Making the Story Room Even Better

[Cutey Kerina]

What ideas do you have for the room? What do you want to see in it? Were the prompts useful? Any other ideas? I'll listen to each and see what I can do ^_^ For now, my contribution is writing new content (you cursed chapter 11! I won't let you break my back! *whips it into shape*)

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Prompts and challenges are interesting.

Contests are also a good idea. Maybe a rating system, or a specialized Critique system, or some examples of exceptional works?

Best Short Story, best long story, best TF, that kind of stuff?

[Arkain]

More challenges! More prompts!

[Kara-chan]

Aye!

^^

[Xiao]

An archive might be a good idea, I am not sure how easy it would be to keep up, but just have a long post that has authors names and what stories they have written.

[Kyunji]

I'd like to see some of the following:

- A dedicated TG fanfiction topic to post TG fanfiction found off-site, similar to the one in the art forum. Someone created such a topic unofficially earlier, but it died after a week or two.

- A more organized archive format, as suggested above. Just shoving old stories and art into another forum is very messy. Ideally, all stories would be posted to the main site (with the permission of their authors). Some people wouldn't want their stories there, for whatever reason, so a frequently updated topic with a listing of all stories in this forum (organized by author) would make old stories more easily accessible.

- More or regularly scheduled contests. (PROTIP: It's not too late for a Christmas contest!)

- Better spelling and grammar. There's not much any one person can do to help this, but some stories posted here are just plain pathetic.* Perhaps a topic discussing common mistakes would help out?

- Anything that will generally improve the ratio of art-forum posts to story-forum posts. Write, people, write!

* Sorry for the offense, Hira Kanaki, but it's undeniably a bad story.

[SweetSophia]

Definitely more prompts, ideas and contest. Maybe some other creative things like brainstorming games or loose story ideas.

[Cutey Kerina]

I have one idea of my own. You have to think of two positive remarks to make on a story for each negative one you give.

[Kyunji]

I have one idea of my own. You have to think of two positive remarks to make on a story for each

negative one you give.

I don't think that would work out well. As good as the idea sounds in theory, people learn more from their failures than from their successes. With this system in place, if I read a good story and wanted to tell its creator three minor things they had done wrong with their story, then I would also have to scrape up six compliments for it. The situation for extremely poorly-written stories is even worse. If no one is allowed to tell an author what's wrong with their story because none of it is good enough to yield the required eight or ten compliments, then the author won't know to do anything differently and will keep writing bad stories.

As such, forcing people to make "positive" comments could result in empty praise for stories or, at worst, keep users from telling authors the problems with their stories. While we all hate to be on the recieving end of criticism, it's what helps us to improve. Telling a writer that, say, a character has a good personality doesn't help them write future stories better. Showing them that they're making a consistent grammatical error does. Your suggestion might boost a few people's egos, but it would inhibit users' ability to give advice to those who need it.

In conclusion, criticism is a much more useful tool for budding authors than empty praise. In no way am I suggesting taking an overly critical attitude towards stories on this board - criticism should always be constructive and include both positive and negative aspects - but restricting the flow of it could cause a degradation in the quality of the works on this board.

[Queen Octavia]

To Kyunji - Not all of us are budding authors, but simply hobbyists who like to provide the community with something they may enjoy in return for all the community has given us! As such, they just wanna have fun. So whilst cutting remarks are good for any JRR Tolkiens on the boards, it's kind of a killjoy for some people. Result of cost-benefit analysis: Play nice.

Now, on the subject of how to make this place better, here's how I see it. The board has only three goals:

1) Creation of high-quality stories
2) Creation of stories in sufficient volume
3) Delivery of said stories to the readers

What I think would be the easiest to improve upon would be number three. For starters, for quite some time I frequented only the main site, ignoring the forums. I was somewhat afraid of forums (Not quite accurate, but kinda), and somewhat prejudice against the type of people who use forums (As I perceived them).

The fact that the majority of content is hidden away in the forums was not one I was aware of until I went in to read more about the story contest. All stories should be available not spread out in multiple posts, but in a single linked file. There should be an index of said stories stickied.

Ratings for stories was mentioned, but given the existing infrastructure that would be difficult to implement. Also, it would be offensive to authors who were given low ratings. A better idea would be for the author (Or perhaps someone else) to include a short list of other stories which are of a similar flavor. No single story should be included in the list often, as it is desirable to form a complete network through these recommendations.

I hope my idea is a good one, and at least somewhat realistic. Other than writing & reviewing stories I'm not sure how much help I can be of, but I offer my services anyhoo. I'm great with C, but the silly internet is all anti-C.

[Kyunji]

To Kyunji - Not all of us are budding authors, but simply hobbyists who like to provide the community with something they may enjoy in return for all the community has given us! As such, they just wanna have fun. So whilst cutting remarks are good for any JRR Tolkiens on the boards, it's kind of a killjoy for some people. Result of cost-benefit analysis: Play nice.

Even if someone's only writing for fun -- which I'm pretty sure we all are -- they can still improve their writing. I understand that some people are more serious about writing than others, but the way I see it, if a person writes a story for fun and it absolutely blows chunks -- horrible plot, horrible grammar, horrible spelling, the whole deal -- then there's no sense in giving the author of the story empty praise. This doesn't mean that one has to be extremely harsh in reviewing said story, but it's important to let a writer know that they're making mistakes so they can improve.

Similarly, even a well-written story can be improved. In your very own works, for example, I've noticed that you make frequent errors when using commas around quotation marks. Even if you're just writing "for fun", would it really hurt you to have someone let you know that you're making easily-corrected mistakes?

I find it very difficult to read stories that consistently abuse grammar, which is perhaps why I'm so harsh in my story reviews. Even so, I feel that criticism is a very necessary part of life, and if an author's not prepared to receive criticism, they shouldn't bother posting their stories. Even so-called "hobbyist" authors should strive to improve because decent writing ability is something many people in the modern world lack -- perhaps even because they're unwilling to accept criticism.

So basically, when I see a story, however good or bad it is, I still look for ways to improve it. Whether I'm reviewing Mecchen House (<3) or a less-than-stellar work (Giant Drink), I try to tell the story's author both what they're doing well and what they could do better. If there's a lot wrong with a story, I have a lot of negative things to point out; if the story's good, I have a lot of positive things to say. It's good for everyone to understand the mistakes in their story, even "for fun" authors. Who knows? Someday, they might decide to start writing more seriously.

... This is probably coming across as particularly long-winded criticism to you. I could stand to improve my debating skills.

[Jay Wrider]

I understand where you're coming from Kyunji. Believe me I do. But I do have some disagreements. They are based on my experiences as a writer, moderator, and story critic.

I think if we view a story as "good" or "bad" we are doing ourselves and the writer a great disservice. Writing can't be judged on such a simplistic scale considering all the elements that go into it. This is further muddied by the idea that it takes time to improve as a writer- just as you progress from addition to subtraction to multiplication to division all the way up to multivariable calculus.

Part of how you critique needs to reflect who it is you're critiquing for. Can you critique Elemental Change (my first story I ever posted) the same as a story I write today? Same author but the difference between how I wrote then and now is judging the work of a high schooler compared to someone who has had a few college classes on writing. I should be held much more accountable for now than I was then.

You also have to consider what a beginner writer goes through. They decide to write a story maybe on a lark. It isn't the best thing- heck maybe it's pretty bad. But they put themselves our there and that's risking something. They are putting themselves on the line. Their story does need improvement but improvement isn't going to happen all at once.

For me, progress on my stories came chapter by chapter. I read Elemental Change now and I gasp at some of the poor decisions I made plot, character, and grammar-wise. If I went back in time and sent a full on critique of chapters 1-3 to myself I probably would have quit writing. The ammount of mistakes I made would make me feel like it was impossible to overcome. But fortunately, at the time I was writing there weren't that many posters and I received bits of advice here and there. The early MSFers were especially helpful in this regard in that they didn't dump on me a list of things I did wrong- they instead would typically compliment me on what I did write (get it? Write? It's a pun. ^_^ I kill myself), point out one or two things I should focus on for the next chapter, then encouraged me to keep writing.

We definately don't want to start just lavish empty praise on people's stories. Some of the emails that I hated the most were "Loved the story! Keep it up!" because they didn't tell me what I was doing that made them like it or any ways I could improve it. But I don't think a laundry list of what they did good and what they did bad is the way to go.

Instead, let's just follow the model that I was treated to. Negative comments do need to be made but they don't have to sound negative. They can be reproving or encouraging. It's very hard for young writers to focus on more than 2 things to improve on at a time I think. Instead of catalogging what they did wrong, I say we just find the top one or two areas of improvement, then encourage them to write more. Then help them along with it- after all, they probably are going to make the same mistake more than once. If we all missed the same type of problem more than once in math, why wouldn't we make multiple mistakes on the same concept in writing?

I guess what I'm saying is go lighter on the hobbyists and first time writers. Kerina should be given a much more thorough critique than TGNoobWriter, you know? They are babes in the writing world and can't handle meat yet. So give them milk. Help them focus on one or two areas of improvement and once they can handle those areas, then move onto the next. That way we aren't babying them and we're also not overwhelming them.