Word Fight?

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 5:01 am

I had a shower revelation. You know the kind, right? You're sitting on the drain, masturbating with conditioner when you're blindsided by an idea.

Now, I know it's not original. If anything I imagine this will seem like a great deal less than a revelation to most of you, now that we have had Song Fight! for some years now, and even have our little art fight, if you can call it that, to go with. Bear with me, though.

One title, once a week. Then the vote. Maybe 500-1000 words. Not quite flash fiction, not quite a short story: about three pages, printed. Easy enough to read five or six, at the least, or to carefully weed out the total crap before moving on to the next entry (as we all do here--admit it!). Probably not everyone's cup of tea here at SF, but I'm drawn to it like a fly to a rotten simile.

The thing I love about Song Fight!, and somesongs has had the chance to share in this, is the attitude of earnest criticism. I love it. I love panning a song I hate, and I love praising a song with total sincerity, knowing that the artist will be able to recognize that sincerity. It's an attitude you can't usually get on the internet, least of all in fiction reviews (I refer you to successful gimmicks like poetry.com and love-fests like fanfiction.net as examples).

I don't know whether any official relationship to SF would be "proper" (since I have no way to assure the Fightmasters it won't turn out as crap in two months and have mentioned it to neither of them), save that if I did go through with it, I'd certainly give a nod and a link to show my appreciation for the inspiration. Then again, Word-Fight.com might be a nice way to go. What's the prevailing opinion here? Some interest? No interest?

Niveous · Post by **Niveous** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 7:34 am

The idea has been tossed around before but no one has taken the initiative.

I would be interested in such a thing, if properly implemented.

Denyer · Post by **Denyer** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 9:21 am

There is a livejournal community for this, but something which isn't on that site might me more fun :E.

Niveous · Post by **Niveous** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 9:49 am

A google cache of the last conversation regarding this topic:

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:FD-U ... ight&hl=en

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 10:47 am

Write Fight is a better name, for sure. Can't believe that one evaded me. Here I was thinking, "Uh... Prose Fight? Uh... Fiction Fight? Word Fight?" But I won't pursue that title, since it seems the livejournal has already laid claim. I see we had a vaguely similar idea, but I don't think we're approaching this on the same scale. Maybe I'll separate it from SF as a whole, at least in title, if not in community and basic format.

I see all the talk of the matter seemed to die out mid-last-year, so I'm hoping no one else is thinking about implementing this full-scale at this point. I'd like to see this become formal and functional, and I'd like to spread the word around a little once it's running. I would love to see material come from this that's been given the same serious (relatively), skilled (often) approach as most Song Fight! entries.

I'm going to start the groundwork for this soon, once I work out some of the specifics. Since "Word Fight" is awful and "Write Fight!" is claimed (and not my idea to begin with, of course), I imagine I'll wait for something witty to come along while the rest is coming together.

Am I stepping on any toes at this point? If I'm rushing ahead, it's because I want to see this come together. I don't want to push on this if there's some dismay on the part of those who've half-planned this before. Okay, yeah, I do. Screw you, slackers!

edit:
JB said:

add me to the list of people who think livejournal is a bad place to hold such a contest though. the layout is just too confusing. that is, if you want it to be a formal "contest" sort of thing. if you want it to be just a community that everybody just writes stuff for a given title every week and posts it in a thread or something, then i guess it's fine.

My thoughts exactly. I'd love to see this turn into something as organized as SF. I think that given some limitations, fiction should be totally compatible with the format, so long as we don't stray into the twenty-thirty entry range (at which point multiple fights would be the way to go). I'll probably look into setting up a "didn't read" flag, with a good/okay/bad system, as well as a straight vote. Should serve to provide more interesting statistics. (Yes, I'm overthinking--but I always did like that setup.)

I also have a personal beef with blog communities, and it's much the same beef I have with sites like deviantart.com and fanfiction.net. Love-fests. Huggy bunny stuff. Not a Fight! at all, I say.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 11:36 am

Hmmmmm, here is a suggestion, which you may like or not, depending on your opinion.

Have three seperate angles with respect to writefight: 1) people who want to write standalone short stories, 2) people who want to write longer stories, one chapter at a time, and 3) people who want to contribute chapters to a longer story which is a collection of past top-vote-getters.

3) is problematic in that someone might voteflood just to have the narrative be about copraphiliacs or something, but also might produce the most interesting results.

Gazelles · Post by **Gazelles** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 12:35 pm

I'd be in for this. I tried that livejournal community out for a little, buuuuut it wasn't real great, it was alright. But yeah, I'd be totally in for this.

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 9:50 pm

I don't know how much room there would be in the format for extended works, but there is one thing I'd considered:

Monthly, or bi-monthly, there would be a side-fight focused on a longer project, with a different title.

I realize that's not entirely what you suggested, but I think I prefer it greatly to the serial format. I'm not sure we're ready for Book Fight!, after all.

Tawny · Post by **Tawny** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 10:53 pm

For those who are interested in the serial-story format with voting, check out Plat's Rejoinder game. http://www.dillfrog.com/games/rejoinder/.

The guidelines ( http://www.dillfrog.com/games/rejoinder/about.asp ) explain it best.

Granted you will need a dillfrog.com login to participate and posts by new peeps need to be approved (to keep it family friendly and coherent). http://www.dillfrog.com/news/display_ar ... sp?aid=503 But after you read some of the stories already in progress, I think you'll find the small hurdle worth it.

Hopefully, Plat won't hate me for promoting this game (which has been idle for a couple months) but I would love to jump back into it if it were active again.

As for the idea that this thread is really about, I love would love to see that follow through. I'd give it my best shot.

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 4:08 pm

I'm glad to see interest in this from the SF crowd, because this kind of project will really require some entries for the first fight, for which a random startup would have some problems drawing in the fighters (e.g. SF probably would've had a terrible turnout for the first fight if Collin didn't already know most of the fighters or have some way to get them in before it opened).

This might take a little while, as web design hasn't really been my thing since eh, well, middle school, but I'll put in the time and make sure this looks nice before it comes time for the first fight. I'll post here or to another thread when the site comes up.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Write Fight! is an acceptable name. If our livejournalers have a beef with that, I'll be happy to compromise, but only if I hear about it before the site is together and domain claimed. After that I'm not going to worry about a few crushed toes.

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 4:43 pm

i'd be in this for sure.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 10:16 pm

erm, you could ask her, or something.
-bill

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 2:00 am

I don't want to make it easy, do I?

Real answer:

I can't find an email address, and there's nothing obviously available at the LJ site. Who is "ems"? Is this a user on this board? I'll look through the list.

(30 seconds later)

No. But the last writefight livejournal update was March 15th, so recently, if not weekly. I'd be interested to hear from her, and I'll look for an email address, but I can't really say I'm daunted by the association.

While there does seem to be some actual writing on there, the titles and messages seem like a lot of dorm-room shenanigans to me. Maybe home room shenanigans.

I'm inclined here to say "so not a real site" and to go ahead. Like I said, if I get a nasty email, I might think twice and then do it anyway. Good luck to the LJ folks with their writefight.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:31 am

sparks wrote:...You're sitting on the drain, masturbating with conditioner...

Hey, great idea. More manageable and tangle free!

c hack · Post by **c hack** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:28 am

Yup, this is a great idea. Just needs someone to take the initiative. I recommend doing it exactly like songfight except with words. And you probably want to start out with one fight a week.

writefight.com is already taken, but .org is available. Buy it now and set it up!

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:36 pm

Say, you're right--I'd only done a URL entry, as opposed to an actual thorough domain check. So writefight.org is the probable choice, in mimickry of SF.

Goddamn squatters.

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 2:05 pm

i'm incredibly pleased to see that this is actually going to happen. i joined the lj community, but it doesn't look very organized. it doesn't appear to be a competition, but rather a place where they post titles and maybe one person actually writes something for it. this will give me an outlet for creativity, other than writing things that no one will ever read, while i don't have a recording setup of any kind.

the Jazz · Post by **the Jazz** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:09 am

You could even append a section for poetry and call it Trite Fight.

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:31 am

I imagine that will quickly enough become a dirty name for the site as a whole.

If anyone's interested, it's available as a work-in-progress with limited functionality at http://www.garethsparks.com/WF/

Pretty much all you'll see there is the index and the FAQ, but the voting is (semi) functional at this point.

This week's participants are apparently Hargan Bargain, Morfarjargan, Doodoodoo, and Daadaadaa. Clash of the titans.

I expect to have this all up and running in two weeks, at the outside.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 8:21 am

And I guess the title of the fight was "Not Found," since everybody's stories started with the same header.
Also, the stories were pretty similar. I suspect one guy wrote his and the other ones copied:

"The requested URL /WF/thisweek/thisweek-daadaadaa.html was not found on this server."

The similarities are too much to be a coincidence!
-bill

PS Your mailto link is broken too. Shouldn't be your website URL _and_ the mailto.

Jim of Seattle · Post by **Jim of Seattle** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 11:29 am

My wife would be all over this. Please do it!!

I disagree with 15-16 (big surprise there) as far as breaking it out into different styles, at least initially. I say start it off with whatever anyone wants to write, then see what you get, then maybe after a while the way to refine it will become obvious.

To start, it should be easy. Pick one title per week, create a topic on the boards for posting entries, create another topic for reviews, create a poll for voting. See how it goes.

Hooray for someone finally doing something about this long-standing great idea.

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:03 pm

i can't wait!

Word Fight?

Word Fight?

Re: Word Fight?