Email List + Submission Dates

[Chaos]

And yes, there is a slightly older version of the same scene. It's readable, I just want to spice it up a little bit. For example, one of my spicier additions is to make the torture just a tad more explicit...

wow your character is getting tortured in chapter one?? I pity him/her/it...

I would tell you more, but I find it far more fun to tease you all.

[Silk]

I think most people are submitting their first chapters. If you want to submit something later, I don't really see a problem with that. You should probably write us a brief synopsis so we know what's going on.

The only thing to keep in mind that reading a synopsis doesn't give us the effect as reading the actual chapters. People might have questions or concerns based on the synopsis that aren't quite relevant. You just have to be able to throw those away.

Karl, I think I'll put you down for December 1st then. That way we'll have nine and nine sumissions, plus our two readers.

[Reaves]

I think most people are submitting their first chapters. If you want to submit something later, I don't really see a problem with that. You should probably write us a brief synopsis so we know what's going on.

The only thing to keep in mind that reading a synopsis doesn't give us the effect as reading the actual chapters. People might have questions or concerns based on the synopsis that aren't quite relevant. You just have to be able to throw those away.

Karl, I think I'll put you down for December 1st then. That way we'll have nine and nine sumissions, plus our two readers.

Excellent. Looks like things are shaping up quite nicely.
Also I agree a synopsis isn't a whole lot of help. The whole point of this is to improve writing skills, not how well you know your story.
       Take that with a bit of salt. After all synopses count as writing too.

[Silk]

There's a time and a place for synopses. I got the go-ahead to work on my current novel for one of my classes this year. Problem was, it was already 40,000 words long, and I couldn't exactly ask my classmates to read all that just to get up to speed. Besides, the first chapters had already been workshopped to death, and need significant plot-important rewrites anyway. Getting those first eight chapters workshopped again would not have been at all useful for me, but getting critiques for what comes after is much more helpful to me. So I wrote a synopsis. It got everybody up to speed on the most important parts, and for that, it's useful.

[Hayley]

Hey, all.

Email: 

Submission: 15th Dec.

[Reaves]

There's a time and a place for synopses. I got the go-ahead to work on my current novel for one of my classes this year. Problem was, it was already 40,000 words long, and I couldn't exactly ask my classmates to read all that just to get up to speed. Besides, the first chapters had already been workshopped to death, and need significant plot-important rewrites anyway. Getting those first eight chapters workshopped again would not have been at all useful for me, but getting critiques for what comes after is much more helpful to me. So I wrote a synopsis. It got everybody up to speed on the most important parts, and for that, it's useful.

I stand corrected 

[The Jade Knight]

Sounds like this should belong in Writing Group?  Anyone mind if I move it?

Also:  You people should probably not be plastering your email addresses all over the forum, as this forum is open to the public and your email addresses are likely to be the receivers of much spam.  Consider keeping the email addresses scrambled, or, better, yet, kept to private messages.

[Chaos]

Actually, Knight, this is expressly for Reading Excuses, which was requested by fans of Writing Excuses. It's a bit different from the regular writing group stuff.

As for the emails... that's a very good point. Private messages, though, aren't exactly the most intuitive thing for our purposes, but something should be done to hide them somehow.

[sortitus]

Psst~ Generous, this is a secret forum. Log out and you will see.  

[Chaos]

Psst~ Generous, this is a secret forum. Log out and you will see.  

Hmmm, that's something I certainly did not know before... Interesting.

[The Jade Knight]

Fascinating.  Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

[Karl]

Anyone care if I email my piece early? No point waiting until Dec 1 if its just sitting here. That would give us a chance to work on any other bugs in the system and stagger the reading a bit.

I will wait for others opinions, but could send it out Tuesday.

Side note: I am blocked from accessing this forum at work now. I could get in last week, but not this week. Bummer.

2nd note: wish me luck on my job interview tomorrow. It's with the same company that I'm at, so it's not like I'm out of work. But my job pays for my hobbies, and a raise would not go amiss. I know who 7 of the 12 interviewees are, and the competition is pretty formidable.

[Necroben]

Good Luck!  Hope you get it!

I do not object, sounds like a plan.

[Chaos]

Good luck on your job interview, man.

As for mailing it early, I think it's better to wait. I understand it seems it a bit pointless, but I think it's a very good policy that we stick to the two submission dates. Imagine if we had ten more members on Reading Excuses (total of 30) and they began submitting at weird times. It would get chaotic really fast.

I'd prefer to try out this structure for the first month. If it's horrible, we'll do some staggering thing, but right now, it would be a bit easier if the December submissions actually occurred in December.

I'm also intending to do another FAQ for the process of submitting and all of the formatting things that go along with it (like the format for making the topic title you'd create and such) just so we are all on the same page with that. I'd like to wait a little nearer to Thanksgiving before I make that quick FAQ. And yes, I think it's already on the Rules of Reading Excuses topic, but it would be a lot better if the FAQ for submitting was easy to find, so it needs to be a separate topic for the sake of clarity.

And for purely selfish reasons, if you waited to submit on December 1st, that would prevent me from getting distracted reading your stuff, which is probably a heck of a lot more interesting than my schoolwork...

[sortitus]

Yeah, I rather not get any more distracted from WriMo...