No. I saw it after posting. Was way too lazy to either change my post or delete it.

True, but it paints a more vivid image in the readers mind. It could be argued that the plot alone =/= good story either. If, say, the first paragraph of "Great Expectations", which vividly describes the main character's nickname, and how it came about simply said "My name is pip.", it would be 3rd grader quality work.

Well, in your example, "My name is pip" has 0 descriptiveness. Of course that's not gonna get you anywhere.

Compare it to artworks. Do all artworks with complicated and numerous amounts of brush strokes, along with loads and loads and loads of objects, always come out great? No. Sometimes simplicity can yield more meaning and symbolism.

It's the same with writing stories. It really depends how you write it. "My name is pip" is a poor example because it is obvious that no efforts or whatsoever were put into it, so it cannot be compared to decent short stories.

My point is, that it can be done, and often (not always) the result is better than the long, dragged on stories.

I guess this is all very subjective, much like viewing artworks, so that's just my thoughts. Loads of descriptive words do not paint a vivid image in my head. In fact, sometimes it just bores me to death because it makes me think "get the hell on with it, I already get the point of how beautiful the -insert object/person is". Too much of one thing aren't always a great thing.

Real paragraph:

"my father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name being "Philip", my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more expicit than Pip. So, i called myself Pip and came to be called Pip."

The same could be said for this paragraph, but in a much less discriptive way:

"When i was a baby, it was hard for me to say my first or last name. I could only say "Pip" in refference to myself. So i called myself that, and people called me that."

that's more descriptive than the one i posted first, and a less dramatic way of making my point. Which of the two paragraphs do you prefer?

Urrghh, I can see it being good both ways.


If limits were to be established, I highly doubt it would be low enough for people to complain or high enough to realistically limit the 'writer.' If anything, the average word-count for the entries was pretty low. Say, a minimum count of 50 and a max of 700, it's your risk whether you want people to go WoT or say there was nothing to read. Though if someone can make a masterpiece with less than 50 words, they should more than easily enough be able to flesh it out a little more.


WtS creator makes final-decision anyway.

First.

Yes, it is more descriptive. But, in other words, it has the right amount of descriptiveness.

Now, can you imagine someone writing a paragraph twice as long as that with more fancy words, but pretty much saying the same thing?

I find that people often try to be too descriptive and start repeating the same things over and over. Not saying any entries were, I don't think they were, but it sometimes happen.

Like I said, it depends on how you do it. When I said 'having lots of descriptive words =/= better quality', that's what I mean.

Anyway, long stories are good. But short stories are also good. Having someone write a story in 200-300 words is too short, of course. But a length of 600-800 words isn't unreasonably demanding for short story "challenge", imo.

Exactly... and an example on this is the movie "Donnie Darko", not in plot, but in the fact that A LOT of scenes that meant a lot to the movie were cut and sent to the dvd's deleted scenes to shorten it to two hours. These scenes would've deepened the movie and expanded several of the character's relationships, making them even more three dimentional.

The same applies to writing.

EDIT: that was in response to Hazu's post.

and i agree that if it's TOO flowery, it's wrong, but sometimes the RIGHT amount of descriptiveness may or may not go over the word limit.

I think we just apply the high school's writing rules. lol

Word limit: ~900 words. Now go and let your creativity fly. And don't forget to watch out for the ceiling.

On a serious note:

I agree with what Blaahs said. Also note that the word limit doesn't have to be strict and a reasonable degree of variation is often allowed. Say if the word limit is 800 words, an entry that is 840 words long (5% over the limit) is still acceptable. However, if it's 900 words long (12.5% over the limit), that is a bit excessive and needs to be revised. This is just an example only.

Hazu can decide on how many words above the word count is allowed since she's running the contest and presumably, the rewards come from her, too? xD

I didn't know WoT was that famous for descriptiveness...I found Ayn Rand a bit more tiresome, LOL


On the topic, if we put in an extremely wide word limit, won't we just end up with what we had this contest? A few descriptive stories like #1 and a few like #2?