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December Free Write Tournament Discussion/Description
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Protagonize is a creative writing community dedicated to writing various forms of collaborative, interactive fiction.
One author writes a story, poem, or other work, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving tale where everyone can participate.
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1. What do you mean by "free write"?
Free write means this tournament will not adhere to a specific writing form. Entries can take shape in a variety of writing styles, prose or poetic.
2. What will challenges look like?
This is still a bit up in the air, and I'd love input on this. The basic concept will be the assignment of topics as well as key points to be touched on. Freedom will remain in the authors hands to mold these into a fine pieces of work in their chosen style. Some challenges may favour a certain style inherently, so you will have to be flexible, or at least adaptive!
3. Will there be any limitations?
The main limitation that will most likely be imposed is a word limit on entries. Of course, there will be a time limit on each round of entries; I'm hoping to begin this during December and finish by the end, with a break for Christmas. Besides that, free reign will be yours.
4. Will there be a panel of judges?
Yes, I'm planning to gather a panel of volunteers (Hopefully a few experienced judges and users) to preside over the judgement of participants' entries. This will follow the same style as the seasonal poetry tournament, but exact details will depend on how many are interested in participating, and how many in judging.
5. Will this tournament be perfect and run completely smoothly?
We can always hope, but as far as I know it's the first of it's ilk on Protagonize, and I believe there will be kinks to be worked out. Input from judges and participants will help to iron some of those out before the tournament starts, in theory.
6. How can I sign up as a participant/judge?
Either send me a message or comment on this thread! I'm aiming for a discussion of the tournament to start here as well.
Let's hear what you all think!
I think, since it's free write, the challenges should also be sort of... free. Like, don't say, you must give a story about such and such. I think it'd be better if it was something like having people write to convey a certain emotion or general feel?
Moon
I wouldn't call it free writing, as that has an established meaning. Free-style might be better, especially since you then go on to qualify free-write as covering a variety of writing styles.
Saying that, I'm not convinced a competition/tournament that allows different styles to compete directly against each other is feasible or desirable. If a given topic comes up as a challenge how do you compare a 4 line poem with a 500+ word piece of prose? Certainly they can't be compared on a technical perspective, as the methods and modes of writing either type are vastly different. If we are judging based on popularity, then judges aren't really needed but there is the obvious bias of people how like/dislike poetry/prose and the biases that arise from people being able to read several short poetic works but unable or unwilling to spend the time to read more substantial works of prose.
However, I suppose if a given set of goals is set for each round, i.e.
Theme: revenge
Words to use: parliament, gravestone, humble, glade, hairpin, sausage
Moods to evoke: relief, anger, peace, jealousy
and each competitor had to meet some or all of them (bonus points for covering everything) then that gives a large enough set of specific points whilst also being vague enough to apply to both prose and poetry, which then gives judges some specific to look for in terms of satisfying round requirements in addition to personal opinion on whether they enjoyed the prose/poem.
I'd like to be involved though, as either a judge or a participant or possibly both if allowable.
But that doens't mean you should exculd one or the other, but you could maybe run the competition in tandum and people and jump from one side to the other, that way prose is only compared to prose and poetry to poetry. Then at the end you tally the points for each person and come up with a final listing...
I'll volunteer to be a judge since I'll probably be all written out by the end of November. :}
I think they can be judged together as one, but only if they aren't judged on their technical merits, but rather on the ability of the authors to meet a certain set of goals that are applicable for any kind of text. There should be multiple goals for each round so that no one type has any advantage, since poetry can be particularly good at covering mood and emotion, whilst prose can be better at including specific words and phrases and themes in a more concrete way. That way it's a proper test of not only the authors strengths and flexibility, but also that of whatever modes of writing people choose to engage in for that round. It means interesting things crop up where very strong poets that are weaker prose writers use poetry in rounds where prose might better fit the goals, while strong prose writers might use prose when poetry might fit better, whilst still be able to judge them all more or less equally.
I think doing a cross-discipline tournament like this will require some fairly substantial thought put into it's round's goals if done this way, but could work very well if done properly. I don't imagine it will be easy however, as across the judges, we'd need to have on average a decent ability across all disciplines to be able to judge fairly.
As for the others comments, some of it I agree with, others not so much. If you look at writing competitions in general they are usually stylised to one specific technical style - short stories, novellas, poetry etc... I don't think needs to remain that way. I just think you need to consider what kind of information you are pitting against each other. I think you can pit a poem against a piece of prose. It depends what it is you are looking for. If you are looking for someone to create a certain message you have to understand that the judges are aware they are looking for the most coherent version of that message. The style, at the end of the day, is irrelevant, with a competition like this, it truly is the content that is important.
I hate the idea that people use popularity as a voting tool, but I also dislike anonymity. I think we should be proud of our work.
I pretty much started the poetry competition here. I'm not sure if I am happy about that. I don't think protagonize needed the competitive nature. I think it has made it a less desirable place to work. I think workshops have much better principles, but are generally less fun.
The best way to describe this ambitious project is a Creative Writing Competition. Where the merits are creativity, delivery and ingenuity, not the technical merits judged in other more specific tournaments. I think what this community needs is something that pulls people together and gets them working together more, and effectively. We all need to learn to take criticism and work hard to improve our own work. Far too many people here think they are already amazing (I'm as guilty as the next guy). Fact remains, people are here to write. To enjoy it and to improve. The main aspiration here should be to help people achieve those goals, in whichever style they feel comfortable.
Dark is right though, you'll need an open minded and genuinely unbiased panel to judge such a tournament. I'd like to think I have those attributes. If you agree I'd happily help you in your endeavours. Keep in touch.
That said, my description itself was a bit lacking, and I probably should have written it at a more coherent time of the day, since I think many of your points hit directly on my thoughts about the competition as it was in my head.
The entries will most definitely have to be shaped by guidelines that will give them touchstones to be judged by, and as I said, a word limit will have to be implemented, for: A) Leveling the descriptive playing field, as unlimited prose would clearly have an advantage there B) Making prose submissions manageable for judges.
This won't be easy to put together, but I believe it's worth it. I'm am against the anonymous aspect of some past competitions for the fact that it seemed to get in the way of the very goals I believe should be the focal point of these exercises; creative growth, technical improvement, and community inclusiveness. I'd like to believe also that we can find a group of judges that can judge on the merits of writing, rather than anything outside the confines of the tournament.
I enjoy, and I believe other people enjoy as well, the tournament style, simply because the competitive nature tends to push writers to put more thought and time into their writing, and generally results in works the writer didn't quite know they were capable of, or wouldn't have otherwise written. As a forum for improvement, it can work, if the participants view it and use it as such.
Ultimately, we've been provided with an amazing tool in Protagonize, we simply have to use it as it was meant to be used; an active community to encourage collective growth, as well as a vehicle for amazing projects to take shape. I can be guilty of tending towards sitting in my own little corner, writing my one-off pieces and throwing them with abandon into the community. This is a step I'm taking, and hope you'll take with me, into pulling the community together, and taking it even farther away from being just another writing site.
More to come... and please keep the suggestions and thoughts coming! This should be a writer built event, and you are all writers!
Drew
I think you can introduce a minimum/maxumum length, say for poetry, atleast 30 lines, max 50 lines, and for prose, min 100 words, max 500.
And, if there will be a winter poetry tourney, try to not have it clash with that.
Winter tourney has gone and passed :)
I think minimum words/lines would be unnecessary, if you can complete the challenge in an effective way with one word, then all the power to you, haha.
1. Brilliant idea/format--some of the competitions on Protagonize have been very structured, and while some writers excel at that type of strictly-defined challenge, others are more creative when given a freer hand :)
2. I personally like Elo's thought of jumping from poetry to prose, so everyone has to do a bit of each, but no one's prose is held up against someone else's poetry (because let's be honest, a lot of us prefer one style to the other, and would write/judge better according to our own bias). I think going back and forth between the 2 gives everyone the fairest chance.
3. What Elzu said. The best part about a competition like this, is that the content, not the style, would be the most important thing.
4. If you'd like me to help out in a specific way, gimme a shout :) That being said, the last tournament I helped judge didn't go as smoothly as it might have, and I feel that tempers (including my own) became very short... so if you'd prefer *not* to have my help, I won't be offended. I think Moon and Dark would vouch for me that I'm open and honest in my judgments, make reasonable arguments to back up my opinions/am not easily swayed by friends' opinions, and am very prompt in handing in critiques, if any of that matters :)
5. Did I make the point--this is a brilliant idea, and you should definitely give it a go :)
There's also the question of the Winter poetry tournament. If no one steps up, perhaps this will see itself blended or transformed into the official tournament as well.