Amph SFF Writer's Guild Writing Contest: February 2006

Congrats to Knight Dilettante.

Boy did I suck up the joint, eh? (And that's not a drug reference.)

 

Congratulations!!!

 

Please respect all the time and effort we've put in, because if we just get grief over this, I, for one, am not ging to be inclined to do it again.

I know what you mean, and I'm going to send you my cross-examination over PM instead of posting it here in public.

Fatburt: As for you, I found your judging much more agreeable. Kudos.


Conratulations to Miss Knight_Dilettante! I can't wait to read your story!

BTW, I'm fine with my story being posted publicly.

 

Wow. I mean, really, wow! I got on this morn... er, afternoon and thought "Why is the logged in name red? Are they playing with the color schemes again?" Imagine my shock when I got to a thread I had a post in and I was red there too. And had a title.

As wonderful and ego boosting as this is (and it is - I admit), the thing I most wanted to get out of this experience was some advice to improve my writing. Though, I do already know I suck at grammar - commas being my particular bane. I am working on that already. So, I thank the judges as much, if not more, for their comments as for the scores themselves. And I'm fine with having my story available to the members of the Writer's Guild here. I'd rather it wasn't left up for too long in a completely open venue though. Mostly because I do intend to revise heavily (pretty much 20 minutes after I had sent it in I decided it needed another 2000 to 2500 words worth of mostly action and some more explanation before I'd be really happy with it) and see about submitting it somewhere. Not that I expect to sell it or anything, but I think it might be more likely to be read if nothing had happened to affect first publication rights. So, DorkmanScott, if you're planning on posting the zip file somewhere accessible to the world at large for a long time or something, I might prefer that people PM me an e-mail address I could send it to directly. But I certainly would welcome comments from the fine writers here and I too look forward to reading the other stories. As well as some of the linked works folks have posted that RL has kept me from getting to yet.

KD

 

Hooray! Scores!

First off, huge congratulations to you, Knight_Dilettante - seems like we had a pretty tough field, so very well done Can't wait to read the winning entry - and indeed all the others

Second: thanks again, to both judges for reviewing clearly and constructively even if we didn't all agree with everything and for just putting in the effort. Same to Dorkman. I'd forgotten that you didn't volunteer, DS, and so thanks again for sticking with us. And to everybody else, for competing.

 

I have been very impressed by the snippets of work from all the folks here that I have managed to read (sometimes I really hate real life). I decided early on that I could learn a lot from the folks here, and I really had not expected to do better than mid-field in this contest. Actually, with the scores so close, I feel a bit of a fraud being the only one in colors. Not that that is going to stop me from finding a nice blinding color combo in a minute.

KD

 

Ah, finally! Congrats, KD! Thanks to the judges and Dorkman for all their work (and suspense )...and to the entrants for their participating. Can't wait to read all the entrants.

 

when will the entries be up, I really want to read them

 

Yay! Scores!

Thanks for the comments. I'm glad that the story was enjoyable for the most part.

I never watched Invasion actually, but aliens posing as humans is admittedly an old bit. At one point I thought that I was writing a kind of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' sort of tale. It was the only 'plot bunny' (as they say in FanFic) that I could come up with, so although it isn't terribly original I ran with it.


I'd sure like to see a marked up copy of my story pointing out the comma errors.

Frankly, I had always loathed English class, mostly because of things like that.
There are times when I write something in Word and the Grammar Check points out things that it doesn't like, but I try to punctuate so that something is read in a specific way. Unfortunately, my writing style doesn't always agree with Word and I suppose that may be something to work on.

 

Congrats, Knight_Dilettante!!

 

Congrats to all involved and well done Knights.




As I said earlier in the thread that if Dorkman is going to have time issues for the forseeable future I would be happy to step up as a host. I´ll be able to do more when I´m back from my holidays if Dorkman does decide to step down (The decision is his though).






Personally I´d like to say thankyou to Dorkman for hosting the first contest and dealing with the hiccoughs along the way. I look forwards to being involved in many more after this shakey though successful start.

 

I lost by one point?! BLASPHEMY! Congrats to Knight, I can't wait to read yours and everyone else's stories. I'll have to work even harder on my next entry...

Thanks to the judges, thanks to Dorkman for hosting, and thanks to the other participants. Hopefully with this first round out of the way, the next round will go by much smoother. Any idea as to when that's going to be?

 

You can access the encrypted ZIP file here. Click under the "Free" column, and wait to get a download code.

The password for the ZIP file to protect the authors' first publication rights is:

gam!bol

You will have to enter that password when extracting the data.

The ZIP file will also be deleted after 30 days of no downloads, so if any author is concerned about it staying up too long, there's no problem. I also have a link to kill the download if it stays up too long.

M. Scott

 

so when will the next contest be ready?

 

Well, unless we have any qualms about some particular part of the contest besides the delays, it should be pretty quick.

We can't really do anything about the delays because well... they just happen.

Sounds like Fatburt's gonna take the Hostship?

 

Second one has been decreed already and the thread is here

From what I gather, droideka has decided to oversee the contest personally. Hopefully RL won't start playing up for her like it did for Dorkman.

BTW, I'm going to download and read the entries ASAP. Then we can start discussing them - it does say that this thread shall remain open for discussion of the winning and other stories . . .

EDIT: Download isn't working for me - I think it doesn't like AOL. Is there anyone who'd be OK to e-mail me the zip package?

 

I can email them to you. My email is castdownpbj@yahoo.com; drop me an email and I'll send them your way.

 

For whatever reason this isn't working for me. It asks for a download option (pay or free), and after I choose one I get an upload page. Very strange.

 

I think you have to scroll right down . . .

Oh, and IMF, thanks very much

 

If anyone else is having trouble, then I can email or PM them to you. Fatburt and I both have them from judging, and I'd be happy to pass them along.

 

I read a few of these today and I really enjoyed The Atlantean one, although the cannibal thing was a little gross