COMING IN APRIL -- The 300 Word Writing Challenge

[Culhwch]

But a picture is worth a thousand words - the seventy-five worder, however, is limited to one, two, or occasionally three word themes.

I think the only restriction is in your imagination. If you can do the seventy-five word challenge (and we've seen that you most definitely can) there's no reason you can't do this. Don't think of the stimulus as a picture, if that helps, think of it as a pictographic representation of a word. A picture of someone in handcuffs is 'Crime and Punishment', a picture of children in costume is 'Trick or Treat', a picture of a musician is 'The Song'.

And remember, it's not some stuffed-shirt school administrator choosing the pics, it's the mods. Have a little faith in us.

 

[Ursa major]

I agree with Cul. There is quite a lot of programme music around but I doubt that very little of it was intended** to be a direct musical transcription of some text, a painting, a landscape or whatever. What must come between the inspiration and the final product is imagination.






** - And those that were intended to be this way have to be failures in that context, however skillful the composer, as the task is, frankly, impossible.

 

[Lenny]

I'm very much looking forward to the extra elbow room with 300 words, but I must admit that, like a few, I did wonder about the winner not getting to choose the image. However, having been made to sit through at least one lecture on copyright a year (I don't know if it's the Curse of a CompSci or if everyone is given one) I understand perfectly the whole copyright thing.

Thus, as point of interest from the world of copyright and photos (but mostly because being a pain is, occasionally, rather fun), I present to you the Creative Commons Search Engine: Creative Commons Search

I assume people are familiar with CC, so I won't go into any detail, but the search engine attempts to return results that fall under CC licenses. Not everything returned will be under such a license, but I think it's a fair bet that most things will.

Give it a try before you dismiss it - I've done a few random searches, clicked a few images and I found declarations on all pages that the images were available under CC licenses.

I don't see the need for immediate action, though - we won't hit any problems until July 1st, which is when the new image for the second contest is posted, and, as Teresa mentioned in the OP, there's a six week gap between the winner being announced and the next Challenge being posted. The way I see it, that's ample time for discussion!

 

[Arkose]

I am in. I personally don't care if the winner gets to choose the next photo or not. Would not being able to choose a photo really be a deal breaker? I wouldn't think anyone who would take the time to post a 300 word story would really care in the end.

I am excited for a new challenge!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If anyone wants to PM a moderator with their own original artwork or photographs (keep it clean!), we'll take them under consideration for future challenges. We've already discussed using photos from the Photo Challenge and no doubt we will do so much of the time.

But as the whole issue of copyright and gaining the proper permissions will be our responsibility, whether we choose to make it so or not ... we are going to do our best to see that it is handled responsibly by choosing the images ourselves.

For anyone who finds that an impossible barrier to their participation ... well, we hope you'll change your mind and join us later. Or, even better, sooner.

But as I said in the first message, the rules are set.

 

[Chel]

I'm very eagerly looking forward to this. Thankfully I don't have to wait much longer.... I never was good at waiting.

 

[cornelius]

I didn't mean my comment as a form of mutiny. Don't send me down the plank, I repent!

 

[Ursa major]

By the way, in my previous post I was using the form of "very little" that means "very much".








(Or would you believe that my error was yet another example of the Curse of the Incomplete Edit. )

 

[Talysia]

I'm looking forward to giving this a try. Should be interesting.

 

[goldenapples]

300 words is within my comfort zone.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

But a picture is worth a thousand words - the seventy-five worder, however, is limited to one, two, or occasionally three word themes.

I think the only restriction is in your imagination. If you can do the seventy-five word challenge (and we've seen that you most definitely can) there's no reason you can't do this. Don't think of the stimulus as a picture, if that helps, think of it as a pictographic representation of a word. A picture of someone in handcuffs is 'Crime and Punishment', a picture of children in costume is 'Trick or Treat', a picture of a musician is 'The Song'.

And remember, it's not some stuffed-shirt school administrator choosing the pics, it's the mods. Have a little faith in us.

Oh, perhaps so, that last part is a real point.....


Hmm....well, at least I managed to get OpenOffice on this thing. I might try it.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

As Culhwch said, the picture is more like a theme. You don't have to write a story that is a literal interpretation of the picture. In fact, we hope to choose things that are open to many interpretations. Depending on how you look at them, they might suggest several different themes, which you could use singly or together. At least, we believe that is true for the first picture, which you'll probably see in a few hours.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Hmm....well, at least I managed to get OpenOffice on this thing. I might try it.

Make absolutely sure you count your words manually, in that case! My OpenOffice and NeoOffice add to the count rather randomly when there are quotation marks present. I haven't figured out the pattern, if there is one, but it plays heck with word counts!

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

I don't know what version you have, but I put on 3.3, if that matters at all.


I'm going to have a look at it myself though.

 

[digs]

I think I have the latest OpenOffice and I have the same problem as TDZ. I usually copy my stories into an online word counter...and then count them myself anyway. Last month I counted my story about 5 times after a couple of disqualifications.

It made NaNoWriMo hell when I realised that my 'completed' story was about 1000 words short.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Well, I counted mine out manually on the side of caution and came up with 75 words without the title, so, it's good.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I think I have the latest OpenOffice and I have the same problem as TDZ. I usually copy my stories into an online word counter...and then count them myself anyway. Last month I counted my story about 5 times after a couple of disqualifications.

It made NaNoWriMo hell when I realised that my 'completed' story was about 1000 words short.

That's exactly how I discovered it, digs! I went to turn in my 50,400-ish words and the NaNo counter said I had 49,800-ish and I had to come up with some more at the last minute! Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I have more than 600 quotation marks in there. But I don't feel inclined to count them.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

And a thread has been created unveiling the inspiration picture for the first 300 Word Writing Challenge

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/531196-april-2011-three-hundred-word-challenge-read-first.html

You can start writing your stories at once, but you may not post them until the thread is unlocked on April 10.

I'll try to do that as early in the day as possible.

Please read the first post carefully.

Many thanks to Mouse for providing the inspiration picture!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Hmm ... now where have I seen that picture before? LOL!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Something odd familiar about it, you would say?

When someone suggested we use something from the Photo Challenge we were all laughing sinister laughs up our respective sleeves, because we had already chosen a picture from among this month's entries.

We did get Mouse's permission, of course.