AW WESTERN CONTEST - Discussion Thread

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Marya

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Great reading there -- I feel as if I'm discovering the real possibilities of Western fiction for the first time.
 

Al Stevens

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Half way through. They're all good. A couple are so good it humbles me to be in this company. If this level of excellence holds up, I'll be in deep doo-doo when choosing.

(My only selection criterion is the quality of the writing, so you can see my dilemma. You peeps be good scribes. I am proud to know you and assemble with you.)

Out comes the ouija board.
 

The_AO

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This is an incredible contest and a wonderful idea. I don't normally do western but this really opened my eyes to some interesting possibilities. Every story written is quality. Every single one.
 

WordCount

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Agree to the above posts.

I feel like mine sticks out like a black sheep. Because sentence variance word count etc..
 

KellyAssauer

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As writers... many of us may not be terribly familiar with voting in a contest setting, especially one with 40 entries. So here's a helper. Considering the number of entries it might be best to use some kind of quick grading scale. If I 'borrow' the wonderful list provided by orion_mk3 and add a 1-10 scale* in front of each title, I get this quick and dirty guide to my choices. (which you can copy & paste and print out!)

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 01. Mexican Monte

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 02. Deliverance

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 03. The First Roundup

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 04. Saloon Girls

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 05. Dealing From the Bottom

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 06. Outside

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 07. Conserving Order

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 08. Awaiting Your Reply, I Remain Your Servant, Josiah Cranston

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 09. Mary-Lou's Prospects

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 10. Fools Get What’s Coming

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 11. Self Defense

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 12. Death on the Range

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 13. New Ideas in the Old West

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 14. The Roiling Sands

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 15. My Ride to Fort Churchill

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 16. Under Burning Rain

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 17. So What

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 18. Paradise Wells

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 19. A Trip Out West

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 20. Ain't Enough

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 21. Ten Seconds

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 22. Incident at the Bar H

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 23. Look Back, Bold Pioneer

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 24. Lame Horses

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 25. Gambler and Gravedigger

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 26. Gravedigger Jones

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 27. The Riders

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 28. To Kill a Rattlesnake

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 29. The Winter Spring

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 30. Home Bound

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 31. The Love and Death of Alice Waddell

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 32. Sacred Rock

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 33. All the General's Horses

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 34. Tooth and Claw

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 35. The Outlaw

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 36. Dead Don't Lie

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 37. Six Bullets

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 38. Hesperides

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 39. Hunger Ain't No Game

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ) 40. We Are Equal

*for those unfamiliar with the differences between a 1-10 scale and a 0-10 scale, the 1-10 forces you off the fence and to lean either to the positive or negative side, leaving no neutral middle. If you feel as if you really have to have that neutral middle use the first parenthesis as a zero and the 5 will become the fence...

Happy reading!

.
 

escritora

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Thanks, Kelly. That will be extremely helpful. Forty is a lot of entries!
 

Puma

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I used a scale when I read through the stories. It helps tremendously for making the initial cut so you know which stories you want to look at again. Don't scream at me, but instead of 1-10 I used the old-fashioned grading scale - A, B, C - with pluses and minuses. Puma
 

KellyAssauer

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I just offered one easy score card... you don't have to use it!

You can use whatevah you like! :)
 

orion_mk3

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Thanks for the ready-made grading sheet! I'm using a 1-5 grading scale to start with, personally, and then I'll go back and re-review the 4s and 5s 1-10. It's a good way to quickly narrow things down while allowing time for agonizing :)

So far I've noticed a real trend toward twist endings, almost to the extent that this could be called the Twilight Zone Western Contest! Given the other popular ending style,though, (no ending at all) I love it.

And speaking of Twilight, there have been vampires. Fair warning: I have a reasonably strong bias there.
 

KellyAssauer

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*sets aside my Paranormal, vampire, chick-lit, Y-A, sci-fi, mystery, romantic, erotic, horror-thriller, set in the old west WIP*

O Dang.
 

brad_b

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Somewhere in my mind... it echoes in here ...
*sets aside my Paranormal, vampire, chick-lit, Y-A, sci-fi, mystery, romantic, erotic, horror-thriller, set in the old west WIP*

O Dang.

And here I was just getting into your story line.

Great job on the voting guide and it should prove very useful to those who haven't created their own method yet.

It's raining here so I have the day off and should finish reading the stories today (and we picked up another job yesterday installing a patio with a pondless waterfall and stream curving around one side - all is good). That'll give me time to go back through and start the very difficult job of deciding my top three. The quality of the stories is excellent and it will be a painful decision-making process.
 

Ari Meermans

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*le sigh* Looks like I'm going to have to go with a scoring system--Kelly's or one of my own. I *thought* I could make my initial selections based on story alone. I ended up with 39 semi-finalists.
 

teacher

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Afte the third round, I've whittled them down to seventeen. High quality writing. I feel embarrassed by my effort. Good luck everybody.
 

TypoToffee

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Printed all the titles, made labels, stuck 'em onto tin cans which I placed on a log. Will spend the afternoon shooting and the last three standing win...

Is that wrong?

Actually in truth - whittled down to 9. Gonna read them again on Sunday. Super awesome writing everyone.
 

WordCount

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Ari: 39? So basically all but yours? If so, I'm glad I made it that far...

I'm doing a music assessment-type 100 point grading system. If you have one of the top fifteen scores, you go to finals. If not, "ya fired!"

Then, I'll move into the 1000-point system, determining whether I think certain plot elements do or don't work for me. (Making it to finals is all dependent on prose, not the story itself.)
 

Ari Meermans

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Ari: 39? So basically all but yours? If so, I'm glad I made it that far...

I'm doing a music assessment-type 100 point grading system. If you have one of the top fifteen scores, you go to finals. If not, "ya fired!"

Then, I'll move into the 1000-point system, determining whether I think certain plot elements do or don't work for me. (Making it to finals is all dependent on prose, not the story itself.)

Yep, all but mine. I printed them for my bedtime reading pleasure last night. Got a notebook and wrote the number and title of each storyline I liked. Ended up with all of them.

IMHO, any and all of those thirty-nine stories can be revised and fleshed out for submission.
 

WordCount

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I've been taking an hour here, and an hour there. (One to writing, one to reading)

So far, I'm incredibly pleased with all of them. In the first round, I knocked out three stories. THREE (one of which, was mine.) So far in semis, I've eliminated three, and the bottom one still got an 89.7 from me.
These last ten points are going to be the end of me D:
 

Chris P

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40,000 words of Western goodness ripe for the reading! It'll be a tough cattle drive at times but I'm looking forward to it.

Shoooot, at 40K words we got our own compilation novella.

And I better get reading! Those 40K words won't read themselves.
 

Kweei

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You mean I get to read this weekend? What a punishment!

I skimmed through the entiries so far and they look fantastic. As the western genre is slowly growing on me, I'm really excited to read and vote :)
 

Puma

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Question for Harry - Are you going to pm us back to let us know you received our votes? Puma
 

WordCount

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Okay, I'm about to fall out. I feel like I just put 36 people on death row. Oh well, I do know this, my scores were EXTREMELY close. The number one score was a 98, the second a 97.67, and the third 97.57.

They were hard decisions, especially considering about four others scored a 97 or above as well. They were just so close in quality, it ended up coming down to the premise itself. I liked some more than others...
 

archerjoe

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Wow, I'm down to ten. I'm putting off the final trimming for a while so I can re-read them fresh.
 
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