DH Skies
July 29, 2016 9:57 AM
Sonora: Fast and Furious.... Begins today! by DH Skies
What is it?Sonora Fast and Furious is a posting event where the word count is waived. This leads to short, sharp exchanges between characters, which can happen in almost real-time if both authors are on at the same time. Whilst we appreciate the skill and craft that goes into writing here, this can make one thread take a long time, each conversation taking weeks to complete. This means that building friendships (or rivalries) takes a long time, and that you only know how a limited number of people interact with your character. Sonora F&F is a chance to quickly change and expand that.
When is it?
This weekend! For 48 hours, starting from 5pm site time on Friday, and running until the same time on Sunday.
Where is it?
We are going to use the Muggle Studies board, as it is currently not used, to do a trial run of this idea. If it is popular, we may choose or build a dedicated space for it. However, in character, the interactions can be set anywhere within the school. You can also continue your threads elsewhere on the site during the weekend, but normal posting rules and word counts apply to anything posted outside of the event.
The rules:
There are no rules! Ok, there are... In that all the usual rules, such as God-modding and the site's PG rating apply. The word count rule is waived. If you find your word count is creeping up and you hit the site word count anyway in a post, it doesn't matter - it's great if the event inspires a longer, more detailed thread. If we discover any bugs over the weekend, we will discuss whether we need more guidelines for next time.
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Sonora: Fast and Furious.... Begins today!
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Professor Taransay
July 29, 2016 6:02 PM
GO! by Professor Taransay
Fast and Furious has now started in the Muggle Studies classroom. You have 48 hours - go!
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GO!
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Jack Spencer
July 29, 2016 6:18 PM
DH Skies
July 31, 2016 9:58 PM
Aaaand stop (and give feedback) by DH Skies
Phew! Ok, quills down everyone. Fast and Furious is over. I, for one, had a blast and it looks like a lot of other people did too - the Muggle Studies board has officially exploded with enthusiasm!Having tried this idea, do we want to see anything change? One issue that came up in chatzy is whether thread order matters in multi-person threads. On the yes side, if you're all posting at once, it's going to get messy, and also it's awkward if you're not on and then your character has stood there not saying anything for ages... On the other hand, it is meant to be fast and furious, and that slows things down, and with posts being so short, even if you miss five turns, you probably only miss a minute or so's action... I'll be putting up a poll about this, and about any other issues that come up from feedback in chatzy, so that everyone can get their opinion heard.
Second question, assuming we want more of these, how often do we want them? Once, midway through each half of the year?
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DH Skies
Aaaand stop (and give feedback)
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Joella & Co.
August 01, 2016 2:27 AM
It was awesome!! by Joella & Co.
I really enjoyed fast and furious this weekend and thought that overall there were few problems. One thing I did note, however, was that some posts gave too little to go on in terms of dialogue so that one person was having to do all the work on making a conversation which kind of reduces the fun a bit. I think it's important that whilst the point is that there are no rules on length, people still put some effort and consideration into what they are writing and the fact that someone has to reply to it.I think it would be good to have them midway through each half of the year because Liliana made a good suggestion in chatzy that it is fun for the Quidditch teams to be able to do a thread after every game and a normal thread would be quite difficult and slow moving with that many people.
Also, I don't think an order for multi-person threads matters a great deal since the conversation is moving so quickly so they wouldn't be standing there not saying anything for long.
All in all, I also had a blast and am excited for more of these in the future!
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It was awesome!!
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DH Skies
August 01, 2016 3:54 AM
Hurrah by DH Skies
Hey Joella,Thanks for the detailed feedback. When you mention posts where there wasn't a lot of dialogue, can you give an example? Or can you think how this could be transformed into a clear rule? In some cases, characters are reserved or not very talkative, and may rely on the person they're talking to to carry more of the conversation. I personally can't think of a way to stipulate a minimum amount of dialogue without pushing those characters out of what is natural for them, though I am very open to any suggestions.
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Hurrah
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Louis et al
August 01, 2016 5:07 AM
Loved it!! by Louis et al
F&F was a great idea - I'd love to see it becoming a regular thing! Midway through each half of the year sounds good to me - not so frequent that it becomes less exciting, but frequent enough that, if someone can't really post that weekend, they haven't got absolutely ages to wait until the next one.I think thread order is always going to get a little messy at times, especially when two people respond separately to the same thread (like we had with Louis, Madeleine, and Tasha) but I feel that can be fairly easily resolved by the authors involved. It is meant to be fast and furious, so if a few responses go up before you have the time to write for your character, c'est la vie, and you'll only have missed a few minutes IC.
I agree with Joella that sometimes responses didn't really give enough to prompt a reply. I know some characters don't speak much, but normally the whole point of a thread is to maintain a conversation (if that's not what the character wants, write them leaving!) and it's very hard to think of what to write if the previous person hasn't given you anything to work with. I know this from experience in other rpgs without the post length rules Sonora has! However, I don't think there's a rule we can add to F&F about this, it's really just something for authors to be aware of and take into account.
On the whole though, I think it went really well. Roll on the next!
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Louis et al
Loved it!!
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Joella
August 01, 2016 12:48 PM
:) by Joella
I'd rather not give an example if that's OK as I don't want anyone to take offence but if everyone is made aware of this then hopefully that will sort it, rather than trying to make some sort of rule to cover it (which would be difficult since in some cases it makes sense for a character not to say much). The problem is not the quantity of dialogue necessarily but the contents.I understand that some characters are not very talkative but if the whole point of a thread is to have fast and furious conversation then it doesn't make sense that it would continue if someone's not getting any real response from someone because they would just stop talking to them.
In some cases, like with the Clark-Araceli thread, it didn't seem intended to be a long conversation and both parties stopped talking when all that needed to be said was said and that worked well.
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Joella
:)
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Headmaster Brockert
August 01, 2016 1:59 PM
So basically.... by Headmaster Brockert
You want to tell people what they have to say?
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So basically....
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Joella
August 01, 2016 2:09 PM
No! by Joella
No of course not! As I said I don't think a rule can be made about length of dialogue or anything like that so it's just people being mindful that someone has to write a response to their fast and furious posts, just as we all are with our normal posts, that's all. I mean, obviously there are cases where not many words are needed - for example, when Kira just said "play" to Alistair that worked fine because it was him that had approached her and asked the question and also Kira is not so talkative (and if I'd had the time I would have easily been able to respond to that because he didn't ask the question for no reason at all) but there are cases I noticed where it was more difficult.
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Joella
No!
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Mortimer
August 01, 2016 2:34 PM
Okay... by Mortimer
Well, on a personal note, I did that one like five minutes before it closed so it's not as if you did have time. Sorry about that. I woke up like an hour before it was over and had to take a bath first.
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Okay...
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Joella
August 01, 2016 3:28 PM
That's fine by Joella
Yeah I did notice it was very close to the closing time so you must have been pretty quick to get it in. That's absolutely fine - it's far better to get a response in last minute if you can than not at all! :)
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That's fine
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Mortimer
August 01, 2016 8:39 PM
Yeah by Mortimer
Well, it's not like it had to be long so it wasn't that hard to do it quickly.I am slightly intrigued as to what he wanted though. I mean, you probably picked him for a reason when you could have easily picked Chuck or Abby to talk to her and said there was a reason he asked that.
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Yeah
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DH Skies
August 01, 2016 10:12 PM
Carry on? by DH Skies
There's nothing to stop you transferring this to the library, and carrying it on as a regular thread (i.e. meeting the word count).
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Carry on?
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DH Skies
August 01, 2016 10:23 PM
Summarising by DH Skies
Ok, so just to summarise what has been said so far...We've got a few opinions going around about thread order, and will work that out with a poll.
People found some threads harder to reply to than others but agree we can't put in hard and fast rules about the content in this way, especially as some characters are more talkative than others. They would just like authors to be mindful of how easy it will be to reply - perhaps thinking about using situations where your character has more to say, or has to talk to others to get something done could be helpful.
FYI, if any threads really caught your imagination but you didn't have time to finish them, you can carry them on as regular threads on the board they were set on.
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Summarising
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Nathan
August 04, 2016 10:30 AM
Thoughts by Nathan
For post order, it may depend on the thread itself. In some cases (Quidditch after party, for example) it might make sense to do as a free for all, while in other threads, if someone asks another character a direct question it would really make the most sense for that person to go next even if it isn't their 'turn', but on the third hand if we had three characters chatting as a group and they are all equally likely to speak, then it might make mose sense to take turns.As to not having much to reply to, if Joella was poking at Clark and/or Ginger, those posts were really just meant to be slices of every day that aren't important important enough to justify a real post but I wanted to show that Clark gets incoherent when he stays up too late and Ginger compliments random people by reflex, and neither thread was really meant to go very far since my time to post that weekend was pretty limited.
Overall, I enjoyed the quick posts and they much easier to do on my phone than a regular post, so I can see us going two ways with this: a) have designated 'events' like we did this past weekend with a start and end time and be really fast and furious. Or we can just have a board set up with no word count rules that you can post at any time, which could be useful if you want to just run through a quick scene with somebody or if you're not feeling up to a full post due to illness, wriers block, time constraints, or mobile-only access, but the drawback there is that we probably won't see the explosive posting we had this weekend since posting would be more spread out and mostly focused on the regular boards.
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Thoughts
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DH Skies
August 04, 2016 10:46 AM
Re: Thoughts by DH Skies
I took Clark's not to be intended to go very far, given that he wished the person goodnight at the end, and enjoyed having the little 'slice of life moments.' To pick my own example on Joella's behalf, my Georgia post was maybe kinda lazy, although Tess managed to roll with it. I was just trying to fit something in and maybe not really thinking, which I feel is part of the beauty of F&F.I personally lean towards having specific events for now, because I like the energy it generated and it's also a lot simpler, in that if we were implementing it as a permanent/allowed thing, I think I'd want to set up safe-guards to make sure it didn't devolve into most writing happening there/in that way. Though I would encourage anyone who is sick/has limited access/writer's block to thrash out occasional F&F style things with friends - it can always be put up as a joint post, and I do would like to see improved access/posting from people in those situations, so it's good to know that you found it helpful in that way.
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Re: Thoughts
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