# Short Story Contest for Summer 2009



## ScottyDM (Apr 9, 2009)

*It's the start of the summer 2009 short story contest and the theme is Road Trip!*



> *Road Trip*
> 
> Itâ€™s summer and time to hit the road!
> 
> ...



Special note: I'll be changing the judging criteria for this quarter, but it's past my bedtime. I'll write up the new criteria and post them later.

Scotty


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## Shouden (Apr 9, 2009)

I'm in as all ways. I think I have a good story idea for this one, too. I just have to remember to proofread more before I submit. Anyways, later.


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## ScottyDM (Apr 9, 2009)

There's a real trick to editing your own work.


Let it set for a few days before you dive back into it. Letting it set for a few weeks is better.
Change the font. If the story looks different, it looks fresh. And when it looks fresh you see tend to see things like typos. Sometimes I write in Courier and later switch to Palatino Linotype (the font I've been using for the PDF files) for proofreading, but recently I've also been using Goudy Old Style. If you're using a word processor (MS Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice) then learn how to setup styles. Properly setup styles make switching fonts a snap.
Read your story out loud, slowly, and read each word. Don't force your mouth to follow what you'd written if it doesn't want to. This is especially true if every time you try to read a sentence your mouth refuses to follow the page, but wants to say the same something else each time. Write that something else; it's probably better.
Use a spell checker, of course, but be careful of homonyms--they will bite you on the tail every single time. If you get the squiggly little red line but the word looks okay, _look it up in a dictionary anyway_. There have been times I was sure I knew the spelling was correct, but it wasn't, and I had to go through my custom dictionary (I'm using a computerized dictionary that lets me add words) and purge misspelled junk. If you can't afford to buy a computerized dictionary there are plenty of online dictionaries, but some are like Wiki and folks can enter random strings of characters disguised as words, so be careful.
Don't edit your own work. It's okay to get a beta reader or even a group of critiquers. What's not okay is to let them co-write your story--unless of course you enter the story as being co-written. Right now I don't have a way to link one story to multiple authors--something I need to think about. One possibility is to trade stories with another author in the contest for a little mutual critting. Some quarters when a story comes in early I do a little crit for the author and e-mail it back. Unfortunately I wasn't able to do that this past quarter.
There is an online tool called AutoCrit that will point out things like repeated words, commonly overused words (such as the "ly" adverb in this sentence), graph sentence lengths, and more. The free trial feature only lets you analyze 800 words at a time, and it only lets you do 5 analyses per 24-hour period. My favorite feature is overused words and a 2500 word story takes me about an hour. I don't just look at those words that the site says I have too many of, but all the overused words that I have any of. Let's say I have one "that" in 800-word chunk of story. I look at it: Do I need this "that"? Can I simply delete it? Or should I rewrite this sentence? Typically I only do one word at a time so the web page isn't covered in red. This also goes back to seeing your story in a fresh new way and other things not high-lighted by the tool tend to pop.
If you're willing to spend a little money then Browne and King's book _Self-Editing for Fiction Writers_ is awesome! There are a couple of excerpts on Renni Browne's website and... aww heck, I don't see them now. Anyway the book is under $11 on Amazon. Your local library will probably have a copy, or three.
I don't have this book, but I've heard it's insanely great, For punctuation try _Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation_ by Lynn Truss. It's too cheap through Amazon.
Scotty


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## Shouden (Apr 9, 2009)

Thanks for the tips. I think mainly I need to read it outloud and have someone critique. I used to use my Mac's "Text-to-speech" feature and have it read a story. It helped catch some things I would miss normally, especially if you follow along as it reads. It also let me hear the story to see if it made sense and to get a sense of the flow. At the moment, however, my Mac isn't working.

Anyways, I think I like the "trade with another author entering the contest" idea.


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## Shouden (Apr 9, 2009)

Would a band driving between cities be alright? 'cause I thought of maybe doing a second story around that. I mean, it'd probably be on a tour bus, but they'd still be on the road.


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## ScottyDM (Apr 9, 2009)

Shouden said:


> Would a band driving between cities be alright? 'cause I thought of maybe doing a second story around that. I mean, it'd probably be on a tour bus, but they'd still be on the road.


Sounds like a road trip to me.

I'd thought of the theme only two weeks ago. I briefly considered trying to create a sample story, and I could think of over-the-road scenarios, but nothing that suggested a real plot. With all my other writing projects at the moment, and that I'm now in two real-life writing groups, I didn't have time to do anything. In fact tonight's meeting is on editing.

Scotty


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## Shouden (Apr 9, 2009)

Great! The one about the band will be VERY satirical and mainly for fun. If it doesn't seem like I did much editing on it when you all read, that's why.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 9, 2009)

> For punctuation try Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss.


That is a good one.  But beware, because it's British, so some of the rules are different.


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## Chronic (Apr 10, 2009)

I may have to give this a go, being a new writer and all.


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## Shouden (Apr 10, 2009)

Is there a minimum word count for stories?


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## ScottyDM (Apr 11, 2009)

Minimum of 1,000 words, maximum of 3,500.

Stories present a different dynamic when they are very short. And longer stories allow for more character and plot development than possible with the size range I've given. Readers have a different reaction to the extremes and so a 400 word story cannot really be compared to a 9,000 word story.

Some day I may have three size categories for the short story contest, but for now that's the size.

Scotty


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## Shouden (Apr 11, 2009)

okay.....I might drop my "Rock Hero" story. mostly because I don't like it, and don't really feel doing a lot of editing on it. Right now I need about 200 more words to reach the minimum, which shouldn't be a problem. And it might just be tossed in on the fire to roast. And if it gets a bad score, I won't care all that much.

But, my other story I'm going to make sure is clean and polished this time. The second draft is almost done, and then I'll slip it into the "SSC Critique" Thread to see if anyone will help me with.

I'm doing these early, 'cause I got the ideas early, and wanted them out of my head before I lost them.

Also, I think I'm having troubles writing a short stand alone story. That, I think, has been my issue for the bast few Contests (especially Spring 2009...yeah...one should NEVER enter part of a novel as a stand alone story.)

But lessons learned. Hopefully, I'll do better this time. (although, I thinks Epilogue was my worst score yet. Still, I've only placed mid-pack once, usually finding myself near the bottom. Though, I'm sure, if most of them, especially "Starting School" and my ghost story one, had been better polished, they would have scored higher.)


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## ScottyDM (Apr 11, 2009)

Shouden said:


> Also, I think I'm having troubles writing a short stand alone story. That, I think, has been my issue for the bast few Contests (especially Spring 2009...yeah...one should NEVER enter part of a novel as a stand alone story.)


Pulling a chapter from a novel usually doesn't work.

Pulling characters and situations from a novel--then spinning that into a story with a beginning, middle, and end--can work very well.

Back in 2005 when Nadan started this contest (then called the Watching Stone Anthro Story Contest), one fellow entered the first chapter of a novel he was working on (I think it was for fall). It received a poor score. Judging from that chapter my guess was his novel was a bit like _Charlie's Angels_, but with the charlie character as a dog and the (two) angels characters as cats. Charlie calls his angels into his office and gives them an assignment, the end. That's great as a first chapter, but it's utter failure as a short story. It's all beginning with no middle and no end.

For the summer 2008 contest, when the theme was "more than skin deep," I borrowed the final third of my longish short story, cleaned it up a bit, then posted it as a sample story to illustrate the theme. It illustrated the theme just fine, but as a story it sucked. No beginning and no middle, it was all end. There was a self-contained story within that final act, which was a subplot to my larger story. A much better approach would have been to strip out all that junk that tied the final act to the rest of the story, and then concentrate on that subplot and spin it into a complete stand-alone story. The focus would need to shift from one character to another, but there's no problem with doing that.

For the fall quarter of Nadan's contest (2005) I entered a story that was a chunk of a novel I was working on. First, I picked a piece of subplot I knew could be spun out into a complete story. My original synopsis for that chapter was: "An Anthro-fox meets his human girlfriend's family over Thanksgiving weekend and struggles to win them over." But to get it to fit within 3500 words I twisted that around and simplified it to: "When her grown daughter brings an anthro-fox home for Thanksgiving weekend, a mother struggles to accept him into the family." My first draft was hundreds of words over 3500, which was a good thing because I was forced to rip out all the little ties to the larger story to get it under the limit. This helped because those references would have been useless outside of the novel. The story placed first out of a field of nine. One person said that my story was like the furry version of _Guess Who's Coming to Dinner_.


A few months ago I joined a real-world writing group here in the Springs. We meet every Thursday night to work on our craft, and every Tuesday afternoon to churn out some words. Thursday April 2nd was a fantastic lesson/exercise on creating a plot. The focus was on novels. By necessity short stories need to be simpler, but many of the principles are the same. I've studied Sol Stein's, Donald Maass', and Bill Johnson's books on storytelling, and I've studied Randy Ingermanson's lecture series on storytellling, but I learned something on April 2nd. And I figured out how to bring a longish short story I'd been struggling with, into a cohesive and focused whole.

I thought it might be useful to create a little white paper on plot construction for short stories. What do you think? I've got a terrific analysis of the plot for Rowling's _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ I could fold into that paper.

Meanwhile, for the winter 2007 contest the theme was transformation _and_ there was an optional plot (counted for 10% of the total score). The plot was in three parts: setup, turning point, and resolution, with specific details to fit the theme. For example _The Little Mermaid_ is a transformation story and it fits the plot (it was the sample story that quarter). _Beauty and the Beast_ is also a transformation story but it doesn't fit the plot (the transformation takes place in the resolution phase rather than the turning point). Everyone chose to use the plot and it was interesting to see how different the stories were. Anyway, if you want to see it, here is the plot guide for that quarter. It would work to keep the three-part structure, but toss out that quarter's specific details.

Scotty


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## JonaWolf (Apr 11, 2009)

Hmmmmm... road trip...

I think I can make something out of that, and it could be a nice diversion from my other writing projects. It's about time I came up with something for this contest anyway. 

The real trick for me will be keeping it under 3500 words and getting it done it time. Almost every time I try writing a short story the damn thing escapes my grasp and turns into some sort of monstrosity.


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## Shouden (Apr 11, 2009)

ScottyDM said:


> Pulling a chapter from a novel usually doesn't work.
> 
> Pulling characters and situations from a novel--then spinning that into a story with a beginning, middle, and end--can work very well.




yeah, but it's hard to go from writing a novel to writing a short story that's under 3500 words.


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## Henk86 (Apr 11, 2009)

I'll give it a go, unlikely that I'll win , but it might be fun to do it.


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## Shouden (Apr 12, 2009)

hmm....not sure if my new idea for my second entry fits, but I'll give it a shot anyway.


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## ScottyDM (Apr 12, 2009)

I tend to write long, so under 3,500 words can be a real challenge for me. The good news is that my first draft usually has unnecessary words, sentences, and even scenes. So if I can manage a first draft under 4,000 or even 4,500 words, I at least got a shot at getting the thing under 3,500. And once I do it's almost always stronger than what I'd started with.

*Probably the best advice is to finish your first draft early. Then edit, edit, edit!*

Scotty


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## ScottyDM (Apr 12, 2009)

*FYI*

I'm still fiddling with the wording, but here's the basics of the new judging criteria:

*Theme* -- same as before -- still counts for 25% of the total score
*Creativity* -- same as before -- now counts for 20% of the total score
*Enjoyability* -- new definition; this is now the completely subjective score; even if you don't have a clue how to evaluate a story you should at least have an idea as to which stories you liked and which you didn't -- counts for 15% of the total score
*Storytelling* -- bits of the former enjoyability and technical; this is about the large-scale issues of your story such as characters, plot, focus, realism, etc. -- counts for 20% of the total score
*Writing* -- this was technical, mostly, but now without the research sub-criteria, which I've moved to storytelling -- counts for 20% of the total score.
If you want to think of it as such, the new storytelling and writing criteria are the technical end of your story and they now count for a total of 40%.

I'll get the official text of the new criteria whipped into shape and post it on the website, then let y'all know.

Scotty


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## ScottyDM (Jul 7, 2009)

*FYI. There is only about 12 hours left to read and judge the stories in this quarter's contest. Not that big a deal unless you write long comments to the authors.*

S-


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## M. LeRenard (Jul 7, 2009)

I just realized we all posted about this contest in the thread for the last one.  Silly me.. I didn't even think to look.
Oh, and you made me feel bad last time, Scotty, so I decided to reveal my name in my comments.


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## ScottyDM (Jul 7, 2009)

That's cool. At least someone is thinking about it.

I was only half-teasing.

I was working on some code a couple of weeks ago. Mostly behind-the-scenes stuff for site management, but part of that will become user profile pages. Remember that optional text box when you signed up that asked for your autobiography? That's what's going to go on those pages. Anyway, might be nice for the author to link from the comments below his/her story back to the user page for the person making the comment. Also might be nice for peeps to add comments after the judging has closed too--even be able to thread comments in a style similar to what they do over at Live Journal.

Anyway, all that makes more sense if the story's author can always see the commenter's name. Any option to hide a name would only be for non-author viewing. Like the stories, comments are always hidden by the login/password system so Google bots and others cannot see what you've written. Same with the (upcoming) user profile pages.

Oh, new CSS for the site. I might roll that out tomorrow.

Scotty


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## Shouden (Jul 11, 2009)

Ah. That's why it's taking so long for the scores to appear. Alright. Keep up the good work, Scotty.


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## Shouden (Jul 11, 2009)

hmm....seems I still need to do a lot more proofreading...and writing only 3500 words is beginning to be a bit of a constraint. But, that's the best score I've gotten so far.

Can't wait for the Fall 2009 Contest.


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## M. LeRenard (Jul 11, 2009)

Congrats to Fere, you fine British author, you.  I guess I was right about which one was going to win.

I'll probably do the next one, whatever the theme.
And thank you, Scotty, for working so hard on this contest, the site, and everything else you do.


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## ScottyDM (Jul 13, 2009)

*The Results Were Calculated and We Have a Winner*

A huge apology to everyone for the lateness of the results. Normally my brain is in high gear about 14 hours a day, so it was really weird to get home and drift in and out of sleep on the couch before dinner time last week. That pretty much destroyed the rest of the evening for me. But the moment I had the numeric results and the little files to display those results, I opened up the website.

Anyway, the results:

*One Way Return* by Fere won with a score of *4.06*

*Chariot* by Vaperfox earned a score of *3.56*

*Life on the Road* by Azola earned a score of *3.41*

*The First Car East* by Lopez earned a score of *3.39*

Congratulations to Fere and to everyone who entered the contest.

Oh, BTW, the first episode of "The Great American Road Trip" aired Sunday night. I guess it flopped in the ratings. I know Mrs. Badger changed the channel pretty quick when she reentered the room after the first commercial. We watched a cooking show on PBS instead. But before the commercial the host was telling the contestants there was a cash prize for the winner. Then he stressed that this show was not about the destination, but the journey. I thought, "Yes!"

------
The theme for Fall?

I know what it is, but it may be a bit difficult to grasp with out a well written explanation. I'll see if I can't get one composed and posted within the next 24 hours. It has to do with a different, often classical, interpretation of what fall or autumn means.

Scotty


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## TakeWalker (Jul 13, 2009)

You know, I really like that I've never heard of any of those folks.  Getting new talent out into the open! Congrats to the winners, and maybe I can actually, y'know, participate in the next one. c.c


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## Shouden (Jul 13, 2009)

Well, Azola is me, so...you've heard of at least one of them. Can't wait for the next contest.


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## ScottyDM (Jul 14, 2009)

Shouden said:


> Well, Azola is me, so...


I thought so.


Everyone, see here.

S-


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