51

(18 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Basic)

Silvia wrote:

Hello everyone smile

I am quite new too and would love to see older members more active and more inclusive!

Welcome Silvia. A lot of us come around in spurts mostly due to work and life in general, but you can always hit people up through messaging, or through the read/review process. Good luck!

52

(59 replies, posted in Romance Inc.)

Welcome back Rach!! I wondered where you went, but glad to see you back!

And welcome to all newcomers. Feel free to hit any of us on this forum, or through messages/reviews.

53

(33 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

I'd love to see this site do a [shorter] version of the NYC Midnight writing challenge. They present a Genre, a Subject, and a Character within a given format (short story, flash fiction, screenplay etc.) and do three rounds of elimination with different criteria for each round before deciding the winner.

So for example in their short story challenge, round one is:
Genre: Open
Subject: Evesdropping
Character: A Hoarder
Of 100 entries, 10 are chosen to move on to round two.
Round two:
Genre: Crime
Subject: A Secret Hideout
Character: A Disabled FBI agent
Of 10 entries, 5 are chosen to move on to round three.
Round three:
Genre: Romance
Subject: Winter Storm
Character: A Blind Retiree
A winner, runner up and honorable mention is chosen.

I think it would be fun, different and challenging. I especially like the idea of elimination being in three rounds to really stretch and challenge the winning entrants. Plus, it would be a blast to read/review the various stages of the contest.

While I am interested in what constitutes a strong start beyond the obvious, this thread brings up something that I've always felt the SS contest needs: simple critique. I understand the lengthy critique is and should be reserved for the winner, but it would be enlightening for the judges to give a brief idea of what ultimately qualifies, or disqualifies an entry from consideration. Even if it is a simple checklist that could be distributed to the entrants privately after judging is complete. This kind of feedback would be invaluable to all, but even more so to the semifinalists who passed some sort of muster to make that list, but not enough to ultimately prevail.

I also think doing so would go a long way to addressing the original question posed by this thread. If writers could see some of the specific criteria used, it would make extrapolating the degrees of subjectivity an easy thing to figure out (similarly to the review process here on the site).

55

(18 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Life happens. I'm just glad the contest is alive and well.

Congrats Randy!!

57

(5 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Basic)

Sharon!! Welcome back--we've missed you!

Congrats to all!!

59

(22 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Hey Iris--we've all been there. You'll get used to handling the process if you devote enough time to it. Welcome and good luck!

60

(15 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

I’d like to see you retool the navigation mainly in the portfolio section. I realize some of the choices made were because you were tailoring the site to be viewed on several platform types, but as is, it’s highly click laden, backwards unreliable and often redundant. 

1)    For instance, want to edit something? Click portfolio>scroll the list >click the desired title >choose the desired action>scroll a second list >choose the dropdown action—success at last!
And if you make a mistake on that edit, clicking the edit function from WITHIN the view pane doesn’t accelerate the process (as one would reasonably assume), it takes you back out to the master edit pane which forces you to click through all the above navigation again.
Also, because of the compartmentalizing of all the available actions, each time you want to change something on a piece of work, you have to deal with navigating in and out of each subcategory via the master edit pane.

I’d like to see this entire process streamlined for efficiency.

2)    Another thing, as others have mentioned, is I’d also like to see review types combined. It’s cumbersome and click laden to have to go through two separate lists. Also, the Filter feature doesn’t work if you wish to combine reviews: I. E. If I want ALL reviews on chapter 1 of X project, I can’t unless I leave the review section and go into VIEW mode on X project (where the styled reviews are clumped).

3)    The filter option of the review section also has navigation bugs. For instance, if I am in a filtered review, I cannot use the back navigation on my browser to choose another review from the filtered list because doing so kicks you off the site entirely.

What I’d like to see when you navigate into the review section is either a drop down of all your works to choose from, or book covers of all your reviewed work so you can simply choose the work and see all reviews according to chapter.

4)    Would still love to see you offer a static forum style for group forums. For all the reasons we’ve discussed publically and privately, but also because it would do away with the need for moderators to keep bumping important threads.

5)    I would love get customizable features on my account homepage. It’s not a huge deal to keep having to scroll past stuff on a daily basis, but it would be nice to have a choice of what predominately populates my page—along with drop down choices so I can see that other stuff when desired.

Mariana Reuter wrote:

If new people who only signed up for the contest aren't polite enough to read and reply the reviews they receive, then I wonder what are they looking for. Winning the contest with their perfect-at-the-first-try entries? Don't they know this is a community, not the Reader's Digest competition webpage where you drop your entry and forget about it until results are published?

Tsk, tsk.

Gacela

Unfortunately, that's how many new face entrants handle the contest each year. It's a cheap price for them to pay so...

Nah, Randy, you're fine...and generous. I'm referencing people I haven't reviewed before. All the more reason, particularly if they are longer term members, to take a moment to acknowledge a review. And for new people, some of them just don't realize that it's a customary practice.

At this moment, I have 8 unanswered ....and they aren't all new faces. On the flip side, I've already had a few wonderful exchanges with some new faces, so I guess it comes out in the wash. Still frustrating though...

For those of you newer to the site and entered in the Strongest Start contest (or in general for that matter), it is customary and appreciated to take a moment to reply in kind to reviews you receive on your work. It's pretty frustrating to spend so much time pouring over someone's work in a detailed review, only to have it left unanswered for weeks. If you don't know how to respond, check out the instructional videos available, or ask someone, we'd be happy to help you.

65

(11 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Hey Dan,
I feel your pain. Took me ages to stop comparing this one to the old site. This one is clunky as hell, hard to navigate, not at all intuitive or ergonomic, ridiculously isolating...but it does have some wonderfully powerful tools. It takes time to adjust, but now that I have, the only thing I'm seriously missing is the community--warts and all.

vern wrote:
Linda Lee wrote:

I'm bummed one of the judges dropped out sad

Which one? I never saw a notice; was it posted? Take care. Vern

Anita Mumm. No notice, she was pictured there as a judge and now she's not. Ah well.

I'm bummed one of the judges dropped out sad

68

(15 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Tirz is right. It depends on the usage. An address of any sort is capped, otherwise not.

69

(4 replies, posted in Romance Inc.)

I'm entering, as always. Also never won. Am going to revamp the opening of a 2011 novel to better reflect my current writing style and enter it. And am also in the middle of a rewrite of last years draft so figured I would enter that one as well.

All the esoteric arguments aside...it's called self publishing for a reason. You are the publisher, Amazon is the platform. Good decision made by the court.

Quick question about the contest...what if we know one of the judges?

72

(19 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

d a I know this doesn't apply to you, but are those receiving next to no attention spending the time to review the work of others?  I'm not asking to disqualify anyone, but since swaps are the name of the game around here, a new face has to work that much harder (even more reviews) to gain any kind of reciprocal footing. I'm not debating what's right or fair, but it is something we've all had to overcome when we were new.

I try to seek out newer writers when I'm caught up with my owed stuff. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen often enough.

SolN wrote:

At the moment, we're hiding our groups from everyone, including TNBW members, which doesn't make sense, but if nothing else, then we'll have to.

To be clear, your group is not hidden. It's visible on the Group listing page. The content of the Group is what is hidden. You can even keep the group signup public and the content of the group will remain hidden. All you have to do is set the Visibility flag to No to hide the activity of that Group and prevent non-Group member access to the forums.

You might want to rethink the labeling of these functions in the group creation section. I was testing this yesterday and the descriptions are pretty vague and unclear.  It's no wonder everyone keeps asking for clarification.

njc wrote:

The visibility flag does the job, but at a cost.  The fear/concern is not about people registered on the site, but against peopld not so registered.  We'd like to be visible to people on the site, but not to people off the site.

Given your limited resources, I don't expect a fix tomorrow, but it appears that there are low-effort fixes possible.  If there is a no-index tag that search engines respect, it could be embedded in the forum page headers, perhaps controlled by a per-forum flag.  Making the forum server use the login-check machinery might be harder, especially the part about returning to the desired page after a login.  Those two steps would, I think, completely address the problem.

THIS is why I suggested creating a private group for intensive work specific discussion, and using your 'open' group to promote it. The group owner can 'sticky' an announcement of the private group's existence. It is a sensible, non-taxing workaround that shouldn't interrupt the flow of valuable feedback while providing you with the desired amount of privacy.

I'm sure he will--he's probably suffering from the black Monday (first day back to work after holidays) blues like everyone else.

Also, there is a small upside to some information being 'public'--One writer recently won a HUGE court case against a Hollywood movie company because of a writers forum. Seems his story was pilfered, slightly rewritten and made into a Hollywood blockbuster. When he tried to claim the story was originally his, he was stonewalled at every turn. Eventually, he took it to court and it was his posts made on a writers forum (which are dated and archived) that ultimately swayed the court to decide in his favor.

Food for thought.