Now opened! The AGS grandiose writing project, starting now!

auriond · Tue 29/04/2008 01:04:53

Oh... you never know

if we keep honing our skills here, we could become more and more alike in thinking and writing style... until it is quite indistinguishable from one another... and then we will become a novel factory! An unstoppable force in the literary scene!

TwinMoon · Tue 29/04/2008 01:24:47

(Novel factory, that immediately reminds me of Philip Parker. If you're wondering what's so special about him, check out how many books he's written.

and, some more information on this literary giant: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6237305.html)

TwinMoon · Thu 01/05/2008 21:07:55

So, what's up with this?

Why aren't the other last people in the branch uploading their stories? Will we have a competition writing the last bit of branch B-1?

Jack Sheehan · Fri 02/05/2008 01:06:43

pssh I don't even care anymore, So many people fucked this one up I can't see the next one being any better.

Venus · Fri 02/05/2008 19:38:02

Sorry for the delay. I only just read that it was up to me now to upload the story. So here is the finished product of branch B2, hopefully working this time. Enjoy!

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Promotion_B2.doc

Tuomas · Fri 02/05/2008 22:06:01

O_o Well that's an unconventional turn in the plot. After what I wrote myself I was waiting for something completely different!

BTW, who's Liz?

Questionable · Fri 02/05/2008 22:56:48

Quote from: Tuomas on Fri 02/05/2008 22:06:01
O_o Well that's an unconventional turn in the plot. After what I wrote myself I was waiting for something completely different!

BTW, who's Liz?

Tuomas, you're a mind reader.

Vince Twelve · Sat 03/05/2008 01:17:53

I was going to wait until all the four stories were ready for reading, but I broke down and read the two that have been shown here so far.

My intentions in writing the first bit were to just provide a setting that could easily be turned into satire, and I thought that a celebrity gossip magazine would be perfect. I thought it was interesting that neither of the branches released so far really touched on how ridiculous celeb gossip is. One devolved into random violence and one ignored my setting and went in a different direction right away. Regardless of my intentions, however, both branches turned out to be pleasant, if a bit cacophonous, reads. Here were my thoughts on the first two branches:

Branch A-1: The part with Jigger and Ollie was brilliant. Hats off to the writers of that part! Too bad we only heard mention of those characters later.

I loved the idea of having different chapters with the rhyming titles! That's the way to change first-person narrators. Each one was fairly clear about the character it switched to.

The ending was quite nice, even though the story got a bit muddled in all the mayhem, but it was a fun muddled anyways. I liked the big reveal at the end.

And I thought it was (unintentionally) hilarious that somehow the name of the magazine became "Employees of Undressed" because someone misread a line in my first bit! I was saying that the employees of the magazine "Undressed" ran to the windows. But whatever, it was funny!

Branch B-2: It's amazing how different the two stories turned out. There were some great one-liners in this bit. "himself or Himself" ha!

The focus on the funeral was a good idea, and I liked the two professional mourners.

Liz? Freudian slip? And Chris! His name was Chris! I couldn't think of a good name so I just gave him an initial. Glad someone filled in that blank. Also, I'm glad someone followed up on the romance set up that I slipped into the start!

Well done to everyone, except for the people who delayed the hell out of this thing! Can we see the other two now? Please?

brokenbutterfly · Sat 03/05/2008 02:41:13

Quote from: Vince Twelve on Sat 03/05/2008 01:17:53
Branch A-1: The part with Jigger and Ollie was brilliant. Hats off to the writers of that part!

As one of them, I say: thanks! But I'm still embarrassed

I really liked your setting, Vince Twelve! Even though you wanted to write the ending, your beginning was awesome! I'm glad I wasn't the one to do it, I wonder what I would've come up with...

Quote from: Vince Twelve on Sat 03/05/2008 01:17:53
One devolved into random violence

I supposed I'm the one to blame for having fueled it with my take on Jigger? But with your two people going splat and kershplack, it was pretty violent too nah?

I like both stories so far, and can't wait for the remaining two!

Stupot · Sat 03/05/2008 13:03:21

Quote from: brokenbutterfly on Sat 03/05/2008 02:41:13
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Sat 03/05/2008 01:17:53
Branch A-1: The part with Jigger and Ollie was brilliant. Hats off to the writers of that part!
As one of them, I say: thanks! But I'm still embarrassed

Me too. Thanks Vince. Your part was equally good considering you had the task of working out what the hell a "contemporary urban satire" is supposed to be like.

I thought the stories both came out very well, it's a shame the whole process was a farce... we need to be more disciplined and only those who fully intend to participate should put their names down... I know we can't account for unforeseen circumstances, but people should just think about it for a few minutes before saying "Count me in..."

Babar · Sat 03/05/2008 13:52:18

Quote from: Vince Twelve on Sat 03/05/2008 01:17:53
Branch A-1: The part with Jigger and Ollie was brilliant. Hats off to the writers of that part! Too bad we only heard mention of those characters later.

As the originator of those two, I have to agree with you. It's hilarious how they were developed.

I was happy that when I put a chapter name at the beginning, people got the idea and continued with it, although my reasoning was simply that I wanted to play with some other characters, and the first person narrative would have made that difficult otherwise.

While I can't think of either branch being 'better' than the other, B2 is definitely the more sane and clearer story

.

Akatosh · Sat 03/05/2008 14:57:31

Quote from: Vince Twelve on Sat 03/05/2008 01:17:53
Liz? Freudian slip?

Actually, it's not quite freudian. I had spent some hours of that day studying stuff about a book since there was an important test upcoming and I knew virtually nothing about it. The female main character / love interest of that book was named "Elisabeth", and given my ineptitude when it comes to names, I somehow got it mixed up with Margret from the chain story. Still...

voh · Sat 03/05/2008 15:01:33

I'd really, really like to see what A-2 turned into. Andail?

Emerald · Sat 03/05/2008 16:57:40

Well, I suppose there's no hope of lo_res_man coming back with an ending. And even Andail seems to have gone AWOL.

So, I'll just post the B-1 branch as-is and you can make up the ending in your own heads...

Promotion (B-1)

Edit: B-2 seems to be corrupted. It's 90KBs (which seems oddly big) and no matter what word processor I load it on to it either rejects the file or locks up...

Questionable · Sat 03/05/2008 21:43:43

Is there anywhere else you can host that Emerald? It's asking me to register and I don't really feel like it.

nihilyst · Sun 04/05/2008 03:38:02

I'm not registered there, and the download works for me.

TwinMoon · Sun 04/05/2008 12:08:04

I can download B-1 as well, and I'm not registered on Mediafire (never will be either).
To satisfy your curiosities almost, here's A-2 minus Andails ending, but with an exciting cliffhanger.

voh · Sun 04/05/2008 12:32:06

Thanks, twinmoon, that was fun to read

Hope to see the finished branch one of these days.

This writing comp didn't quite... Work out, did it.

Candall · Sun 04/05/2008 17:44:49

I'm probably the primary culprit in the muddled state of A-1. Sorry about that. I was trying to get everyone to converge in one or two places for the end chapter and fix some potential timeline problems, but I guess I just made it worse.

Emerald · Mon 05/05/2008 21:36:41

Quote from: voh on Sun 04/05/2008 12:32:06
This writing comp didn't quite... Work out, did it.

Yet the end result still seems of better quality than the last.

I was thinking of some ideas to rectify the 'missing link' problems for next time. I shall number them for easy critiquing/ripping apart...

1. Pre-assign substitutes to jump in and take over for anyone who misses the deadline, which should be enforced better, for smoother progression. Make sure everyone who signs up understands that if they miss the deadline, they will be subsituted -- no waitsies. That should make them more attentive.

2. Assign a referee - someone who's dedicated and frequently checks up on the competition - to keep things moving. Whenever you send the document on down to the next person, you also send it to the ref. That way, the ref will always have an up-to-date copy. If/when somebody misses the deadline, the ref sends the up-to-date copy to the next person in line, and also sends a notice to the skippee informing them they've been skipped and to feel ashamed.

3. Use a first-come, first-serve policy rather than a list which is drawn up weeks before the actual competition. Quite simply, when someone finishes their part, they post up "I'm finished! Who's next?", and then they hand off the document to the first person to shout "Me! Memememimilol" and the chain continues like that.

4. We forgo the document files and emails and just use the forum thread, like normal people. At the beginning, the thread-starter sets out the genre, the word limit per post, and how many posts until the story ends, and how many posts are allowed per writer (for example: modern fantasy, 500 words maximum per post, ends on the 25th post, one post per person).

Whatcha think?