I decided to not do that in the actual email, but in my planning villains out google doc…I have her motivations, her detailed abilities, and a small summary of her life. IDK, I feel that a short paragraph or smoothing explaining her abilities into a bit more detail would have helped.
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I won’t be overly legalistic about it either way!
It’s going to be overwhelming reading all of these…I’m already at 31 so far. But I’m going to have to narrow down the finalists, because otherwise it will just be too much for voters to sort through.
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Does the threat level really have to 7/8? Because I was planning on my villain not being much of a fighter. 
Just make your villain a nerd or something and slap the threat sticker on that bad boy.
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Im just trying to get with stoic haha
I mean, it has to be obvious why they would want this person to join them, so no lightweights.
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Or you can tie them with one of the Staff members or smthing. Like they have a weaker power/no powers at all, but with the training and knowledge of the Greats. Idk, I kinda made mine around that idea to reinforce their threat level and add some heavy drama to the story (except mine has powers).
So, question. Is the 250 word count absolutely mandatory? Because I kind of got carried away and made my story a bit…longer than that.
Do your name and email address or the title count against the 250 word count?
Yes, stories need to stay at the flash fiction, 250-word limit. As I said above, I won’t be overly legalistic about whether that includes title, author name, email address, and/or a (very) brief summary of powers, but it would not be fair to compare a 250-word story with a 500-word story.
Limiting the contest to 250-word (ish) stories evens the playing field AND results in stories that the general public may actually take time to read.
I think I’m closing this thread for now because I am slammed at work and hopefully the rules are clear enough to everyone.
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Just a reminder: two more days until the writing contest ends! I’ve received like 40 entries, a pretty awesome response! I’ve taken a break from social media for most of October, but I figured it doesn’t hurt to post a reminder for forumites!
And I’m pretty excited to have developed what I would call my own “engine” but what is really just probably a pretty solid approach to primary stats, secondary stats, establishing choices, testing choices, climax questions and end states. I’m wrapping up a special project and plan to use this “engine” for CCH3, although it will have to be slightly expanded to account for all of CCH’s variables.
I feel that I developed whatever tension I could develop in CCH1 and 2 through the narrative itself, but for CCH3 I need to take things to the next level and develop tension through conflicting goals and the means by which they are tested.
I will announce my new project when it’s closer to being wrapped up.
In a perfect world, for NanoWriMo, I’d be able to toss this engine on top of all the Talon City content I’ve written and rewritten and finally get that one done too, but that’s rather optimistic.
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58 entries is a lot. It might be worth dividing them into similar powersets then you can pick the best off each batch to put to the public vote.
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I disagree with this approach – it is setting up some to be “judged” differently than others.
58 entries is a lot but them being flash stories is a counterbalance. I have full confidence in Eric’s ability to get through all 58 entries – and to choose the five best, no matter the power set they have or don’t have.
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Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? I’m not sure I understand your viewpoint.
I think we all have faith in Eric’s ability to judge the entries, but sorting by power set feels like a very reasonable way to break down a large task into something more manageable. Even 58 flash fiction stories is 58 items Eric needs to judge on so far undefined parameters, and trying to just judge all 58 against all 58 at once sounds like an exercise in frustration and second guessing.
Any judging parameter might come with some level of arbitrary like or dislike–it’s entirely possible that this is all moot and Eric is going to read the entries and just have exactly five entries speak to him on a personal ineffable level–but it seems like given the nature of the contest, choosing power types as a way to judge the entries, and characters, against each other could make sure that the final five are all unique, distinct, and interesting in their own ways to the judging audience.
Admittedly, I think it could be fun to sort all of the entries onto a tournament board (by randomization? By power?) and let the public vote individual story against individual story, but there’s a good fifty ways that could go wrong, so probably not a very reasonable suggestion.
I’m not going to argue process
I will say this though –
1: Having entries divided into power sets then to be judged against those of the same power set might have changed a person’s choice while writing … having my entry judged against 2 others choosing the same power set as me is much different than being judged against 10 entries …
2: People have already changed the nature of the competition by including “introductions. explanations and other work-arounds” to having a limit of 250 words per flash story … all a sudden this “sorting” is further thrown into the mix …
It is just not fair to everyone who chose to write an entry to keep changing the parameters … especially since these changes are coming outside and not being initiated by Eric.
Just because a power set is "unique, distinct or “interesting” (to whom?) doesn’t mean that it should have an automatic advantage or disadvantage over another …
Eric and his wife are more than capable judges and can do that judging on their own terms … there is no need to change the contest every time someone thinks of a “reasonable” addition to the rules, conditions or parameters …
I’ve judged writing before - I have confidence that Eric’s reading and comprehension is up to the task of judging without further guidance set down by others.
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That makes sense, thank you for the explanation.
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I wasn’t thinking of it giving an advantage to certain stories. More like it giving the public a more diverse selection of powers to pick.
While I’ll agree with the overall post and didn’t think of it that way but I disagree with the comment about people changing the parameters with introductions and explanations and other “workarounds” I wrote a flash fiction entry that was under 250 words I did what the competition asked. I wrote a more detailed explanation of my villains powerset. That wasnt done to work around anything I know Eric wont score my entry higher because of it. I did it because the powerset I chose is explained well enough in the 250 word limit it is just a bit more explanation of the scope of the powerset with the more not important to the story to work.