Quote:

Original post by Beige Cliches are not necessarily a bad thing. Good execution is most important. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's a neophyte at creative writing and drama studies. It could be good to work within established forms and techniques.

I agree; cliches and stereotypes can be powerful tools if handled correctly. The audience to your game will "get" the concept behind your character quicker if you stick to a classic stereotype. For a short writing piece like in this competition, that can be a good thing.

But as you've said, I'm also a neophyte at creative writing, so sticking to stereotypes is a good starting point.

Noooooooooo TZ. :) You can't stop participating! It's not fair. We all love you. Don't let a mild case of douchebaggedry getcha down. Besides - this is the round that I didn't get to participate in, so it's the only one you have a chance of winning(I -am- awesome incarnate, after all). GRrrr!

Next round will be a clean sweep! GRRRRR!!

Now.... since a garunteed loss in round three might not be considered fun.... How about this... I'll tell a joke, and the winner is the only one that recieves the punchline.

Now it's fun again. GRARRR! :D

hahahaha

Re: Gor-Gor
If you see the things I said and how I started them. You should understand that I wasn't at fault. You should still remember your argument against me on Demonstrative Introduction.

Think about your attitude when you replied to my claim that there was a format beyond what we did in Round 1. How did you look back to how you judged me? What made you completely speechless after I posted an example? (I don't even know whether you read it.) This is one of the situations when people just can't think clearly based on the facts themselves.

Since you know the kind of things I wrote in Round 1, you can assume that I have the similar ability to read posts. It doesn't matter how you word your posts. Insincerity permeates. If you really wanted to see the example, you wouldn't have just said: I learned a lot from Estok.

You were embarrassed. The others were just doing the same thing that you did before you felt embarrased. I wasn't trying to do that. You as well as others were defending on nothing even though I told you the facts. You need to understand that I am very relaxed when I post things and ideas. How did you think about the idea of Demonstrative Introduction? Didn't it make sense?

Re: Weaknesses of the Contestants
5MG: Not everything I post are based on logics. Also rationale. Sometimes you don't have basis to prove something using logics. In all other forums, if you win a contest, you get congratulated. That is common sense. GOR-GOR did it because it is common sense, plus he is a newcomer. Just think about it, everyone practically ignored the winner. Being busy is not an excuse. Too busy to type one word? The fact is that people in this forum aren't that normal.

Round 1. Nine entrants. Four out of nine simply disappeard after submitting the work. You start to sense some level of irresponsibility. From the way I see it. The contestants had hidden emotions. For what reasons those emotions are hidden is not important. The point is that that can be dissolved. I came across a good description of the situation:

There are three levels of thinkers: Those that think in the Garden of Eden, those that let everything goes, and those that can think critically.

1. Garden of Eden
This type of thinkers can't really think for themselves, they need authority to set the rules. These thinkers can't thoroughtly justify their believes and conclusions. (i.e. Why do you believe that? Because that is what my teacher said.) You need to understand that this is not an insult or a word due to disrespect. But you were in this catagory when you asked for credentials after reading my critiques.

2. Anything Goes
This type of thinkers have a false application of open-mindedness. They believe that truth is very relative, and it is quite pointless to argue who is right and who is wrong. (i.e. You have your opinion and I have mine, yours is valid for you as mine is valid for me. No point to argue, it is just a matter of opinions.) Again this is not an insult. This is a fact you can observe. S/S is in this catagory.

3. Critical Thinkers
This type of thinkers understand open-mindedness and also understand that are basis to argue and compare the options. To thinkers in stage 2, Critical Thinkers look closed-minded because they believe that there is absolute right and wrong, just like the Garden of Eden thinkers. But it is fundamtally different. Because Critical Thinkers can justify rightness and wrongness not by authorities, but through logic and reasoning.

To make it clear, these aren't options. These are stages in a scale. It means that 3 is better than 2 and 2 is better than 1. I am telling you plain where you were and what you needed to change.

For s/s, you really need to think about this because you are very deep into Stage 2. You believe that you are open-minded and a good thinker, but you are not. There were obvious logical flaws in the way you evaluated, and I told you what the flaws were. If you had been using those kind of reasoning in your writers group and it didn't catch the flaws, the group hasn't given you sufficient pressure to evolve. You need to recognize this. It isn't that you 'maxed out' on your thinking ability. You were in a too weak of an environment for you.

Stage 2 thinkers is a major cause that you, 5MG, was not congratulated. Because no matter what you did, if it was fundamentally different from what they believe, they don't sincerely think that you did something good. They have a sense of undisturbable superiority because they think that they are entitled to what ever set of rules they believe. That is a weakness in the contestants. These weaknesses aren't used to judge the entries. But as forum members we have a responsibility to evolve. And the contest can be designed to promote the changes.

The contest needs to be designed in a way so that people thinking in stage 2 start to think critically. The current system lacks that motivation because the entrants were exempted from verbally comparing their own entries against the others. As long as we avoid comparing them critically, you can't see that they can be compared critically. No more dodging and hidding in a corner thinking that everyone is entitled to their own views uncontested.

Does this motivation make no sense?

Re: Clicheness
I know that you wrote it in 20 minutes. I don't think I could do that in 20 minutes. There is no reason to copy exactly what you did. I was just trying to get a feel. What we did was not the same.

I didn't say it in a way to suggest that you didn't think of the contest considerably to just submit something harsh. I said it to tell you that time is not a factor that determines the paradigm used in a piece. So if there are paradigm/ideological errors in the piece, they can't be fixed simply by time. To substantiate what I said:

Quote:

There is no excuse for clicheness. There are only two explanations: The contestants didn't try to be creative, or failed to be creative. In my case, I just tried what 5MG did and wrote it right before the deadline. I submitted it an hour too early, and formatted it in the next hour.

I tried to be creative and failed.


Re: Vague Rules

Rules are mutual. Both the judge and the participants need to understand the rules. A 'vague' rule such as page limit is legitimate when both the judge and the participants understand it. In this round, the page limit was a perfectly reasonable and applicable rule, because the contestants shared an understanding of it (even though it is a fuzzy rule), especially after the judge had posted the sample.

Your notion that it is solely in the hands of the judge show you that you are a Stage 1 thinker. This is not an insult. This is something you need to change. You are incorrect that is it completely in the hands of the judge. There are reasonings behind rules to groven how they should work.

You are also incorrect that it is not our responsibility to raise flags. It is our responsibility. TechnoGoth is not an "Authority" in the design of the contest. The contestants and the viewers are equally responsible to improve and define the contest. This is supposed to be a mutual experience. TechnoGoth doesn't necessarily know everything. If you see something wrong. Say it. Things change. Autonomous feedback.

Quote:

The rules that are posted are not a legal document, Estok, thus you should not interpret them as such.

Yes. This is the reason why you should be using common sense, instead of trying to argue against it like a legal document: "Ah ha! Since it doesn't explicitly state the word limit, it is up to everyone's interpretation."

Stage 2 doesn't work here neither. Common sense. I posted it because we are all participants. I never see the contest as a one directional thing. I said it was too long and s/s and trapperzoid used the legal argument. I told them that that was a really bad argument, and that if you were involved, and you use that argument, it sounds really like an excuse.


Re: Dialectic Community

It wasn't me who brought up the term 'dialectic community'. It was how s/s described how the community should be. A dialectic community is a community where people can discuss logically. It wasn't my expectation. It was s/s's expectation.

Dialectic means to argue. When intelligent minds meet, it is bound to have arguments. The question is whether the ones involved can uphold a reasonable argument. The problem is in an argument, you will point out weaknesses, especially when the participant is making invalid statements. If by simply saying, "you didn't think right" ticks the participant, there is no basis for a dialectic communication. You need to get through that chapter, and understand that arguments are necessarily, and there are bound to be misinterpretation and faulty reasonings.

I only demand explanations when you are not making sense. Did what I said about the types of thinkers make sense to you? It wasn't like I am trying to be a judge. To you, if you continue to resist, the reasonings will be overwhelming. To you it will sound like I am judging you. I am just stating the obvious in length because you didn't comprehend.

Every single post I made started really short. When you don't understand I need to explain. When you keep rejecting, the reasonings get piled up fast, because the reasons are overwhelming.

Sit down. Take some time off and think over what I said.

This is round 2. Think in stage 3 and to actually discuss the entries--not just to listen to critiques.

[Edited by - Estok on October 6, 2005 2:09:53 AM]

Round 2
Most notable good things:

E1.Soroland - 2-in-1 character
E2.Shai
E3.Aeger
E4.Shin
E5.Kael - Clear and organized
E6.Micah - Clear and organized
E7.Airre - Most colorful entry
E8.Chinu-a - Best profiled character
E9.Anahata
E10.Ichiwa - Best use of a scene in a profile

comments?

Only that I can't figure out whether I want Estok to win hugely or lose badly =D

Wow, I'm too busy to check this thread for a day (got my NaNoWriMo reminder/invitation, yay!), and look at all the posts! o.O Well, I've got an hour and a half before I have to start cooking dinner, let's see if I can put together a coherent response.


Type 1, 2, and 3 thinkers. While I agree that these are three identifiable types of thinkers, I strongly disagree with ranking them that way. Type 2 is the way that reasonable adults think. Type 1 and type 3 are both danggerous - type 3 thinkers are fanatics who try to force their beliefs onto others, resulting in things like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, lynchings, and revolutions, and type 1 thinkers are the sheep who get caught up in the type 1 thinkers' rhetoric and do their dirty work.

And if you recognize that other posters are type 2 thinkers, then you can't argue that your reasons are overwhelming, because to a type 2 thinker like me reasons are never overwhelming. If you insist that they are we can't have a functional argument because we are operating on two different sets of rules - it's like we aren't even speaking the same language.


Argument I think there are good and bad types of argument.

Good arguments are those where:
- Someone clarifies an idea in their own mind by writing about it.
- Someone encounters a new idea or technique when someone else mentions it.
- Someone asks questions or offers a different interpretation of an idea, and this cross-fertilization energizes people to come up with more ideas.
- Someone suggests a way to improve or add to a project others are interested in.
- Someone comes to a fuller understanding of an idea and how it relates to other ideas through another person's explanation.
- People become better friends by getting to know each others' thoughts.

Bad arguments are those where:
- The two people have completely explained their opinions but stubbornly keep arguing rather than agreeing to disagree and moving on to a more productive topic.
- One or both people are closed to the other's ideas.
- People 'fight dirty', for example with name calling, ad hominem arguments, and other fallacies.
- The act of arguing is exhausting and upsetting, demotivating the participant from generating new ideas on the subject.
- People become enemies by hurting each others' feelings, and/or people start to ignore each other because they decide it's impossible to have a pleasant and reasonable conversation with the other person.


Congratulating 5MG Honestly the idea never occurred to me. o.O I was thinking that being announced the winner was a congratulation in itself, and so was offering to take the time to carefully critique any entry whose author requested it. I was also thinking that winning the contest wasn't important, entering and participating in mutual critique was the important thing. But I suppose that to be a good hostess of this forum I should have congratulated everyone who entered. I regret that I didn't think to do so. I'm an introvert by nature, I usually am focused on writing technique and philosophy, I forget about these community-building things like cheering on fellow forum members.


Hmm, any other points I should hit...

Common sense is always arguable and thus never a valid basis for rules which are intended to be enforced (as opposed to rules of thumb).

TechnoGoth IS an authority in the design of the contest because he is running it. If you want to be the authority, you're welcome to start your own contest. You could run it on alternate weeks, so that every week we have something to enter and something else to vote on.

It might be an interesting experiment to have one round of the contest where people are allowed to vote for their own entries, although I wouldn't want to do this on a long term basis because I still think it would not produce fair results.

The voting is over right? Where are the results? Anyway now that we can talk about the entries I will come back after dinner and comment on them and the clicheness issue.

Quote:

Original post by Estok Re: Gor-Gor If you see the things I said and how I started them. You should understand that I wasn't at fault. You should still remember your argument against me on Demonstrative Introduction. Think about your attitude when you replied to my claim that there was a format beyond what we did in Round 1. How did you look back to how you judged me? What made you completely speechless after I posted an example? (I don't even know whether you read it.) This is one of the situations when people just can't think clearly based on the facts themselves. Since you know the kind of things I wrote in Round 1, you can assume that I have the similar ability to read posts. It doesn't matter how you word your posts. Insincerity permeates. If you really wanted to see the example, you wouldn't have just said: I learned a lot from Estok. You were embarrassed. The others were just doing the same thing that you did before you felt embarrased. I wasn't trying to do that. You as well as others were defending on nothing even though I told you the facts. You need to understand that I am very relaxed when I post things and ideas. How did you think about the idea of Demonstrative Introduction? Didn't it make sense?

Re: Estok

Alright - first time I'm responding to one of your novels, because it's the first time I've taken the time to actually read one... and only then because I saw my name in bold.

Speechless? HAHAHA!! no... ;) Why I didn't respond after you posted the example:

(!Warning! - this might come off as offensive - but I'm not a nice person when someone thinks their the almighty know-all/be-all... so... don't read it if you're sensitive.)

Because I thought it was absolutely terrible writing, an awful way to propose an idea/introduction, and when I'm a newbie to a community... especially one as intellectual and mannered as this... I tend to live by "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". I really didn't understand what the purpose of that writing style was... It didn't induce anything for me. I didn't feel like I was part of the gameplay, I didn't feel like I understood any of how the game would have been played.... It just made absolutely no sense to me. You can think you're smarter than me, because I didn't follow it, you can think I'm less of a writer than you are because I didn't follow it, you can think I'm just plain dumb, if you want.... but it doesn't change that it was just plain bad. <3

I didn't even finish it, and that's why this isn't a real, unbiased critique. Also, I'm not giving you a -real- critique here, because I live by the rule 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you', and while you didn't thrash my writing, you thrashed some of the other members, some of whom are very respectful individuals even after you were a butt. That unpleasant mess aside... let me ask this.

What did other people think of his Demonstrative Introduction?

2- I said I learned a lot from you, not from the writing, but because of some little tid-bits about voting systems and contests and little details such and such like that. :)

I wasn't embarrassed. I was trying to keep from embarrassing you. :)

3 - I never judged you, dude, after about 5 pages of a bunch of perfectionist crap, and reading a bunch of people's replies.... out of which -no- one is pleased with your contributions(and fun-factor detriment) to this contest... only then I judged a small case of douchebaggedry on your part. And I don't think I read your Round 1 entry. Sorry to burst that bubble, too.

4 - I think you need to take a -biiiig- whiff from the jar of "I'm-not-as-ubercool-and-perfect-as-I-think-I-am" and tone it down a few notches.

I hardly remember the things I said when replying to you when this all started - frankly - I come to these forums to learn and have a little fun. These post count wars hold -no- interest to me... I simply don't care to nitpick every one, and every little thing they say. Alpha-male Domination games are -much- more fun RL than they are on the internet.

[EDIT]
Oh yea - 5 - I didn't congratulate 5MG because it was "Common sense", I did it because I was happy for him. I've read a lot of his posts, he's a nice guy, and I was pleased he got it. Please keep your psych. evaluations off me. ;) They fail.

GRRRRR!!

Quote:

Original post by GOR-GOR Noooooooooo TZ. :) You can't stop participating! It's not fair. We all love you. Don't let a mild case of douchebaggedry getcha down. Besides - this is the round that I didn't get to participate in, so it's the only one you have a chance of winning(I -am- awesome incarnate, after all). GRrrr!

Thanks GOR-GOR; I'm not really that annoyed now. It's actually extremely rare for me to me to lose my cool, so it's very unnerving when it happens. Don't worry. I'm probably going to throw together something for the next round; I'm sort of committed to the competition now.

But Estok, you haven't really listened at all to anything anyone has been saying about your critiquing style. Just read through that long post you made (the one GOR-GOR is referring to, where you state the three types of thinkers) and pretend you are someone else in the competition. There's a whole air of superiority about your posts that really ticks people off, you've made some rather fanciful judgement calls in second-guessing what other people are thinking, and I don't think I've ever once seen you admit that you might have been wrong about something. If you continue posting like this, more and more people are going to start skip reading your posts, which is a pity because occasionally you have a good point buried in those posts of yours, but it isn't worth digging through all the obnoxious stuff to get to. And if you keep ignoring the advice that people are giving you, and keep posting in a manner that upsets more than it informs, I'm afraid I'm going to also have to start ignoring you (which frankly I don't want to have to do, but I've wasted too much time dealing with your posts already for the "benefit" they have provided me).

---

Anyway, back to the competition; once I have word from TechnoGoth that the voting is over, I'd be happy to start discussing the entries. I'm open to anyone giving me advice on how to improve my particular creative writing skills. I'll also offer my opinion on anyone else's piece, if they request it (since I know some people might be a bit nervous about asking for opinions on their work, and I don't particularly want to spend ages writing down my critique for someone who isn't still here to read it). Although to be fair, my skills are more in technical writing than creative writing; I can't use words like "Zeitgeist" without giggling.

If you want to move along:
please comment on this:

Round 2
Most notable good things:

E1.Soroland - 2-in-1 character
E2.Shai
E3.Aeger
E4.Shin
E5.Kael - Clear and organized
E6.Micah - Clear and organized
E7.Airre - Most colorful entry
E8.Chinu-a - Best profiled character
E9.Anahata
E10.Ichiwa - Best use of a scene in a profile

comments?

An other appropriate question to ask for each contestants:

In your own words, without comparing to anyone else's entry, what are the flaws in your own entry?

Criticisms identify blindspots. By definition, you don't see blindspots. When someone identifies a blindspot, it is not a matter of opinion. Show us the range of your own vision, so that when someone give a criticism, you can be convinced that it is an observation beyond your horizon, not just a matter of taste.

Criticisms are not about identifying the flaws you already know, but the ones you don't know. Anyone else up to writing a self-critique to set up a fair basis for criticisms?

[Edited by - Estok on October 6, 2005 7:47:53 PM]

Okay! (Cooking spaghetti is tiring, but two days of yummy leftovers is worth it, lol.) Now to comment on the entries.

I found it very difficult to decide which of these entries to vote for as the best because I did not think any of them were great, including my own. Aside from issues with clicheness, I thought that while some entries had an interesting concept and some were well developed, none were both. o.O

Entry 1 - Soroland and Sanglante

For an example, let's take the first entry, Soroland and Sanglante. A prison warden who feels lost without any prisoners to guard is a very interesting concept. I wonder how he became the warden, what happened to the prisoners during the massacre, how Soroland alone escaped, how he got the tattoos, what the tattoos mean, how and why he transforms into Sanglante (which does not on the face of it make any sense). However, this is a character profile - it's supposed to be _answering_ these questions, not posing them. So entry 1 mostly fails to develop its interesting concept. There were two good bits of development - the description of how Soroland feares he is bad luck and hides his fear and shame behind machoness, and the description of how inconvenient transformations into Sanglante function in the gameplay.

I also don't understand how that whole "sacrifice to bind the prisoners, which were then massacred but still need to be freed to undo the curse except Sanglante doesn't want the inmates freed" thing is supposed to work. How can they be freed if they're dead? Why do the guilty ones have to be freed as well as the innocent?


Entry 2 - Shai
This entry was mixed. I liked about half its concepts and half its development.

It's always a bad idea to put a gap of several years in a story. There's no easier way to lose emotional immediacy and waste the suspense and drama created in the introduction. Also, underground armies have been done, and are almost always done poorly, because unusual though that setting is, there isn't all that much you can do with it except talk about claustrophobia, darkness, and the constant underlying fear that the enemy will discover where you are. None of was used to characterize Shai or her army (which is actually the second character here, IMO). Also, the name of the army is boring, something much more symbolic and interesting could have been chosen.

On the other hand, the heart-shaped tattoos, Shai's corruption/posession by the goddess Aarae, and the accompanying slogan "No mercy" were quite interesting concepts, but could have used more development. Does Shai actually have one of these tattoos? Did it appear on her neck when she dreamed of the goddess? How does it get on the necks of her soldiers, is there some sort of ritual and/or sacrifice involved? Are her soldiers afraid of Shai's growing madness? How does the problem of the goddess-inspired blood thirst work in terms of the gameplay?


Entry 3 - Aeger

While the flightlands and tribes were cool concepts with a lot of potential, they seemed to be mostly irrelevant to the character himself. Can Aeger himself steer flightlands? Why is he watching over Shai? How is the issue of his poor approach to this resolved? What does his tattoo do/mean, and why doesn't he want other Leersmen to see it? Much the same as entry 1, this entry left me with far more questions than understanding of the character.


Whew, I'm tired, I'll come back and comment on more entries later.