His World or Mine?

[Domi]

Having participated in an interesting discussion on another board about writing in your own and someone else's world (the argument was about which world it is easier to write in: your own or premade, like FR), I thought of a free-style challenge, with no rules but these:

 

-5,000 words or less story;

-authors chose their own worlds created for the purpose of that particular story or classic FR/other familiar setting;

-external referencing to anything but the body of the story is forbidden.

-it would be really cool if each author tries both FR/existing setting and original setting stories and share the thoughts on what difficulties he or she encountered and which one was easier to write.

 

Anyone up to it?

[BigRob]

Hey, 5000 words isn't too much, I should be able to swing that.

[Guest Bons]

The 5000 words is what gives me pause. We're talking "invent a universe" in thirteen pages! Do you realize how freaking wordy I am?

 

Anyway, I'm 800 words into the semblence of something. It's occurred to me that I don't really get this part of the guidelines, though:

 

external referencing to anything but the body of the story is forbidden.

Since I'm not sure what that means, can you give a specific example of what you don't want? (So I can do a wordy rewrite if necessary. )

[Domi]

Hey, 5000 words isn't too much, I should be able to swing that. 

 

Aha! Looking foreward!

 

The 5000 words is what gives me pause. We're talking "invent a universe" in thirteen pages! Do you realize how freaking wordy I am? 

 

Anyway, I'm 800 words into the semblence of something. It's occurred to me that I don't really get this part of the guidelines, though

 

5K has an advantage of being easily readible format Plus in this case, i think it will push to focus on the story, rather than describing the world and then adding the story to it.

 

hey, you are ahead of the game - I so far just came up with the storylines!

[jcompton]

No, you missed her question, Domi. Her question wasn't about the wordcount, it was about:

 

"external referencing to anything but the body of the story is forbidden."

 

(and I don't know what you mean either. Meaning, you don't want references to Drizzt or Captain Kirk in the writer's "original setting"?)

[Domi]

Argh, the thing ate my first post, and I forgot to replicate it in the second: what I meant is that there should not be footnotes that will provide an external source of lore (other than the story).

 

Ie nothing like: And then the vindercot (a)

 

a- vindercot is <insert lore reference on anatomy, physeology, habitat=, custom and history of vindercot>

[jcompton]

Ah, damn.

 

I guess I'll have to scrap this draft of Death To the Vindercot I was just finishing up.

[Domi]

Went for Tolkien-style Appendixies, JC?

[Guest Bons]

Oh, goody. I haven't footnoted anything so far. I was just going to let the readers figure it out for themselves, or wonder what the hell I was talking about.

 

Of course, this doesn't mean I won't do a complete rewrite once I've had more than 5 hours of sleep. I'm not sure I know what the hell I was talking about.

[Domi]

Guys, hold off on posting anything yet. It might just turn into a more 'regular' contest with a prize or two. I'll let you know if it fell through or flyed.

[Shadowhawke]

Hmm... I'm game! Do we have to write two though, one in FR setting, one in our own setting, or just one?

 

Thanks!

[Domi]

I think nothing came out of that other site idea, so might as well just continue here

 

Yep, the idea was to write 1 original and 1 FR story to compare the experiences and challenges of doing this. And I, huh, better attend to my original story, which sort of stopped after the introductory paragraph... lol.

[BigRob]

Are we posting stories in here or in seperate threads? In case you can't tell I've already got one finished.

[Domi]

Yay, I will open a spearate thread for each type of the stories, hope that will work well for everyone!