Discussion Thread -- September 2014 75-word Writing Challenge

[David Evil Overlord]

Teach the furniture you won't be bullied, Teresa. Buy yourself the natural predator of all furniture...the chainsaw.

 

[The Judge]

Feeling quite smug here, since I got both holland's colour blindness and Victoria's Sublimation! (Missed the Amanda, though, drat it...)

Juliana, that is a decidedly creepy story.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

No, no, David. Considering my relationship with inanimate objects, I should most certainly have nothing to do with power tools.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Well, then, TE, how about something relatively harmless? Like a beaver. Or termites.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

I wonder if anyone noticed the link that was hidden in the title of Holland's story? If you run your cursor over the title there's a surprise! (But maybe everyone noticed...?)

 

[WinterLight]

For Victoria's story I was guessing the whole time who/what Amanda was. Wait, I still don't know... OK I will be brave and guess, is she a flower?

 

[ratsy]

@Juliana that makes your story even better! I believe in supernatural things like that and even thought I've never had to live somewhere with a spirit or bad energy, I can't imagine how messed up that must have been. You should do a short someday on it

 

[The Judge]

I wonder if anyone noticed the link that was hidden in the title of Holland's story?

Um... no, we didn't. Not in the Staff Room, at least. And we'd rather no one else had either...

We've had a mini-conclave about this. In the very dim and distant past we have, in the Discussion thread, linked to outside sources of information when we've been discussing individual entries, eg to wikipedia entries about particular myths, but with the adoption of the no-explanation rule it's not something that's been welcomed. And putting a link into the Challenge entry itself is, we feel, going a little too far.

We've never set it out in black and white, and we're sure holland didn't intend to contravene any rule, and there's been no harm done. But in future no links, please, in the Challenge entries.

Links in the Discussion thread which in no way serve to explain an entry would be allowed, but please err on the side of caution there. Discussion of a story is fine and encouraged; explaining it isn't.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

For Victoria's story I was guessing the whole time who/what Amanda was. Wait, I still don't know... OK I will be brave and guess, is she a flower?

That's an interesting interpretation. Part of the joy of coming up with these things is seeing what people make of them.

My own interpretation is that Amanda is simply an ordinary human being, who happens to have snow as a lover and sunshine as an enemy. I leave it up to the reader whether this story if fantasy or if Amanda is mad.

 

[Azzagorn]

Sorry for not posting anything at all this month. Been way too busy this month with work and a rather nice holiday to Orlando. Congratulations to Teresa on picking up the win.

 

[holland]

Um... no, we didn't. Not in the Staff Room, at least. And we'd rather no one else had either...

We've had a mini-conclave about this. In the very dim and distant past we have, in the Discussion thread, linked to outside sources of information when we've been discussing individual entries, eg to wikipedia entries about particular myths, but with the adoption of the no-explanation rule it's not something that's been welcomed. And putting a link into the Challenge entry itself is, we feel, going a little too far.

We've never set it out in black and white, and we're sure holland didn't intend to contravene any rule, and there's been no harm done. But in future no links, please, in the Challenge entries.

Links in the Discussion thread which in no way serve to explain an entry would be allowed, but please err on the side of caution there. Discussion of a story is fine and encouraged; explaining it isn't.

Wow, I don't know what to say here, I can swear it was not me who put that link in the title. I literally have no idea how that happened, I didn't even notice it myself.

I know there are some web pages that automatically put links behind cetain words (paid advertizng or whatever), is there any chance that happened here? Because once again, I'm 100% sure I didn't link the title of my story to the explanation of the word.

 

[The Judge]

I know we have in the past had some odd links which confused the hell out of everyone which arose from exactly that kind of automatic linking, so it may well be possible. Sorry I didn't think to clarify the situation with you before posting here, but as we'd not seen that for such a long time it didn't occur to me it might have started up again.

Clearly, in future -- since there may well be some repercussions involved in deliberate linking -- we would check. Meanwhile, if anyone notices links appearing in the Challenge threads, please tell a mod.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I know there are some web pages that automatically put links behind cetain words (paid advertizng or whatever), is there any chance that happened here? Because once again, I'm 100% sure I didn't link the title of my story to the explanation of the word.

Yes, I can see how that might have happened. Must have happened, since you didn't do it, and links don't show up as brightly as they used to, so I can see how it slipped past everyone until CC brought it up.

For the future, I imagine we'll all be squinting at our entries, checking and double-checking, to make sure none of the words have changed color on us.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

*ponders writing a story about being trapped in a temporal loop, and putting in a link that links straight back to the story*

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Oh no! Apologies to all concerned...I meant no harm in mentioning the title-link. We'd had comments in the discussion threads over the last few months about clever tricks authors had used to enhance their stories, and I thought I had uncovered one in the link; I'd just wanted to send praise Holland's way. I'm sorry, Holland, I didn't mean to cause you any problems!

 

[The Judge]

No harm done in the mentioning at all, CC. Quite the reverse in fact since it brought the topic as a whole to our attention. It's a definite oddity in this case, though.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

I'm wondering it it's like my Kindle - if you highlight a word in an ebook, it gives you a definition of the word. Maybe the forum software was trying to be helpful for those of us unfamiliar with the word.

 

[holland]

Well let's try once again:

Deuteranopia


Test test

 

[Juliana]

No link, there, not for me, anyway. Did you copy-paste you entry from word or something? Maybe the link got added in the process...

 

[holland]

Yeah, no link for me either. Could be that I copied the word if I hadn't been sure how it's spelled, I don't even remember anymore. But yes, defitinely could be that, since the site that is linked is the first on that shows up on Google when you search for the word.

I guess it's not that important now since pretty much no one except CC saw it, but yeah, I definitely didn't put the link myself, that would be too much explaining even for someone as insecure about their writing as me Sorry for all the confusion.