The Curse of the Doing Well In Challenge One |
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LaurenL
NYC Midnight Groupie Joined: 17 Apr 2020 Location: Glasgow Status: Offline Points: 193 |
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Och, yer just up the road. I grew up in Edinburgh before moving to the dark side. |
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tiptreejen
NYC Midnight Regular Joined: 10 Jun 2020 Location: Brighton, UK Status: Offline Points: 376 |
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Uggggh to all of this - never done this comp before - got a reasonably good score (11) for round 1 and now feel the pressure's on for round 2 (though, I think, with that added pressure, I found it much harder to be happy with my story premise this weekend.
I just have to keep telling myself that, whatever happens, I've created two stories I'm quite proud of and that's two more stories than I had before!
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northernwriter
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 15 Sep 2018 Location: Alaska Status: Offline Points: 3096 |
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Last year I got 25 points combined and moved ahead. The two people ahead of me had something like 29 and 27 points. The two people below me in my heat who advanced each had a combined total of 12 points. But that was truly an anomaly! It really does depend on the heat, and even then your particular group’s strengths. If you get assigned horror in R1 and you have a group with a lot of strong spec fiction writers, and then you get romantic comedy in R2 for example, or some other genre at the other end of the spectrum, the scores have the potential to swing wildly. I think that’s what happened in my group last year. Good luck!
Alex
Edited by northernwriter - 01 Sep 2020 at 9:50am |
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Microfiction 2021: 4th place overall
Flash Fiction 2020: 8th place overall |
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amlewi08
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 16 Jul 2019 Location: Lexington, KY Status: Offline Points: 1125 |
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MY GOD. I went looking for that thread last week and for the life of me couldn't find it.
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BethanyDawn
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 12 Jul 2019 Location: Texas Status: Offline Points: 840 |
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I had a similar experience as someone else mentioned of getting "spoiled". I scored 13/14 in Round 1 and Round 2 last year, my first year writing in a long time and my first ever competition. Unfortunately personal things came up that kept me from completing a story R3.
This year I had a weekend of moving houses, solo parenting a 2 yr old, and the first week of a doctoral class but I probably could have carved out the time if I was really motivated. When I saw my R1 score of 4 points I just couldn't make myself do it. A little disappointed because I think I could have put something good together with the prompts-- at least for the fun of it. But good to know I'm not the only one in this camp!
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EMG
NYC Midnight Groupie Joined: 18 Jan 2020 Location: Dundas Status: Offline Points: 172 |
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I've never made it past round 2 in any of the (2) other NYC challenges I've done, but I did feel a great deal of pressure going into round 2 of this one having scored only 4 points in round 1. The pressure came from knowing my chances are so slim of doing well enough to move on. It's funny how the pressure manifests: feeling I should quit, scrutinizing the work of the higher scorers to try and emulate, considering changing my voice, my style.
But I can always find pressures that make me second guess myself, in every contest and submission. I've started to accept the pressure as part of the game. And, to borrow a Pressfield analogy, if I'm getting knocked down at least it shows I'm in the game. Also, writing under pressure is such a great skill to master - these contests are great practice. And the feedback is invaluable. Edited by EMG - 01 Sep 2020 at 3:48pm |
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Vernacula
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 21 Jan 2016 Location: West Coast Status: Offline Points: 3729 |
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This is me during every screenplay final. I'm like, Oh no, wait, who let me in here? Then I write some stupid ish about a robot dog or whatever. *ETA: final that I've been in!
Edited by Vernacula - 01 Sep 2020 at 7:28pm |
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OnyxLily
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 20 Jan 2019 Location: New Zealand Status: Offline Points: 2674 |
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In last year's Flash Fiction I got a 13 in Ch1, and then bombed out in Ch2 with a 2 - with an arguably equal or better story, and great feedback from the judges. I missed out on advancing due to the tie breaker rules (the other guy got 0-15).
So this year my 13 in Ch1 doesn't feel at all safe, even though my Ch2 story is getting really good forum feedback! I try to tell myself it's important not to judge the quality or worth of my work by my score or the judge's feedback (and have seen stories I read and loved get 0s, while stories that seem to have some clear issues go through) but it's still a gut punch when you get hit with a low score or the dreaded HM!
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The Steggles Collect
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 12 May 2020 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 642 |
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I'm definitely more in this camp. I thought my 1st challenge entry was "meh" so was very pleased to score 12 points. But rather than putting pressure on me for challenge 2 it actually encouraged me, as I now know there's some chance I could make it through to the next round. My only worry now is that I quite like my challenge 2 story, so I'll be even more upset if I don't score anything for it.
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The Steggles Collect
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 12 May 2020 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 642 |
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A score of 8 would be in the center-ish if there were only 15 entrants in each group. But, as far as I can see, there are around 34 writers in each group, so scoring at all is pretty good going. The other thing to bear in mind is that the judging is incredibly subjective. In the judges' feedback for my first challenge, one said they loved the flashback section, another suggested I rewrite it in a linear format. You just can't win!
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