Writers Race--- It Is Done!!!! * 1st--duskwings, * 2-DarthIshtar & Drabbo_Fett, 3-Indra

Gahhhh. I have eight plot bunnies written down, and I keep looking at the list and saying, "I can't write Number Six, that's too sad--no, wait..."

Hats off to you, Ish. I don't know how you do it.

 

Well, I've actually wanted to do this particular subject for a while, then remembered a certain thing from a certain novelization and boom, it turned into a plot bunny.

 

I'll be happy if there's some humor in there, but I like the idea of a contradiction in terms like we have in the little challenge.

 

I don't have Microsoft Word (Mac person here ), and I'm fairly close to the word limit (four words under based on one program's word counter, nine words over based on another). How do I tell when I can stop trying to pare this thing down?

-duskwings

 

Oh man, that was emotionally challangeing! First I do a dark, angsty chapter for my fic, then I tackle this monster! I need a hug!

 

www.wordpeddler.com

 

www.wordpeddler.com

That's the same counter as the one used in Word? Cool, I'm 12 words under. Maybe I can use them to actually write a proper ending ...

Thanks,
duskwings

 

wordpeddler.com I don't know if it's the same, but it's what I used when deprived of word and no one complained.

 

Well, I sent it in, so here's hoping that the word count does work OK. Thanks, Ish.

I would be willing to bet that I will get absolutely zero points (forget first through third -- I'm headed for last! ) but I really enjoyed writing it. And hey, the fun is all that counts, right?

-duskwings

 

DW, that's the best part of it. Finally, someone's feeding me plot bunnies and I'm having so much fun here!

Hey, K-T-J, does all of us voting on the challenge mean we all get judge points?

 

I'll be sending you a fic ASAP. This is actually fun!!!

 

Stupid question but....

Does "during the celebration" also mean at/near/same physical vicinity of the celebration?

Or could it be during/connected to the celebration?

 

Okay, mines in... Not sure how sad it is, but it's in.

Did anybody else have trouble making theirs sad? Mine kept turning funny...

 

Darth
No judge points but good try.


Analise
There has to be a celebration going on in your scene. It could be in the background but if your scene were filmed, then the celebration would definitely be a part of the scene.

pokey
I always have a hard time making any of my stories without humor. Even trying strictly for saddness I have to get myself to stop and cross out little humorous lines that creep in.


I'm glad ya'll are having fun...

 

There has to be a celebration going on in your scene. It could be in the background but if your scene were filmed, then the celebration would definitely be a part of the scene.

Well, there goes the eligibility of my submission. I figured that "during" was used in its literal sense -- that is, occurring at the same time as, and not necessarily in the same place at all. I'm just not having any luck with this challenge business, am I?

In other news, I have cooked up a javascript which, I believe, returns the same word-count as Microsoft Word does (thank you, Kettch, for telling me my word count). I can't check it (again, Mac person here), but here it is. Hopefully it will work, and hopefully someone will find it useful.

-duskwings

 

Here's a Mac word counter. I haven't used it because I have MS Word on my Mac so I just select what I want counted and paste it into a MS Word window and let MS Word count it for me. So I can't tell you how well it works but MacWorld gave it a good review for what that is worth.

KD

 

Thanks, Knight_Dilettante, but I already have several different programs on my computer that can count words. The problem is that all of them give a lower word-count than Microsoft Word. The program that you suggested, as nice as it seems, is no better than the others (see the section on that page entitled "A note about Word Counter versus Microsoft Word" for details).

That's why I wrote the online thing -- Microsoft has an extremely loose definition of "word," and inflates the word count far beyond what it should be. This causes a big problem when you are submitting to a contest with a fixed word-count limit such as this one. Your trusty word counter may tell you that you have 496 words, but Microsoft could inflate that into 507.

I believe that the online javascript that I wrote has the same definition of words as Microsoft Word -- that is, all separated punctuation like " ... " or " -- " is counted as a word; and any hyphenated words are separated into their component parts to make, for example, "devil-may-care" into three words. I'm not 100% certain that the javascript will exactly match Microsoft Word's count, but it is, at the very least, closer than most other counters.

</rant>

Sorry if that sounded a bit snippy -- I'm not angry at anyone in particular, just at Microsoft for thinking that the world revolves around them.

To conclude: those of you that do not have Microsoft Word and are close to the word limit -- be careful!

-duskwings

 

There has to be a celebration going on in your scene. It could be in the background but if your scene were filmed, then the celebration would definitely be a part of the scene.

I misunderstood, too. The celebration is going on during my story, but my fic is not really set in it. Actually, come to think of it, I suppose mine could be going on with the celebration in the background, but that might be stretching it a bit.

 

Mine's in. It's waaaay under the word limit, so no problems there.

 

Hmm...angst... These will be really interesting to read when we get them for judging.

 

I've got my box of tissues ready!

I use the plain text editor TextPad, and I was amazed at how accurate it counts words! (I use version 4.4.0 although it's up to 4.7.1 now, I think. Oh, yeah, Windows, of course. 'Tis sad, isn't it?) I hand counted the words plus made TextPad check it. Tested it with hyphenated words, words with ellipses and emdashes in the sentences...never phased it one bit! Trial version is free to download from their website. Nice for simple, basic, no-thrills text editing. Built-in spell checker to which you can add more words, macros, very powerful little editor. I use it to type all my fanfic 'cause with a few macros, the fic becomes an HTML page ready to upload. Gotta love that.

 

Important Notes:

• Since there was some confusion on the second challenge I am going to make an addition to the rules of the challenge. If you submitted an entry that did not take place in the same "scene" as a celebration, then you can submit another entry as long as it is sent in by tomorrow morning at 10 am.


• Currently I am organizing a 230+ person conference and thus am up to my hair in responsibilities as well as being away from home and forced to use an extremely slow dial-up connection. As a result, I am going to postpone Challenge 3 until sometime in the future.


• I will however, make it a priority to post the stories from Challenge 2 tomorrow afternoon. You will have until Monday morning at 11 am to vote.


• The results from the first challenge are almost complete. I will try to post them tomorrow also.


• Thank you for your patience.

 

Erm, well I read the rules and I don't think there is a rule against this, but please correct me if I am wrong. I missed this thread completely for the first two challenges and only found it after seeing it in a few signatures. But I still wanted to write an answer to the Alphabet Soup challenge so I wrote it and posted it to the boards. It is not an entry (obviously since the challenge has already been judged) so I'm just letting you know that it is there and that no one else is disobeying the rules and posting.
http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=18637227

I hope I'll catch the next one! Because this is fun.