Collaborative Creative Writing Community

Appealing! The SM team as judges or, if they could get a "panel" of industry people.

Perhaps limit one chapter per week for authors so I don't write fifteen chapter 2's, for instance, but could write 10 chapters in all.

I like the idee!

Good call about limiting each author to just one chapter per week. It could get out of control if one author writes a crapload of chapter twos, like you mentioned :)

Thanks so much for the feedback! I'm hoping that this idea will be put into use soon.

Agreed. I might feel guilty winning every week...muhahahahahahahahaha!

I like this idea a lot because everyone will focus on just one story. With the contest now, there are so many different chapters you can write for that many aren't being seen. So for this new contest its a great way to get more eyes on more chapters that are added. Though this isn't entirely full proof since we would be having all storymashers mashing one story. That is going to be a very very long page.

With that being said: I think either judging way stated above is good and bad at the same time. If you guys judge, that is going to be alot of entries. Another question that arises is, is this going to be write chapters one week? Judge the next? Then week 2 starts then you guys judge the week following. ?? (did that make sense?)....in a nutshell...how long would it take for you guys to judge and choose a chapter following the week that we write the chapters?

The other way is just how it is now and we all know the pros and cons to that ;)

Very good questions. You made perfect sense--if we choose the judging versus the ranking (which seems like how it will end up), then there would definitely have to be a "down time" in between Week 1/Chapter 1 and Week 2/Chapter 2 and so on.

Thanks so much for your feedback and thoughts :)

This contest is a solid idea. To better reinforce the StoryMash collaboration concept, I recommend no winner of any one chapter be eligible for another prize. Ten chapters, ten authors.

I firmly believe it would work best with a judging panel of SM employees (or impartial bystanders). Even after lingering in the top three for this long, I don't like the current rating/voting system.

Sidenote: you could add each winner (if ineligible) to the judging pool as each new chapter is published. Have them email you off-site rankings of their favorite three chapters and consider that part of the process.

If you want to keep it to a weekly thing, perhaps new chapters could be due Monday. Winners would be announced Wednesday, providing five days to write the following installment. Judges would need to churn through quite a bit, but if they paced themselves along with the timelines of publication, I'd think it's possible. The other option is to give 7 days for each chapter to be written, then 2 or 3 for judging/announcing winners. That leaves deadlines ambiguous at the opening, however; you lose the "It's ____day, the next chapter's due."

Lastly, I'm not sure how you'll decide on a genre outside of deciding which Chapter One is "best." Romance/comedy/train-of-thought/fantasy are all represented on the site, and you'll draw some new writers (while possibly losing others) by straying from suspense/action/horror. Dunno any way around that obstacle, unless you split the funds into two contests - different genres - and award $50 per chapter. That doubles the judging segment too, so I'm not sure you want to chase that white rabbit.

Looking forward to whatever conclusion is drawn, and hoping to draw a bigger check from StoryMash sooner than later.

-- Nash

Absolutely--because we don't want boobiewalker winning each week! ;)

Great idea about adding the chapter winners to the judging panel!

The genre issue is a good one to bring up, and one that we hadn't considered thus far. I will most definitely bring this up to the rest of the team.

As always, thanks, Nash, for your thoughtful feedback!

Sounds pretty awesome to me. I like the panel judging idea better then the strict rating system, though of course, if my chapter was rated the highest and I didn't win, I could see myself being slightly pissed off. Either way, I think its a great idea.

Absolutely--I'm sure that there will be some authors whose feelings/egos are hurt because they don't win--especially if their rankings were among the highest. But I think this is something we deal with during each contest, due to the voting issues that have been brought up.

Great feedback!

Very interesting.

I think SM should decide on the best chapters weekly. As the contests wane on, people don't go back and vote on newer submissions, so they don't get scored and could possibley lose because of this.

Good call--I'm pretty sure we're leaning towards the judging aspect vs. the ranking aspect as well.

Thanks!

Hey, Katrina...Off topic, kind of....

I see so many "new stories" that don't technically stand out as "chapters" or "poems". I see alot of them get ranked really highly, but to each his own, right?

Is SM giving any constructive critism to the authors? Who is the "Simon Cowell" of this site?
Who is giving real, useful, technical info to the writers?

If the answer is "no one", then how can we truley rely on a rating system where the opinions being offered are from a vast majority of people who do not know have any professional training?

I am not saying that I am superior, in any way. I DO have a background in the language arts, but that does NOT mean I don't have typos or lame story ideas. It DOES mean, however, that with the knowledge I have that I get frustrated when I see poor work recognized so highly.

This is why I suggested the SM people do the judging for contests. The truley greats are going to be recognized. This offers the rest of us a chance to sit back and evaluate their work...and if we are smart, learn from what we read.

Point these chapters out!!! We should have ourselves a witch hunt and right these wrongs!!

Good argument Persephone, and I think I agree with it.

Hi there!
At this time, there is no "Simon Cowell" of SM. I do agree with you, that it would be helpful for someone who has been established in the writing community to give his or her two cents. I will most definitely bring this up to the site developers--as this site is still growing, we are still making changes to continuously improve the community.

Thank you so much for taking the time to comment!

Hello, i am a new member here. I enjoy writing and would like to participate. I think the winner should be decided by the readers on the site. Sorry if this is too general, as i'm not sure how this whole thing works yet, i just joined!

Welcome to StoryMash!

Thank you for taking the time to comment, and we will definitely take all of this feedback into consideration.

Happy writing!

I was reading nashville's comment about the different genre's and I just wanted to add something about that. Considering everyone would be writing for one continuous story, that story is going to have a huge number of entries. (might have mentioned that before but anyways). People like to write in certain genre's and while we cannot cater to everyone, why not have five (or how ever many) different genre's with their own continuous story. That way a person has five (or whatever number of genre's you choose) chances of finding a story they like and want to continue. Also they would only be allowed to enter one story in only one genre. This cuts down on the massive size of the stories as well has trying to incorporate as many people has possible to write a chapter (there are many stories on here that I would be at a loss at to try and add something, and im sure many other people feel the same way. This just ensures people have more of a choice to be able to participate). The prize money would all have to be worked out and there would have to be a way for when people submit their chapters to make sure it goes to the right genre (separated so you don't have fantasy mixed with suspense or something). Just an idea for the next comp or the one after that. Also, there would have to be ways to monitor people from submitting in more than one genre. If this is a possibility, I'm sure we could come up with all the finer details that I may have been vague on.

xfionax~
Thank you for that great feedback! I definitely think this is worth delving into. I've passed your comments on to the site developers, and we're going to continue to brainstorm ways to take care of the genre "issues" (if you could call them issues) :)

Thanks!

I love this new contest idea--SM team sounds great as being judges. But i know reading a lot of chapters can be overwhelming. Is it possible to have an independent panel of judges that could help SM team with judging?

This is a good point. We've been throwing around ideas of how to deal with the massive volume of chapters we will face. We're also contacting some outsiders who are involved in the industry to see if we can get some outside help with the judging.

Thanks for commenting!

This contest idea sounds interesting. I would be much more motivated to participate if the judging were conducted by the SM team rather than being based on rankings. As for the length of the contest, it seems like ten weeks might be a bit long. Or maybe not, but it would be nice to have more than one week to write a continuing chapter after finding out the winner of the first week's contest.

Thank you for taking the time to comment--you bring up some valid points, and we'll definitely take them into consideration.

Happy writing!

I love this idea. While I understand the intent of the current contest, it seems to me that something has been missing from Story Mash since this began...seems like a lot fewer stories are being looked at now than before. And if someone starts a new story, it sort of gets lost in the shuffle because it isn't part of the contest. This way, only one main story wold be getting that attention and it may make some room for other interesting stories to garner attention as well. I really do like the idea of judging, and especially the idea of letting winning authors serve on the judging panel. And I say definitely limit one win per author.

Thanks so much for the feedback--I'm very excited about the possibilities that a contest like this would open up for everyone.

Thanks again!

I think this is a great idea, and the limits your suggesting will work wonderfully. I'm all for it.

Thanks so much!

I don't have time to do anything but agree with Nash, so put me down 'in favor'. I would probably come out of the woodwork for this one.

Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to drop a comment :)

I am happy to hear Katrina SM team is working on securing help from outside judges, I really feel judges who are not storymashers would be the best judges. I feel they can provide a clear and unbais judging of chapters.

I see other feel the same as I about the voting system. I still think the voting system have gliches. I also agreed with a different winner every week. It seems to me to be the most fairer approach.

Absolutely. I'm excited to see who we can get involved.

Thanks!

I love the idea! I really like the idea of judging being a selected number of judges that read through all the chapters and decide which one is the best. Voting won't be totally fair if you base it off storymash member's vote's because many people don't vote on the story, they vote on the author.

Great feedback. I agree with you, and I believe we're definitely going to go with the judging rather than basing the winners on ranking alone.

Thanks so much for taking the time to comment!

Katrina, I love the contest idea, but judging is always a problem. No matter how you do it, someone is unhappy. In real life winning is measured in dollars. Just to be crass, how about raising the stakes? Let readers vote with their pocketbook: one vote, one dollar. Readers can vote as often as they want. 30% of the PayPal net goes to the voter's choice, 30% goes to the chapter winner, 30% goes to the contestant with the most votes in the finished work, 10% goes to administration. Post a tally page listing contestants, voters and totals to keep it honest.
Nothing draws talent or opens the field like money.
I apologize in advance if this offends anyone.

vern~
That's a really interesting and creative idea! I'm absolutely going to pass this on to the rest of the SM team, as I think it's worth looking into.

Thank you so much for taking the time to comment!

Katrina, this is an awesome idea! I'm flexible about most of the ideas, but you and your crew doing the voting is a must in my book:)

honeygloom~
Great! Yes, it looks like there will a panel of judging for this type of contest, so I'm excited to see how it all turns out!

Absolutely fantastic contest idea!
Without question contests with cash should not be decided by public voting, but by a panel of SM reps. There can then be no question about the fairness of it.
And because there’s no sure fire way to please all the people all the time, maybe SM could provide an explanation in the winning chapters comments as to why it was selected.
Maybe even a few ‘runner-up’ comments so others can feel the love too.
I really liked Nash’s idea of allowing the previous chapter’s winner an opportunity to submit their three favs for the follow up. (just as a recommendation…SM still ultimately selects the winner)
Agree, same author can only win once.
I think the genre should be determined simply by the chapter that is selected as the best of week one. This also keeps it fair. If you select the genre in advance then it could potentially alienate some authors from submitting anything.
And who’s to say that just because the winning first chapter has a horror feel, that the second chapter can’t add some romance. Or that a ‘cop’ story can’t morph into a sci-fi tale.
I also love the idea of authors being forced to step outside their comfort zone and try their hand at something new. Sci-Fiers penning a romance chapter…etc. Good workshop.
There should be some sort of identifier on those chapters submit for the contest. Perhaps a requirement in the title line, like a big C-1 for Contest-chapter one or C-2 for Contest- chapter 2. This will make it easier for SM to sort through the entries that they need to read.
I also liked the idea of cut off days. Since SM will undoubtedly be bombarded with material to read there should be clear cut start and finish entry days.
For example, Contest starts on June 21. (Sat) Chapter one entries will be accepted from the 21st through the 24th. Four days to post an entry and four days for SM to review and select a winner. Post the winner on Sat the 28th and accept Chapter entries from the 28th through the 1st…so forth and so on.
If SM manages to read through all the entries and select a winner early then it can be posted early and allow the authors some additional time to submit the following weeks entry.
I also think limitations on chapter length should change. I suspect it is some sort of technical limitation? I just know that I am constantly going over the limit and then spending way too much time trying to trim and cut in order to get it to fit. And for some reason I can always fit more in a chapter if I submit it through Firefox rather than Explorer. However, using Firefox always messes up the format when I copy and paste.
There have been chapters I’ve spent more time trying to format and post then I did actually writing.
Sorry…wrong blog to bring that up….
Anyhow, It’s so cool that you guys are keeping the site fresh with new ideas and constantly upgrading it.
Thanks Katrina!

Good idea about giving comments about the winning chapters/to explain the winning selection.

I think it would be awesome if the panel of judges could also give feedback on those chapters that did not win, but I fear that the SM team just doesn't have those kind of resources this early in the game.

Regarding your comment about genre: I'm happy to see that you feel this way. With all of the talk about genre, I was wondering how complicated it was all going to get. This is still something that we're discussing.

Good call about labeling the chapters that are written as entries to the contest. Perhaps we'll have a check box available for contest participants to check or something...

I agree with you--I think the limitations that are currently in tact should be done away with, or lengthened.

Thank you so much for the thoughtful comments!

Like ShadowMan, I haven't the time to appropriately comment so....
Ditto everything Nashvillebecker wrote and Ditto everything dogdeity11 wrote!!
I will say on my very own....great idea and I will definitely play! LOL

Awesome!

I'm so glad that you all are taking the time (even if it's just a few seconds) to comment and let us know what you think.

I'm pretty stoked about this idea, and I'm looking forward to watching it pan out.

I think its a wonderful idea. Gets me exited about a few story starts I have been plotting in my head. Hope to see it started up soon.

Great! Keep those ideas in mind :)

Happy writing!

So... Is this like the storytellers' version of the "American Idol" competitions? If so... sign me up!

It could be viewed that way!!