Jack the Halls Posted June 21, 2012 Report Share Posted June 21, 2012 Okay, I'm a for sure for the 25th! (Not sure if I had to let you know, Silk.) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk Posted June 21, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2012 Thanks for confirming! It's probably more important to let me know if you decide you can't submit, as that way I can give the slot to somebody else. We're up to three for the 25th as I just got a PM from a new member. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandamon Posted June 24, 2012 Report Share Posted June 24, 2012 If you have room, I'd like to submit again, for the week of the 25th. The next section is a little long, at 7100 words, but it gets to a good stopping place. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk Posted June 24, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 24, 2012 Yes, there's still space. The length shouldn't be a problem. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yados Posted June 26, 2012 Report Share Posted June 26, 2012 I actually have something to submit this week/weekend if there's room. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk Posted June 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 27, 2012 I'll put you down for July 2 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack the Halls Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 I'd like to submit chapter 2 on July 2 please. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandamon Posted June 30, 2012 Report Share Posted June 30, 2012 Is there still room on July 2nd? I can submit the first half of a short story I wrote. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yados Posted June 30, 2012 Report Share Posted June 30, 2012 oh wait, i got the dates wrong. nertz. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk Posted June 30, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2012 (edited) oh wait, i got the dates wrong. nertz. Is July 2 still good for you, then? We're up to four people for the upcoming Monday, if so. (Room for one more.) ETA: Four, because a new member just PMed me and has stuff to submit. I promise I can count ... on a good day, anyways. Edited June 30, 2012 by Silk 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yados Posted June 30, 2012 Report Share Posted June 30, 2012 oh no I mean I thought saturday was the post day. my thing's all sent. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk Posted July 1, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 1, 2012 Oh, haha, so I see. Well, you weren't the only one who submitted early this week so I wouldn't worry about it too much XP 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aminar Posted July 3, 2012 Report Share Posted July 3, 2012 I'd like to submit this coming Sunday. I'm also(due to my long absence) going to resend the stuff I've already submitted in case anybody wants to go through it if that's okay. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk Posted July 4, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 Sounds good. I'll put you down for the ninth. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack the Halls Posted July 4, 2012 Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 (edited) I'd like to go again on the 9th, too. I'm wondering. How should I go about this writing group thing. Even if I went every week until the end of my novel (which I wouldn't expect since that would just be unfair) I hope to have it done and possibly submitted long before I'd be submitting the last chapters. What would you guys suggest? Edited July 4, 2012 by Jack the Halls 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesW Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 (edited) I'd like to go again on the 9th, too. I'm wondering. How should I go about this writing group thing. Even if I went every week until the end of my novel (which I wouldn't expect since that would just be unfair) I hope to have it done and possibly submitted long before I'd be submitting the last chapters. What would you guys suggest? Well, I'm fairly new here, but what if the number of people submitting was lessened, but the length of the submissions increased? Maybe instead of 5k words you shoot for 15k. That would be a bit more then a minor change in how the submissions are completed, but it would probably detract from more people submitting material. What about a group on dropbox (One of my personal favorite tools) where you can just save a chapter in there anytime you finish it, and the group, if they have free time, or are willing to can read it, and just post up a thought or two? Maybe get an entire group who want to do something like this, just save their chapters to a group file, and post their short critiques about it? You could even have a notepad or text file in the folder that people can edit and fill in their thoughts about a specific chapter. (I suggest this because it's probably easier then setting up private forums using some alternate site) Nothing like a full critique, but if the chapter's were available it might only take 2-3 readers to notice "Hey this is an issue, maybe you should look into changing X" Just a couple of thoughts, I'm a huge fan of dropbox and it helps a great deal with file sharing, especially for something like this. JW Edited July 5, 2012 by JamesW 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk Posted July 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 This is definitely one of the problems of a group like this. Lowering the number of people submitting per week and raising the word limit (which we've actually done once already--and remember, too, we're not too strict about the 5k maximum) really only gives us the same problem from a different angle. Since there usually seem to be about a dozen people active at any one time (50+ people on the actual list) that means that most people participating get to submit at least every two weeks. If we raised the word limit to 15k and lowered number of people submitting per week to, say, three people (it's five right now), then if the same number of people stay active most people will only be able to submit once a month. I would be open to trying something new if the majority of the group agrees, but it seems to me that if we went with this approach, people would ultimately only be able to get about the same amount of material through: more material at once, with a longer wait in between. James's idea about the dropbox might work in addition to what we already do: that way, people who are hoping to push material through faster can get less detailed critiques (but that may work if you just want to catch major issues, especially if you're submitting first drafts). Other people have used beta readers as well as the RE group. You might also consider providing a partial outline or summary and only submitting the chapters you most want feedback on ... things like that. Personally, I've found this group most helpful for short fiction rather than novels for this very reason--but I recognize that only helps people who also write short fiction. In terms of how long it takes to get longer works through the group, I'm not sure there's any real way to address it without changing the structure of weekly submissions altogether. I'd be a bit reluctant to change that (though, again, open to experimentation if a lot of people feel strongly) because it seems to work pretty well insofar as ensuring that everyone gets a decent amount of feedback each week, and I know a lot of people like having even a soft deadline. In general the weekly discussion thing seems to have worked pretty well, but it's definitely a compromise. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandamon Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 I thought of the same sort of submitting issue as James and Jack a few days ago, having just submitted the first two parts of a short novel. Luckily I had enough wrong with the early part of mine that I could extrapolate from two sessions enough to rewrite without having to submit the whole thing. I actually do like that this group focuses on things that need to be fixed in one or a few "scenes" rather than the whole length of the book. It can help a writer to shore up certain parts that he/she feels aren't going as well as the rest of the novel. As to submitting longer sections, I completely see what Silk is saying--it would take a lot of focus on a few different short works to a lot of focus on one or two large works, and with the amount of regular people here, It might be hard to even that out among us. That said, I think Yados' recent idea about workshopping outlines has a lot of potential. If a writer wants feedback on a story arc as a whole, without going into detail, maybe he/she can submit an outline for the week and let the others pick it apart for plot holes/character development/etc? Alternately, he/she could submit a magic system concept, or SciFi location, or whatnot, to look for logical consistency. What about a group on dropbox (One of my personal favorite tools) where you can just save a chapter in there anytime you finish it, and the group, if they have free time, or are willing to can read it, and just post up a thought or two? Maybe get an entire group who want to do something like this, just save their chapters to a group file, and post their short critiques about it? I love Dropbox. I've been using that exclusively for my writing for about a year and a half now and it's a great tool. **Oh yeah, and since I'm posting in here, is there room for me to submit the second half of my short story next week? After that I'm going to take a break from sumbitting for a while to do some rewriting. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesW Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 So I'm a fan of the dropbox idea, I'll start a thread and see who is interested. I'm working on my first draft of my first novel so quicker, more broad feedback would be something I'm interested in. The writing quality, and specifics (Like I would get in the weekly submissions group) might be less beneficial then the "Hey this is boring" or "Hey this chapter doesn't say anything" which I could easily get from a short critique. I'd say we work with a group of maybe 3-5 people, I think thats a fairly reasonable number. That way people aren't needing to read an excess of material, and you still have a good chance that one of the four others will read and send a short critique of your work. I'll see who is interested in another thread, I'll Include Jack just because it was his comment and interest that sparked this. Mandamon you sound interested as well, but let me know if you want to, just post in the other thread. JW 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSadDragon Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 I can see many problems with the drop box approach, but I can also understand the problem with how things currently work. Just to reiterate though, the way I'm reading the problem is as follows: The problem with the way we do things now is that some feel they cant get feedback on the whole novel within a reasonable time frame. This is due to many people wanting submitting and thus you might only get to post 5k words every other or third week, which can add up to 1 chapter submitted every 2 submissions -- or about every 4-6 weeks. Assuming you then have about say 10 chapters that would add up to about 1 novel in about 40-60 weeks. Assuming a 100k word novel. Now personally i don't think that sounds too bad myself, especially since i might not have to submit every single chapter to the writing group -- though i wouldn't mind doing so . In my previous group some people used to jump around quite a lot in terms of where in the book we where reading.Some chapters just gave them more trouble and they wanted to focus on that rather than going strictly chapter by chapter. To solve the confusion we always included a small summary of what had happened in the story since we last read. Another trick could be to split up the group. If we say have 12 active members than we split it to 3 groups so that everyone can submit every week. Have each group focused on giving feedback primarily on the submissions of the members of that group. This would have to be flexible though as if suddenly some people becomes less active -- to the point of them not giving feedback -- we might end up with a group with only 2 active members. I can also foresee problems with the dropbox solution. The main one that would affect me is that I just wouldn't be able to give feedback. I read very slowly, I even have problem to read all the submissions for one week and try and give meaningful feedback on them as well as work on my novel as it is. I already have a backlog of chapters I want to get feedback done on before I can relax and start thinking about submitting again. Now the problem here isn't just the possible length of the dropbox 'submissions' -- though for me this might very well be the main problem -- it is also that you might not be 'prompted' to give feedback as much as with something that comes to you instead of you having to seek it out. As for the feedback examples for the dropbox idea isn't that a bit of a shallow mark. I mean sure I can say something like "this chapter needs more conflict" and "this character acts out of character" but without context and explanation as to why I think so it doesn't give you that much more than "it was ok" would. In fact it might actually throw you off cause the solution to me thinking that it needs more conflict might actually not be more conflict -- something that might only become apparent if looking at the reason behind my assumption that more conflict would solve the chapter. Another thing to note is that if you want broader feedback that can also be done with the current setup so this might be a bit of a side note -- though the problems with broad feedback would still be there. I'm not saying the dropbox solution, or the current set up, are a bad ideas, just that they both have drawbacks -- and that is something to consider. Best Regards, The Sad Dragon 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk Posted July 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 I see some people are trying out the dropbox idea, so we'll let whoever's interested run that for a few weeks as well and see how people are liking it. The one drawback I can see to The Sad Dragon's solution is that the submitters would generally be getting feedback from fewer people (and the same people, until/unless we cycled who was in each group) and the variety of opinions one gets is one of the best parts of a group like this (I think, anyway). Aminar, Mandamon, Jack, I have you all down as submitting for the ninth. Did I miss anybody? There are two more slots. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aminar Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 I see no reason not to give the dropbox a try for people interested in it. I have a full novel done. Just leaving it as available for somebody from the group to look at is nice, even if they give feedback... A repository of completed works by our group. We can always just swap books. For instance James and I could agree to finish each other's books by the end of the month and then start a topic where we discuss things, or do it through PM's. As soon as I finish up the Iron Druid Chronicles I can start on somebodies book. It just has to be looked at more as a library that might get looked at than a submission schedule. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesW Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 That's what I was thinking Aminar, just having the books available for some is enough. I for one can't spend all of my time writing, so reading other peoples work might be a good break activity (Significantly better then checking Facebook or my email for the fifteenth time) . And @Tsd, I agree there might be drawbacks, but just being able to put it up for review might help a lot. If ive been talking with Aminar (for example our conversation about the magic in my submission thread) a great deal about a topic, or I want his opinion because I know he wants to try and break the magic system, I could ask him his thoughts on a particular passage or exchange and find out if he feels like something is out of place, or could just provide a different perspective and maybe catch something I missed. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSadDragon Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 Just point out that there are drawbacks, though I still think you guys should try it out. As said I wouldnt be able to contribute much from the form myself -- there is a reason i prefer audiobooks over regular ones -- but any contribution is always better than none. As for discussions. I pitched the idea a bit in a pm but I might as well bring it up here as well 17th Shard has a IRC channel on freenode which can easily be accessed. What about having a RE channel? IRC as all IM services lends itself far better to discussion and if nothing else it might be a nice place to hang out. If it seems like a good idea i can set up a channel. -TSD 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesW Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 That seems like a cool idea, I don't have know anything about that but it might work well. If you want to set a channel up that would be good. If you want to post in the other thread that I started the information that might be good. JW 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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