Luka's 2015 Novella and Novelette Challenge and Contest

[Luka Datas]

So far in the Writing Forum there are 3 comps running. The MICRO, the FLASH, and the SHORT STORY. I am quite interested in becoming a longer form writer and I think this forum has the potential to benefit, not only me, but others who feel the same way and who would like to stretch themselves a little further.

A novelette is between 7,500-17,500 words and I think, a doable stepping stone on the way to novel writing.

I figured 6 months would be enough time to write one and if the comp began two weeks after the next round of comps it would interfere less with those.

This post is just a feeler I am putting out for expressions of interest in contributing stories and critiques AS WELL AS to hear ideas about how the comp could be set up.

Hopefully there is enough interest to get this off the ground.

 

[RedMage]

I might be interested. It would depend how it's done. Are you thinking we would write to a specific theme?

Also, I'm not sure a full 6 months is needed. That's quite a long time. Then again, with other projects and contests, hmm ......

 

[Luka Datas]

I might be interested. It would depend how it's done. Are you thinking we would write to a specific theme?

Also, I'm not sure a full 6 months is needed. That's quite a long time. Then again, with other projects and contests, hmm ......

Yeah, I'm not sure what a novelette would-be best served by as a jumping off point. I like writing to themes because it gives plenty of room for interpretation. But if someone has another idea...

I suggested 6 months so we'd have time to get stuck into them... yeah and also allow the participants to continue contributing to the other comps... 6 months seemed to leave some thinking room... but if interested parties think that's too long..?

 

[Luka Datas]

There's also the option of making it a novella comp.

• Novella: 17,500-40,000 words

Some famous novellas were

• Isaac Asimov, Nightfall
• John W. Campbell, Who Goes There?
• Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
• Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer
• Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
• Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
• Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans
• Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
• Ira Levin, The Stepford Wives
• Jack London, The Call of the Wild
• Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
• Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor
• George Orwell, Animal Farm
• Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water
• Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
• Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus
• John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
• John Steinbeck, The Pearl
• Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
• H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
• Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis. (story link)

Some famous novelettes were;

• Isaac Asimov, The Bicentennial Man
• George R. R. Martin, Sandkings
• Harlan Ellison, Paladin of the Lost Hour
• Ursula K. Le Guin, Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight.
• Terry Bisson, England Underway.(Link to story)
• David Gerrold, The Martian Child .
• Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

 

[RedMage]

Good ideas. But I think we need some other input than just yours and mine before moving any further forward.

 

[Luka Datas]

Well we do have a three week window. So i thought it might be an idea to show in a real sense, what novelettes are -- and can do.

 

[RedMage]

There is another thing to think about. How would the stories be submitted?

I once tried to post an 18,000 novelette here and would have had to do it in multiple posts if there hadn't been a function letting me post it as an attachment. I don't know if that function still exists, but even that didn't work too well for letting people read it.

 

[Luka Datas]

Good Point and the word count restriction per post is even tighter than before now. A Short Story is even too long to upload. I've had to cut and paste them in bits into my wordpad from the thread and vice versa when I wanted to read or upload them.

I'm sure it wouldn't discourage people from uploading their stories but the reading side might be another matter. I'd say it's possible we might only be left with contributors actually reading and critiquing the entries.

Which is mostly how the comps seem to have been working anyway...

In short... I'm not aware of a work-around.

 

[Jussslic]

There's also the option of making it a novella comp.

As a reader, I am definitely more interested in reading novellas than novelettes. But that's just a personal preference. A novella is a pretty serious writing commitment though, participation might be better for novellas!

Logistically, there are tons of possible workarounds for uploading. I've created a group Tumblr before for a few writers.... the platform is super straightforward and doesn't have a character limit. Or you could always exchange emails and just send one another word docs (Not the most audience friendly solution, I guess). Or paste the text into a GoogleDocs or OneDrive "public" folder and just post the link in the competition thread like you normally would.

 

[Luka Datas]

As a reader, I am definitely more interested in reading novellas than novelettes. But that's just a personal preference. A novella is a pretty serious writing commitment though, participation might be better for novellas!

Logistically, there are tons of possible workarounds for uploading. I've created a group Tumblr before for a few writers.... the platform is super straightforward and doesn't have a character limit. Or you could always exchange emails and just send one another word docs (Not the most audience friendly solution, I guess). Or paste the text into a GoogleDocs or OneDrive "public" folder and just post the link in the competition thread like you normally would.

Thanks Jussslic, I'll take that as one vote for novellas.

Is the TUMBLR a thing you can copy from? (pardon my ignorance) because I have a hell of a lot of trouble getting the text out of GOOGLE DOCS and ONEDRIVE genuinely kills me.

I guessing the writers would prefer to post something in the open forum rather than just shuffling emails around amongst themselves too. Could we use your TUMBLR
thingy?

 

[Facing]

I'm interested in writing longer forms as well. I like the idea of 4-6 months as a time frame. One idea would be to have staggered deadlines with different topics. For example if we were to start this in July we could have a November deadline for stories about topic A, a December deadline about topic B etc. so that people can jump in at any time and their is a constant stream of new stories for forum members to read, comment and vote on.

I have no insights into the mechanics of this though.

 

[CharlotteAshley]

Maybe we could do novellas and post in "chapters"? One every 2 months or something? Like a short serial!

This would be of interest to me because everything I write these days is novelette length or longer. It's hard for me to get in under 6k words, thus why I haven't done many of the monthly short story challenges lately...

 

[RedMage]

This is starting to make me think about the Stories section of our site. Not the Stories Subforum, but the Stories section which is a different thing entirely. I would provide a link, but I'm posting this from my phone...

I visit the Stories section maybe 1x per year, then leave because within a single minute. Why? I don't know. Perhaps because I'm not actually interested in reading a story there at that time. Is it just me who doesn't read or do anything there? Maybe, but I have a feeling it's a part of the site that many people visit, but just as many people are unaware of or treat as practically nonexistent as I do (not that it's right of me to do, but I visit the scifi reading forum only a little more often)

What I'm wondering right now is if, instead of a contest, we want to actively promote the Stories section of the site here in the Forum section of the site and, perhaps, the Writing forum specifically?

 

[Luka Datas]

I'm glad you're up for this, Facing and Charlotte. This
has us virtually at the critical mass we need for our green-light. You both have interesting ideas and while it's up to us all to agree on how to run our comp...

One thing I'm a bit concerned about is overlapping the voting across SS's voting time because if we do that. The poor readers would need to read all of the M's, SS's, F's and N's all at once. Which could be quite punishing.

I had the thought earlier that if we set up the comp to run 5 and a half months and ran the voting for a fortnight we could be sure to steer clear of that sort of gridlock and maybe dodge any scheduling conflicts altogether.

 

[RedMage]

@CharlotteAshley, your idea of serializing our stories is interesting too. A handful of us had done a pair of collaborative stories in that subforum and, while I think we were all having fun, we ran out of steam on the second one. But something like that, a shared world even, might be fun to write in and post our stories, maybe in that Stories section of the site? I know there have been discussions in years past about collaborative and shared world stories amongst members. There could be another one.

 

[kennychaffin]

What I'm wondering right now is if, instead of a contest, we want to actively promote the Stories section of the site here in the Forum section of the site

When I suggested that, I got a lot of 'been there done that, no one wants to hear it....'

 

[RedMage]

When I suggested that, I got a lot of 'been there done that, no one wants to hear it....'

When was this?? WHERE was this?? I didn't see any of it or I might have jumped to your defense. I don't use every part of the site, but I'm all for promoting SFFWorld and helping it to survive this Death of Forum's age that we're in.

 

[kennychaffin]

When was this?? WHERE was this?? I didn't see any of it or I might have jumped to your defense. I don't use every part of the site, but I'm all for promoting SFFWorld and helping it to survive this Death of Forum's age that we're in.

I'm not really sure, it's been a month or more ago ....if I remember right in a discussion on getting more votes or activity in the writing polls....

Don't want to drag this discussion off topic either, just wanted to mention that.

As far as Novelette/Novellas and a competition, I personally am not interested in writing that length at the moment, I might be willing to read and vote though and who knows what the future might hold.......

 

[RedMage]

I'm not really sure, it's been a month or more ago when in a discussion on getting more votes or activity in the writing polls....

Ah. So, probably one of those regular threads I don't pay much attention to because I'm a long form writer and consider my writing anything shorter than 15,000 words to be absolutely impossible.

Maybe we should discuss it outside of one of those regular threads. Like in this one!

 

[Dreaming]

I think a novelette writing comp is a great idea Luka I'd certainly go for it. I get a little bored in between contests, with nothing to work on. I'm trying to push myself to start my first novel, but a contest like this would really give me the motivation I need to drive myself forward. Also, I'd be really exited to read all the entries.

As to the format, I think posting each chapter as a new thread with links to the next chapters would be good. No different from posting a short story really. That way people can post comments on a chapter by chapter basis. I think it would be a great way for us all to become better writers.

Time scale is a tough one though. I've no idea how long it would take me to write a novelette, and it wouldn't be any fun getting to the deadline with it being unfinished And the more entries the better, so we would have to give plenty of time for everyone to get past the finishing post, so I'm thinking five or six months might be good.