Self-Analysis |
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jakz404
NYC Midnight Newbie Joined: 23 Nov 2022 Location: Melbourne, AU Status: Offline Points: 33 |
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I know what you mean about with procrastination. My ADHD-guilt tendency worked, in that knowing there was a hard deadline gave me the adrenaline pump to get it going. Own worst critic was kinda the inspiration for this topic as well! Congrats on fighting both of these and getting your submission in! I suck at titles, but can appreciate good ones having read through the forums, so will have to work on that.
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jakz404
NYC Midnight Newbie Joined: 23 Nov 2022 Location: Melbourne, AU Status: Offline Points: 33 |
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Thanks for your comments! Whenever I've written OC before, I was some vague scene that I had stuck in myhead for a week and needed to just "get it out" but it existed in isolation and was never sure how or where to get to go someowhere. Similarly, I was hoping that doing a challenge like this would help me limit focus and keep something punchy. And oh boy am I learning about the importance of titles!
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jakz404
NYC Midnight Newbie Joined: 23 Nov 2022 Location: Melbourne, AU Status: Offline Points: 33 |
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I think the 24hr limit is an interesting one, for some people they may be up writing & editing the whole time, but the fact its only 250 means there is more option to rest, review, come back later and redraft. Something that I need to do next time, as I submitted relatively quickly, and then life got in the way and I wasn't able to come back and redraft. I tried to come up with a bunch of concepts given the prompts and chose the one that felt like it might be the most unique. But in the writing, the execution still did not come out how I wanted it to, but as I said above, missed significant redrafting time. Great introspection, and I wish you all the best for round 2!
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TheGhostofMissJessel
NYC Midnight Groupie Joined: 10 Jan 2022 Status: Offline Points: 112 |
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A big one for me — don’t forget we only get 24 hours not 48. My preference for any contest is to let a story cure for a little bit—even if that’s only an hour or two. I can almost always find something to improve when I come back with fresh eyes. I unwisely spent my time pouting and procrastinating because I didn’t like the prompts and realized last minute that the deadline was tonight not tomorrow so ended up tossing something together with no beta reads or any real time to review/edit.
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wisemel
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 21 Jan 2021 Location: Nova Scotia Status: Offline Points: 2442 |
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Great discussion! I have a bit of a mental checklist I try to work through to address areas that can really improve a piece. It includes:
-filtering language (noticed, seemed, felt, saw, wondered, thought, etc.) increases narrative distance, and in addition to making the writing so much better, editing out those words can add to the word count (I really try to watch out for this) -every word counts in micro (well, always, but especially in micro) so I pick things apart and look for alternative ways to say something in fewer words -play with punctuation, which can help with word count and also make for interesting variation -dialogue tags are rarely necessary, and using them is a missed opportunity when we can attribute through action or description -I try and go back and add a descriptive word here and there for setting, as I tend to skip this stuff and have learned that it really helps elevate a story so it doesn't feel like things are happening in a vacuum -dialogue has to move the story forward, and if it doesn't add anything it should be cut (I can definitely over-do it on dialogue) -start as close as possible to the action -varied sentence length -read aloud for rhythm and repetition issues
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SumFemina
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 14 Apr 2021 Location: New York Status: Offline Points: 2690 |
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I think one challenge you faced was you thought the "action" had to be a central theme of the story. So your entire story focused on someone climbing a wall. But if you had known the action just has to happen sometime in the story you would have had more freedom to write a different type of story.
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theinquisitor
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 10 May 2020 Location: Scotland Status: Offline Points: 5036 |
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My self-analysis for the next round is 'don't get f**king covid again'.
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Carelizafor
NYC Midnight Newbie Joined: 05 May 2022 Location: Newfoundland Status: Offline Points: 72 |
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SAME! the brain fog was awful.
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Annk
NYC Midnight Newbie Joined: 20 Nov 2022 Status: Offline Points: 61 |
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Hi all, bumping this thread because it's full of gold, which I need going into round two. I'm a newbie, both to micro and to competition.
The one thing that I've been kicking myself for is having too pat an ending. We'll see what the judges come back with. I was down to the wire, time-wise, and so my last sentence told, rather than showed, and I think didn't give the reader enough credit.
Thank you all for the tips. I will use them, for sure. |
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NERdling
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 10 Dec 2014 Location: Chicago Status: Offline Points: 2350 |
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If only I took this note for R2
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