Competition - Total Write-Off

pickarooney

It's an open draw for round two so that will have to wait until Monday. Meanwhile there's still a lot of voting to do in round one.

pickarooney

We're half-way there with another contestant through to the quarter finals and one making his/her way tearfully back to the dressing room.

pickarooney

Five safely through now and that wraps up the results for the week. From now until Monday, we need people to vote on the remaining stories.

Antilles

Some real gems submitted so far!

pickarooney

More Votes Please!
6, 7 and 8 need your feedback.

Antilles

I think people might be running out of steam after a week of coming back to read/vote. Maybe the next round should all be released at the same time?

Oryx

The next round will be shorter so it shouldn't matter so much?

Turtyturd

Gotta say I am surprised by some of the results so far, especially the one between Pink and Yellow. Not that it was a bad result but I was expecting that to be one of the closest match up after reading both of them.

pickarooney

The quarter final draw and list of themes will be up tomorrow. The themes will be books of the bible.

Antilles

Um, what? Any chance we can change that to something less... religion-specific?

Mr E

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Slow Show

Well I guess it's a challenge...And it would be quite interesting to see what people come up with.

Memnoch

Not a fan of the theme either. Don't even know what the different books are, never mind having a clue about them.

pickarooney

The first round was religion-specific too and nobody complained.

Antilles

Yes, and if a significant proportion of the people taking part were likely to be followers of the Greek gods, that might have been a problem too.

I had no problem with the "seven deadly sins" idea because it is a very generalised idea. Using specific books of a specific religion that certain people would be familiar with is not generalised.

Oryx

I like the theme. Exodus. Genesis. Revelations. Etc. It doesn't have to be a religious story. The writers take the name (whatever one it is) and do what they like with it. Could be very interesting.

Blush_01

Antilles wrote: »

Yes, and if a significant proportion of the people taking part were likely to be followers of the Greek gods, that might have been a problem too.

I had no problem with the "seven deadly sins" idea because it is a very generalised idea. Using specific books of a specific religion that certain people would be familiar with is not generalised.

Well the last round didn't exactly see many people following the whole Greek Gods thing. I don't remember reading any stories about:

1: Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt
2: Ares, God of War
3: Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest
4: Lyssa, Goddess of Madness / Dionysus, God of Ritual Madness
5: Athena, Goddess of Wisdom
6: Hephaestus, God of Fire
7: Hestia, Goddess of Home
8: Asclepius, God of Healing / Panacea, Goddess of Healing

I know the above might be over-egging the pudding slightly in terms of making my point, but I don't see how books of the new or old testament, colours of the rainbow, breeds of cattle, seasons of the year, brands of car etc. make any difference. They're a theme or a guideline, not a set plot.

Antilles

Blush_01 wrote: »

Well the last round didn't exactly see many people following the whole Greek Gods thing. I don't remember reading any stories about:

1: Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt
2: Ares, God of War
3: Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest
4: Lyssa, Goddess of Madness / Dionysus, God of Ritual Madness
5: Athena, Goddess of Wisdom
6: Hephaestus, God of Fire
7: Hestia, Goddess of Home
8: Asclepius, God of Healing / Panacea, Goddess of Healing

I know the above might be over-egging the pudding slightly in terms of making my point, but I don't see how books of the new or old testament, colours of the rainbow, breeds of cattle, seasons of the year, brands of car etc. make any difference. They're a theme or a guideline, not a set plot.

The themes weren't "Artemis," "Ares," etc, they were the respective gods' areas of influence: "The Hunt," "War," etc. Unless I'm misunderstanding Pickarooney's post, the theme next time around will be the various books of the bible, rather than their themes (whatever the hell those themes are).

Aoibheann

But surely there's a lot of excellent titles from the books of the Bible? Exodus, Genesis, Lamentations, Songs (well, Song of Songs), Revelation, Proverbs, Kings, Chronicles, Numbers.. Not a single one of them has to have anything necessarily to do with religion, so I honestly don't see a problem, and I'm 100% atheist! :P

Antilles

Ok fair enough, it looks like I'm outnumbered. I'm still not comfortable with it but if I only ever wrote about what I was comfortable with I'd be a piss poor writer.

Next round: chapter titles of Mein Kampf

Blush_01

Antilles wrote: »

Next round: chapter titles of Mein Kampf

That'll make for interesting reading for us, because there are so many to choose from, and they're so broad you could have pretty much anything. Might even work for the next Total Write-Off first round - we could even have a full "Mein Kampf chapter titles Total Write-Off" because of the number of chapters.

I know you were being flippant, but it's not a half bad idea.

I'm excited to see what the remaining competitors will come up with in the next round. I'm impressed with the takes people have had on the themes thus far. Well done everyone!

Congratulations to everyone who has got through to the next round, and commiserations to those who didn't get through the heat, a lot of the competitions were very close as a reader, and it was genuinely disappointing to see some really good stories (and therefore writers) getting knocked out so early.

Once again, thanks Picka. Top mod!!

Oryx

Em, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out some of the qualifiers here. Yizzer givin the game away lads!

Antilles

Does secrecy matter once the specific round is over? I can see why it would count during the rounds but between them is there a reason not to discuss who qualified?

Oryx

I thought it was meant to be anon right to the final result.

Aoibheann

I guess it's because it'd be kind of pointless to continue on with codenames if people have already given the game away! :pac:

Mr E

I didn't want to say anything earlier, but I think I know most of the quarter finalists now.

At least with the codenames, the anonymity is preserved.

Antilles

Mr E wrote: »

I didn't want to say anything earlier, but I think I know most of the quarter finalists now.

Unless some people are so ashamed of losing in the first round that they've built up a series of posts to give them impression that they actually qualified, and they'll continue doing that right up until after the final, at which point the winner will be declared and the whole thing will come crashing down around them and they'll have to leave boards.ie in disgrace and shame, never to return.

pickarooney

Here are the line-ups for the four quarter-finals.

1. WHITE vs COPPER. Your theme is Numbers

2. ORANGE vs BLUE. Your theme is Genesis

3. PINK vs CYAN. Your theme is Exodus

4. BLACK vs RED. Your theme is Revelation

The word limit is approximately 1500 for this round and the closing date will be 23.59 BST on the 18th of June. I'll be in Ireland from the 8th to the 18th so rather than give a tight deadline I'd prefer give a few days extra even if some of you will be waiting ages after submitting and the rest will still not have started on the 17th.

Oryx

Antilles wrote: »

Unless some people are so ashamed of losing in the first round that they've built up a series of posts to give them impression that they actually qualified, and they'll continue doing that right up until after the final, at which point the winner will be declared and the whole thing will come crashing down around them and they'll have to leave boards.ie in disgrace and shame, never to return.

Take more than that to make me leave boards

BuddingWriter

Hi guys,

I've only just come across this as I'm a newbie around here but what a great idea! I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the start of the next one.

Is there somewhere the entries can be read?