your input needed

[chrysa]

Okay guys, it's the end of the month and there haven't been any entries. I know I have a few more days because of the delayed posting of the prompt, but I also can't do a review week without any entries. Unfortunately, I'm too busy to babysit this comm, so I'm making a poll about the (near) future of this comm. If y'all don't answer the poll, then

Comments

[kitsuneasika]

If you write, what do you think about the current prompt?

Love it to bits, have some ideas rolling around, and am planning to write for it if I have time after I finished taking all the exams I have this week.

[chrysa]

We're probably going to extend the prompt, so you'll likely have time after if you can't get to it right away.

[crystalpool]

Another option might be to extend this prompt through December and post a Blitz or two in that time. Not saying it's the best option, but...

The reason it might work well is because I think everyone is extremely strapped for time. I haven't been able to write more than 200 words in a stretch, so a 1000+ word story is not the easiest thing for me to do. But I would love to write some drabbles - and read some drabbles.

And maybe by the time January comes around, I'll have more time.

[br33z3h]

I'll second this actually. Letting a prompt run longer with a blitz (or two in this case) run in between has done well in the past, especially if the word cap on the blitzes isn't a minimum of 1k words.

[undersaffiresky]

Perhaps I might be the only one of this opinion, but if you wanted more entries, one thing that would do it for me is to open up Poképrompts a bit more to other types of entries. And by that, I mean don't limit it to fandom characters only.

I remember joining it and being disappointed because this comm is only open to fandom characters, as I write primarily OT/OP stuff-I'm not really into any of the fandom characters much; it's not my thing. Normally, in other fandoms, this wouldn't be much of an issue; however, Pokémon is the one fandom I see that doesn't seem to mind original characters at all: they welcome them with open arms (see FF.net, Serebii, Pokécommunity) instead of being the bane of existence.

[lark]

Hi! I'm sorry you had to wait a little bit for a reply to this.

Unfortunately, we have no plans to "open up" pokeprompts to original character pieces. We have lots of reasons for restricting entries to canon characters. You can read three of those reasons here-it's the last long paragraph in that comment.

There are two additional reasons why we're "canon characters only." The first is that, as far as I know, LiveJournal is the main publishing site for canon character fanfiction, and gameverse fanfiction in particular. As an LJ comm, we want to cater to the majority of LJ writers-that is, people who enjoy writing and reading canon character fanfics.

The last reason ties into the reason I just gave, and is almost an inverse of your argument. Pokémon fandom is the only fandom I know of that has such a huge OC focus. If I go to Serebii, FFN, or Pokécommunity, I find an overwhelming amount of OC fanfiction, and virtually no canon fanfiction. LiveJournal, and pokeprompts in particular, is one of the very few places that actively encourages fanfic

[masu_trout]

Yeah, I really like this prompt! I think this is just a bad month, because I'm having a hard enough time just keeping up on my Big Bang fill. :(

[solarpillar]

I'm kind of overloaded here with homework, mid-terms, pokemon big bang and video games, and tumblr. Writing for pokeprompts is just too low on the to-do list. It'll be great if the prompt could continue till December while still adding a new one every month and then we can do them all for winter vacation.

I don't mind imposed limits on the writings, really. I think it's good that we are restricted to canon characters only and I find it challenging to have things like themes and word count. I would love to have a MAX words limit too, not just a MIN. So we can like, you know, learn when to stop writing.

For busy months like September, October and November, I think it'll be great to have micro challenges: fics no longer than 10, 100 or 1000 words.

[chrysa]

Well, the "Undercover" challenge actually had both a max and min word limit. Since it had to be a multiple of 100, the least number of words had to be 100, and since it was limited to one comment post, the max would've been about 700/800 words.

We actually haven't had many challenges with lower word count limits -- if I recall correctly, this is probably the first one; most of the limits we had were upper wc or time limits, to contain what people do. I'll keep that in mind, though, since it might help people when they're busy.

I gave the current a lower limit of 1000 words because we're telling stories about "tiny" stories. If you're going to write a 100 word about a 15 word story... that's kind of missing the point.