So, why did the winners win?

[C.W. LaSart]

Thank you, all. Especially Terry and Craig; I gained a lot from your posts. You both can tell that I am that much of a newbie, eh? Perhaps my problem is that I am a greedy capatilist and feel that if i am going to write for me, which I do, I might as well see if there is a market for it.

Write what you write, then BUILD a market for it through social networking

[RJHubbard53]

The worst part of writing is not the process of writing, or even the editing, it's the process of having to let your stories out into the world. I give up trying to write for readers and now I do my own thing. Sometimes it works for other people, sometimes it doesn't. Like Terry said, write what you want to read. The rest will happen when it happens. Of course, I sometimes think it is best to write what you want to read and read only what you write, too. in truth, there are days I consider never letting go of the story.

Thank you, all. Especially Terry and Craig; I gained a lot from your posts. You both can tell that I am that much of a newbie, eh? Perhaps my problem is that I am a greedy capatilist and feel that if i am going to write for me, which I do, I might as well see if there is a market for it.

[Craig Wallwork]

The worst part of writing is not the process of writing, or even the editing, it's the process of having to let your stories out into the world. I give up trying to write for readers and now I do my own thing. Sometimes it works for other people, sometimes it doesn't. Like Terry said, write what you want to read. The rest will happen when it happens. Of course, I sometimes think it is best to write what you want to read and read only what you write, too. in truth, there are days I consider never letting go of the story.

[TerryE]

And RJ, getting back to your original statement of trying to learn from the winners, you can't sit down and try to write for the masses. If you try to appease a section of the reading public, you leave out another section. The people going to see those Twilight movies are not watching Ingmar Bergman films, and that crowd isn't watching George Romero, etc. Write what you want, then see if there is an audience for it. Sure you can write on spec, but don't get to the point of pandering to the lowest common denominator. You'll recognize good writing and good story. When they overlap, there you have the gold.

[mlouisdixon]

I was surprised how little votes some of my favorite stories got. I've even asked one of the authors to submit to Dark Recesses. One of my favorite stories ended up in my own group and that was a bummer because I had to vote against it--even though I really liked the story. I felt that there were a couple of stories in the top that should not have been there. That's my opinion and that's all I'm going to say about it. There are probably people who were surprised I was there as well. Everybody has different tastes. I'd recommend to Dan that the next contest should have hidden polls but then that might be defeating the purpose of attracting people to the forum. Half of the excitement is watching the numbers.

RJ, to address your question about why the stories won while other ones did not: I can't say specifically here. There were a bunch of good stories and a couple that didn't even belong in the group. (IMHO only) Out of them all, my favorite was Meat Socks. It was a fun story that made me laugh. It had nice creepy elements. It also was very well written making it believable to me. There were other stories in the top that I really liked as well. The common reason is that they managed to pull me in. They kept my attention. They gave me a promise of entertainment, be that via humor or thrills, and they delivered on that promise. They clearly had been thought through with great attention and craft. The other thing is their originality. Not every story can be a "brand new" idea, but did they do something new with an old idea? I read tons of stories and I just don’t have time for poorly formatted/written pieces. I’ve got around 300 stories to go through for the final issue of Dark Recesses. I know that I will be rejecting most of them. I will be sending back form rejections after reading only three paragraphs or so on a lot of them. I will not even bother reading something that can’t be formatted correctly. I will also find a number of stories that I really like but won’t fit our magazine. I’ll email the authors a detailed reply and may even suggest another venue. I will probably find stories that I really like that need improvement. I’ll ask for a rewrite and make suggestions. I will probably find stories that I want to print and pass it on to the rest of the staff only to be vetoed unanimously. Then there will be the few stories that we buy. These will be the gems that get into the magazine. Hopefully, these will be the stories that our fans will talk about for days on end. Hopefully, these authors will be so excited about the validation of their talents that they’ll keep writing and submitting and probably publishing.

MLD

[C.W. LaSart]

I'm glad you mention that. My only complaint with your story was Dr. Johnson's unprofessional attitude. And, silly me, I didn't get that it was the whole point.

It's all about perspective. Also, when faced with the sheer number of stories we had to read, we were prevented from completely enjoying them as we might if we just sat down to read them by themselves. When I buy a collection of short stories, I read them for enjoyment and am far less critical of everything than I was here. Of course, an obvious mistake would still bother me, but I tend to shut off the editor mode when reading for fun.

[C.W. LaSart]

btw, Ur is the King Kindle story...

Thank you!

[RJHubbard53]

btw, Ur is the King Kindle story...

[TerryE]

It's funny, when I sat down to write Dr. Johnson's Patient, I had intended for it to be about Sheldon, the patient. But, as often happens with my stories, it took off on it's own and decided to be more about Dr. Johnson and his patronizing attitude. Of course, we can't completely blame him, it would be hard to deal with a Sheldon.

I'm glad you mention that. My only complaint with your story was Dr. Johnson's unprofessional attitude. And, silly me, I didn't get that it was the whole point.

[C.W. LaSart]

LOL-No worries Terry! I wasn't taking it that way at all! Now that you explained it-I did read "N" but had just forgotten. It was the one with all the events having to do with a clearing by the river or something, right? I get what you're saying though. When you get to reading similiar stories, it comes across as cliche. It's funny, when I sat down to write Dr. Johnson's Patient, I had intended for it to be about Sheldon, the patient. But, as often happens with my stories, it took off on it's own and decided to be more about Dr. Johnson and his patronizing attitude. Of course, we can't completely blame him, it would be hard to deal with a Sheldon. I don't know why I was so successful at picking the finalists, but maybe I have a decent view of what is marketable. Now to figure out which one of King's stories was the one only on Kindle.......

[TerryE]

Is Stephen King's "N" the story that you can only get on Kindle? I haven't read it yet and if that's the case, I suppose I never will. I don't have a Kindle :/

Hey Caren, I hope you know I wasn't slamming you or the story as being derivative. "N" was not the Kindle story. I think it was original to the latest collection, Just After Sunset. It was also adapted by Marvel as a video comic on their website, before the book was released, and then adapted again by the same artist and writer to comic book form. It's kinda Lovecraftian and features a man with OCD seeing the things from beyond. The shrink doesn't believe him, but finds himself catching the OCD behaviors like a virus, moreso after the patient's suicide. And King himself, said his story was inspired by Machen's "The Great God Pan".

It's strange how some motifs just seem to latch onto the zeitgeist at the same time. Sometimes it's intentional (like the deep sea monster movies that were made to hit the theaters before James Cameron's "The Abyss") and sometimes just coincidence (like that summer there were 3 or 4 body switching comedies out at the same time). Like I said, there were several stories here that opened with a doctor not believing their patient has something paranormal happening. And they were all very different except for that little hook. And obviously no one had seen the other stories before they were submitted here.

[lilbirdy]

I was torn between three stories and ultimately voted for "Meat Socks" for the win. The main reason was that the evil doers were a gleeful and happy-go-lucky group. If you are going to break the rules of a civilized society, I think you should have a good time with it!

[C.W. LaSart]

Is Stephen King's "N" the story that you can only get on Kindle? I haven't read it yet and if that's the case, I suppose I never will. I don't have a Kindle :/

[MrRoland]

I tried to go strictly by story, but, like Caren, there were some with no paragraph breaks that I ignored. They were just too difficult for me to read and keep the story interesting to me. Also if I got jarred out of the story by wrong word usage and grammer errors too many times, I lost interest in reading those. There were a few that I voted for in the first round that moved on, not as many as Caren had though.

[TerryE]

Personally, I looked at the stories very harshly for an amateur contest. Once the story count got above 70, and I knew time was going to be tight, I went with Caren's method of giving the ones with horrible formatting only a cursory glance. I can understand an editor's frustration; they were difficult to read after a while. I looked at them, but if the first couple paragraphs didn't hook me, I moved on. In the first couple days, I read every story and took detailed critique notes. By the second week, I wanted to get through every story and it came down to a yes, no, or maybe in my notes.

I agree with Craig, half of the appeal of Meat Socks was the title. But Nikita did follow that with an interesting story. I've posted critiques for a few of your stories, and mentioned each time that I can be hyper-critical. That said, I found little things I didn't like with almost every story submitted, even though I liked most of the stories. For me to like the story, I needed some style to the language, not a simple recitation of the facts. The story also needed internal logic, decent grammar, and some originality. Caren had a great story, but my original critique of mentioned that it was the 3rd or 4th story I read that had a doctor or psychiatrist who didn't believe their patient. That's not a weakness of Caren, but had more to do with the order that I read the stories. Also I had just finished reading the comics version of Stephen King's "N", and was feeling similarities to that in all of those doctor stories. Again, something I wouldn't have thought about if I hadn't just finished "N". But things like that can always cloud a reader's judgement. Heck, I even think I subconsciously didn't rate Richard Thomas's "Rudy Jenkins..." story higher because it had some very basic similarities to my story.

I think I voted for 2 of the finalists in the first round, so my taste doesn't agree with the majority either. There were a few "extreme" stories that only repulsed me. I want more than just something shocking. My vote went to "It Roars", just because it was so unique, bizarre, and fun. I usually hate the dream sequence as a story, but at least she told us right off the bat that it was a dream and had fun from there.