself, and policed by immortal imperial lords with superpowers (basic stuff, like superintellect and superperceptive, plus being immortal and indestructable). So one day, while going about her business (just having exterminated a dangerous anti-imperial cult with the help of her handy super strong [but otherwise normal human girl] sidekick) she steps through a vortex gate (I just think 'vortex gate' is cooler and more descriptive than 'wormhole') but instead of being transported back to the seat of the Imperium of Mankind she lands on Earth in the early 21st century (nearly losing her composure in the process).

On the plus side, she speaks a highly evolved version of Latin (I thought of Chinese, but Chinese is too phonetically divergent to be recognizable after several dozen millenia, so she can only read it, not speak it), she is super smart, super perceptive, immortal, has a killer (but fetchingly innocent) sidekick, and right away meets a cooperative local who speaks enough Spanish and collegiate English to make out the basics of her vocabulary.