The Eighth TV Tropes Writing Contest

Wow, so that's the first set of scores up. While a little nerve-wracking to read — and I'll confess that I intentionally skipped over my own entry, hand held up before my eyes, and read all of the rest before coming back ^^; — it's also a great relief to have that first result and feedback. (It probably helps that I'm very happy with my score. ^_^)

Thank you very much for your thoughts, not only on my own entry but on all of them: they make informative reading, I find. Finally, thank you very much for taking the time and putting in the effort to judge for us. ^_^

I didn't do too bad for a story I wrote in three hours. Wooooo!

I think we all did at some point.

I apologize, but I have to drop out as a judge.

I only have one entry scored, and I'm seriously procrastinating on the rest to the point that I turned to my novel project to put off judging. It's just that I can't convince myself that I should be doing it this time around. The motivation isn't there.

Fortunately, we have a substitute judge, but it's preferable for me not to drop out, but I don't want to waste time for you all anymore.

On a similar note, I'm likely to roll back my time on TV Tropes as I reconsider my priorities.

Again, I'm sorry I'm ditching this, so good luck to you guys, and hopefully I won't repeat this next time.

edited 8th Jun '13 8:01:55 PM by chihuahua0

Don't worry about it, I doubt anyone's going to hold it against you. Everyone's got their own priorities and not enough free time to go around, so that's understandable.

Also I wasn't sure if danna sent the links to Khantalas, so I went ahead and did that to hopefully speed things up if he didn't.

edited 8th Jun '13 8:49:08 PM by FingerPuppet

Er...I really thought I did send the links to Khantalas, really...But then when I went back to my mailbox to recheck, I sent one to chihuahua, Finger Puppet, and Nocturna, but not Khantalas...

Really sorry 'bout that.

So, how many marks are left?

It looks as though we're waiting for Nocturna — who we might hear from soon — and Khantalas, once the he finds the PM containing the links and has time to read and mark them, presumably.

Okay, I finally looked at my score. Hopefully it won't take me two days to get the guts to look at the other judge's scores.

Arrrgh. Oh well, I can sympathize with having almost no free time. And at least I got the chance to see one of my scores.

I'm wondering if I should pull my story...

I think the wiki page for the TV Tropes Writing Contest needs some updating. I would add the scores for the seventh contest (it's complete up to 6), but I can't find the topic anywhere.

The contests have a wiki page?

Yes.

Here.

And sorry for the extra delay, guys. My mom got sick, so I mostly took over the housework, which has left me with little spare time.

Also, has anyone heard from Khantalas yet about whether they're actually judging?

Huh. Did not know that.

Oh dear — I'm sorry to read of your mother falling ill; I hope that your mom gets well soon, and, speaking for myself, take your time.

Oh yeah random question but.

When can I reveal which entry I did? Because I did not make something obvious enough apparently and I really really really want to explain it because the story makes a lot more sense if you get that.

@Oh So: Though it hasn't been revealed yet, I'm 99% sure which entry is yours and I wouldn't pull it just yet. Check your PM box.

@Jimmy: The thread for the seventh contest is here so if you (or anyone else who sees this post) feels like updating the wiki page, knock yourself out.

@Nocturna: Sorry to hear that. Hope your mom gets feeling better soon. And to answer your question, I have not heard from Khantalas, which is a little concerning. It would be kind of silly to have signups for another judge after everyone has already submitted.

edited 11th Jun '13 10:36:08 PM by FingerPuppet

Actually what you emailed me about is not the problem...

Oh okay I feel kinda silly then. Anyway it's your decision but personally, I wouldn't pull any of these stories.

I actually do not think that the story you questioned me about was mine.

What I am more concerned about is publishing rights. I submitted my contest entry to a short story publication at about the same time I submitted here and I just got back an email saying I had made it to the second round. Even if I don't get published in that publication, it makes me definitely think it's good enough to submit elsewhere.

This of course has me worried about first publication rights, and it doesn't seem fair for me to be judged and then to not have my story be available for everyone to read afterwards, which is why I was considering pulling my story.

@Hermie: No revealing which story is yours until after all the judging is done.

@Finger Puppet: I've PMed Khantalas directly, but haven't heard anything either. If no one hears anything soon, we'll have to start looking for another judge to step in. This isn't the first time we've had to go scrambling for other judges during the judging round.

@cats: Not to be a downer, but I'm pretty sure your story would already count as published, as it was put on a public website. Unless it was the one with the password (don't say if it was). But you'd really have to check what they consider "published". And at this point there's little reason to back out, I think, as one judge has definitely already scored and I've probably already scored it; it would mostly likely only be the third judge that would be affected.

edited 12th Jun '13 10:11:43 AM by Nocturna

Wait, let me send out a tweet or two on first publication rights before we jump to a conclusion.

edited 12th Jun '13 2:25:39 PM by chihuahua0

Okay guys, here's my part of the results. Finally. Sorry for taking so long with them.

Once all the judges' results are in, feel free to ask for clarification on my comments on your story.

Also note, if you're reading my comments on stories other than your own, that there are unmarked spoilers.

And one final note: there were a lot of people who struggled with correctly punctuating their dialogue (over 75% had at least a few problems), so I'm just going to leave the following two links here. They both go over the rules for punctuating dialogue; I would recommend looking over them, especially if you're one of the writers of the stories where I particularly noted speech tags in my explanation of a less-than-perfect conventions score.
[1]
[2]

Entry 1: [I wanted to be a reporter all my life]
Theme: 4.5/5 "Stand" is an unfortunate—and inaccurate—choice of words for someone who was just hanged.
Conventions: 3/5 Incorrectly punctuated speech tags and using hyphens in place of em dashes were the most common errors.
Overall: 6/15
Comments: This had an interesting plot and premise, but there were a lot of issues. The part with the list of names was too long—a few to establish Cassandra's point would have been fine, but there didn't need to be that many and it lost my interest. There was a lack of attention paid to historical accuracy: the protagonist wouldn't have been able to just waltz into the jail and they didn't have birth certificates then like we do now. The establishment of motive was lacking. Why would the protagonist be willing to give her life up for a random stranger? Why was she even going back in time in the first place? Also, how in the world did she manage to conceal a soccer-ball-sized time machine on her person? The characterization was somewhat spotty, too, as I never really felt I got a good handle on the personalities of any of the characters (aside from the protagonist being impulsive).

That said, it was fairly interesting to read, and as I mentioned at the beginning, the concept of time travel and needing time traveling police was an interesting one.
Total: 13.5/25

Entry 2: The Other Side of Town
Theme: 5/5
Conventions: 4/5
Overall: 14/15
Comments: This was haunting. A sort of subdued horror story. There were two main things that kept this from getting a perfect score. First, "the puppet" was referred to as both male and female, and I didn't get the feeling that the blurring of gender was deliberate. Second, I'm still confused over how killing the girl could have been the goal of the contract when the puppet didn't know of her existence and they only found her by accident. I also would have liked to have found out how much of the first story was true—as it seemed the most likely to be true—and if the girl they encountered was one of the other three, but I understand that the ambiguity is part of the story. Also, my brain kept insisting, "But what if there's people on the other side of the world? They can't know from where they are."

Moving on to why this got a near-perfect score (which is a lot harder to articulate): The setting was superbly set up, with just enough description provided to give a solid feel for the vast creeping emptiness of it. The narrative voice was amazing, understandable yet wholly different in the way it looked at things. And as I mentioned at the beginning, the mood evoked was strong and consistent, and only intensified as the story went on. There was that lingering question of "what happened?" and the ending only served to underscore the horror both of what had happened and what had been done.
Total: 23/25

Entry 3: [But right now, I'm close to regretting it]
Theme: 4/5 The last sentence felt rather forced.
Conventions: 2/5 The biggest issues were inconsistent verb tense and statements which were missing a qualifier (for instance, "Not once did I try to defend someone I just met for, at that point, a month."—except that he just did, making the statement nonsensical. What you wanted was "Not once before had I tried to defend...").
Overall: 9/15
Comments: This... I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the story was interesting, the plot was coherent (if a bit far-fetched) and told in a logical manner, and the narrative voice was nicely consistent. On the other hand, the idea of a woman who was so caught up in Disney films that she was utterly unaware of reality, yet who was able to function on her own, stretched my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. Also, the consistent referral to his wife as "the girl"—he never once actually used her name—was offputting, for a number of reasons: it dehumanized her; it prevented me from really forming an attachment to her, as I didn't even have a name to associate with her; and it really made me doubt the sincerity of Nigel's conclusion at the end, as someone who actually cares for someone else is not going to consistently refer to them in impersonal, non-specific terms. Also, while I generally try to keep the conventions score separate from the overall score, in this case they somewhat bled together, as there were too many places where you wrote one thing but clearly meant another (such as with the missing qualifiers above) which kept jerking me out of the flow of the story. Overall, though, it was interesting.
Total: 15/25

Entry 4: Making Plans For Nigel
Theme: 3/5 Last sentence was changed. Also, it felt awkward.
Conventions: 2/5 Watch out for typos and speech tags. Also, although this didn't impact your score, double spacing would be nice.
Overall: 3/15
Comments: This was very disjointed and rambling. There was no real overarching plot. Events happened without any introduction or any explanation. Characterization seemed to be "whatever is most convenient for the story at the moment." My advice for the future would be to figure out what the major conflict in the story is. Then determine what information you need to convey to the reader to both draw them into the world of the characters and to explain background relevant to the conflict and supporting events. Anything which is not related to the main conflict or to establishing the world for the reader should be ruthlessly pruned. Also, I would suggest a beta-reader.
Total: 8/25

Entry 5: [Well, calling it a decision would be technically correct]
Theme: 5/5
Conventions: 3/5
Overall: 13/15
Comments: You had a clear narrative voice, with its practical yet somewhat philosophical bent, and the story was for the most part structured well. The bit at the end with the aftermath of the murder felt a little tacked on (although necessary for the final sentence), given that you started with the murder and then moved back to explain it. Overall, this was a solid piece.
Total: 21/25

Entry 6: [A warrior does not regret]
Theme: 5/5
Conventions: 4/5
Overall: 15/15
Comments: Wow. This was amazing. Strong characterization which drew me into the story and made me care intensely—the warrior pride, the fear, the driving need, the loss. The descriptions were wonderfully earthy; it was very clear that this was a people connected to the rhythms of the earth, apart from technology. The worldbuilding was excellent and introduced in manageable chunks. The one thing that's been teasing at me were the parallels between the story here and the Spanish invasion of South and Central America, particularly with the way you drew on the animal talisman idea for the Khayeht warriors and then the armour of the others; was that parallel deliberate?
Deduction for being 538 words over the word limit: 2 points
Total: 22/25

Entry 7: The Princess' Decision
Theme: 4.5/5 The speech tag. That pesky speech tag added to the first sentence. You would have had a full score here without it.
Conventions: 4/5 The most common error was occasional random capitalization.
Overall: 12/15
Comments: This was good. This had strong characterization, a coherent story and plot-line, even with the story-within-a-story, and you did an excellent job of incorporating the sentences. My biggest criticism is that there was too much mystery about the details of what really happened in April's life. You place things in a normal modern-day setting, and then you throw this fantasy curveball that never really gets explained. You had almost 3,000 words you could have put towards expanding on the details; it would have been a stronger story, I think, if you had used some of them for that purpose. My other major criticism would be that the story was a bit bland. It was sweet, but there were no real quirks to draw me in, no vividness that captivated me. But even with that, the story was coherent and interesting.
Total: 20.5/25

Entry 8: [I remember being tired above all else]
Theme: 0/5 You didn't use the sentences.
Conventions: 2/5 Misplaced apostrophes and malapropisms were the most frequent mistakes.
Overall: 7/15
Comments: I really wish this story had been better; for all its problems it was actually fairly interesting and I think there's a lot of promise here. There were three main problems and a major irritant.

The first problem was the sense of time. I think you may have intended this to be some sort of indeterminate fantasy setting, but that didn't come across clearly and so the setting felt like a poorly thought out Anachronism Stew. You mixed references and culture from a variety of time periods and it didn't come across well. The second problem was narrative consistency. Maldred being the emperor wasn't introduced until later, but you used the terms interchangeably from the beginning. First the narrator was beaten only about the face, but then he was injured all over. And so on. The third problem was the structure of the story; it seemed like it was the introduction to a larger work rather than a complete short story, particularly because your beginning indicated that the narrator was going to tell the whole story of his involvement, but then you only told the very beginning.

The major irritant was your use of the "cotton jenny". First, it's "spinning jenny". Second, having one's face forced into it would not result in neat lines cut into the face but rather in messy, ragged tears. Third, there's also no way a spinning jenny could leave a crisscross pattern on anything; the threads are all parallel and run in one direction.

I think the one thing that caught and held my attention the most was the narrative voice. It was, for the most part, strong and interesting. The use of the swears was jarring, given that the voice was otherwise cultured and somewhat archaic. You really showed the narrator's personality through the narrative voice—educated, somewhat jaded, and imaginative—and succeeded in getting me to care about the character.
Total: 9/25

Entry 9: [I've never had to contradict that]
Theme: 4/5 The last sentence felt slapped on.
Conventions: 3/5 The biggest issue was incorrectly punctuated speech tags. The secondary issue was that you occasionally would just drop words. Also, although I didn't remove points for this, the story would have been easier to read if you'd double-spaced the paragraphs.
Overall: 8/15
Comments: This started out really good, with a strong, interesting narrative voice. But then it unfortunately largely fell apart. You mostly lost the voice a bit into the second section. The pacing was awkward, with some seemingly important things taking up a breath and other less relevant things getting a whole section. A few plot holes crept in: Amina stated at the beginning that she worked at the hotel, but then she was inexplicably out of work by the end; Roik thanked her goddess for being able to leave her old life of bodyguarding behind but was perfectly fine with returning to bodyguarding at the end; and it made no sense that Jeknel not only knew of Roik but also knew that she was in town. Also, given the focus you paid to "what happened to land Amina on her own", it would have been nice to actually have that question resolved by the end.

This was very clearly a character-based as opposed to action-based story, and I think you did a decent job with that. We did see Roik and Amina's relationship develop over the course of the story, as well as get a sense of who they were individually as people. I liked the way you switched back and forth between their perspectives, although some sort of textual indicator might have helped with ease of reading; I got rather confused after the first switch. The ending was quite sweet, too; I'm glad things are looking up for Amina.
Total: 15/25

Entry 10: [The truth is that I never truly walk alone]
Theme: 4/5 First sentence felt like a non-sequitor, and the rest of the story didn't change that.
Conventions: 1/5 My recommendation: find a proofreader. The biggest recurring problems were run-on sentences, incorrectly punctuated speech and speech tags, and incorrect spaces (both missing spaces and added spaces). You also need to work on your paragraph structure.
Overall: 5/15
Comments: You had an over-arching plot to the story, and that plot wasn't a bad one; that is what rescued the overall score from being even lower. However, the story was executed rather clumsily. The protagonist was not introduced or developed in a way that made me care about him. The prose was much too factual, much too "this is a thing that happened", for me to emotionally connect to him. I was never invited into his life and shown what happened; I was told about it.

The pacing wasn't great, either. Too much time was spent setting up his background when most of the things in that section were irrelevant to the story. All we really needed to know was that he'd recently had a staph infection which cost him his job and forced him to move back in with his mother. Once we got past the introduction, though, the pacing was much more even.
Total: 10/25

Entry 11: [And I don't regret it]
Theme: 4/5 The final sentence felt fairly shoved in there; it just didn't flow with the rest of the paragraph and so stuck out rather like a sore thumb.
Conventions: 4/5 occasional typos, missed commas around speech tags, and awkward sentence structures
Overall: 10/15
Comments: This was a fairly good story. My biggest beef with it is the lack of grief the main character displays. He seems much too settled and resigned for someone who just lost his wife unexpectedly a few weeks ago. This actually caused confusion on my part which detracted from me immersing myself in the story: there were hints that she was dead, but he was so calm about it that I thought that she must have just left him, but that didn't make sense given what had been said previously about her stuff... Also, I had a minor quibble with the "stay or go" exchange between the main character and the caretaker, as the meanings of "staying" seemed to shift several times throughout that conversation.

Now for the stuff that I thought you did well: You nicely established the creepy-horror vibe early in the story and kept building it up until the reveal. (Until that point, I was expecting the whole thing to be a horror story.) The story as a whole was well-plotted and fairly well-paced; it was an intriguing concept and you did a good job at introducing elements bit-by-bit as they were needed.
Total: 18/25

edited 12th Jun '13 5:52:55 PM by Nocturna

I kinda like how the two judges have rather different opinions on some of the stories. Makes for more variety...

Er, I'm assuming I'll have to reveal everyone's names and entries when the judging is done? That's gonna be quite a pain considering the fact that some of the stories don't actually have names and instead the second sentence of the story was used....Oh well, shouldn't take too much time to do.