Fortnightly Writing Competition: FEEDBACK (2-part round: pre-round discussion)

[Mandle]

So, this is an idea that Stupot had and that we discussed a bit and refined. But, it is so unique in structure, that I thought it worth a little discussion in here before setting the rules in stone and starting the round:

The idea is that participants write a story, then there is a round of feedback from others, and then they go back to the story and revise with the feedback in mind. This does NOT mean that they must incorporate all feedback, but if they do not, they should provide notes after the second draft is published of why they did not think certain feedback worked for them and their story.

The winner should be the person who dealt with the feedback in the best way.

My initial idea is 7 days for the first draft, then 3 days for feedback, and 4 days for the second draft. A word limit might also be a good idea considering the shorter writing time?

What does everyone think?

[Sinitrena]

While an interesting idea, I'm not sure it'll work.

1. We tend to have very few entries and often even less comments, because people don't find the time to comment, even when they have the time to read, or don't want to comment (whch is fine, generally, but desruptive here.)

2. Just because people would need to write a second version, doesn't mean they need less time for a first version. For me, personally, ideas need to grow and develop, I hardly ever start writing in the first week of the competition.

3. 4 days is short, even for a second draft, depending on when people have time. I don't think I'm the only one who writes in large chuncks when I have time. Finding such longer periods to write in works in a 2-week period, but not in a 4-day one.

4. I recommend a word min and max (mostly max, but min is probably a good idea in this case as well), just to have more uniform entries that are easier to critique to some form of standard. Stories of different length can lead to very different feedback.

5. In the same vain, there should be a topic given, to make it easier and fairer to give feedback. As a matter of fact, I would go for a more stringent, narrower topic than we usually give.

6. It might be a good idea to have some minor guidlines as to how feedback looks. <It's a good story, I enjoyed it.> is nice to hear, but ultimately useless.

7. A few rounds ago (Sliding Doors) brushfe had as a voting category the story that would have been even better in a different genre. I pointed out that that might actually reward the worse writer. I see a similar problem here: If the story that used the feedback the best is supposed to win, a story with a perfect first draft would lose. That's probably not a good idea.


Overall, it might work, but I think you do need to work on some of the details.