The Ninth TV Tropes Writing Contest

Question regarding the "single setting" rule; does something being described that occurred in a different place a long time ago (i.e. backstory stuff basically) count as a second setting or not? I wouldn't have thought to, but better to be sure.

Yeah, you can have people describe things that happened elsewhere and stuff like that. As long as the actual action of the story takes place in the same setting, you're good.

I'll enter, seems like fun.

Just bumping this to remind errbody we need another judge if this shindig is to go down.

-tumbleweed rolls by-

edited 28th Oct '13 3:34:44 AM by FingerPuppet

Oh god.

Well I'd rather write something, but if nobody else comes along I'd be willing to act as a judge.

Sign me up.

I already have a title.

Count me in.

1,600 words so far. I might actually finish for once!

Curiously, how strict is the 2k minimum word limit or the 5k maximum word limit? How many words can you have less or more than the above respectively?

The word limit's not too strict, it's more of a general guideline. The winning story last time was ~5400 words and no one penalized him for going over the limit. I think as long as you stay reasonably close (e.g., within a few hundred words), you should be alright. They're mostly in place so people don't write flash fiction or so they don't write excessively long stories that take forever to judge or anything like that.

edited 1st Nov '13 5:18:27 AM by FingerPuppet

Uh, what's the point of having the word limit at all if you're not going to be penalized for violating it? There should be at least -some- points taken off.

If I'd have known that I wouldn't have padded my last entry so much to get it up to the minimum.

As a judge, I have taken away points before for being under the limit. Less that 2000 words is a heck of a lot more noticeable than being slightly above the max.

edited 1st Nov '13 9:37:20 AM by Parable

If I recall correctly, points were deducted by at least one judge for overrunning the word limit, although it did vary by judge.

As a judge, I will confess that I did not pay attention to the word count at all, but rather how long the story felt. A story that feels like a slog at just above the minimum is obviously going to score lower than a story that exceeds the limit but feels like half that length—unless the desire is for more, but that's a kind of positive problem rather than a negative. That said, a story that is long and tedious is the kiss of death: At least bad flash fiction has the courtesy of fleeing the scene at good speed!

Then once again I ask what the point of having the word count is. If there's no uniformity in how it's judged and it clearly doesn't matter then why should we take the effort in making sure we're in that range?

There are two simple but important reasons that you should aim to be within that range, even if the guideline is not absolute:

1. Very short stories and longer short stories begin to spill over into different forms entirely: Flash fiction/vignettes and novelettes respectively. While these are both comparable to short stories, they are not so comparable to each other. The architecture involved is often very different, like comparing a shotgun shack to an English country estate: Both houses, but not really the same at all. This is especially true of vignettes and the like, which may be totally plotless where a longer work cannot afford to be.
2. Too long and you start monopolising the judges' time, which is patently unfair to others entering the contest. Even if you're absolutely brilliant, another John Cheever or Joyce Carol Oates, you're still imposing. It interrupts the flow and makes comparison more difficult—or, alternately, makes individual assessment more frustrating.

edited 1st Nov '13 2:27:06 PM by JHM

I'll give this a go. Don't know if I'll have time with my university applications though.

@imadinoasur: If no one else steps up to the plate in the next 2-3 days you'll probably have to be judgified.

That's OK, I haven't really got much written yet anyway.

So, just to be clear: Is the story limited to only a single room? Can you have different rooms in a small building or anything?

Well, I was personally wondering if a single location has to be indoors.

Because if it's a single room, then it obviously has to be.

But if it doesn't, then it can be somewhere else.

The spirit of the rule, I think, is that it's a place that the story doesn't leave.

Oh, and, if you're still desperate for a judge, I could possibly try.

I read quickly, at least.

edited 11th Nov '13 12:56:11 PM by Matues

My interpretation is based on thinking of it like a play (one in the vein of something like An Inspector Calls); it's an instance where the setting never needs to be changed. Anything that would be shown "on stage" as it were is exclusive to one particular area. Possibly a bad analogy, but it made sense in my head at least.

I've personally limited myself to one room, though that was mostly so I don't take a more liberal interpretation with things. The OP somewhat agrees with this, though he made it vague and unclear which doesn't entirely help.

e; Better analogy: think of it as a bottle episode.

edited 11th Nov '13 2:54:20 PM by Deuteronomy

I was thinking of Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope myself.

Deuteronomy's interpretation is correct. I think it'd be possible to write something that takes place outdoors, but everything would still have to be confined to a small area (e.g., a campfire comes to mind), but obviously you can't have a story start at the base of a mountain and end on its summit or anything like that.