Previous: >>25510633https://warosu.org/lit/thread/25510633~Itinerary~• Friday, October 2nd, 10:00 AM GMT (or a bit earlier)>Character & theme requirements revealed—start writing!• Friday, October 16th, 11:59 PM GMT>Submission deadline. Voting and critique begin.• Friday, October 30th, 11:59 PM GMT>Voting ends and winners crowned. Critique persists with thread.~Rules~Writing>Write a work that fulfills the character & theme requirements.>In all ways, your piece must belong to you—no plagiarism or AI.>And it must be written AFTER the requirements have been revealed—no previous work.>Do not edit your writing on Rentry after the submission deadline.Submitting>Format and publish your submission on rentry.co>In this thread, open a reply window, then type a unique tripcode (Name + “#” + Password) into the Name-field.>Using that unique tripcode, post your submission here as a Rentry link.>However, if your submission is short enough that it fits inside a single reply-window textbox, you can simply publish it here.Critique, Process, and Q&A>The deeper you delve into your peers’ stories, the more likely they’ll be to engage with yours.>Share your thoughts, advice, improvements, polemics—anything you think an author ought to hear, and you might receive it too.>If you had an interesting creative journey in crafting your piece, please divulge your process.>And, above all, ask questions! “Did this land?” “What were you going for here?” “Is this a reference to something?” etc.Voting>On Strawpoll, rank your top 3 submissions: 1st (top) = 3 points; 2nd = 2 points; 3rd = 1 point.>Do not vote for yourself.>Vote as the “Name” part of your tripcode.>Immediately after voting on Strawpoll, reply “Voted” in this thread, using your full tripcode.>Non-authors (Anonymous voters) can skip this in-thread verification.
~Requirements~Character: Cryptid.Theme: Predator vs. Prey.>[Countdown to submission deadline]https://countingdownto.com/w4/display/submission-deadline-lwc-oct-2026-qbrThis month there are TWO WEEKS to write; TWO WEEKS to read & critque!
never been a tripfag before, so im hoping this works.>>25565377i love the pictures you are using for these threads, im a sucker for art nouveau.>>25565403i feel like the prompt has one very direct and obvious interpretation, and it requires a bit of thinking outside the box to make it really interesting. i do think i have one solid idea already.
>>25566201>i feel like the prompt has one very direct and obvious interpretation, and it requires a bit of thinking outside the box to make it really interesting.That is the standard for /lwc/ and why it is dying. Multiple anons have pointed this out but are always ignored.
>wrote story once>rewrote it>realize I have a much better framing device of the whole thingI don't know how the hell Bradbury rewrote a story six times every week without shooting himself. It's exhausting. Especially since now I gotta research MORE stupid shit. I've come to respect second vault/well-read fags not because I thought that stuff was useful before, but because having a network of notes for something you need ready to go is super valuable.
>>25565403I'm not super familiar with cryptids, would picrel be the definition we're going with?
>>25567123nah I think all that stuff is cryptids.
>>25567123>I'm not super familiar with cryptids, would picrel be the definition we're going with?“We’re” not going by any definition; it’s up to each author as to how they interpret what that word means but, quite intentionally, the fact that it’s the Halloween month should be granting you some latitude.Personally, I disagree with that infographic because Mothman is the cryptid quintessential.And any list that leaves out a biological doofus like the Loveland Frog is dead to me, at least.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptids>>25566605>That is the standard for /lwc/ and why it is dying. Multiple anons have pointed this out but are always ignored.You’re hyping up their compliment as though it’s a criticism? As if promoting out-of-the-box thinking is a bad thing?
>>25567167>You’re hyping up their compliment as though it’s a criticism? As if promoting out-of-the-box thinking is a bad thing?No, just pointing out that such exercises quickly become boring and only offer a challenge to those just starting out in writing. Hence these threads dying, after doing it a few times it offers nothing, especially when it fixates so myopically on character and theme. To survive you need to give prompts which offer something to all skill levels so anons will stick around and more accomplished writers will join in. Probably too late for /lwc/, should just let it die and wait a few months to start anew. Also should just give up on being thread ruler, at the very least make the reward for wining be getting to do next months thread how ever they see fit and not being constrained to character and theme. Multiple anons have explained this to both you and yodo, you both ignored their advice and we are seeing the result.
>>25567219>only offer a challenge to those just starting out in writingYou mean it's suited to a fresh roster of participants and encourages writing from people who otherwise might not be writing, rather than being a circlejerk of an established elite who claim a predictable place every time?>Probably too late for /lwc/, should just let it die and wait a few months to start anewWhy not start your own monthly comp for the more established talent pool you're interested in? More events catering to a wider gamut of writers sounds like it could only be a good thing.
>>25567291Strawman or just lousy comprehension?
sorry, i didnt realize my message would launch such a heated argument.>>25567219i fail to see how the challenge could become boring just because youre an experienced writer. i dont wanna spoil my story, but i bet you could write literally any genre or type of story based on this prompt.>myopic fixation of character and thememyopic? character and theme is about as broad-strokes as it gets.>>25567291i dont think there is anything wrong with a cirklejerk, especially on a board such as this. the pool of beginner writers who wanna submit a text to a month-long competition isnt very large. i imagine most of them are gonna drop a sneaky link in the writing general right before it drops off page 10.>>25567427thats not how a strawman works.
>>25567492>i fail to see how the challenge could become boring just because youre an experienced writer.Because it is the same challenge, character and theme. There is a lot more to literature than just those two things, need to work on them all if you want to improve and you need to stand on your own two feet with characer and theme. >but i bet you could write literally any genre or type of story based on this prompt.Sure, can do that with any prompt but that turns the exercise into thinking outside of the box instead of developing your writing skills in full. >myopic? character and theme is about as broad-strokes as it gets.I did not say character and theme are myopic, I said the fixation on them is. But we can get far broader-strokes, for a Halloween prompt:>deathCan be character, theme, plot, even setting or all of them and more. Now you have to construct far more of the story on your own, you have to think about character and theme in ways you will not think about them when they are given as the prompt, in the way you will have to think about them in your own writing. Completely accessible to everyone from the beginner to the seasoned writer and those seasoned writers will probably offer advice and encouragement to those starting out and will be able to offer better advice than beginners can.>thats not how a strawman works.Cherry picking and ignoring context to argue against things which were not said is a strawman argument.
>>25566605>>25567219>>25567576/lwc/ is not a writer’s workshop, where we gather around and have lessons or lectures on how to improve our writing. There’s a lot of newbies yes, but crucially they improve through feedback, not through the contest. The aim of the contest is to write to each other’s stories.You are fixated on the prompt, while ultimately, it is neither limiting the creative expression of storytelling, and your alternative is not substantially different. The character and theme can be interpreted however you want: you dismiss out-of-the-box thinking, when your death prompt itself requires that, except yours requires more range. Besides that, you have not demonstrated that the prompt format is meaningfully correlated with writers leaving. No testimonies, no dwindling submissions: you are just diagnosing a phenomenon that I haven’t seen occurring, and then prescribing a solution you personally prefer. Even if we are losing writers, a more likely reason is writers not wanting to write to /lwc/ when they are busy with their own lives. Or feeling the community isn’t worth engaging in. Or refusal to write OC for a 4chan general. All of these are more pressing matters than the prompt format itself, which becomes auxiliary at best.As for why this prompt should keep going, it has one core idea: it helps orient our submissions around a theme, however loosely, and gives /lwc/ an identity. Not only that, there’s enough specificity within it to curb anons smuggling in older works with a fresh coat of paint. That isn’t to say that your prompt idea does not have value, or other prompts don’t: I am saying that you have not demonstrated the necessity of us changing what is already established.
>>25568741>ignores everything saidOK, the slow death of these threads has nothing to do with the thread itself. Have a bump, you need all you can get.
bump
>>25565377Trick or TreatShe shares her love, loves sharingWith those missing a piece of their heart.Like lighting a match in cold darkness,Her warmth beating wings impart.Golden locks streaked with autumn,Loose dolphin shorts too new;A necklace of teeth(seemingly human)Slightly singed and tucked from view.But hardly is there time to think —She dances, twirls, cries out and sings,A day of scattered leaves and laughter,Dreamt life of wonderful ever afters.Hallow's Eve chill kept at bayBy downy caresses and kisses half-way;The sunset's blaze, dry kindling asmolder,Met teary eyes that could scorch the beholder.In hallway, doorway, bedroom and bed,Came flickering dance of unsteady tread;Mingling of bony flesh and feather,Smells of past snows and old-fashioned leather;The lustrous inferno gives no rest,Gasping and melting and closely pressed;Sweetness of cinder, burning untamed,Crumples and bursts and explodes into flame...So embers dull.Breeze settles gentle.Quiet, a slow pall.Smoke, a soft mantle.Her partner was gone,Their joy turned to ash.Most beautiful moment,Captured at last.With tender sighthe maiden bent lower,And there she picked upthe soot-covered molar –Shared remnant of one who loved sharingA missing piece of her heart.
>>25572189Dope.
230 hours left, and 1 submission so far.>>25568741I’ll just add to this that a big part of it all for me when I started writing stories for /lwc/ wasn’t even the critiques per se, but the feeling after “publishing” that someone out there, whom I’ve never met and can only imagine, is reading a thing that I wrote.I read my own material forwards and backwards as myself, as the author; but picturing it from another’s POV—where there’s this real, concrete stranger scanning my work for themselves somewhere—doing that feels like the camera’s cutting away from the inside of my own brain or something, almost like I’m escaping subjectivity.Even if no one on the other end actually reads one of my stories, the possibility alone that someone DID (or is going to) is enough of a extrospective gobsmack to make me more self-critical and write better next time.
I've got something in the works, but I'm gonna take advantage of the extended deadline and probably post it some time next week. Just saying in case anyone's on the fence about participating for fear of lack of submissions, I imagine others are gonna be doing the same.
>>25576232>• Friday, October 16th, 11:59 PM GMTWhy did you told me this? It was fueling my drive.
https://rentry.co/b62ubada
>>25583609forgot tripcode?
>>25583609>>25583829
4 days left.>>25577668University students have to study for and take midterms mid-October. Call it an accommodation.
>>25586548Fuck... im 28 i miss undergrad...
3 days and 3 hours left.
>>25565403You chose a very shit character concept and theme to boot, most people can't spend two weeks reading on cryptids and cryptozoology to write a short story nophono's gonna care about. Making up some bullshit about an entirely fabricated made-up monster and use it as the basis of a compelling narrative is gonna require more than a fortnight to make it work at all.
Here's my submission. Include it in the vote under the name Roy or I will go fucking mental:I was walking thru the woods when a skeleton chased me with a big pink rubber dildo and i thought i got away but then i fell in a big bog but not only was i trapped in the bog but my trousers had fallen down and my bumhole was stretched wide open and exposed to the mulchy October air.Although I had shook the bedildoed skeleton suddenly i heard a bony rustling along the path next to the bog. To my horror it was the skeleton. Luckily skeletons can't see colour else he would have noticed my big red cheeks, ruddy from the sudden cold snap we had that week. He slowed down as he got closer to the bog. Was it ancestral memory? Or did he catch my perfectly round cheeks? He sighed, as if weary of the world, and moved on. I couldn't believe my luck. But then something terrible happened.The reheated pumpkin stew i had earlier that day had finally rounded the corner into my small intestines, and at that moment shot out for all the forest to hear like a big pile of wet rocks landing in mud. The skeleton stopped in his tracks and i heard the dry clatter of ribs as he turned back to the bog and my bum braced to the elements.Yet he made no further move than that. Did he see my bumhole or not? With every second i feared the bony clench of my buttocks which would precede the dildo attack. What was he up to? Surely he heard it, if not smelled the pumpkin gas which overpowered even the dank brimstone of the orange bog.Silence. For maybe five excruciating seconds, no sounds for anywhere in the woods. I was somscared i couldnt hold it in. I had to fart! Suddenly bubbles erupted by my ear. Bog bubbles! Of course. Bog bubbles are a naturally occuring phenomenon, due to the context of fermantation down below. As a skeleton, he would know this. Thats why he waited! And although i couldnt see him, i heard the smile of his bony jaw as he chuckled deathlessly and walked off, whirling the big pink dildo in his hand like a drumstick.The bog saved my life that day. Every year without fail i go back and make an offering - i take my trousers down and fart as close as i can to the surface without getting any of it on me, then drop a few sheets of toilet paper. As for the skeleton, who knows where he is. Maybe he's watching you now.
>>25588881Major skill issue. Like an actually embarrassing admission.
