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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #140 - "Nameless"

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C

Cyan

Banned
tJngFTi.jpg


Theme - "Nameless"

Anonymous, incognito... or obscure and forgotten. A nameless man, a nameless city, a nameless god? It's up to you!

Word Limit: 2500

Submission Deadline: Saturday, April 5th by 11:59 AM Pacific.

Voting begins Sunday, April 6th, and goes until Tuesday, April 8th at 11:59 AM Pacific.

Optional Secondary Objective: Anonymous

Let's have some fun with anonymous entries! We've done this a few times before and it's always a good time. Instead of posting entries as normal, everyone PMs me their entry, and I will post them in a single batch once the submission period closes. After voting closes, the authors will be revealed. Until then... feel free to obfuscate and misdirect as much as you please!

To submit your entry, please send me your story (and title!) via PM. This could be a link to a doc or txt file, or plaintext in the PM itself. I will format all the entries to look similar, password-protect and PDF them, and host them on my Dropbox. They will be removed a week after the end of the challenge. Feel free to note in-thread that you've submitted... or don't!

If you don't feel comfortable submitting this way, please instead password-protect and PDF your story on your own (using the following password, quote to see: ), host it, and send me the link. I will post the link alongside the others at the end of the submission period.

Submission Guidelines:

- One entry per poster.
- All submissions must be written during the time of the challenge.
- Using the topic as the title of your piece is discouraged.
- Keep to the word count!

Voting Guidelines:

- Three votes per voter. Please denote in your voting your 1st (3 pts), 2nd (2 pts), and 3rd (1 pt) place votes.
- Please read all submissions before voting.
- You must vote in order to be eligible to win the challenge.
- When voting ends, the winner gets a collective pat on the back, and starts the new challenge.

NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge FAQ
Previous Challenge Threads and Themes
 
C

Cyan

Banned
For those who haven't done this before, essentially the way it works is that instead of posting their entry as normal, everyone PMs me with their entry, and then I'll post them all at once, without attributions, when the challenge period ends. Feedback and votes are given on the story rather than the author, and everyone gets to have fun guessing who wrote which entry (or skip that if you don't feel like it). At the end of the voting period, I'll post who wrote which entry (spoiler-tagged, don't you worry!) alongside the vote count.

Right. So there are a few different ways of doing this, with differing degrees of anonymity and security.

The standard model: everyone posts their story to their hosting site of choice and PMs me the link, and I'll put those links in the eventual story list (probably in alphabetical order by title). The upside is you get to choose the host you're comfortable with, and it's one that you have full control over. The downside is we lose some anonymity this way, as most of us can probably guess which people use Google or SkyDrive etc (or Ashes' favorite password :p), or could compare user IDs on dropbox if we were so inclined.

Cyan hosts them all: everyone PMs me their story, either as text or a link to a .doc or similar. I will make sure they're all formatted the same, PDF and password-protect them, and put them on my Dropbox. A set time after the challenge ends, I will remove them all from my Dropbox. Upside: no hints besides pure writing to who wrote what. Downside: you don't have control over the hosting site, I do. I'm sure you all trust me (right? ;) ), but that can still be uncomfortable and I totally understand that.

So, let's hear some feedback on what people would prefer. If enough people prefer the latter method that it seems worth doing that way, I'll edit instructions into the OP and we'll do it that way. If most people seem opposed, I'll edit in the instructions for the standard model.

Note that if we do go with the latter model, if you personally aren't comfortable with me hosting it, definitely feel free to just host it yourself as normal. You can simply let me know in your PM that you don't want me to rehost it. Oh, and we should all use the same password. Since some people aren't fond of the the standard one, please use (quote to see pw, inside email tags):
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
cyan said:
Cyan hosts them all: everyone PMs me their story, either as text or a link to a .doc or similar. I will make sure they're all formatted the same, PDF and password-protect them, and put them on my Dropbox. A set time after the challenge ends, I will remove them all from my Dropbox. Upside: no hints besides pure writing to who wrote what. Downside: you don't have control over the hosting site, I do. I'm sure you all trust me (right? ;) ), but that can still be uncomfortable and I totally understand that.
Click to expand...
I'm fine with this method.
 
K

kehs

Banned
cyan neogaf crawling neogaf writers for neogaf stories for his non neogaf book based on negoaf from an anonymous neogaf poster


alternatively were all gonna write stories about Nameless
 
C

Carlisle

Member
Congrats Cyan! It was a great entry, well-deserved. Wow at that point spread, and wow at somehow inching into technically 2nd :)

I love the anonymous idea. I think the more anonymous the better, so I'm good with you hosting.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Pau said:
So do you get to vote, Cyan? :p
Click to expand...

Oooh, huh. I hadn't actually thought about that! I think I'll vote and give feedback as normal, it'd be no fun otherwise. Pretty sure that's what crow did in the original thread.

Oh, also, if we don't want to make it too obvious, everyone who's doing feedback will have to do it for their own story. Hahaha.
 
A

Aaron

Member
I need to get this one done quick to give me time to forget the story I just wrote. I could pull that off in a month, but less than two weeks might be pushing it.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Aaron said:
I need to get this one done quick to give me time to forget the story I just wrote. I could pull that off in a month, but less than two weeks might be pushing it.
Click to expand...
Did you not like your last story? Or do you mean that it's stuck in your head and you can't write other things? Slightly confused by this post.

Fiction said:
Bookmarking in case I feel up to it, really love the theme and secondary.
Click to expand...

Hurrah!
 
T

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
This should be a good one. Still planning on reading stories for the last one, though! Just haven't had much time lately.
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
Word Limit: 2500
Click to expand...
Uh



Could we extend the voting time for this one? Or shorten the writing by a day if that works? Because while I provided feedback first for the last one, it still took me the better part of an entire day to read through everything, and that was at 2000 words...and like, at least 75% of the stories were pushing the limit.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
That sounds like a lot of fun. I'm totally OK with cyan rehosting my story. So, if I put a word document in my dropbox and send him the link he'll be able to edit the layout and stuff to make it look like the rest, right?

Commenting on my own story is probably gonna be the hardest part about this challenge, lol. Would be kind of obvious if there are like a dozen more or less constructive crits and one that just shits all over a story :D

Ourobolus said:
Could we extend the voting time for this one? Or shorten the writing by a day if that works? Because while I provided feedback first for the last one, it still took me the better part of an entire day to read through everything, and that was at 2000 words...and like, at least 75% of the stories were pushing the limit.
Click to expand...

Well, we could just make the deadline a hard cap for a change. That alone would probably give us about 12 hours more to read.
 
G

GRW810

Member
It's the reading, voting and feedback part that always kills me too. A dozen 2500 word stories is akin to three or four extra stories compared to ~2000 word entries. But hey, I'm not complaining, Cyan won and earned the right to dictate the rules.
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
Nezumi said:
Commenting on my own story is probably gonna be the hardest part about this challenge, lol. Would be kind of obvious if there are like a dozen more or less constructive crits and one that just shits all over a story :D
Click to expand...
Nah, I'll just vote for my own and claim ignorance that I wrote it! >_>;

...all right. I think I have an idea. I'm not going to blaze through it this time though.
 
T

Tangent

Member
Congrats Cyan!! The picture is hilarious, partly because Clint Eastwood, and partly because he seems far from nameless. But maybe he is trying to recall the name of someone else, hence, his expression.
Otherwise, maybe he's constipated.

I'm also fine with this new method. I very much like the idea of having the stories be anonymous. I think that's something that is truly lacking in our writing challenges.

Ourobolus said:
Urf. Last place. Guess I'll be trying something different next time...
Click to expand...
This is from the last thread. But anyway, I agree with Cyan's feedback: "You never know why a piece doesn't get votes." If you try something different just for the sake of votes, then it seems like you've certainly learned the "system" or "formula." But I think that the risks you take in varying up your writing style are more commendable than the route of a safe ticket to lots of votes. And, your efforts will probably make you a better writer at a more exponential pace than if you just tried to gain votes with a "formula." Even if you had the best story ever, it might get few votes based on people's personal preferences, but that doesn't speak at all about your story. I'm sure everyone tries to vote objectively and not be biased towards writing styles, content, etc. But naturally, that is hard.

Nezumi said:
Would be kind of obvious if there are like a dozen more or less constructive crits and one that just shits all over a story :D
Click to expand...
Haha good point, but maybe it'll be a test for us to see if we can bump up how well we give crits... by treating our own story just like anyone else's rather than shitting all over our own work.

Ourobolus said:
it still took me the better part of an entire day to read through everything, and that was at 2000 words...
Click to expand...
I'm glad I'm not the only one! It takes me forever to read through stories and sucks up so much time. It's a bit agonizing. Especially because I feel like Sundays and Mondays get crazy busy. Regardless, I feel like I must read through everything carefully, like I owe it to the challenge if I'm gonna throw my own stuff out there.

Also, I see your point about 2,500 words being a bit longer, but it's only 500 words longer after all. Plus, sometimes there is a 700 word entry or something, regardless of the word limit. ;)
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
Tangent said:
Congrats Cyan!! The picture is hilarious, partly because Clint Eastwood, and partly because he seems far from nameless. But maybe he is trying to recall the name of someone else, hence, his expression.
Otherwise, maybe he's constipated.
Click to expand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_No_Name

Tangent said:
This is from the last thread. But anyway, I agree with Cyan's feedback: "You never know why a piece doesn't get votes." If you try something different just for the sake of votes, then it seems like you've certainly learned the "system" or "formula." But I think that the risks you take in varying up your writing style are more commendable than the route of a safe ticket to lots of votes. And, your efforts will probably make you a better writer at a more exponential pace than if you just tried to gain votes with a "formula." Even if you had the best story ever, it might get few votes based on people's personal preferences, but that doesn't speak at all about your story. I'm sure everyone tries to vote objectively and not be biased towards writing styles, content, etc. But naturally, that is hard.
Click to expand...
I understand that. I'm not really changing things around just to get votes, but it is a little irritating that it really is difficult to understand why something wasn't working. Honestly, with the idea I came up with for this one, I won't be changing too much, just trying to do better. I certainly haven't tried to conform to a formula...clearly, or else my stories would all be set in space or dystopian future, with people dying (and/or being spirits), and a twist ending :p.
 
T

Tangent

Member
Ourobolus said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_No_Name"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_No_Name
Click to expand...

*facepalm* Oh.... RIGHT. ;) Thanks for the heads up!

Ourobolus said:
but it is a little irritating that it really is difficult to understand why something wasn't working.
Click to expand...
Word. I think a few things I'm trying to understand is: (1) how to provide an ending on a short story, (2) the balance between exposition and plot, (3) if there is a point to a story, which I think there usually is, how to balance being covert and overt. Blech!

Ourobolus said:
I certainly haven't tried to conform to a formula...clearly, or else my stories would all be set in space or dystopian future, with people dying (and/or being spirits), and a twist ending :p.
Click to expand...

Oh so that's the formula! I've been wasting so much time... until NOW. Mwoohahaha!
 
A

Azih

Member
My entry then:

In a dystopian future time a derelict space station is populated by depressed people. But they aren't people. THEY'RE SPIRITS.

The end.

This is not my entry
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Azih said:
My entry then:

In a dystopian future time a derelict space station is populated by depressed people. But they aren't people. THEY'RE SPIRITS.

The end.

This is not my entry
Click to expand...

The last time we had an anonymous entry challenge, the theme was... "derelict."

*Twilight Zone music*
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
Cyan said:
The last time we had an anonymous entry challenge, the theme was... "derelict."

*Twilight Zone music*
Click to expand...

Oh, nice. Luckily, I have all the time in the world to write this story. Let me just get set up here with my keyboard and...WHERE DID MY FINGERS GO?

*Twilight Zone music*
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Tangent said:
Word. I think a few things I'm trying to understand is: (1) how to provide an ending on a short story...
Click to expand...

This is tricky. The actual ending line or paragraph or whatever is more a matter of style and taste--you might go for something punchy and memorable, or something more reflective and quiet, or something abrupt, depending on your own writing style and what works with the feel of the story. It's never easy, especially if you want to get it just right.

On the other hand, there's a simple way to determine how you end a story--as in, what the final scene consists of--and that's to look at the beginning of the story and mirror it. In my story for the last challenge, this was literal. The first scene had the MC talking to his father before leaving home, and learning something about himself he wasn't happy with. The ending scene had the MC returning home and talking to his father again, and showing that he'd learned something else that recast the first scene, and was now comfortable and happy with himself. Basically everything about it was mirrored.

But the mirroring doesn't have to be so complete. The way I look at it is that the first scene generally raises a question, and the last scene should answer it. Like opening and closing parentheses. For example: if the opening scene presents a dead body, the closing scene shows us the killer. If the opening scene shows someone getting lost in the woods, the closing scene shows them leaving the woods. If the opening scene shows someone going through a midlife crisis, the closing scene shows them becoming reconciled to their life, or definitively moving on to something else. If the opening scene shows a meteor crashing into the planet, the closing scene shows us the restoration of order or the establishment of a new status quo. Note that all of these can be reversed: the killer might escape, the lost person might give up all hope of finding their way out, the midlife crisis person might decide to just fake happiness for the rest of their life, the meteor might result in the deaths of everyone on the planet. The point is that the opening parenthesis gets some kind of closing parenthesis, even if it's not a happy one.

I should point out that here I'm talking about the main focus of the story. If somebody's in a midlife crisis, but the main point of the story is that they're a detective solving a crime, we probably don't need their midlife crisis resolved (though I'd suggest not bringing it too far to the foreground, if that's the case). If getting lost in the woods is a minor plot point on the way to a much larger story, you might not need to show them getting out at the end.

This isn't intended to be a formula. But it's something you can ask yourself at the end of the story: does the ending scene close out what I started with the beginning scene? Maybe sometimes you won't want to do that. Maybe you're writing something more meandering that never really closes, maybe you intend to frustrate the reader or subvert all expectations, maybe the opening scene was a red herring for the real story. And that's fine, if it's intentional.

But I think you'll find that in general, ending a story by mirroring the beginning works very well.
 
T

Tangent

Member
Cyan said:
But I think you'll find that in general, ending a story by mirroring the beginning works very well.
Click to expand...

Wow thanks for the thorough description. I never thought of it that way, in terms of closure. And, the mirroring aspect reminds me of 3rd grade essays: the conclusion is a sentence that reiterates the intro.

Maybe I should write about a spirit having a midlife crisis in a dystopian future, who looks into a mirror and sees nothing. The opening scene begins with a mirror, and the story ends with a mirror too, mirroring the opening scene.

Or I know! I should write a story where cryptids turn out just to be spirits. *Twilight Zone music*
 
A

Aaron

Member
Cyan said:
Did you not like your last story? Or do you mean that it's stuck in your head and you can't write other things? Slightly confused by this post.
Click to expand...
I was flipping through the pile of my past submissions looking for a particular story, and was surprised to find some stories I wrote that I have zero memory of. This is going back years, but it caught me by surprise. I think they sort of went like a dream where I got the idea, wrote it, submitted, and never thought about it again so it never stuck. Still odd though.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Sounds like most people are fine with me hosting the entries, so I've edited that info into the OP.

Carry on!
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Cyan said:
Sounds like most people are fine with me hosting the entries, so I've edited that info into the OP.

Carry on!
Click to expand...

If you want to participate too, we could do a double blind entry system. It's a simple procedure. Pm someone to pm Cyan. That way only one person will know who the real author is. So 8/10 people will not know in the case of ten entries.

E.g.
Nez>Aaron>Cyan
Aaron>Tangent>Cyan
Tangent>Ashes>Cyan

Cyan won't know who originally posted what; Aaron will make sure nez doesn't vote for her self; Tangent will make sure Aaron doesn't vote for himself etc.. & cyan can then host all pieces, edit passwords & format to a set standard, while playing along.

Too complicated? Or can we trust one another?
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
No offense, but I don't see how that is more anonymous than just Cyan knowing who is who. In your case, everyone knows who wrote two of the stories. In the other, only one person knows, but they know all of them.

In the first case, that is 3 x (number of submissions) points that can be gamed in the system (since you can't vote for yourself, but you can vote for whomever's story you know), but in Cyan's case, it is only 6 points total, since he can only vote for 3 stories.

I'm not saying that would happen, but it's just how I see a worst-case scenario.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
What's the point of gaming the system? To win a GAF thread #140? & results in the end would spoil any plot anyway.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Ashes said:
If you want to participate too, we could do a double blind entry system. It's a simple procedure. Pm someone to pm Cyan. That way only one person will know who the real author is. So 8/10 people will not know in the case of ten entries.

E.g.
Nez>Aaron>Cyan
Aaron>Tangent>Cyan
Tangent>Ashes>Cyan

Cyan won't know who originally posted what; Aaron will make sure nez doesn't vote for her self; Tangent will make sure Aaron doesn't vote for himself etc.. & cyan can then host all pieces, edit passwords & format to a set standard, while playing along.

Too complicated? Or can we trust one another?
Click to expand...

Ow my brain.

I think that might be a wee bit too complex for me. ;)
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
Clearly the submissions should be implemented via onion routing.

Aaron chooses a path of users from himself to Cyan, picking three fellow users. Call them Alice, Bob, and Eve.

The path is:
Aaron -> Alice -> Bob -> Eve -> Cyan

Aaron encrypts his story using Cyan's public key, then encrypts THAT with Bob's public key, then encrypts THAT with Alice's. At each hop, the receiver of the encrypted story decrypts the message with their private key, and receives the (still mostly encrypted) story, as well as directions as to who to forward it to next. Finally, it gets to Cyan, who decrypts it back to its initial contents with his private key.

* Cyan knows that he received a story from Eve.
* Eve knows she received a story from Bob, and that she is the last in the chain.
* Bob knows that he received a story from Alice, and that he is not the last in the chain.
* Alice knows that she received a story from Aaron, and that she is not the last in the chain.

Easy!
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Can we just send Cyan the links instead?

If anyone votes for themselves he can just DQ all their votes or at least their self vote.
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
I don't think there's any problem with a trusted party (Cyan) knowing who the submitters are. The anonymity problem is untenable if you actually want to enforce "people can't vote for themselves". Even if we waved that rule, all anonymity schemes (short of using tor or i2p
YYvCJ.gif
) are necessarily a pain in the ass. aka not worth the trouble. So just send it to Cyan.
Cyan said:
No way Elff, we have to keep the stories away from Eve!
Click to expand...
It's fine, that's why it's encrypted!
 
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