The Official Author's Hangout 2014 Earth Day Contest Support Thread

[oggbashan]

Well, I liked it. Although I was disappointed to get to page 2 and find only one line

Thank you. I checked it was just one page, and then previewed it twice. It was one page. When posted it still ran over by that one line.

After the contest, I'll take the disclaimer out at the beginning. That should bring it back to a single page.

 

[TimothyM]

I also noticed there were 70 entries for the Valentine's Day contest and only 20 so far for this one. I wonder if there will be a rush of stories in the next 10 days or if writers have lost interest in the Earth Day contest (there were 61 entries for ED last year).

Still only 21 stories, but hopefully Laurel is holding the next batch for Monday to avoid the smaller weekend reader attendance.

 

[TimothyM]

Thank you. I checked it was just one page, and then previewed it twice. It was one page. When posted it still ran over by that one line.

After the contest, I'll take the disclaimer out at the beginning. That should bring it back to a single page.

That happened to me on my VD story, and it had me tearing my hair out. I PM'ed Laurel but ended up resubmitting and getting rid of the empty line before the last sentence in order to fix it.

 

[patientlee]

Still only 21 stories, but hopefully Laurel is holding the next batch for Monday to avoid the smaller weekend reader attendance.

The first batch was posted on a Saturday. Holding off to avoid Saturday would bring out the tin foil hats.

 

[lovecraft68]

The first batch was posted on a Saturday. Holding off to avoid Saturday would bring out the tin foil hats.

Nah, it would just prove the inconsistency and lack of care the contests get these days.

But....

I am polishing a tin foil hat as I await the eminent post of a certain person.

 

[Seanathon]

I am polishing a tin foil hat as I await the eminent post of a certain person.

I think you meant imminent...and as far as holding stories, in my limited experience it seems that the administrators post contest stories within twenty-four hours of getting them. I think if any more had been submitted we'd have seen them by now.

 

[JagFarlane]

I think you meant imminent...and as far as holding stories, in my limited experience it seems that the administrators post contest stories within twenty-four hours of getting them. I think if any more had been submitted we'd have seen them by now.

I submitted one yesterday...

 

[silkstockingslover]

Interesting I had one changed last year too..Laurel said they were going to get rid of all the quotation marks in stories...so I didn't do it for the next many months...but after noticing they still existed I figured I would try it for my new story and was pleasantly surprised it works.

The weird thing is, Lit is selective as to who is allowed to use the quotations in a title.

I submitted a story years ago titled "Are you sure about this?" and the quotes were taken out when it was approved.

 

[silkstockingslover]

Hi
When I started I sometimes did...especially to thoughtful comments or criticisms...but as time goes on it gets hard to do.

That said, I will respond on occasion to the rare comment.

That also said, I do respond to 95% of emails.

It is a good way to grow an early fan base.

I am curious what your "policy" is regarding folks who favor you and/your stories - do you respond to thank them or not? Did you do it at first but no longer (now that some of you have lots of such "hits") ? As a newbie, being "favored" is a very nice compliment (and infrequent), and I feel like I should respond in some way, but maybe some would consider spamming. Just wonderin'...

 

[Mara12]

Hi
When I started I sometimes did...especially to thoughtful comments or criticisms...but as time goes on it gets hard to do.

That said, I will respond on occasion to the rare comment.

That also said, I do respond to 95% of emails.

It is a good way to grow an early fan base.

Thanks, good points, esp. about the fan base. You seem to have it in spades.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think you meant imminent...and as far as holding stories, in my limited experience it seems that the administrators post contest stories within twenty-four hours of getting them. I think if any more had been submitted we'd have seen them by now.

Yeah I was on my phone

And you're right, many times entries post within hours if you put them in at midnight they will still show next day.

I think V-day started slow last year too.

Depends on how the author sees it. You want to try to win you go as late as possible.

 

[RejectReality]

Depends on how the author sees it. You want to try to win you go as late as possible.

Why? What is the advantage?

 

[lovecraft68]

Why? What is the advantage?

Less chances at trolling than if you're in early(and no given the sweep knocks all of them out)

Also less votes garnered. Now I know you're going to answer that the majority of votes are gained within the first- I would say 3-5 days- and in a normal story you're right.

But in a contest because the link is on the homepage for the duration a story will see votes daily even if its only a few (mine has now been up a week and I still have seen two dozen votes today)

The less votes the more dramatic effect the final sweep has on the score. Bigger jumps in score for stories with less votes.

If the late entry is in a lower voted category to start off with and it has minimal vote getting days it is an advantage especially because the sweeps seem to be cutting far too deep in the last few contests.

But I think we and others have had this debate before and it will go nowhere (like most conversations here) and I'm not going to jack the thread by debating it again.

I'll play via Pm though.

 

[oggbashan]

Why? What is the advantage?

In theory, it is possible to win with just over 25 votes.

If you enter late, you won't get as many votes as the stories that entered early. You might get just over the minimum 25 and sweeps can radically affect your rating. Say you have 30 votes and a reasonably high rating - a sweep that removes a single 1 vote can change your rating into a winning position. But there is a risk that a sweep might remove 6 votes and make your entry ineligible.

If you have several hundred votes, sweeps are unlikely to make much difference to your rating.

 

[lovecraft68]

In theory, it is possible to win with just over 25 votes.

If you enter late, you won't get as many votes as the stories that entered early. You might get just over the minimum 25 and sweeps can radically affect your rating. Say you have 30 votes and a reasonably high rating - a sweep that removes a single 1 vote can change your rating into a winning position. But there is a risk that a sweep might remove 6 votes and make your entry ineligible.

If you have several hundred votes, sweeps are unlikely to make much difference to your rating.

Right, that's pretty much what I was saying.

If you want the exposure to gain new favs and readers and action on old stories the more time in the better.

As Pilot mentioned further back and we're saying now if you want to win you enter later. Later the better.

 

[RejectReality]

A low vote story has the potential advantage of the trolls unwittingly camouflaging it. A single low vote has more impact on a low-vote story, thus making it appear to be less of a threat to whomever the malicious voter is trying to help win. Once it's dropped off the radar, the low votes stop coming in, because that energy is being expended upon other stories that are a threat to the low-voter's favorite.

Once the sweeps remove that low vote, it has more impact on a low-vote story for the same reason.

However...

The maximum jump in votes between day-5 of a day-1 story to the end of the contest is 39% in a random sampling from my old tracks. It averages about 12-15%, and only drops a couple of percentage points through most of the submission days until the dead end, when it's impossible to get any data.

Quite a few of those attaining higher percentages of post-honeymoon votes actually placed in the contest, or barely missed it. Part of the reason for those higher increases is probably that they were good stories, which caused people to recommend them.

A day-1 story with 75 votes ( hitting somewhere around the midpoint between average and max ) isn't going to move that much more than the zero-hour story with 60 votes.

4.86 x 60 + 1 = 4.80
4.86 x 75 + 1 = 4.80

4.80 x 61 + 1 = 4.74
4.80 x 76 + 1 = 4.75

4.74 x 62 + 1 = 4.68
4.75 x 77 + 1 = 4.70

( I didn't bother with the fractions on those, so it's possible the last 4.68 could be a 4.67, etc. )

It's not that fraction of votes attained over the duration of the contest that makes the difference, it's the lower vote total in general. Votes obtained over the full length of the contest don't have the potential to move the bar far enough to matter.

 

[lovecraft68]

You should be in politics with those awesome spins of yours.

But something you said strikes the real issue with the contests and one that there is really no fix for (and never will be as my feeling is we are close to them disappearing altogether) is the low vote category.

Combine the last minute entry into a category that already garners little attention and the sweep will do wonders.

The formula if one wants to win is low read category+last minute entry pure and simple.

1000k stories see little help(usually) from a contest sweep.

But as discussed before what's the fix to that?

For "last minute" the date to enter could be moved up to allow more days afterwards for voting, but the vote totals?

What can be done not allow certain categories?

 

[PennLady]

What can be done not allow certain categories?

Maybe there should be a longer time for people to vote to even it out? And/or a sorter submission window? If you had two weeks to submit, then submissions closed and then there were two more weeks of voting with no new stories entered, that might even things out a bit.

As far as categories, I don't think there's much help for that and I'm not sure there should be. If you write in a more niche category, well, then, you do. OTOH, if someone goes to the contest page, there are no categories or taglines listed. On that page, at least, every story starts out evenly unless the category is obvious from the title. So one suggestion, to keep it all even, might be to not put the stories on the regular new stories list; keep it strictly on the contest page. However, that would probably discourage people since a big reason for entering is to get new readers, and we all know most reads come from the new stories list.

 

[RejectReality]

"Spin" = Nothing to refute it.

You seem to have forgotten "Really long story" in your list of strategies, LC. The object is to write something so long that only your biggest fans and people who fall in love with it from the first word will ever reach the voting form. Thus, the greatest percentage of your scores will be 5s.

Not surprising, since you rarely have a story go less than 6 Lit pages.

But, that holds true for your non-contest stories as well. You're writing the same length of story you write all the time. Writing what you always write isn't some calculated strategy. It's just doing what you like, whether it's a contest or not. Right?

You might try applying that standard to people you love to spew accusations at and see where it leads you.

 

[lovecraft68]

"Spin" = Nothing to refute it.

You seem to have forgotten "Really long story" in your list of strategies, LC. The object is to write something so long that only your biggest fans and people who fall in love with it from the first word will ever reach the voting form. Thus, the greatest percentage of your scores will be 5s.

Not surprising, since you rarely have a story go less than 6 Lit pages.

But, that holds true for your non-contest stories as well. You're writing the same length of story you write all the time. Writing what you always write isn't some calculated strategy. It's just doing what you like, whether it's a contest or not. Right?

You might try applying that standard to people you love to spew accusations at and see where it leads you.

If you see an accusation you must be feeling guilty because all I have done is pick up from where Pilot mentioned strategy awhile back and added to it.

maybe he was accusing someone as well.

And new readers will read a longer story or I would never get any new favs. Just remember my fan base had to find me somewhere and somehow and I have always written long as you say. Probably, if anything, to my downfall as many think people don't read stories.

Perhaps you feel accused because you are famous for your last minute entries in a low voted category using similar titles and mainly getting votes from your fan base.

In fact I find it hard to believe-as do others trust me on that- that you posted your V-day entry two days before the deadline and it just happened to sit there and get posted last day. That could be true, but not with your history. And it did just miss placing didn't it?

And...where is your story now "Les"? The one you mentioned working on back on Feb 15th in the beginning of this thread?

6 weeks later and no story. Tell me, how many days will you wait to start the "been having a grind, its going to be close" posts? then the "....but whew got it in at 2 minutes to midnight (again!)

I recall you taking a lot of flak a couple of summers ago for that game with your 70 or so vote story win(entered last minute BTW) you got so mad you stopped posting scores and numbers(or are you SSS like everyone thinks?) but I guess the call of that W is too much to resist and you still do it.

Last minute entry, sci fi category, another :"of the wood:" story which at this point has a chapter like following due to name recognition(which means its you turning off new readers and sticking to your fan base)

That enough for you?

You want to accuse me of accusing you then deal with that. I put my stories up half way through at the latest. I enter in different categories and take chances on some of them. This entry is a new category for me and I entered on day one and my vote activity page tells me I got a lot of new readers voting not just an existing fan base.

If you need to manipulate to win and lie about it to feel good that's your issue.

When I-and others- win, its straight up. Try it sometime.

 

[patientlee]

Would you people please quit it with the friggin math?? Si vous parlerez en maths, he parlerai en français. O en español.

You're making my math-retarded head hurt!!

 

[lovecraft68]

Would you people please quit it with the friggin math?? Si vous parlerez en maths, he parlerai en français. O en español.

You're making my math-retarded head hurt!!

I got called retarded on my LW V-day contest story.

It was only 3 pages though so I guess that was a fair entry.

 

[lovecraft68]

Well anyway enough of that.

I'll leave scouries II to his manipulations.

 

[RejectReality]

Actually, there's little to no chance of finishing it, making it three years of Fail after managing an Earth Day entry with the series every year up to that point.

Even with a week of vacation ahead of me, it's doubtful I could finish it in time. Even if I did finish it, there's little time to pass it through the first-reader who has reviewed every other story in the series. That leaves no time to make revisions based on her input, no time to pass it back to her to look those over, no time to give it a pass through my grammar/spelling utilities, and no time to send it off for a final nuts-n-bolts edit with my regular editor.

It's not happening.

The simple fact is that I'm writing what I want to write and posting it to contests when I have it ready to go ( or the next Friday within the submission period, because contest or no, I'll get read more that way. There's some strategy for you. )

Every bit of this should be obvious. If you look at my contest and non-contest stories, you see common themes. Length, style, endings, categories... You only need to look to my flagship series as Dark to see what happens with my muse. I've been roadblocked on a story dedicated to my wife for two fucking years now. Lowborn took me five years to finish. Dig back through the blogs on my website, it's all there.

You want to see strategy and underhanded tactics, so that's what you're going to see. Facts ( like reading one word of a story you're saying doesn't deserve to win a writing contest ) are meaningless to you.

You don't have the faintest idea, because you don't want to.

 

[lovecraft68]

Just got a comment titled

"So cute and sweet."

I am deeply ashamed of myself now.