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Literary Challenge #13 Discussion Thread

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited March 2012 in Ten Forward
Literary Challenge #13 : The Void
This is the comments thread for Literary Challenge #13 : The Void.
We also have an Index of previous challenges HERE.

Feel free to link directly to the entry you are commenting on. And please remember: we're not here to tear each other up. Do not troll your fellow Captains, give feedback! Let the others know what you liked and disliked. Maybe they can even go back then and tweak their entries!

Let's get those creative juices flowing! :cool:
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    i wish i could think of something creative for this challange :rolleyes:
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I'm already running 26 hour days with a 4 shift rotation. Hmmm, I wonder where can I squeeze in a few more hours of work out of my crew.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I'll try to do this one when I can think straight. I didn't do the last two partly because of personal reasons (which are very depressing so I wont go into it) and partly because I found them difficult to make something for.

    If you want some advice Branflakes, I think your making the premises for these challenges too specific. Look at Wishstone's challenges, they were very loosely structured, they just said "your story must involve this plot point, other than that, go mad!" which is less structured than yours are.

    My advice is simple, loosen the reins a little bit, as an example, instead of your current description for the Challenge involving the imposter, it could be more a case of "While on your ship, you receive word of an intruder alert near your position, how shall you solve this predicament?".

    This is just my advice, take it as such, I will still try to do these challenges regardless, but I feel less specific premises will allow for more variation in the stories and as such, will make more people do the Challenges as they will feel more comfortable without putting their character in a position they may not necessarily want to be in at this point in time.

    P.S. For the love of Quinn people, if I ask for constructive criticism on my story, then please give me some! I do this kind of thing a lot and value my writing and the critique it gets very highly, so its not fun when I ask for feedback and get ignored.:(
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Personally i see them as a guide line so even if they're relatively specific, there is still plenty of leeway. Plus if you ever get a job as a writer then you'll probably come up against a lot of restrictions or suggestions, so it's nice to get specifications every now and then just to see how well you can work your way through or around them.

    As for he creative criticism, i wouldn't mind getting some constructive feed back myself.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Not enough wiggle room. Don't forget that people Anchor to suggestions. I'm with Blacksabre on this one; keep it loose. The moment the wormhole didn't have stars it killed it for me. The suggestion even wrote itself into a corner.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Meh.. I neither hot nor cold on the back story. But I posted my attempt. Fun way to kill an hour while the servers were down last night. Finished it off a few minutes ago.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    There is some great feedback here. I thought you guys would think that me not posting enough of a background story would be "lazy" :p But, good to know, and I will take this into consideration for the challenge that will be posted up on 03/06.

    Cheers,

    Brandon =/\=
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Just to be annoying, I actually quite like having more details. In the previous challenge I was able to pick up where the intro left off and continue with the story. Had it been more basic, such as 'There is an intruder alert on a space station you are visiting' then my entry would have been at least 50% longer as I went into details of the actual alert itself, possibly bringing into a third post. I want my stories to be a short entertaining read, not a long epic saga that no-one has the time to enjoy and therefore they just skip it.

    On a different note, I wouldn't mind some advice from the more experienced writers. How many characters is too many in a story like this?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Divvur wrote:
    On a different note, I wouldn't mind some advice from the more experienced writers. How many characters is too many in a story like this?

    Rule of thumb: you can have as many characters as you want but you have to give closure of some sort to each person. Even minor characters should have a point other than "push a button". Otherwise, just save space/time and have the primaries do the work while they setup the scene.

    Closure doesn't have to be finality either - often times the most intriguing characters are the ones who have finished a mission but have unfinished emotional drama or closed a chapter in their personal lives but still have some business to take care of elsewhere. Life rarely gives clean breaks; characters are better if they don't have them either.

    But that's just a suggestion. Take it as you will.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    This particular challenge is a little ironic to me since i was already working on a similar story, though the original plot was galactic wayfarers showing up in the Betreka Nebula and ensnaring one of my starships. It sounded a bit too much like a TNG episode, so I scrapped it in favor of one of my ships being lost and winding up outside the galaxy. Like in the past, though, I wanted to tell a story from a bridge officers' perspective, so instead of a starship it's Kim's Chief Engineer and First Officer getting lost.

    I broke from the guidelines, though, since they're supposed to get stuck in just a random void, but being lost in the expanse between the galaxies counts as a void right? I also have no intention in having Kala or Soral come back. In future stories, they are not on the Stellar Drift, and I kind of like the idea of them tromping around the universe with these intergalactic explorers.

    ---

    So, I resurrected the intergalactic wayfarer story and consolidated it down, though in the chapters I wrote to flesh the story out, I didn't say specifically where they were from. It's hard to get a single episode down to one or two personal logs, so some stuff got lost. There was a lot to this story, though it was fun to write. I thought it was a fun take on some of the evolutionary stories we've seen in Star Trek.

    Also, Ziri for the first time as a department head. She's fast becoming a favorite character to write. Her pregnancy will lead into a few future stories, and explain the origin of a character I had on Tribble for a while.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    So what was it about this challenge that keep people from doin it? Was it the specifics? Was it because of it beig voyager associated? Or was it too specific with the suggestions? Either way I'm looking forward to the next one.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    I have posted my slightly rushed effort in two parts. (Part 1 and Part 2). Again I was just slightly over the character count (by 707 this time) and so had to split it up.

    My original story was much larger and had two or three intwined storylines but I took a hacksaw to it to try and keep it down and therefore, I hope, make a better read. I hope it has come out ok, but I am still new to this, so if anyone has any suggestions or notices any mistakes please PM me and I may give it a few tweaks.

    As for future challenges, I am looking forward to the next ones. I am beginning to think that others have a point about having a slightly looser task that allows people to expand on it in their own unique way. It also means I don't have to borrow a set of Voyager DVDs. :p

    I don't want to comment too much on other people's stories as I am still very new to this and don't really know what I am talking about. However, I must confess I really did enjoy Corbantez's story, just because it included a lot of personality and a little bit of humour. I also liked how Kalic89 focused on encountering another Starfleet Vessel that had turned pirate. A chilling reminder that had our ships not escaped the void they may well have turned out the same way, very Trek.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    So what was it about this challenge that keep people from doin it? Was it the specifics? Was it because of it beig voyager associated? Or was it too specific with the suggestions? Either way I'm looking forward to the next one.

    The Voyager aspect certainly killed a lot of motivation. If the story hook was that our ship and crew got pulled through a wormhole/blackhole/anomaly then I could have had some fun but after seeing the "no stars" part it reminded me too much of Pandorum and didn't leave a lot of room to make the return to the Alpha Quadrant believable.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    So what was it about this challenge that keep people from doin it? Was it the specifics? Was it because of it beig voyager associated? Or was it too specific with the suggestions? Either way I'm looking forward to the next one.

    For me, the trouble is as I said above, it sounded too much like a TNG episode. Voyager and Enterprise (if you count The Expanse episodes), have done similar stories as well.

    There was a lot of story that was asked to be covered, and condensing it into one or two log entries is a bit much. Either some story gets lost, or I need to make multiple posts, and if that's the case I might as well write a novella. If I am writing a novella, it won't be as log entries.

    I also like having a bit more freedom when it comes to being able to throw a little bit more individualism into the plot, which I did since I already scrapped this idea once before, and also chose to post it as is out of stubbornness. Deviation from the rules is the Starfleet way isn't it? xD
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    So what was it about this challenge that keep people from doin it? Was it the specifics? Was it because of it beig voyager associated? Or was it too specific with the suggestions? Either way I'm looking forward to the next one.

    for me it was two things, one it is ground that has been gone over quiet a few times in Trek. any approach tried to come up with just sounded like a rehash of some other episode. Second was the fact that it was rather veg, you and your ship are in the middle of nowhere, now do something. well with what? One thing about good story telling is having dynamic elements that play off one another. You have your ship and crew but nothing beyond that to interact with or have it act towards us.

    now i myself have a good chunk of my crew bio written and the reason i did not participate in this challenge is because reason number one.

    so lets see what the next challange holds.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2012
    Thanks again to everyone who provided feedback on this challenge, and to everyone who participated! Y'all told some great stories, and I hope everyone enjoyed reading the.

    I am going to unsticky this now as I prepare to post #14 (of which will be a little different -- we'll test out some of the feedback provided :)). Feel free to keep discussing, though!

    Cheers,

    Brandon =/\=
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