Cheaters Challenge 2015

and the computer's name is Deep Thought, in case anyone didn't understand MY comment.

I had forgotten that. Perhaps we now know who Woodstein was consulting.

I am having a hard time voting Flopsy. Forgive me. I have voted 7 times on two stories. Not a real expert on line. I will read all submissions. Thanks for site. Best wishes. Nite.

How does one vote for a story more than once? I seem to be able to change my votes but not submit new ones on the same stories.

Yankee - on reading all submissions - well done! A problem about these challenges is that so many people read only the stories that leap out at them first, maybe the order on the screen, maybe a titillating title, and vote on those stories, so a story they read and didn't much like gets more points than one they never got round to reading. I think it's only fair to read and vote on the lot if humanly possible.

I assume, OTK, Yankee means revising his votes, not the "vote early, vote often" that used to be said to characterise Northern Irish elections. Changing one's mind about a vote is most likely to happen often with readers quite new to the challenges (one gets a feel for the thing after a few times) and at the start of reading through the entries for any one challenge. You may give an eight for the first story, for example, and then a few reads later realise there are too many better stories than that one which deserve to get more than one or two points more. Anyway, it does suggest Yankee is taking the process with Yankee seriousness, which is great.

While I'm here, a couple of comments on the entries, as I've now read a lot. I very much like the fact that many stories feature some kind of twist in the basic "person does something wrong and gets spanked for it" template - for example, the punisher becoming the punished for some ingenious reason.

I'm much less keen on the way many stories start by telling us a whole lot about a main character. Lots of guidance for writers tells them to demonstrate things about a person's character and circumstances wherever possible rather than telling the reader about them. Unlike much parroted orthodox writing guidance such as "eliminate all adverbs" (difficult if you have an American cop shouting "Come on out real slow!", which has two adverbs), this guidance is wise. It means the opening of the story, which so influences how people react, isn't weighed down with stuff that's unlikely to be exciting or intriguing - and it lets the reader feel good for working things out for him/herself. Physical description, yes, it can be hard not to do it by telling us, but character can be displayed.

Compare "Tom was a meticulous, precise man, a careful timekeeper. He took his work as a middle manager in the Local Eastminster Bank very seriously. Junior staff found him polite but often preoccupied and he was always busy" with "Tom arrived at the Local Eastminster Bank eight and a half minutes early. On his way in the new clerk buttonholed him: 'Mr Smith - I wasn't sure what to do about this Copeland file."

'I'll have a look at it and come back to you in twenty minutes,' Tom replied. He sat at his desk and thought about the forthcoming meeting.".

IMHO this is entirely up to each readers preference and the style some excellent writers choose to use. I know a lot of readers only start the story and stop after the first three paragraphs, but that will happen with all types of stories, no matter how they are written.

Revising votes is prefectly acceptable, voting more than once if one has found a way and I doubt they have, is cheating and that should earn one a serious spanking.....LOL

CS

I try to have a consistent scale with my votes, so I've found in past challenges it can be necessary to go back and alter a score, for better and worse.

Nswitch/thereader0987

CS: Thanks. Of course it's up to each reader's preference, and each author's. Mine is decidedly for stories that manage to indicate things about characters without telling the reader a whole lot of stuff directly.

My point was not about readers who stop after three paras. They may well complain if the spanking hasn't happened by then! It was about readers whose reaction to the whole story is strongly influenced by the beginning. It's a fact that's very common, indeed normal - same with job interviews and speeches.

oops,

Don't you hate it when you accidentally post on the wrong thread? The original version of this post has been posted to the "Suspension of disbelief" thread.

Where it was supposed to be.

Well, I'm guessing that it's often easier for an author who wishes to describe certain characters, both physically and psychologically, to do so immediately--the same might be true of the story's setting. As a reader of stories, I'd rather have the details provided gradually as the account's plot line develops--I do appreciate a degree of physical description, although I generally prefer psychological details to be revealed via dialogue and exposition (action).

I'd also venture that physical descriptions don't necessarily need to be overly detailed, although that feeling seems to vary from reader to reader--generally, I do appreciate having an overall idea what key characters look like, including the clothes they're wearing on occasion, obviously if that's relevant to the story.

Based on the limited number of Challenge entries thus far, it strikes me that "cheating" has been interpreted quite broadly, to mean pretty much any type of dishonesty, in some of them... --C.K.