Why am I imagining a hairy guy in a skimpy muu-muu and Speedo, being pumped up as a test subject for a new drug after signing extensive legal waivers in case he bursts, and in considerable distress from the experience?
Prose that Blows 6: NOW OPEN!
Submissions due by Friday, July 8, 2011.
Sat, 05/28/2011 - 05:12
#3
Sat, 05/28/2011 - 14:11
#4
doubleintegral
Rathani wrote:
I like the idea behind it, a contest about trying to break away from the cliches of inflation stories. But I think it might be better to avoid trying to structure the contest rigidly by trying to count up how many laws were broken. Instead, you could just have "avoiding cliche" be the theme, with The Laws of Body Inflation as a guide for authors and voters of some of the most prevalent cliches to be avoided in the stories.
If enough people feel this way then I will reconsider. My primary goal was just to make it pretty challenging, but perhaps I went overboard.
Sat, 05/28/2011 - 22:52
#5
RenegadeKamui
Rathani wrote:
Plus, even if you can nail down what it means to break a law, it potentially creates a situation where there's an incentive for authors to toss in random things to boost their broken law count. For instance, mentioning a balloon in passing that a woman doesn't react to in order to break the Law of Balloon Affinity, or mentioning a gay man in passing to break the Second Law of Mutual Masculine Attraction.
I was worried about this myself as well, but I don't think it'll end up being that big of an issue. For one thing, the 1000 word limit will prevent really egregrious rule abuse. But even beyond that, the stories are going to be judged by people, not algorithms, and I doubt a story written specifically to max out the laws broken will get many votes. This is why Best Story has a three-vote threshold, after all.
I'm a bit more concerned about determining whether a law has been broken, as Rathani mentioned. Pretty much any non-flotation story breaks the Law of Biogenic Buoyancy, for example.
Personally, I'm not going to try to come up with an idea for trying to break as many rules as possible. I'll pick one or two rules, come up with a concept that lets me subvert them, and if I can break any other laws along the way, that's great.
Sun, 05/29/2011 - 06:59
#6
doubleintegral wrote:
My primary goal was just to make it pretty challenging, but perhaps I went overboard.
Well, I'm not really worried that it's too challenging, just that it doesn't necessarily push writers to do interesting things with their stories. I think it's much more of a challenge to say "write a story that's not like the others" than "subvert as many of these particular cliches as possible in your story."
notsosupersaiyan wrote:
I was worried about this myself as well, but I don't think it'll end up being that big of an issue. For one thing, the 1000 word limit will prevent really egregrious rule abuse. But even beyond that, the stories are going to be judged by people, not algorithms, and I doubt a story written specifically to max out the laws broken will get many votes. This is why Best Story has a three-vote threshold, after all.
It's true that humans are voting, but my thing is that once you pass that threshold of three votes, the bulk of your votes could easily come from the vote bonus from breaking laws.
As a test, I tried writing a passage that breaks as many as possible in few words. In 300 words (and that's a first draft, not edited for length), I wrote a news report that could be dropped into pretty much any story, in which I can make a case that I've broken 76 laws and corollaries. Obviously it's a pretty rotten 300 words, but that gives me at least 700 words to write well enough to convince three people to vote for my story, and I've got 30 bonus votes. And that's not counting any extra laws I break in those 700.
Obviously that's an extreme example, but my point is that the structure rewards putting things in a story that you wouldn't use if you were just trying to write something fresh. I'm more interested in competing at writing a story that's genuinely different than competing at finagling a story idea to break a list of laws.
Mon, 05/30/2011 - 01:03
#7
doubleintegral
Rathani wrote:
doubleintegral wrote:
As a test, I tried writing a passage that breaks as many as possible in few words.Would you mind sending it to me, just so I can see your proof of concept?
Mon, 05/30/2011 - 04:31
#8
Sure, I'll send it now. It's actually more like 85 laws and corollaries when I recounted. Keep in mind it's weird and awful writing, and while I suspect it's possible to write well enough for the rest of a story to get three votes, it's mainly meant as an extreme illustration of the problem that writers can be rewarded for including arbitrary things.
Mon, 05/30/2011 - 07:23
#9
LutherVKane
The Laws aren’t written in a rigorous manner. They’re mainly just for laughs. But I think you can thwart many of the potential exploits by treating them as one would the laws of science. That is, you assume that a particular law is true and only get the point if your story provably breaks it.
The downside is that some of the Laws, due to the lack of rigor, are difficult or impossible to falsify. The Laws that say “usuallyâ€Â, â€Âprobablyâ€Â, or “most†are pretty much out. On the other hand, the Laws that say “anyâ€Â, “everyâ€Â, or “all†can broken by a single counter-example.
If your story contains three completely heterosexual women, that’s still not enough to refute the theory that 20% of women are lesbians. Although you’ve broken the Fifth Law of Mutual Feminine Attraction if any of them aren’t being held captive by psychotic lesbian inflationists.
In the hypothetical story with only one woman of indeterminate sexuality, none of the Laws of Mutual Feminine Attraction would have been broken. Unless she’s the last woman in existence, in which case you’ll have broken four of the five.
The First Law of Mutual Masculine Attraction is easy to break. You just have to depict two men having sex with neither inflating, or one inflating but not bursting. The Second Law of Mutual Masculine Attraction is damned near impossible to break, as you’d have to demonstrate that nowhere are there many people who consider homosexual men to be a myth.
notsosupersaiyan wrote:
Pretty much any non-flotation story breaks the Law of Biogenic Buoyancy, for example.
Having a person inflate but not float away isn’t enough contradict the Law; the gas inside the person could still be lighter, just not light enough to achieve liftoff. A situation that might break one of the Laws isn’t sufficient.
I think this idea is tricky, but still workable. I’m curious to see how Rathani’s 300 word passage would hold up to the stricter scrutiny.
On a side note, I’d consider each Law to encompass its corollaries. So breaking the Law of Deflation Infeasibility and each of its corollaries would only count for one point rather than five.
Mon, 05/30/2011 - 23:04
#10
LutherVKane wrote:
I’m curious to see how Rathani’s 300 word passage would hold up to the stricter scrutiny.
Oh, it'd definitely count for fewer, but I think most of the ones it wouldn't count for wouldn't be breakable by anyone anyway, like you pointed out with the "usually" laws. And a lot of the ones I provably broke rather than broke in spirit are some of the most arbitrary parts of the already arbitrary passage.
For instance, ones completely unrelated to inflation, like mentioning that every non-straight woman in the world is dead to get all five Laws of Mutual Feminine Attraction. Or ones that come off as random rather than cliche-breaking, like putting someone who inflates in a muumuu because it's the only likely way to definitively break the Law of Sympathetic Elasticity.
Tue, 05/31/2011 - 11:47
#11
Not entirely random, Rathani, when you're basing a character off of this guy:
http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=001231
He has a good reason to wear a muu-muu. He's named after it.
Tue, 05/31/2011 - 13:56
#12
I think this is an absolute genius idea!
Wed, 06/01/2011 - 01:48
#13
doubleintegral
LutherVKane wrote:
The Laws aren’t written in a rigorous manner. They’re mainly just for laughs. But I think you can thwart many of the potential exploits by treating them as one would the laws of science. That is, you assume that a particular law is true and only get the point if your story provably breaks it.
That was the general idea of the contest, but I didn't include it in the description because it was already too damn wordy.
Mon, 06/06/2011 - 01:36
#14
So have we decided to go through with the contest?
Mon, 06/06/2011 - 23:41
#15
doubleintegral
Should we put it up to a vote?
Wed, 06/08/2011 - 06:27
#16
I'd say that since you're the organizers of the contest, it's reasonable to change the rules without bringing it to a vote if you think the format will be a problem. It's only fair, since you're the ones who would have to arbitrate all the claimed broken laws for each story.
Thu, 06/09/2011 - 19:33
#17
RenegadeKamui
Personally, I'm fine with the contest as is. Sure, there are some conceptual quibbles with the rules, but after seeing the quality of PtB 5, I think things will turn out okay.
Thu, 06/09/2011 - 22:10
#18
notsosupersaiyan wrote:
Personally, I'm fine with the contest as is. Sure, there are some conceptual quibbles with the rules, but after seeing the quality of PtB 5, I think things will turn out okay.
I agree that PtB5 produced some good results, but there's a reason that while PtB5 got me interested enough to enter for the first time, PtB6 has me concerned. PtB5 was about style of writing, forcing writers to try fresh things with word choice and description, which is all a part of good writing. The rules were simple, and worked well, because simply cutting out the most used words in inflation fiction was enough to force writers to think of new ways to say things.
PtB6 is about substance, and not overusing cliches. That's also a part of good writing, but it's much, much harder to quantify than word choice, because it's very subjective what's considered cliche, how much cliche is too much, and so on. It's not quite as simple to lay down a structure to discourage cliche abuse as it is repetitive word choice. I think a contest about avoiding cliche is a good idea, I'm just worried that the structure of the contest isn't going to produce the intended results.
Going by the letter of the Laws of Body inflation means that it's impossible to get credit for avoiding a lot of the more overused cliches, and possible to get credit for a lot of random things. Going by the spirit of the laws would come closer, but it still encourages some random decisions by writers to hit as many as possible, and turns the question of whether a law should be counted as broken or not into a nightmare.
I think for a contest about avoiding cliche, it'd be best to just allow for the subjectivity involved by using the Laws of Body Inflation as a guide for writers and readers for what to avoid, and let voters make those subjective decisions by voting for the stories they think do the best job of avoiding the cliches of inflation fiction.
Sat, 06/11/2011 - 03:55
#19
doubleintegral
Since both Pakona and myself are torn about what to do, I think a vote would help us make our decision.
Sat, 06/11/2011 - 05:25
#20
I'd like to vote, but none of the options are quite what I'd like to vote for. I still like the greater idea about avoiding cliche behind the contest, so I don't want to vote to scuttle it, but I also don't want to vote for "relax some of the constraints," because I honestly think the best thing to do is remove the "number of laws broken" structure entirely, not just loosen it. Make it completely subjective and up to the voters, in other words, and not just less quantitative.
Sat, 06/11/2011 - 11:25
#21
doubleintegral
Rathani wrote:
I also don't want to vote for "relax some of the constraints," because I honestly think the best thing to do is remove the "number of laws broken" structure entirely, not just loosen it. Make it completely subjective and up to the voters, in other words, and not just less quantitative.
That's really what that option is supposed to mean. Maybe I just suck at wording it.
Tue, 06/14/2011 - 16:21
#22
Right now if I'm reading everything correctly, it looks like 4 out of 5 of the voters want to stick to the theme but would like to see a change in the setup. Shall we wait and see if the polls yield new results or is it safe to say at this point that the current rules won't serve us well?
Thu, 06/23/2011 - 01:04
#23
While nothing is crystal clear at this point in time, it looks like DI and I will be discussing alternatives to the rules of the contest and probably be postponing the deadline of the story submissions. Hopefully this doesn't discourage anyone who's already started writing. Sorry for the hassle guys. Hopefully we'll have this sorted out soon and get on with the contest.
Wed, 07/27/2011 - 03:08
#24
So, uh, it's been a month, any news?
Thu, 07/28/2011 - 01:40
#25
doubleintegral
degausser wrote:
So, uh, it's been a month, any news?
Not really, sorry. I've been busy with other things and I honestly haven't thought about PTB much lately.
I like the basic idea, but the way the contest is structured seems problematic. I think it might need a few changes--at the least, it probably needs some clarification as to what counts as breaking a law. It doesn't help that the laws aren't exactly written to be specific (which I wouldn't expect them to be, it's a work of humor).
For instance, have I broken the first four Laws of Mutual Feminine Attraction if my story contains only straight women? If it contains only one woman who doesn't interact sexually with anyone? What about if it contains no women at all? Have I broken the Law of Balloon Affinity if my story has no balloons in it?
Plus, even if you can nail down what it means to break a law, it potentially creates a situation where there's an incentive for authors to toss in random things to boost their broken law count. For instance, mentioning a balloon in passing that a woman doesn't react to in order to break the Law of Balloon Affinity, or mentioning a gay man in passing to break the Second Law of Mutual Masculine Attraction.
Even on a less "gaming the system" level, it seems like it'd influence writers to make similar choices in their stories, since you could be missing out on a chance to break a number of laws if you write a story with only one character inflating, or without any women inflating, or if the method of inflation isn't chemical.
Plus, given the subjectivity, isn't verifying these going to be a pain?
I like the idea behind it, a contest about trying to break away from the cliches of inflation stories. But I think it might be better to avoid trying to structure the contest rigidly by trying to count up how many laws were broken. Instead, you could just have "avoiding cliche" be the theme, with The Laws of Body Inflation as a guide for authors and voters of some of the most prevalent cliches to be avoided in the stories.