posted
Good plan. One day I'll be able to rip my work to shreads as bad as I can do it to others. Usually it takes a couple months of ignoring it before those big flaws become apparent to me without someone showing them to me.
Posts: 807 | Registered: Mar 2003
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We have 21 entries this time (22 if my disqualified entry is counted among them). This is awesome, yet it puts a strain on our voting system -- the polls only allow for 20 choices. So, the vote will be delayed a very short while until we sort that out... I'm hopeful that we can simply increase the poll options to a higher value.
Thanks to everyone who has participated. All of you are responsible for making this so successful. We have appreciated your feedback and we hope that the process is running smoother. Please keep us informed about what you think.
After one month of Flash Challenges, we should be inundating the flash markets with our stories! Maybe they'll notice a common thread among them...
posted
Polls are fixed. I have increased the number of poll options to 50. I sincerely hope we never see that many! How would we read them all!?
Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I have only gotten as far as #5 but there are already several very solid pieces. If the rest are like these we're going to be having a really memorable challenge.
posted
I think that's just how it goes! If the seed had been "dead babies" we'd have a lot of light cheerful stories about kittens and bunnies; but perfectly innocent seeds lead to grim stories.
Posts: 1750 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
HSO, of course your story counts as a participant. You aren't in the vote, but you did the work, you wrote a story. Don't belittle yourself that much. There were 22 stories written for the challenge. Of those stories, 21 were eligible for voting.
Posts: 818 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Personally almost all ideas turn grim for me. I can write light-hearted humor but it is not my natural inclination; I prefer horror. Maybe others feel the same.
Posts: 818 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Mine was dark, not because I prefer horror (I don't care for it much at all), but because I'm using these flashes as a chance to try out new styles and approaches. I rather expected mine to be unusually dark for this challenge (not like utricide! lol); I was quite surprised when I got that email attachment with the other stories and discovered that only three or four _didn't_ strike me as dark! You guys are starting to scare me! Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
There was no self-deprecation in my post, Autumn. I was merely pointing out that my entry wasn't a Qualified entry... it is still, however, a story that was written according to all the rules; I just knew the trigger for days in advance. That's all.
Posts: 1520 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Yes, there were some very dark tales in this FC. Luckily, there were a few light-hearted ones, too. Last week's voting choices should have been this week's, I feel. Since I didn't read any of the stories until after I setup the voting polls, I couldn't have known.
posted
you mean "most light-hearted" and "darkest"?
I'm more interested in voting on "best" whatever. best character, best plot, whatever, because for me, "dark" isn't something that I'm striving for, necessarily. "dark" isn't a goal. for me.
posted
Yeah, I did mean that. By the way, I did use one of your voting suggestions... Best Narrative Voice. And I do feel our polls are good ones. We could probably create two more if we wanted to, but they are a pain in the bottom to set up. It's about 5-10 mins per poll, and that's copying and pasting. If there were a way to copy the polls and then change the poll question, that would be awesome. Yet... I see no way to do that...
[This message has been edited by HSO (edited April 25, 2005).]
posted
I found that judging based on the categories there was no one story that hit them all, which is good. I like being able to vote for different ones for different reasons. Even with three polls, though, there were a couple of stories I really wanted to vote for that just didn't fit the categories. Life's like that.
Posts: 818 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
yes, I did notice Best Narrative Voice, thanks!
and hey. On "most light-hearted" and "darkest" - maybe the way to go is "best light-hearted" and "best dark" - that way there's something to strive for. Last time I kind of struggled with "most light-hearted" because I didn't really like the one I thought was the lightest.
voting for "most light-hearted" is sort of like voting for "most science-fiction-ish." i'd rather vote for "best SF."
belaboring my point, but I just figured out how to say what I meant!
posted
I gotcha. That's why this time around I only used "Best" for things. I was never a fan of the high school yearbook blurbs "most likely to jump off a bridge before turning 21" stuff.
Posts: 1520 | Registered: Jun 2004
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How would we read them all!?
