Round one struggles |
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theinquisitor
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 10 May 2020 Location: Scotland Status: Offline Points: 5036 |
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Posted: 23 Jan 2022 at 4:37am |
This is a thread we've had a couple of times in previous competitions, where we can vent about our struggles and frustrations this time around. The idea being that when it comes to actually sharing the story, we do so without caveats that might influence how other people respond to it. I'll go...
I had ghost / room and board / ferryman. They seemed like decent prompts at first glance, but I struggled all week with reconciling a subject that seemed static with a character on the move. I had loads of ideas for one or the other, but couldn't find a way to work in both without it feeling artificial and forced. On about Thursday I decided I needed to just go with the best idea I had, which was a complex mystery involving multiple characters, skipping back and forth between two different timelines. And I didn't know who the killer was when I started writing... Unsurprisingly, it ended up muddled and confusing, with far too many peripheral characters, a motiveless murderer and a nonsensical twist. With the help of betas, I think I've crowbarred some sense into it (I deleted that twist for a start), but it's nothing like what I had in my head when I started. #LFMF (is that still a thing, or is it so early 2010s?) - if you're going to write a mystery, plan it first.
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jayscottink
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 10 Jul 2021 Status: Offline Points: 1070 |
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I had the same prompts you did. My first reaction was "ah yes, I can work with this!" Half a second later I swore out loud because there's a really obvious ferryman to stick in a ghost story, and I *knew* I was going to have trouble getting away from that. In the end...well, I'm not sure I entirely succeeded. There are some parallels, but it's not the *literal* River Styx... And I totally hear you about static room and board/dynamic ferryman. The thing I was stuck on for most of the week (I had a draft last Saturday, and a draft that was actually a story late on Sunday) was the ending. It just kept feeling...wrong. One of my wonderful betas finally asked the right question ("Why doesn't he just [redacted] in the end?") and I realized the issue was a disconnect between the story's theme and how it ended in earlier versions. I think I got there, but...we'll see ^.^
Edited by jayscottink - 23 Jan 2022 at 4:44am |
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Aggie
NYC Midnight Groupie Joined: 15 Jan 2022 Location: Gold Coast Status: Offline Points: 198 |
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Those prompts seem amazing on first glance... but all I can think of is T.J. Klune's Under the Whispering Door... and I don't think I would have been able to think past it.
I really struggled with how vague suspense seems as a genre. Especially considering it's not something I've ever written or really even read. The examples given by the site are all wildly different, and google suspense genre basically just seem to throw up results for suspenseful thrillers and mysteries.. which are of course different genres in the competition. I struggled through all rounds of my story to get it suspenseful enough, and hopefully close by the end. |
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MikeBham
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 14 Jul 2018 Location: Birmingham, UK Status: Offline Points: 528 |
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Aggie - I agree. I got suspense / scavenger hunt / street cleaner (Group 165) and struggled with the "suspense" bit.
No reveal at the end...mystery. Too much action...thriller. At least it wasn't PolSat
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Suave
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 25 Jan 2015 Location: Thailand Status: Offline Points: 25028 |
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I finally got Romance - yeah, I know, but I wanted to try it. A tea party and an empty nester. Now those are some pretty specific prompts. The reason behind my wanting to try the genre, was that the ones that I have read on NYCM were light, airy, and kind of fun even if they were not RomCom. Now I did my best with those prompts, but I don't think I am the light airy kinda guy for those prompts, not 2,500 words worth anyway. There just did not seem to be much wiggle room.
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Aggie
NYC Midnight Groupie Joined: 15 Jan 2022 Location: Gold Coast Status: Offline Points: 198 |
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Yeah, at first I was like but then I realised I didn't have to be funny on purpose, so there's that.
Political satire just seems like a cruel genre to inclue |
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Suave
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 25 Jan 2015 Location: Thailand Status: Offline Points: 25028 |
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One year NYCM staff actually put a questionnaire up asking if everyone agreed that PS should go, But that was the last we heard of it. It was overwhelmingly against the PS.
Edited by Suave - 23 Jan 2022 at 7:24am |
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Not_a_Robot
NYC Midnight Regular Joined: 13 Jan 2022 Location: Earth Status: Offline Points: 341 |
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It's decided then. If I get Political Satire - I am going to write a rom com using cartoon animal characters as my way of protest. |
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BarbaraFL
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 08 Jun 2006 Status: Offline Points: 3785 |
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This is a great thread. I do tend to add caveats when I post because I always want the readers to know that I know there are issues there, haha.
I had romantic
comedy / a dinner party / a mind reader. As much as I like to watch rom coms, I do not like to write them, and I felt immediately out of any fresh ideas (having had rom com a few times last year). I also am a politics and news junkie and as such am not feeling light and fluffy this January given all going on in the world. So the week progressed with me coming up with nothing useful and then stressing that I wasn't coming up with anything. By Friday decided not to torture myself further and just blow this one off, it is not the end of the world. Then yesterday decided just to free write for a bit whatever came to mind, and then I had a few hundred words, then a thousand, then I was invested. But it's not really a rom com and the main character is the best friend and not any of the people involved in the romance, I barely described the love interest, and it's all over the place. As always happens for me, the beginning is much better than the end because the end was completely rushed. What can ya do?
Edited by BarbaraFL - 23 Jan 2022 at 7:25am |
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Draiglas
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 09 May 2020 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 2416 |
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I've not drawn PolSat yet but I always think PolSat is very tough for any non-US participants in the contest just because so much of it is so cultural... I think my main complaint with my story is I've had a lot of late nights so wrote it while quite sleep deprived. Well, that and I spent most of my week not entirely convinced I'd written a fairy tale...
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