IWT 8: Suggestion Thread

[End Master]

Okay so I'm in charge of organizing and general overseeing of the next contest again. Well you guys know what to do, make some suggestions on theme and we'll argue about it a lot then ultimately I'll just ignore what everyone said and pick whatever one I want.

This would probably also be a good time to discuss any potential changes or suggestions on the current rating system (or anything else) for these contests if you have any. I know the subject comes up sometimes.

After some debate and all that, I'll make an official thread as usual to list the theme, due date, scoring etc. Then everyone can ignore it and not actually write anything until the last minute as usual!

Last contest's pick was easy since everyone was pretty enthusiastic about Urban Fantasy as a theme, let's see if this year's pick is just as quick. Keep in mind this is just a suggestion and "hammering out the details" thread. No need to worry about getting SHAMED if you participate in it and then don't submit a story.

I'll start off by suggesting some themes that were brought up in the past that some people were interested in, but weren't picked.

Romance
Myth
War
"Infinite" Story (Anyone want to attempt this one again? Lol)

[Crunchyfrog]

If it hasn't been done already, I'd like to add sci-fi to the list.

Or perhaps if we can't decide on genre, agree on some features, characters or items that must make an appearance somewhere in the story.

[donteatpoop]

I'll vote for science fiction. I haven't done one of those yet.

[Sven Smokevich]

Sci-fi sounds good to me, too, as well as a fresh change from urban fantasy for the rest of you.

[JJJ-thebanisher]

Sci/fi is doable but it's really broad. I'd prefer something a little more refined. War sounds phenomenal to me.

[End Master]

Okay let's run with science fiction theme for moment, since so far some either want it, or aren't unopposed to it.

Does anyone have preference of a sub-genre of it, or did you just want to leave it broad so people can do whatever they want? (hard, soft, military, post apocalyptic, time travel, cyberpunk, space opera, etc.)

I'd imagine broad might work better to get a wider variety of stories instead of say 5 stories all focusing on time travel. I don't know though, maybe some other guideline features that Crunchy mentioned could make it more focused without restricting the type of scifi story you want to create.

[donteatpoop]

I'd like to propose the following stipulation to the sci-fi theme.

* One of the characters must be non-human... non-human is a pretty broad term that can easily be interpreted in plenty of different ways.

[Locke]

I'd rather stay away from "myth" and "infinite story," just because of the history, and with our usual themes, romance and (particularly) war can be written whatever we decide.

I've always been a fan of "hard" sf, but not everyone likes writing or reading it. Cyberpunk or even steampunk sounds okay (actually, steampunk might be a little close to urban fantasy). We could make it broader - and more specific - by just setting a time period (near future, far future, 2525, etc) and maybe tacking on a few imperatives as DEP suggested.

I liked his "at least one nonhuman character" suggestion; maybe there could be a couple others - must be set partly away from Earth, include colonies (undersea, outer space, Antarctic, whatever), a specific technology - whatever can be brainstormed.

EDIT: Incidentally, I'm always looking for good contemporary SF. Any suggestions, particularly anything online? Here are a few of my own, in case anyone else feels similarly (I probably have more, and better, but these are conveniently collected, and were what came to mind). I read some of the modern zines - Asimov's, Clarkesworld, etc.

Ted Chiang
Greg Egan
Ted Kosmatka
A far-future Baxter story

[Sven Smokevich]

Broad seems best for a diversity of stories, I agree.

Here's a small list of other potential stipulations/guidelines/tropes entrants might use, though some may be more applicable than others;

-Ancient astronauts
-Conspiracies/One world order
-Augmented/virtual reality
-Human enhancement (mechanical or biological)
-Cargo cult
-"Manchurian candidates"
-Megacorps.
-WWIII

[Hi! My name is: Katie]

I like broad categories.

But, I was thinking it might challenge the fellas to write the story as a female protagonist. Have any of you boys done that?

I'm also definitely feeling Sci-Fi, especially if we leave sub-genres up to the authors.

[End Master]

Yeah, steampunk falls a little too close to the urban fantasy theme we just had, that's why I didn't mention it even though it can fall under scifi.

For the mandatory non human character idea is this just any character in the story or the protagonist?

For the mandatory female protagonist idea, I would take it a step further and say you have to create a protagonist that isn't the same gender as you since we have more female writers on here now. Or if you're feeling really "adventurous" keep the gender the same and write a gay/lesbian protagonist.

[donteatpoop]

any main character. can be the protagonist, antagonist, love interest, associate, or whatever; doesn't matter so long as it is a main character. That's my idea anyway.

[Usoki]

I, too, like the idea of a broad theme with certain, narrow guidelines. Perhaps we need to follow all of them, or perhaps we just need to follow a specified majority of them. DEP's suggestion is nice because non-human can mean anywhere from alien to robot to mutant, whcih can be applied to almost any plotline and setting. Katie's is also a good, vague idea, but I would have to say that I pretty much refuse to do that. Dreamshell's list is very specific. It has a lot of good ideas, admittedly, but I'd rather keep it very open. I really don't want to read five versions of the same story.

The more I think on it, the more I wouldn't mind a trope list from which we choose a certain number of concepts.

[End Master]

The more I think on it, the more I wouldn't mind a trope list from which we choose a certain number of concepts.

Here's a quick list of stuff people can sift through.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_genre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...fiction_themes

So far we're going with scifi, and probably going to use DEP's suggestion of a non-human main character, but no need to make a final decision just yet. Still lots of time for other suggestions, additions or stipulations for the scifi setting

[Sven Smokevich]

I was doing my best to suggest ideas that were already fairly broad in terms of which subgenre they could be placed in, though I guess I did forget to take into account the larger issue of how using even one of them would result in similar stories, yes.

I like Usoki's idea of a general trope list to pick from, though, if not as something mandatory, then at least to help people come up with stories.