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DISCUSSION: Oneshot Competition Chat Thread (Summer 2019)

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unrepentantAuthor

A cat who writes stories
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Hello everyone! Allow me to get your attention for a moment...


Now, welcome all to the discussion thread for the "Undelivered Messages" oneshot competition! At the time of writing, we're just in week one of the writing phase. Many of you have already made a start, which is very wise. Others may have not yet quite begun. I encourage you to set yourself a schedule and make good progress. Remember, you have until September 8th to finish. If you need to refer to the rules, they're right here.

As for myself, I've only just made a start today with a few words to test the water. My wordcount stands at 340! I have an idea in mind, but I'm allowing it to grow on its own. I found that while considering the shape of my story, there were a fair number of 'takes' on the competition theme I found interesting, and was tempted to cram in several at once. In the end, I decided to keep it simple and stick to something fairly conventional. I'm sure many of our talented entrants will have more esoteric interpretations of the theme to show off soon enough.

How are all your stories shaping up? Share your progress and discuss your process if you like. I only ask that nobody posts any excerpts at this early stage. It wouldn't be very sporting to leave an impression on your future readers so far in advance.

So, how's it coming, fellow writers? :bulbaWave:
 
I want to take a comical slant to the theme, so I have things narrowed down to two possible approaches:

--Someone tries to send an e-mail, but the system is down all day (so in the end it is never sent)
--Someone tries to deliver something but is distracted by other things all day, so the message is never sent
 
I’m running into an issue where the concept of the pokemon I want to use is really cool (offworld travel, wormholes, different dimensions), but the design is objectly not something I can write in a serious manner (hoopa.)

classic pokefic strug amirite
 
I've been keeping a steady rhythm of 200+ words a day ever since I managed to form my idea into a sufficient enough outline, but today I did hit a block upon realizing my events didn't fit together as I'd planned earlier. I think I've come up with a solution to it now, though, and I sure hope it works given I've decided the daily wordcount based on how many days remain and how much away I'm from the longest possible result (10k words). If I need to rewrite large parts, that's not gonna work out so well. I'm also 3.5k words into this story and really hoping that I don't run out of space.

Still have 150 words to go to hit today's quota. I just wish the uncertainty wasn't sapping my motivation.
 
I've got three ideas I want to work with right now. I had three, but I struck off one because I just don't want to write it anymore.

• One idea is a Firefly fanfic with Simon and Kaylee writing letters to each other, but not actually giving them to the other because they don't know if the other reciprocates their feelings. I love the idea, but I'm not sure I could do their characters justice for this.
• Another is a Harry Potter fanfic with an OC writing letters to her husband who just up and disappeared after a little incident, and she's telling him about all the moments he's basically missing with their kids. I feel like I could pull this one off pretty well, but I feel like it's just gonna make me want to work on a larger project with that OC and I think I'm bouncing around ideas with that concept in my head still.
• The last is actually a Pokemon story I came up with last night where Ash writes letters to his dad about his adventures in the Pokemon world, but they never actually get sent off because he gets caught up in other stuff. I really like this idea, and I'm kinda leaning towards it, but I dunno yet.

Kinda sitting on it all right now, waiting to see if there's any more ideas I might come up with before I start working with one story. Leaning more towards the Pokemon story, but I think overall, I'm wanting to do something on the Pokemon side of things unless I come up with a completely original concept before I sit down and start writing.
 
I've not begun mine properly, but I've got my theme figured out and the plot structure is done. I can't decide if I want to cut the final scene or not, since it'd be kinda hard to do in a first person narrative and doesn't feature the protagonist at all.

@unrepentantAuthor Are we allowed to talk about what we've actually chosen as our theme/plot?
 
a question for the other participants, hopefully general enough to be within the rules: do you tend to put your priority more on a unique and dramatic concept or a story that has minimal plot holes and pacing issues? i'm a bit worried my story may be too boring in the end, a price paid for events making as logical sense as possible
 
Absolutely thrilled to see so many people showing up for this!

@Misfit Angel, yes, it is absolutely fine to share your project's premise. Just dont go posting drafts just yet!
 
Going for a looser take on the theme. The message in my story takes the form of a painting by an amateur artist. Won't say too much more as I'm still fleshing it out, but I'm looking forward to all of you reading it.
 
do you tend to put your priority more on a unique and dramatic concept or a story that has minimal plot holes and pacing issues?

Plot holes can ruin things because if they're glaring, they're all I can think about. "But why didn't they just X" or "but wait, what about Y" and so on will ruin a story for me very quickly. Sometimes a concept is just too complex to run on a single short story without leaving a lot of dangling threads behind, I guess. But sometimes it's okay to leave questions unanswered if it's not important to the narrative, to an extent.

It's tricky.

Anyway, as for how I'm doing? I'm writing something that's somewhat in line with what I usually do, yet at the same time is incredibly off-beat for those familiar with my work. I'm curious how it'll be received. It's going to be practice for me, too.
 
a question for the other participants, hopefully general enough to be within the rules: do you tend to put your priority more on a unique and dramatic concept or a story that has minimal plot holes and pacing issues? i'm a bit worried my story may be too boring in the end, a price paid for events making as logical sense as possible

I feel like I try to do a little of both. I want to create unique ideas to write while also trying my best to not have too many plot holes and/or pacing issues. I think most of the time, I end up with the cool ideas, but then there's a lot of plot holes or pacing issues, mostly the latter. No story will be perfect, of course, but I'm hoping to find that nice balance between cool, unique concept and minimal plot holes and/or pacing issues.
 
My project is coming along nicely! I'm getting a few hundred words done a day so far, and I'm currently at 1400 and change. It's very different to my usual work, but I think it was inevitable that I wrote something like this eventually~
 
I'm already getting signs of growing sick of mine... I hope that passes. A forced story won't be as good, if it's even finished.
 
It's a good thing I haven't committed to starting mine yet. Last night I got a great idea, and now I'm sad I can't enter twice with both that and my original idea.
 
I've got a beginning at least--the premise is Brock as a music therapist (combining his original ultimate goal as a doctor in the show with my imagined view of him as a musician and storyteller--based on some chats with a friend) starts an e-mail about promoting the music therapy clinic at an upcoming health fair, but in between seeing clients and revising the e-mail, it never gets sent, so he just decides at the end of the day to scrap it and just ask his superior directly the next day (so the e-mail is never sent)
 
@canisaries best of luck, mate. I hope you can finish something you're happy with!

@Misfit Angel all the more credit to you for having a pair of good ideas. I'm sure whichever one you pick to go forwards with will do well, and you should go ahead and write the other one if only for your own pleasure.

As for me, I got initial feedback from one of my chief betas yesterday and as expected, it was pretty harsh. That's typical from the guy, and to be fair the story is very "first draft" right now. I'll get there.
 
I feel like I'm going to have a hard time competing! Everyone's talking about their beta readers and I'm sitting here without one (or at least one that would be reliable), a decade after I've started writing!
 
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