posted
Woo hoo! I finally got my story finished and typed into my OWN computer. (If you'll recall, I wrote it in a notebook while I sat in an airport waiting for my long delayed airplane) I've got to let it sit for a few days before I do the final edit and then it'll be ready to turn in! [Don't knock the exclamation point. I earned it ]
Posts: 938 | Registered: May 2008
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posted
Ok, so I'm probably the only idiot that doesn't know about this already, but to sacrifice myself at the hope of helping others, I found a great way to count the words in MS Word. I was doing it by going to File> Properties> Statistics.
You Click on Tools > Word Count. This opens a little toolbar that you can drag onto the main toolbars so that it will always be shown. Then just press "Recount" every time you want to see the new updates.
I thought it was nifty. If I'm the only one who didn't know this, then I understand I must be chastized in public.
posted
Unless and editor tells you to use MSWord word count (or its online equivilancy) the basic estimate--if formatted properly--is 250 words a page.
Posts: 3687 | Registered: Jan 2007
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I resolved my plot problems and have most of a working first draft. It's approaching 1000 words and going to run over, but it should be okay after a revision or two--except the characters are beginning to take over. One's not taking kindly having her part reduced. "Word count?" she shrieks. "I will not be limited by 1000 words. Cut someone else." Luckily, she's not the one waving the guns around ...
quote:One of my readers liked it, the other said "It's fine--but what's going on?" Some revision is in order, methinks.
I don't know, I just checked the book Flash Fiction out of the library, and not knowing exactly what's going on seems to be the effect that some of the authors are going for.
posted
Either is fine, as long as the file is .doc, .txt or .rtf, or embedded in the e-mail. (And not Word 2007 please, I can't read it.)
I'll send everything out in MS Word a plain .txt format so that everyone can read it, and I'll request crits in a similar format for the same reason. (Else, we have to have long discussions who can use which features of Word and in my experience that gets messy.) That means, don't spend too much time with formatting because it will likely get lost.
posted
Gack! Got my premise but don't know where my story is going. I could probably find its path in, oh, 4000 words, but... yeah.
Posts: 2185 | Registered: Aug 2007
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posted
Yeah, I had the same problem. Trouble is, when I cut it down I kept stuff I liked and cut some plot essentials, rendering it more of a puzzle than a story :-(
posted
It was late Sunday afternoon when the anisble rang--again--in the kitchen. "I see we have eight stories," said the Voice from Afar.
"Yeah," I said, "Good, huh?"
"From whom do we have stories?"
I read from the list pinned to the fridge.
"Why two from WouldBe?" asked the Voice.
"He wrote one, almost blew its identity in some other thread and wrote another just in case. I told him it's supposed to be fun, so to offer them both if he had a mind to."
"What about the others?"
"Well, they have until 18.00 GMT Friday July 4th to send their stories--or if they did already, their ansibles are faulty and they need to resend 'em."
"GMT?"
"Greenwich Mean Time, five hours ahead of US Eastern Standard Time."
"So," said the Voice, "that's by 1.00 pm Eastern. Will you need help e-mailing the stories out?"
"Don't be daft," I said. "You can't help. You're just a figment of my imagination."
As I put the ansible down I said, "Aren't you?"
Here's the list on the fridge. A 'y' beside your handle means I got your story.
lliterate Unwritten y JustinProse IB y Jeff M Cheyne WouldBe yy kathyton Annepin y Grant John y shimiqua y snapper y TS
posted
that TS guy was just telling me in an Email that he was having trouble fitting his story in that stringent rule of under a thousand. Maybe he should complain to the organizer of this contest. I offered to help Tar and feather him.
Posts: 3072 | Registered: Dec 2007
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posted
I'm revising the story gingerly, because two of the characters are armed and one's a woman with attitude. I keep telling myself that the pen's mightier than the sword ...
I'm taking care not to read any of the stories received until mine is finished, so there's no chance of accidentally lifting someone else's ideas. There are some great titles though, and I think we can all look forward to some good reads.
posted
Here's the current list on the fridge. Please send your story to me again if you do not see a 'y' against your handle. If you do not receive a 'got it' e-mail from me within one working day, something's wrong.
lliterate Unwritten y JustinProse IB y Jeff M Cheyne WouldBe yy kathyton y Annepin y Grant John y shimiqua y snapper y TS y
Don't forget, entries close at 18.00 GMT on July 4th.
Over the weekend (Saturday I hope but Sunday if there are glitches) I will send the entries to all participants who sent in a story. (I will assume that no story, or e-mailed reason for delay begging for extra time and promising Macallans, means no participation.) That e-mail will include voting and critting instructions--no surprises, just a repeat of the salient points above. Also, I'll post the first 13s in a new thread for voting purposes. Remember, we're voting on best first 13, and best story. You must crit at least three stories for your vote to count and your story to be voted on.
lliterate Unwritten y JustinProse IB y Jeff M withdrew--too busy Cheyne y WouldBe yy kathyton y Annepin y Grant John y shimiqua y snapper y TS y
If you don't see your entry acknowledged in the list please contact me either by e-mail or this thread.
From the titles alone it's clear everyone has worked hard. We can all look forward to some good reads and valuable crits.
I plan to get the first 13s posted and the stories despatched by tomorrow, Sunday lunch time, before the British Grand Prix starts. The e-mail will include instructions for voting and critting.
posted
Are we to judge these based on the authors adherence to the guidelines as well as what we thought of the story?
Posts: 3072 | Registered: Dec 2007
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posted
Since the main idea was to provoke everyone into writing a story and having some fun I would suggest being quite relaxed in interpretation of the triggers. We want to encourage creativity. What's more important is character, plot, etc. Bottom line: we'd not want to disqualify or otherwise discourage what's basically a good story, right? Unless there's a serious breach, I'd suggest judging the first 13 and the story itself.
posted
Hey Pat, i sent you my vots and crits by email yesterday. Could you just ping me and let me know you received it? Thanks!
Posts: 2185 | Registered: Aug 2007
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"Must move that thing to the study," I thought. "Why would you put it in the kitchen?"
"Ping," said the Voice from Afar.
"Huh?"
"Anne said to ping her. Sounded like fun so I did it for you."
"But ... Oh, never mind. We've gotten three sets of crits and votes to date. Isn't that cool?"
"Yeah. When are they due by?"
"July 18th. Another nine days. But you aren't voting. Why are you asking?"
"Just in case anyone else needs pinging. I'm using an ansible. That's gotta be faster than you with your e-mail."
"Oh. Thanks--and when they're invented, send one to IB for me?"
"Sure thing. See ya."
As I put the ansible down I looked at the list on the fridge. There were marks by the names of the people who had sent votes and crits thus far, and wondered whether to ping them about the July 18 closing date ...
Unwritten IB y Cheyne WouldBe y kathyton Annepin y Grant John shimiqua snapper
posted
Werewolf Spartans defending the last bastion of Intergalactic Hope--a defunct and overgrown death star--against a race of Mafia-like Shark-People?
Posts: 3687 | Registered: Jan 2007
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posted
IA, that's just silly. Sheesh. How about an army of zombie shopping mall Santas vying for...a mall, I guess. A really scary mall...dark.
Posts: 746 | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
I'm working on mine, TS. Got two of my top picks critiqued, just need to work on the last. Do you plan on posting these crits? Would you like a short summary from us on what we liked and why?
Posts: 3072 | Registered: Dec 2007
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posted
We've never posted all the crits before. In fact, that would be difficult because some people have annotated the manuscript file.
I could put all the crits together into a zipped collection of files (with instructions on downloading and using a free copy of Winzip for anyone zip-challenged) and send them all to everyone--it would certainly save me the work of sorting the crits and sending them to authors.
I'm finding it quite instructive to see different people's reactions to the stories, so if nobody objects strongly in the next few days, I'll send all the crits to all authors--good idea, snapper.
Some people have included a short summary of their reaction to every story as their crit.
Here's the note on the fridge of those who've voted and critted so far:
Unwritten y IB y Cheyne WouldBe y kathyton Annepin y Grant John shimiqua y snapper y
One first 13 is way ahead of the others, but several stories are vying for best story, so these last votes matter.
posted
I'm fine with having my crits made public, both those I receive and those I've written. I anticipate that I, too, will find it instructive to read other people's reactions.
[This message has been edited by annepin (edited July 12, 2008).]
quote: I'm fine with having my crits made public, both those I receive and those I've written.
I'm good with that, too. Of course emailed to everyone is not the same public as these fora, which will keep our stories viable for submission.
Edited to add:
Is the thirteen which is ahead in the numbers a major contender for the best story? As long as we're discussing different perspectives, I wonder how many found the 13 line hook not to be delivered upon.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited July 12, 2008).]
quote:Is the thirteen which is ahead in the numbers a major contender for the best story? As long as we're discussing different perspectives, I wonder how many found the 13 line hook not to be delivered upon.
For me, the answer was no. One of the top three in the thirteen made the top three in the favorite story, and just barely. Two of those top 13 I really, really liked the hook. I thought they were splendid. Too bad it couldn't carry that excitement along for the rest of the script. My favorite story (it was a run away for me) probably would have been ranked 7th or 8th out of ten in my favorite 13. Which goes to prove for me that a prose and plot is far more important to me as a reader. But if I were an editor that had to go through a few hundred stories a month to pick six for my magazine, I might feel differently.
posted
My ansible isn't working properly, aren't these things supposed to tell you what is going to happen? Maybe I should check to see if I plugged it in correctly.
Posts: 3072 | Registered: Dec 2007
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quote: aren't these things supposed to tell you what is going to happen?
Uh...no. At least, not in anything I have ever read. As far as I know, they're supposed to be a way of communicating in deep-space or on FTL travel.
quote: [Quoted from the Wikipedia link] The word ansible was coined by Ursula K. Le Guin in her 1966 novel, Rocannon's World. Le Guin states that she derived the name from "answerable," as the device would allow its users to receive answers to their messages in a reasonable amount of time, even over interstellar distances. Her award-winning 1974 novel The Dispossessed tells of the invention of the ansible within her [i]Hainish Cycle[i].
[Later]
Le Guin's ansible was said to communicate "instantaneously"
[Still later]
Le Guin explains that in order for communication to work with any pair of ansibles at least one "must be on a large-mass body, the other can be anywhere in the cosmos."
[A little later]
"doesn't involve radio waves, or any form of energy. The principle it works on, the constant of simultaneity, is analogous in some ways to gravity... One point has to be fixed, on a planet of certain mass, but the other end is portable." Le Guin's ansibles are not mated pairs as it is possible for an ansible's coordinates to be set to any known location of a receiving ansible.
I think the quoted are the only components used by all of the authors re-vamping the ansible. I could be wrong, but this seems to be the universal consistency.
posted
I think I see the confusion here. If I travel across the galaxy in my FTL cruiser, relativistic effects mean I'm vastly in the future according to your frame of reference. When I call you on the ansible, I will appear to be calling you from the future since communication is immediate. But I can only tell you about things that have happened in my time frame--the future, relative to your time frame. I can't tell you about things that will happen in your future, in your time frame, because I'm way across the galaxy and your future hasn't happened yet. Because of the transdimensional time torques inherent in ansible communication, people often believe they can tell the future, but it's an urban myth.
That's a confusing explanation so I called the Voice from Afar in quest of a simpler one. "Can an ansible tell the future?" I asked.
"No."
"Why?"
"Because it's a communications device. The ansible does not speak to you. I do."
"Oh, yeah, right--"
"And, per your previous post, it doesn't have 'channels'. You just set the coordinates of the ansible you want to talk to."
"Wups. Silly me. Umm ... I don't suppose you know what the result of our competition will be?"
"No," said the Voice from Afar. "Patience, distant one. Friday, July 18th is just a few days hence now, and those three votes will surely be in by then."
Stay tuned, same ansible coordinates ... Pat
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited July 14, 2008).]
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