8 votes

Writing Club #3—"Madness" (Submissions)

Posted by etiolation
Tags: writing, tildes writing club, writing prompts

Shakespeare's birthday is observed today. Thank you, verily, for sharing your writing!

Please post your efforts below, with an introduction and/or questions for your readers.
Here are the guidelines, again.

6 comments

  1. [2]
    Grzmot
    Link
    So I've edited my story from the last writing club and I think it is way better now, although I fear it reads less like a short story and more like a first chapter of a longer story. I don't think...

    So I've edited my story from the last writing club and I think it is way better now, although I fear it reads less like a short story and more like a first chapter of a longer story. I don't think it's bad per se, but the story just has a lot of plot threads that aren't resolved. I've shown it to one person so far (yes I'm shy about showing this stuff off okay) and she liked it, so here goes nothing.

    Link to the PDF

    Thank you @etiolation and please also extend my thanks to your wife as well for her generous correcting. I ended up rewriting a lot and her pointers were incredibly, incredibly helpful.

    Addendum: Had wrong link. Fixed now. Sorry.

    4 votes
    1. etiolation
      Link Parent
      Good on you; we were both happy to do it!

      Good on you; we were both happy to do it!

      2 votes
  2. [3]
    mrbig
    Link
    This seems to have stopped. Why is that? If participation was low, maybe we could change something make it easier for people to participate?

    This seems to have stopped. Why is that? If participation was low, maybe we could change something make it easier for people to participate?

    3 votes
    1. [2]
      etiolation
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Thanks for checking in. I'd love to resurrect this. Interest plummeted. Folks may have been busy with re-opening and summer. I might have a blindspot, but I think the guidelines were about as open...

      Thanks for checking in. I'd love to resurrect this.

      Interest plummeted. Folks may have been busy with re-opening and summer. I might have a blindspot, but I think the guidelines were about as open as could be: prose or poetry on any theme (not exclusive to the inspiration), less than 7,000 words. Maybe there are other ways to make it easier.

      Another reason could be that I crept away under a blanket of depression, so the enterprise may have suffered from lack of a cheerleader. But count me in.

      4 votes
      1. mrbig
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Hey, no problem! Writing is hard, everyone wants to show their best, and that's not always possible. Fluctuation is to be expected. I hope you're better from your "blanket of depression", I also...

        Hey, no problem! Writing is hard, everyone wants to show their best, and that's not always possible. Fluctuation is to be expected. I hope you're better from your "blanket of depression", I also get those. Let me know if you wanna talk!

        I don't think I'm a good cheerleader, but I do have a few ideas that might help (and which also might make this easier on you).

        • I think there should be rules, but not themes, genres, or anything like that. I know the theme now is optional, but I personally feel a strong need to comply with what is asked of me, and it's a bit hard to go against the grain. So I tend to think "I can't write that!", and that's it. Maybe others feel the same. I mean, I know I am not required to follow the theme, but it feels kinda rude not to do so. Additionally, thinking of cool themes is more work for you or whoever is doing that with you. We are all writers, and, as a group, we tend to be self-conscious. Control freaks. I know you will give a lot of thought to it, and someones you (or anyone else) may not have the energy to do so.
        • Without a theme, there is no need for more than one post per round. This makes it easier for everyone to find it and not forget, and also might attract potential readers that are just checking it out.
        • Deadlines should always start on the first day of the month and end on the last day of the month, or something equally predictable. Previsibility is key so people don't even have to put that on their agendas. They'll create a routine. Writing takes time.
        • Make it bimonthly. Tilders are busy people.
        • Fewer rules. We don't have a big enough audience to demand much from our writers.
        • Instead of everyone sending in their preferred format or platform, just ask for markdown. Post on Tildes itself as a comment. Or maybe somewhere like a Github Gist, IDK. But everything is in the same place, organized. Make it easier for everyone to be able to read however they want - markdown is super easy to convert to anything, and even printing to PDF works in some cases. Make it easy for readers, a bit harder for writers.
        • Every edition, people vote on the best story, which gets a "prize" -- it will be added to a "book" that we will "publish" after twelve editions. The book will be just an ebook that we will generate (with much care!) from the markdowns containing all the best stories. We'll list all the book on a historical thread or wiki page.
        • I don't think there should be prose and poetry in the same place. I think we should focus on prose. This suggestion will probably be unpopular and that's fine, it's just a suggestion!

        So, what ya think?

        2 votes
  3. Grzmot
    (edited )
    Link
    Even though I am a month late, I have finished my next work. I feel like this time, it is way more in line with the theme. I'll keep writing in this world, and I like writing short stories, the...

    Even though I am a month late, I have finished my next work. I feel like this time, it is way more in line with the theme. I'll keep writing in this world, and I like writing short stories, the quick iteration allows for improvement much better than writing long-form plots. If someone read the last story too, I wonder if there is improvement or if I am just imagining it.

    This time I also had an outline from the start and knew what I was going to do, so it is way more closed off than the last one. Though I have some ideas for the mysteries left in Sofia's story that could serve as good plots for sequel stories continuing her journey.

    This time, after I read through it and edited, I also ran it through MS Word, so hopefully there'll be less errors.

    Link to the PDF

    I hope I was able to maintain this feeling of the world I evoked last time, even though the theme is very different in this piece. I'm looking forward to feedback and I hope you like it!

    EDIT: As for questions, is there a particular part of Ostia that you're wondering about? How it works, how it looks? It would be interesting to read how people think about fictional worlds.

    2 votes