Writing Tournament: Revival [Round 1]

Noodoosoup VS Insomniac.
Noodoo's Entry (Click to View)
Insom's Entry (Click to View)


Leone19 VS The Supreme One
Leone's Entry (Click to View)
TSO's Entry *WARNING, CONTAINS SOME PG-13 PARTS* (Click to View)


Thunder Dome VS Odin
Thunder's Entry (Click to View)
Odin's Entry (Click to View)


Kyler_The_Best VS LMAO
Kyler's Entry (Click to View)
LMAO's Entry (Click to View)


Bye Rounds:
Temporal's Entry (Click to View)


Post your thoughts, criticism and things you would like the judges to note for their votes Smile

Note: Temporal's Entry is for criticism and comments only, any points brought up regarding it will not affect it's vote chance.
Wow. I LOVE all the stories, good luck everyone Smile
These stories are so cool! For the judges, I mispelled kill, sorry about that. LMAO I could be in trouble. Good luck to everyone!
Odin's is quite reminiscent of the first book of the Demonata series. Except I liked it, which is a major plus. Instead of the character making the fatal mistake (though the idea is there), the theme comes into play with the perception of the antagonist. Love it. Plus, Thunderdome's is kinda odd. And short. I think that there could have been a better one in its stead, had Thunderdome planned better, but the truthfulness of the piece DOES redeem it some. Plus, it's funny. But to me, Odin won.

I almost couldn't get behind TSO's. There was an annoying (to me) inaccuracy too early. Historical accuracy is my favorite thing in these entries, but... Ivy League schools don't do athletic scholarships. However, the idea is quite original. Dark, but original. Well, kinda. It's something you see in sappy novels aimed at distressed youth, but it's not something you see in a writing tournament. I can overlook one inaccuracy because the entry itself is pretty good. I would vote TSO here. That said... Brick 'o Text.

Noodoo's entry was... Noodoo writing like Noodoo in her Noodoo-like way. Translation? "godiveneverseensomuchredbefore" is Noodoo in a nutshell. The writing seems all over the place, but it still fits, somehow. Plus, it sounds like how someone thinks, which is literally ALWAYS a plus. That said, Noodoo is quite good at using things you might find on the internet (like mashing a whole sentence into one word) and making it fit in a story.

That said, Insomniac was JUST as good. The realism (though the timing is odd. That year number is funny to me, though.) works well. I can see a post-apocalyptic Earth as I read. Well done. Well written. Insomniac is also a writer you might be able to tell after reading. I would pick Noodoo simply because she did slightly better grammatically. Plus, as biased as this might seem, I liked the way Noodoo used the theme better.

I couldn't follow much of Kyler's entry. I think I understand the premise, but it seems too cliched. That said, LMAO's entry doesn't seem much like a prologue... There are a few ways that LMAO's entry can be expanded, so I'd go with LMAO here. Mostly because Kyler's entry seems sorta random. It's a stretch. And there really isn't much of an error there.
So...after rereading the stories a few times, I guess I should offer my opinion. They were all great! For the first pairing, I thought both entries were cohesive & quite well-written. Noodoo's style of writing really pulled me in in this round. I felt like I was part of the story and the sudden twist after a few paragraphs had me wanting to read more; this might have been my favorite entry over all, to be honest. I love dialogue, and with Insomniac's entry, I felt like the dialogue was natural and realistic. The end of the introduction had another nice cliffhanger, though not as much of a hook as the former. My primary "issue" (well, not issue, but you get the point), was that, as Temporal noticed, there were a few grammatical errors, most of which I noticed towards the beginning. This did get under my skin at times.

In pairing two, I thought Leone's plot was pretty gripping, though a little hard to follow. The voice of the narrator was natural, but the syntax, at times, was a little off, especially regarding the use of commas when a sentence should have had a period or a semi-colon and reversely, the use of commas where one was not needed. For my own story, I refuse to even reread it because I dislike it myself lol. I would agree with Temporal that the context of the protagonist getting into an Ivy League college was a stretch, but honestly, these days, so would simply saying he got in on his GPA alone. I guess what I was trying to do was portray a well-rounded teenager with the promise of a bright future and I wasn't sure how to further elaborate on this idea. Also, I apologize for the formatting; I copied and pasted my story into PMs & only bothered to italicize one of the last words because I'm lazy like that.

Thunder's entry... I don't quite understand what he was trying to do here. What little he had was well written, but it seemed to me that he didn't take the tournament seriously. Not really sure what else I can say about this. As for Odin's entry...god, this was amazing. I freaking loved this story. The plot was a spinoff of one I've seen a few times before, but the writing practically sent shivers down my spine. I don't think I have any critique for this one, just mind blowing.

With round three, the main thing that bothered me about Kyler's writing was his issue with commas. There were too many commas after "and" and too many unnecessary commas in general for me to really focus on anything else. There were more situations where he put commas in a sentence that didn't need one than commas in a sentence that did. Things like using "that" instead of "who", neglecting to put commas in contractions such as "we're", and misspellings of words like "kill" were other issues I had. The story its self isn't too bad, not to mention he is on the younger end of participants, but mistakes like the ones above hindered me from focusing on the actual content of the story. I noticed some of these mistakes, particularly punctuation errors, reoccurring in LMAO's submission as well, however I thought the story was more well written and I liked the ending.

Having recently finished interning for my uncle, who runs a hedge fund, I can testify that Temporal's entry was fairly accurate when it comes to stocks. I wouldn't say I've ever heard anyone refer to my uncle as an "carp", or anything along those lines, but the terminology he used was pretty accurate. (Not sure what you meant when you were referring to levels of economic sectors, but if that's creative license, I'll go with it). Very nicely written story and an accurate portrayal of a stock investor.

So...this is just my feedback on what I read, which took like an hour to write lol. Feel free to ignore this...I don't know what I'm saying half the time & I apologize for seeming harsh Pinching_eyes_2 Anyway, nice job everyone. Can't wait to see the results!
I had an internship with an investment bank at school, so I swiped a few economic journals before the last day from the ones they had to give out. They were supposed to be material for the interns for something to read over, but I took multiple issues. (Not sure if I was supposed to, though. I ended up returning two after reading them.) Thus, I do have a fairly decent base of knowledge when it comes to stock investing. Especially with the way market bubbles work, given the whole housing bubble in 2008 popping and killing Wall Street. I'm fairly versed with things like CDO's, too. Things like this interest me, but I'd never study it in college as anything more than a minor. So I poured that stuff into the story.

Seems like everyone who turned in an entry at least tried, which is always a good thing. Even if you lose, take the criticism to heart and improve. I think that's the most important part of these things. I personally like that instead of voting, we're actually weighing in on the entries. Just saying whose entry you liked more doesn't fix much of anything with no context. That might be my biggest regret of the tournaments we did before, whether we finished or not.
Hrm... Any chance that we can get a somewhat specific day/time that we can expect results?
(Jul. 17, 2013  7:58 AM)Temporal Wrote: Hrm... Any chance that we can get a somewhat specific day/time that we can expect results?

I talked with Sparta about that. He said that we'll wait a few days before submitting final results. Gives tie in between writings. Also, it helps us judges have time to change our decision if necessary...

Anyways, we should have final results today, if not tomorrow.
Don't confirm this, but results MAY be posted on this thread tomorrow. Once results are posted, I'll be posting my opinions on each story as well and offer my suggestions to improve your writings. Not only does it possibly help, but it makes the tournament more interesting as it goes on.

Also, I'll post my Favorite Story of each round (My Favorite Story, basically). Don't take it personally if you don't win my vote for favorite story. I'm sure all of you really put some hard work into your writings and that is something to feel successful about. Just remember that throughout the tournament. Smile
I cant wait to see what happens, I wish everyone good luck!

All of these stories are really cool!

You can tell everyone tried their best, so everyone already deserves something for that Tongue_out
Alright everyone, the wait is OVER!! Head on over to the official Writing Tournament thread, where I'll make the first round analysis, and announce the winners! Are you ready?