*ahem* My inbox is becoming cluttered faster than I can delete things.
Also, @Sareneth and @Gabriel - I apologize for the late reviews (although a believe the deadline is in a few hours, unless I'm mistaken and confused, which isn't such a new thing). I know how annoying it is to wait for something like this, but I have not been getting home from work until around 8 or 9 every night this week and doing it before 8AM is clearly out of the question for someone who so values sleep. Luckily I got off earlier today! You shall have your reviews soon :)
@Harlot, the peer groups were randomly generated by assigning each competitor a random number and then listing those numbers from least to greatest. if i were to put you into a group that took into account your writing style and preferences, i would have to give you a form to fill out, and i'd have to go through your posted work and somehow categorize you. not gonna happen when i'm running this thing on my own time.
@Harlot@Jack Also, I don't believe personal preference of writing style should really come into this very much. Perhaps a small amount in the 'engagement' section, but even that could be objectively decided based on quality rather than preference.
And I think the word is actually 'critique' in the case of your post, not critic. The critic is the one critiquing :)
@aryst0krat I was finding it was causing me to drop marks in believability as well as engagement.
Leaving only mood/imagery and Grammar/Syntax to get scores for @DruidX.
This generally ticked me off, as well, that made it so she only really had a chance to get 20 out of 30 from my marking to begin with. Making it so, if she was lucky, she could only get a score of 66% from me.
This was not a condition I enjoyed marking her under.
It also seemed that she seemed to miss the point on my stuff, making it so, I could not get as much marks under mood. To be fair, I was low on imagery--buth that again, was more an issue of the subgenre I ended up choosing for my world to be built for.
@Lyre, sorry about your inbox-- I know the feeling
@Gabe (as well as @Sagar and @Charlotte), I'm also sorry for the very last minute review. I'm on vacation so I can only go to the lobby for internet every so often
@Harlot Genre does not decide how much imagery is used. War is just as full of imagery as love, science fiction just as full of imagery as fantasy or historical non-fiction. And 'Believability', as I understand it to mean in the context of this challenge, is not so much 'could happen in our world', but rather 'makes sense in the context of the created world'. The genre, again, should not affect this, and personal opinion should have very little influence on it.
I understand that opinion enters into if not every review then most of them, but to automatically decide something can only get a zero in two categories just because of the genre or writing style is to not even try, especially in a largely objective category such as 'Believability and Consistency'.
@aryst0krat I am not entirely certain you get what I am pointing out.
On the Believability thing:
Certain genre's require people give up certain ideas just to allow verisimilitude enough to keep reading. From what I was seeing of @DruidX' work--while it was true to the genre it was from... it was not a genre I have ever been able to keep a solid amount of verisimilitude while reading.
Using ready that sort of stuff has me begin MSTing the entire thing.
On the imagery thing:
I think you are confusing War Stories with Military Comedy Stories.
The two are not one in the same.
Typically, of the two, Military Comedy only really do much of anything for imagery, if it is required for a section that goes over the next set of logical fallacies that will follow.
War will do everything as imagery--but not much of either logic or logical fallacies.
I think you are not reading the full genre I am mentioning... and just reading "Military", rather than "Military Comedy".
Which again, most of the imagery is made up in well--the pointless discussions that occur when the really should not be.
Mind you, to be fair, there really is not much in the genre of Military Comedy. Which is mostly why I chose to base my contest entry around it.
So, yes, between Imagery and Believability you can lose a lot when the person reading it is not familiar (or particularly likable) with a certain genre.
@Harlot To be fair, this is a competition being run by the World Building group. Your challenge has never been to create a believable story but to create a believable world, which requires the use of imagery. Imagery is not just there to set the scene but to create mood, to foreshadow, to develop and mold. Even The Mouse That Roared used imagery to contrast the homely and old world Grand Duchy of Fenwick with the aloofness and paranoia of modern America.
As for Believability, this has nothing to do with genre unless you make it to be. Believability has to do with character actions and motivations, along with continuity. If, for example, you were creating a warfare comedy and had the Archduke shot and subsequently reanimated, well, unless you'd set up the possibility for such an occurrence you're going to be docked Believability points. I'm being facetious, I know, but all Believability really has to with is how well the characters/setting you've set up continue to behave in the way you've already specified them to.
Certainly, everything is going to come down to individual bias. That's just how humans are. I just would have hoped that we could suspend that kind of bias and, instead of focusing on how much we 'hate" a genre, decide to keep an open mind and instead focus on how something is written. Not what is written. So you know, and so @everyone knows, I don't like fantasy. Even Harry Potter irritates me. Doesn't mean I can't think Elzu's prose is beautiful. Doesn't mean I resent mike_itong's myriad inventive creatures.
I love language. That's why I came here to judge for all of you. I had hoped that's what all of you came for, too.
Well, if you want to get into that, this competition is about building a world, not writing a story. Writing a story involves setting, which I would say involves imagery. Writing a comedy alone, or any situation really, is not creating a world.
So I will reword that - a war-torn, comedic world has just as much to it as a world of star-crossed lovers. The imagery might seem less important to you, but the story is not the main concern here. Not that that has anything to do with why Laura's fantasy world should receive low marks for being of a genre you don't enjoy.
As for the comments about believability, as I said, this isn't about how close something is to our reality.
Anyway, I'm beginning to lose coherency, I believe. It is surely bed time. Good night, all!
@Archi_Teuthis Right... the issue was... the imagery in @DruidX' stuff lack believability.
When the imagery, which is fairly typical what genre I thought i was reading really does not strike me as real or believable--but it is typical to the genre, that was the issues.
And... the example had me a bit confused for a moment--as the last entry kind of had the Chancellor shot... and I had to double check to make certain I did not have any sign that he was ever reanimated (he was not--and did not plan to)
You also get some genres where the architecture in the genre would typically never work in the real world. Which in the genre, it is fairly normal--but it removes believability for anybody reading.
And yes, there are fantasy stories I enjoy. There are also styles of fantasy that drive me up the wall. This goes more into the matter of various sub genres and sub sub genres that just get irritating to name--making a very irritating form of word soup just to discuss them.
Let us just say, that there were tropes in @DruidX' style that were irritating me, mayhaps? Tropes are not bad--but they can get irritating.
I dunno--grouping stories on genre is pretty much like group objects on the planet by is it Earth, Wind, Water or Fire.
My idea was more to group them by their base Tropes--think proteins for a comparison to food.
And my story DID have imagery... it was more of a logical/illogical one. The imagery was more based on the psychology and thought processes of the people involved. To have the audience think about these word battles, and compare it to stuff they did.
While it was not a physical set of imagery--well... maybe it is too abstract to call it imagery... however in which case, I fail at what I would end up calling it.
And, yes, I do love language too--that is why I hate English =P
@Harlot Then we shall just have to disagree on some points. Ah, well. All I know is that this conversation has taken up too much of our time tonight and I'd like to see it at an end. Let me thank you personally for joining the inaugural Prose Competition. Obviously we still have some bugs to work out ;) Hope to see you in the future but, as you are no longer in the competition, I would ask that you save this space for the remaining competitors.
@aryst0krat okay, I have got a confession to make here:
The idea of thinking of things in genre really has not made sense to me in about over a decade.
I mean--most labellings of genre really have long since lost any cohesion with the content they may or may not contain.
Please, understand, that when I say "style" it is almost never synonymous with "genre".
I think once you get that out of the picture--we may have less issues.
Now, Military Comedy does work as a genre, as there are only like two or three stories that come to my mind when I think of that.
I am definitely going to have to step out now--as well, I have understood why I have never done well at the idea of world building.
The concept just plain confuses me really.
I mean, typically when building a story, I can take some tropes and throw them together, to get a basic idea of what is going on.
Looking at what is going on for world building--I now understand that I have no clue what makes up a "world" in a story, much less know how to throw together those mystery ideas together in any way meaningful.
Yeah--just going to part this group... as really, I am just going to say, that I really have no clue what it is about any more. And I doubt following it would allow this.
As well--I really see a world as people and the relationships with each other in the world.
I have no idea what you guys see the world as, maybe apart from formations of animal, mineral and vegetables.
@Harlot, there's a reason why i keep referring back to the 30 Days of World Building exercises. if you don't know how to go about creating an entire setting, that should have been the place to start.
@JackRubashevskiy fair enough--I guess what kind of confused me, was I DID recall a link to the nanowimo's write a novel in a month being given.
There being about thirty days in Novembre.
And well--I guess I did not check the link to the 30 Days of World Building you gave once. Even more so--I was well--kind of confusing this contest with that 30 Days of World Building thing. That is, not really certain what the differences were, as well--the only link I really saw was that of the Nanowimo's novel writing month link that was given right at the start of this...
*thinks about it*
Yeah--from how I understood it, this contest mostly came about from you wanting to do a world building contest that was based on the write a novel in a month thing.
So, yeah--guess I mostly misinterpreted what was going on.
I would have asked questions... but well... there was no reason to have a question until now.
@Harlot, did i give out a NaNoWriMo link by accident? i know that the creator of the 30 Days of World Building has a link to NaNo on her page, but i can't remember posting one in this group. i tried hard to use different terms for the 30 Days of World Building exercises and the Summer Prose Competition challenges, but i can see how it can be confusing fersuure.
I have kind of been on, or at least around, enough committees for that to stop confusion.
As it is fairly common for name changes to projects, as they have changed or modified their goals (or just one whim of the chairperson) that really that idea of "this WAS 30 days of World Build, NOW it is the Summer Prose Competition" to seem like a rather normal and understandable concept.
And this is why socialising and working on a team is a bad thing X3
So yeah--the name change really did not do much to make me think they were different ideas.
er... I mean--referring to it as a seperate name from the World Building... sorry... still have a bit of lingering confusion here.
Also, @Sareneth and @Gabriel - I apologize for the late reviews (although a believe the deadline is in a few hours, unless I'm mistaken and confused, which isn't such a new thing). I know how annoying it is to wait for something like this, but I have not been getting home from work until around 8 or 9 every night this week and doing it before 8AM is clearly out of the question for someone who so values sleep. Luckily I got off earlier today! You shall have your reviews soon :)
And I think the word is actually 'critique' in the case of your post, not critic. The critic is the one critiquing :)
Leaving only mood/imagery and Grammar/Syntax to get scores for @DruidX.
This generally ticked me off, as well, that made it so she only really had a chance to get 20 out of 30 from my marking to begin with. Making it so, if she was lucky, she could only get a score of 66% from me.
This was not a condition I enjoyed marking her under.
It also seemed that she seemed to miss the point on my stuff, making it so, I could not get as much marks under mood. To be fair, I was low on imagery--buth that again, was more an issue of the subgenre I ended up choosing for my world to be built for.
It was a situation that I did not really enjoy.
@Gabe (as well as @Sagar and @Charlotte), I'm also sorry for the very last minute review. I'm on vacation so I can only go to the lobby for internet every so often
I understand that opinion enters into if not every review then most of them, but to automatically decide something can only get a zero in two categories just because of the genre or writing style is to not even try, especially in a largely objective category such as 'Believability and Consistency'.
No problem. I'll likely be in the same position next week.
On the Believability thing:
Certain genre's require people give up certain ideas just to allow verisimilitude enough to keep reading. From what I was seeing of @DruidX' work--while it was true to the genre it was from... it was not a genre I have ever been able to keep a solid amount of verisimilitude while reading.
Using ready that sort of stuff has me begin MSTing the entire thing.
On the imagery thing:
I think you are confusing War Stories with Military Comedy Stories.
The two are not one in the same.
Typically, of the two, Military Comedy only really do much of anything for imagery, if it is required for a section that goes over the next set of logical fallacies that will follow.
War will do everything as imagery--but not much of either logic or logical fallacies.
I think you are not reading the full genre I am mentioning... and just reading "Military", rather than "Military Comedy".
Which again, most of the imagery is made up in well--the pointless discussions that occur when the really should not be.
Mind you, to be fair, there really is not much in the genre of Military Comedy. Which is mostly why I chose to base my contest entry around it.
So, yes, between Imagery and Believability you can lose a lot when the person reading it is not familiar (or particularly likable) with a certain genre.
As for Believability, this has nothing to do with genre unless you make it to be. Believability has to do with character actions and motivations, along with continuity. If, for example, you were creating a warfare comedy and had the Archduke shot and subsequently reanimated, well, unless you'd set up the possibility for such an occurrence you're going to be docked Believability points. I'm being facetious, I know, but all Believability really has to with is how well the characters/setting you've set up continue to behave in the way you've already specified them to.
Certainly, everything is going to come down to individual bias. That's just how humans are. I just would have hoped that we could suspend that kind of bias and, instead of focusing on how much we 'hate" a genre, decide to keep an open mind and instead focus on how something is written. Not what is written. So you know, and so @everyone knows, I don't like fantasy. Even Harry Potter irritates me. Doesn't mean I can't think Elzu's prose is beautiful. Doesn't mean I resent mike_itong's myriad inventive creatures.
I love language. That's why I came here to judge for all of you. I had hoped that's what all of you came for, too.
So I will reword that - a war-torn, comedic world has just as much to it as a world of star-crossed lovers. The imagery might seem less important to you, but the story is not the main concern here. Not that that has anything to do with why Laura's fantasy world should receive low marks for being of a genre you don't enjoy.
As for the comments about believability, as I said, this isn't about how close something is to our reality.
Anyway, I'm beginning to lose coherency, I believe. It is surely bed time. Good night, all!
When the imagery, which is fairly typical what genre I thought i was reading really does not strike me as real or believable--but it is typical to the genre, that was the issues.
And... the example had me a bit confused for a moment--as the last entry kind of had the Chancellor shot... and I had to double check to make certain I did not have any sign that he was ever reanimated (he was not--and did not plan to)
You also get some genres where the architecture in the genre would typically never work in the real world. Which in the genre, it is fairly normal--but it removes believability for anybody reading.
And yes, there are fantasy stories I enjoy. There are also styles of fantasy that drive me up the wall. This goes more into the matter of various sub genres and sub sub genres that just get irritating to name--making a very irritating form of word soup just to discuss them.
Let us just say, that there were tropes in @DruidX' style that were irritating me, mayhaps? Tropes are not bad--but they can get irritating.
I dunno--grouping stories on genre is pretty much like group objects on the planet by is it Earth, Wind, Water or Fire.
My idea was more to group them by their base Tropes--think proteins for a comparison to food.
And my story DID have imagery... it was more of a logical/illogical one. The imagery was more based on the psychology and thought processes of the people involved. To have the audience think about these word battles, and compare it to stuff they did.
While it was not a physical set of imagery--well... maybe it is too abstract to call it imagery... however in which case, I fail at what I would end up calling it.
And, yes, I do love language too--that is why I hate English =P
The idea of thinking of things in genre really has not made sense to me in about over a decade.
I mean--most labellings of genre really have long since lost any cohesion with the content they may or may not contain.
Please, understand, that when I say "style" it is almost never synonymous with "genre".
I think once you get that out of the picture--we may have less issues.
Now, Military Comedy does work as a genre, as there are only like two or three stories that come to my mind when I think of that.
I am definitely going to have to step out now--as well, I have understood why I have never done well at the idea of world building.
The concept just plain confuses me really.
I mean, typically when building a story, I can take some tropes and throw them together, to get a basic idea of what is going on.
Looking at what is going on for world building--I now understand that I have no clue what makes up a "world" in a story, much less know how to throw together those mystery ideas together in any way meaningful.
Yeah--just going to part this group... as really, I am just going to say, that I really have no clue what it is about any more. And I doubt following it would allow this.
As well--I really see a world as people and the relationships with each other in the world.
I have no idea what you guys see the world as, maybe apart from formations of animal, mineral and vegetables.
Well--anyways, thanks for the enlightenment here.
I have came to the conclusion that the main issue here is a different in thought.
I see the world being made up of the people and how they interact with each other. How they talk and handle things.
This group appears to see world building as arrangements of animal, mineral and vegetables.
In the case I am wrong in my assessment here, I would be willing to move the discussion to another spot.
However, while we appear to have these rather different paradigm on what a world is, it is best that I do not join any further world building topics.
There being about thirty days in Novembre.
And well--I guess I did not check the link to the 30 Days of World Building you gave once. Even more so--I was well--kind of confusing this contest with that 30 Days of World Building thing. That is, not really certain what the differences were, as well--the only link I really saw was that of the Nanowimo's novel writing month link that was given right at the start of this...
*thinks about it*
Yeah--from how I understood it, this contest mostly came about from you wanting to do a world building contest that was based on the write a novel in a month thing.
So, yeah--guess I mostly misinterpreted what was going on.
I would have asked questions... but well... there was no reason to have a question until now.
I have kind of been on, or at least around, enough committees for that to stop confusion.
As it is fairly common for name changes to projects, as they have changed or modified their goals (or just one whim of the chairperson) that really that idea of "this WAS 30 days of World Build, NOW it is the Summer Prose Competition" to seem like a rather normal and understandable concept.
And this is why socialising and working on a team is a bad thing X3
So yeah--the name change really did not do much to make me think they were different ideas.
er... I mean--referring to it as a seperate name from the World Building... sorry... still have a bit of lingering confusion here.