WE BEGIN AGAIN!
LitReactors, last February I issued you a challenge: To join me in a grueling, tournament-style short story battle competition. When I first announced WAR, I was skeptical. It seemed too big, too involved, too much of a commitment for a group of normal people to participate. But either I was wrong, or the people of LitReactor are far from normal. You armed yourselves, you girded up your loins with faith in your abilities as writers, and you engaged one another on the field of battle in a ten week literary bloodbath. You roared defiance into the faces or your enemies and brought WAR upon their heads. It was violent and vicious. You all were ruthless motherfuckers. I was unspeakably proud.
And now we're doing it again. My (Un)Official partner Averydoll and I are once again dropping the gauntlet and calling you, again, to do battle.
Consider yourself included. This is your invitation to participate in WAR2: PRIDE - The LitReactor Battle Tournament*. It's a chance, once again, to put your money where your mouth is and go toe-to-toe with the rest of this writing community in a tournament-style competition to crown a site champion, who will receive the title of WAR King/Queen. We're all here because we like to write and a lot of us would like to do it professionally. This requires a professional output and consistency. Discipline. PRIDE. And a desire to make war.
You should step up to this challenge.
What it is:
WAR is a tournament-style competition. It will be a series of writer battles in the basic format of the Beyond Thunderdome writer battles, with some timing changes due to the volume of work necessary to make it run. Contestants will be paired into a traditional bracket format and write until there is only one left standing. Just like last time, but bigger. This is a 64-contestant, 7 round double-elimination tournament. In case of any early withdrawals we are maintaining a list of alternates who are slobbering at the bit to take someone's place.
How it works:
1. You tell me you want in. I put your name on the Battle Roster below.
2. After the Battle Roster is filled, contestants will be divided into their seeds. For those who don't know, in seeding participants are rated according to perceived chance to win and given a numerical designation to indicate this (in this case probably 1 through 16). Initial matchups are based on this seed process, with those perceived least likely to win the championship pitted against those perceived most likely to win, and so on. So initial matchups would be 1-16, 2-15, etc.
3. We put together the brackets.
4. On the start date we receive our writing prompts. Each pair will receive its own prompt (otherwise the workshop would get pretty tedious). These prompts will be PMmed to each contestant's individual accounts at approximately 5:00 PM US CST on a Friday (please bear with the approximate times here, as I cannot only send one set of PMs at a time). This gives the weekend for getting your stories off the ground.
5. Competition stories due at Averydoll's personal email account (non-LitReactor) by 5:00 PM CST one week from date of prompt. Failure to meet deadline will result in immediate disqualification. Do not include any personal information in the body of your story. Do include your prompt at the top of the story, below the title. Please bear in mind that if you do not follow this direction it's just going to slow down your story getting posted, as Avery will have to take the time to remove all that stuff.
6. Competition stories must be 2,500 words or fewer (word count not to include title, header/footer, "The End", etc.). Final drafts of more than 2,500 words will be disqualified.
7. At deadline, polls will be created in an independent thread for each battle. The polls will be open for one week, closing at around 5:00 PM US Central time on a Friday. Brackets will be advanced.
8. New prompts will drop after the brackets are finalized. Please bear in mind that my receipt of your stories, verifying there is no personal identifying information in your story (for purposes of anonymity), posting polls, inputting scores in the bracket, and dropping new prompts will all take time. So you will receive your prompts on Friday evenings, at a time around 5:00-6:00 CST. Due deadline does not change based upon slight alterations in the Friday evening timeline.
Who participates?
All of you. Any of you. I want to see work from those of you who don't think you have a chance to win because this is how we get better. Iron sharpens iron. And I'd love to see folks like Richard Thomas (who is a seasoned veteran both of the last WAR and of the publication industry), Nik Korpon, Lidia Yuknavitch, etc., participate as well. Because there's no honor in taking up the weapons if the battle is easy. I would like to see this tournament be a very difficult, very bloody one.
When does WAR2: PRIDE begin?
To give time to get the word out and get as many people involved as possible, the first writing prompts will drop and the competition will begin at 7:00 PM US Central time on November 2, 2012.
What do you get if you win?
Honor. Pride of place. You will be crowned BAMF. Side bets between contestants are, of course, perfectly fine. But you're doing this tournament for you, and for the joy of testing yourself against the rest of us.
Grab your sap and your heater. Shield yourself.
Make the commitment again. Make WAR.
*This tournament is not officiallly sponsored by the officials who officiate LitReactor.
WAR
WAR
Put me in Utah/Avery. Can't wait.
!!!
No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from WAR. - Ernest Hemingway
“War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.” William Faulkner
"...you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
Tim O'Brien
Put my down, bitches! I've got me a title to defend...
That said, I'm really doing this for the ambition, because I honestly don't think I'll be winning this time around. There really is no better way to get a story brainstormed and out of your system in one week.
shit. i know i don't have time for this. i just bailed on a challenge. but dammit, i was pissed to get knocked out "early" last time. screw it. i need some new stories anyway, i think everything i wrote for WAR has been published, except one.
WAR.
i'm in.
I'm going to kick all of your asses. I'm in. WAR
I want in! WAR
@Richard - The way I look at it, if things get bad you can always back out. The first round starts just before a small vacation I'll be taking in November, but I managed the first time, so hopefully I can manage again.
Also, MAYBE this time we'll have a round duking it out. That'd be pretty cool beans.
Wow that is a shitty fucking awesome song.
I fucking love Utah! Dude, I missed you so much.
WAR!!!!!
WARWARWARWARWARWAR!
yeah I'm in. Write it. Flaminia. Oh well, actually I've got a new battle name. FLAMINIA FERINA.
Bring it on.
Chestah Pane!
JGB: Did you want in? Because I can't tell.
Sign me in.
Bombadiers to your stations!
Fuck...
I am gonna be so very busy these next few months. Like, ridiculously so. I am a bit worried about adding to my workload. I have to move house soon and I am part way through two big projects that I don't expect to be finished for a while yet. Plus, y'know, working at the hospital and travelling cross country to stay with the missus when I get chance. I never get to sleep as it is.
But...
Seeing as I fell just one, brutal, J.Y. shaped hurdle short last time, I don't think I am allowed to say no. Utah wouldn't let me live it down. You and Jessica are shit-heads, you know that? Total, lovely, squishy, huggable shit-heads.
And...
Last time was so much fun.
Plus...
As Bekka said, there are contingencies in case my participation goes bad. I would feel like an ass for pulling out, but it won't ruin anyone else's fun. I can live with that.
So...
WAR! motherfuckers. Watch your asses, coz I got a greased up gun muzzle that will fit real snug in your backside. I have a lovely set of skulls from last time, though Bekka's collection is better. I hope I don't draw Richard Thomas too early on, because he is gonna be keen to put me in my place for the upset last time. I want to draw Utah himself. We almost got to duel last time, almost, and in an alternate universe we were the finalists.
You are all gonna die. In fiction, of course.
I will have sweet f-a free time around then, but count me in, I'll provide something even if it's sleep deprived hallucinations. I hate feeling left out.
God created WAR so that Americans would learn geography.
-Mark Twain
--
I'll see you there.
Watch your asses, coz I got a greased up gun muzzle that will fit real snug in your backside.
I have so many questions about this sentence...
I almost forgot!
almost...
I better give it a shot this time. I feel silly for missing it the first time.
I've been slow writing lately, so count me in. War helped push me to finish stuff and meet deadlines.
Chestah Pane!
I mean, War!
Sign me up. Smack talk, smack talk, smack talk.
I have so many questions about this sentence...
My methods are unorthodox. All is fair in love and war.
Also, Howie's in? Fuck yeah.
And I want to try and make it to the second round this time, ha ha.
Ahhhhh I have a million excuses I was going to give. Screw it. And God said, "Let there be WAR!!!!!" So that means I can't help it, I want in!
SUPER excited to see howie joining the fight this time!!
This is going to be such a good fight.
Opting out of this one. Want to focus my time on the novel.
Is this actually going to have 64 entrants? They fixed it.
this is going to be like the NCAA tournament, but interesting!
I'm excited. War brings out the best in writers, it seems. I'm hoping i get a boost in my writing like the participants of the other War got.
I'd put Averydoll as a favorite this time. Perfectly Natural is a masterpiece. If she writes with that kind of scary honesty and humor again, we're all fucked.
Maybe. With 64 slots, I figure I have a minute to think about it.
I want in.
Maybe. With 64 slots, I figure I have a minute to think about it.
Heh. I got so many giggles from this one line.
Ha. Another way to think about it: With 64 slots, I figure I had better get to work.
WAR. I'm in.
Did we do 64 last time? That's a lot of stories to read!
My favorite part is the WAR avatars.
Filling up quick! Nice to see. Some new names, too. Very cool.
How you running the double-elimination? There are variants, though what seems to be the easiest has a nice little wiki page.
I started reading the explanation at the top of what WAR is, got bored. But I want to WAR! I assume this is a writing challenge or something. I wil read the rules later when I am drunk. Must leave page of screaming guitar solos...
I want a cool fucking battle nickname!
The Emmasculator