Oddities/Betweens prompts/exercises?

[Shweta]

Beez brings up playing based on a prompt here (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3340793&postcount=8).

Would people like to play? And here's the big question: would anyone like to take over organizing such a thing, or at least being my second if I am too sick to do so? :D

[Gray Rose]

I think it's a great idea and yes, I would like to play as time permits.

Perhaps Beez can help organize this?

[Esopha]

I would be interested, but I'm probably not the one to go about organizing something like this.

[beezle]

Perhaps Beez can help organize this?

I'm not really the organised type. But I'll throw in my two cents worth.

I took the idea from the scif/fantasy forum's Flash Fiction Challenge. I propose that the simplest thing to do would be to take their formula, and change the XYZs to suit our own needs.

Here's what I mean. They meet at a designated place (the AW chatroom) at a designated time (every Sunday afternoon), a prompt is posted (randomly from a pre-made list) and participants are given a set time (90 minutes from reading the prompt) to write and post their work in SYW, where they are then encouraged to read and comment on each other's result.

As an intersticey community we may well have different requirements for our game than the broader SF/F community does with theirs. Obviously their challenge is geared towards flash fiction, and I don't know if we need to be that narrowly focused. Or it may be that flash fiction is ideal for this sort of activity. We may want more time to work on our pieces, or less. We may not want to do this weekly. At the risk of the whole endevour collapsing in confusion, you guys may decide we don't need such rigid rules and guidelines at all.

Anyways, at its most basic, we'd be deciding on schedule for the challenge (weekly, fortnightly, monthly), a length for each individual challenge (an hour, two hours, 24), and a picker of prompts.

Thoughts?

[Shweta]

Alternatively, we could pick time&place for "some exercise" and whoever volunteered to provide the exercise would do so any given week. I think 90 minutes is good in general. But for example, we might want to try some of the surrealist exercises Jeff Vandermeer tossed at my Clarion class (that i was really bad at!) And I or one of my classmates might sign up to explain those.

[Polenth]

It sounds great on the outside having it timed and everyone writing at the same time. In reality, it means you get a small number of people who can attend and the rest ignore it.

There's something to be said for posting exercises on the forum. It means everyone can take part, regardless of timezone and working hours. And it means you have an archive of prompts/exercises for people to use in the future.

You can still have timed exercises, but people would do them when they can. Perhaps say it should be done before the next one is posted (once a week sounds reasonable).

[Shweta]

It sounds great on the outside having it timed and everyone writing at the same time. In reality, it means you get a small number of people who can attend and the rest ignore it.

The way the flash fiction challenge works, there's 24 hours in which the people who couldn't make it to the event get to do the exercise and post, honor system.