Halloween 2011 Lit Discussion

[TomFulp]

This is the companion thread to the Halloween 2011 Lit Submission thread. Please keep discussions, questions and ideas in this thread and only use the submission thread for final submissions.

[DeftAndEvil]

Well, there's a whole month left, which is good because I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to write about. I don't want to focus on horror, but instead focus on crime or drama, with a touch of mysticism or black magic.

[BrianEtrius]

Halloween? Maybe I'll actually write something different than another Nightfly tale this year.......

[Atlas]

I guess since i wrote some stuff for Madness Day I'll work on a Halloween story.

[thornglitter]

I might as well write something, it'll help me on my creative writing on the horror genre.

[DeftAndEvil]

Hey, before you submit, try to get someone else to look at it, and make sure that there are no egregious errors....

[Gimmick]

I think I may be able to fit a story in.

[OrgasmWoodChipper]

I just wanna say that I just read leet ghost's fish-man and it was beyond awesome.

[Idiot-Finder]

Mine's probably too short but I'm giving it a shot.

[OptimisticOctopus]

By any chance would horror-themed song lyrics be accepted? Or maybe that should just be a seperate contest...

[DeftAndEvil]

At 10/5/11 12:23 AM, OptimisticOctopus wrote: By any chance would horror-themed song lyrics be accepted? Or maybe that should just be a seperate contest...

Yes, but they will pale in comparison to the more developed and robust stories (it's hard to develop tension in lyric form, unless you write a very long song, which will probably become more annoying than scary to read).

I'm glad to say that the stories submitted thus far are actually solid :) Keep it up, dudes.

[OptimisticOctopus]

At 10/5/11 01:00 AM, DeftAndEvil wrote:

At 10/5/11 12:23 AM, OptimisticOctopus wrote: By any chance would horror-themed song lyrics be accepted? Or maybe that should just be a seperate contest...

Yes, but they will pale in comparison to the more developed and robust stories (it's hard to develop tension in lyric form, unless you write a very long song, which will probably become more annoying than scary to read).

I'm glad to say that the stories submitted thus far are actually solid :) Keep it up, dudes.

I'm thinking the originality/creativity aspect is a bit more important than it being scary, but whatever. I might give it a try.

[RedVector]

Since I haven´t written anything since the November writing contest last year, I feel like writing something for this one.
However I can´t find the rules for this contest. When is the deadline, and what is the maximum limit of words?

[DeftAndEvil]

At 10/6/11 07:13 PM, RedVector wrote:

However I can´t find the rules for this contest. When is the deadline, and what is the maximum limit of words?

The deadline is Halloween (the 31st). There has never been a clear word limit, but you have to mind your readers. They will be reading many submissions (and from the looks of it, there are gonna be some pretty lengthy ones later), and if yours is 10,000 words, they won't take to you too kindly. I think 5k words may be too much; about 3k seems like a perfect number to me.

[YumeSin]

My dream last night scared me...I'll write about it.

Though I'm more sure I'll finish my art submission than my story :/

[Atlas]

I'm working on a murder story about a woman named Taylor titled "October 31St". I won't reveal much more but right now it's almost over 3 pages so not sure if it will fit in this little space.

[Luke]

Shit, I had an awesome idea for a story last night too... oh god I hope there is still time!!! Short story... I can make this happen!!!

[EKublai]

Are we restricted to posting the full story in the thread or can we link to a google doc that has proper formatting?

[Luke]

At 10/15/11 08:55 PM, EKublai wrote: Are we restricted to posting the full story in the thread or can we link to a google doc that has proper formatting?

I think it'd be easier to keep them all in the thread. And I think though there is no word limit, 3-5k is pretty much good enough. So you should be able to post the story in the thread in 1-2 posts total.

I had this awesome idea, and then I realized it'd take up like 30k words to get it where I wanted it to be. Got another good idea going on though.

But yeah, I'd just say keep it in the Submissions thread, probably easier.

[tyler2513]

Submitted mine. Haven't submitted Literature for awhile but wow the competition seems to get better every contest.

[HumanitysManatees]

Just submitted mine! It's a dark reimagining of the "Pokémon (creepy) black" creepypasta.
I think I outdid myself... it turned out way better than expected. Thoughts?

[Farore02]

Well I guess I should try and tell a spooky story to !

[Farore02]

At 10/23/11 10:53 PM, Farore02 wrote: Well I guess I should try and tell a spooky story to !

I think my story is more creepy then scary but heck its a first try at a horror story so yeah first tries normally dont go as well as hoped but I hope you guys liked my story called Once Upon a Time!

[DeftAndEvil]

At 10/23/11 01:40 PM, HumanitysManatees wrote: Just submitted mine! It's a dark reimagining of the "Pokémon (creepy) black" creepypasta.
I think I outdid myself... it turned out way better than expected. Thoughts?

It was actually pretty solid, except I could not take the Pokemon theme seriously >.>

[DeftAndEvil]

At 10/23/11 10:57 PM, Farore02 wrote:

I think my story is more creepy then scary but heck its a first try at a horror story so yeah first tries normally dont go as well as hoped but I hope you guys liked my story called Once Upon a Time!

No one likes a wall of text man ... put a space between paragraphs! Also, please proofread before posting. No offense, man, but your story isn't easy on the eyes. Do our judges a favor :O !

[HumanitysManatees]

At 10/24/11 01:28 AM, DeftAndEvil wrote:

It was actually pretty solid, except I could not take the Pokemon theme seriously >.>

That's fair enough. Thanks! :)

[Farore02]

At 10/24/11 01:35 AM, DeftAndEvil wrote:

At 10/23/11 10:57 PM, Farore02 wrote:

I think my story is more creepy then scary but heck its a first try at a horror story so yeah first tries normally dont go as well as hoped but I hope you guys liked my story called Once Upon a Time!

No one likes a wall of text man ... put a space between paragraphs! Also, please proofread before posting. No offense, man, but your story isn't easy on the eyes. Do our judges a favor :O !

thanks for telling me but I sort of knew that would happen since I'm so bad at grammar,but thanks for telling me the problems now I can revise and edit it and make it better so next time this contest might come around I can probably post a much better story . but if you read the story could you tell me which parts were good so then I can just keep those parts in the story?

[DeftAndEvil]

At 10/24/11 09:26 PM, Farore02 wrote:

thanks for telling me but I sort of knew that would happen since I'm so bad at grammar,but thanks for telling me the problems now I can revise and edit it and make it better so next time this contest might come around I can probably post a much better story . but if you read the story could you tell me which parts were good so then I can just keep those parts in the story?

Well, from what I've read, the narrative seems very interesting, but it is terribly fractured and the narration is composed entirely of telling.

For example, the majority of the story goes like this: "Once upon a time, there was this. This happened. Then that. I thought this, so I did this, that, and this." This and the several egregious errors in grammar/spelling were very distracting and took a lot from the frame narrative, which I thought was really cool.

The story within the story about Alice Gray was a great idea, and that should have been developed and should have been more focused. The frame narrative is interrupted over and over again by the narrator.

[DeftAndEvil]

At 10/24/11 09:26 PM, Farore02 wrote:

thanks for telling me but I sort of knew that would happen since I'm so bad at grammar,but thanks for telling me the problems now I can revise and edit it and make it better so next time this contest might come around I can probably post a much better story . but if you read the story could you tell me which parts were good so then I can just keep those parts in the story?

Keep in mind I only read about 3/4 of the first post, so I couldn't give you a thorough critique.

On a side note, I've been working hard on my story. I am aiming for about 2.5 k words, but I am probably gonna go past 3k >.>

I've got a crazy bio test tomorrow and also BF3 comes out tomorrow. I have no idea when I am going to finish the story; there's only a week to go :O

[ShredRed]

Hi Deft,
If you don't mind, I love the way you critique the submissions and was wondering if you could take a gander at my own. By the way, good luck on your story. Sounds like it's going to be a top contender!