Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Challenge Can You Guess the Writer? Contest

How well do you know the styles of various LnC fanfic writers? Do you think you could spot a LabRat love scene at a hundred paces? A CC Aiken dialogue from an airplane at 10,000 feet? A Wendy Richards introspection or an Yvonne Connell torture-Clark scene with one arm tied behind your back?

Test your skills as a reader and a writer. Participate in the “Guess That Writer” contest.

Rules for the Writers:

1. Length to be kept between 5 and 10 pages in a word processing program such as Word (using a standard font such as Courier or Times New Roman at 10 or 12 pt.). You can write something shorter than 5 pages, however it is hard to recognize a writer’s style if there is not much to go on.

2. Can end on a cliffhanger or can be a complete story/vignette (if you choose a cliffhanger, no complaining over the pitchforks clamoring for a sequel once your name is finally revealed <g>)

3. Can contain any number of scenes needed (1 thru whatever)

4. Stories should not be posted. Send completed story to me at the e-mail on this post. I'll post all stories so that they all appear under my nick with the format "Title of Story" by Writer #X - that way the writers remain completely anonymous.

5. All stories should be sent to me by August 21st, 2004.

6. Can submit entries for either or both an Nfic/Love Scene or a PG Scene with the following premises:

Nfic/Love Scene Premise: Lois and Clark attend a fancy dress ball. Can do a love scene before, during or after <g>.

PG Scene Premise: Clark or Lois (or both) gets a pet.

The Nfic scenes will be posted together on the nfic thread and the PG fics here in the challenge thread.

7. Story can be funny, tragic, anti-angst, heavy angst, high dialogue, no dialogue, whatever. Anything goes.

8. The PG scene may contain affection (kissing, etc.) but within the limits of PG, but it doesn’t have to contain that.

It is up to you as a writer whether you want to try to make it difficult for the readers to guess who you are or not. If you want, you can write one story in your own style and one "red herring" story, but no mocking of another writer's style.

Rules for readers:
1. Once all of the stories have been posted, guesses can be posted on the challenge thread – a format will be supplied.

2. We’ll decide how long to keep the guessing open once we know how many stories have to be read.

3. Winner is the person or persons who make the most correct guesses.

4. Prize is...a new car! OK, no, really. Just a big fat “Good for You!”

Hope this is fun – seems like it could be!

Lynn

This looks like lots of fun for the readers! I hope you get many responses Lynn..great idea!

~Liz

Can a writer guess, too? By emailing you their answers, maybe?

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

That sounds like fun! Oh Anna I like your new avartar...avatar....ack.

To answer Anna's question - yes, writers can participate in the guessing. Obviously they will know their own stories <g>. I see our final answers/guesses posts looking something like this, and suppose Tank was the one who submitted these guesses:

"Once Upon a Time" by Writer #1 - Joe Doe
"Happily Every After" by Writer #2 - Mary Sue Smith
"Angst, Angst and More Angst" by Writer #3 - DramaQueen
"Smooches 'N Nothing Else" by Writer #4 - ClarkLuvsLois
"Everyone Dies and Jimmy Dies Twice After Lois Gets Her Hair Cut" by Writer #5 - Tank

Of course, these are all made up writers not real writers (well, I think Tank is pretty real, but I've never actually seen him so it's debatable), but it's just for demonstration. So you get the idea - obviously when you would enter the name of the writer of your own story - you would put your own name as your "guess".

Hope that helps. If not, let me know and I'll try to clear up any confusion.

Lynn

Thanks for the clarifications, Lynn Hmm... I hope the last one to guess isn't going to add up everything the writers 'guess' about themselves (because, in that case, either the writers would have to set up a conspiracy or I would have to be the last one to post guesses )

And, Roo, thanks for liking my avatar - I made it myself

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Hmm. So you're going to number the writers? How does that work with the "one story in your own style, one 'decoy' story" theory? You'd have the "decoy" story tacked on to the same writer number, right? Kind of seems to defeat the purpose.

When you first said "Writer X," I assumed that would be what you would post for each writer. Then, people can guess story by story. Makes it a little trickier if you have two or more stories by the same title, but that can be worked out.

As for writers guessing, if, as in your example, Tank "guessed" himself, that'd be a dead giveaway, wouldn't it? Anyone reading the thread to check other guesses would know right off the bat. "Oh well. There goes my guess. I was sure it was Kae trying to fool us..."

Not sure what else to suggest, though. If there are enough stories, then guessing just a few (and conveniently not guessing about your own stories) might work. Would it be too evil to deliberately guess wrong for your own stories?

Or would it be better, as Anna suggested, just to have guesses emailed to someone (doesn't have to be you, Lynn. I'd be willing to handle that, if you'd rather not have the extra work), and then have that someone post all the guesses on a certain day?

Then again, we could use the polls, since that's anonymous. Make a list of all the participating authors (and maybe a few extras, just for fun) and then have people vote for who wrote what.

Just tossing out ideas. It's your thing, Lynn. Sounds like it'll be really fun, however you work it from here. Great idea. I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with.

Paul

Good point, Paul, about the Writer #1/Writer #2/etc. idea. That would cause confusion if one writer submitted more than one story.

Hmmm.

I kind of wanted to avoid people e-mailing me answers, not so much because of the work involved (I don't mind it at all) but more because I thought it would be a kick to see people's guesses.

What if we did this - and this is by no means written in stone so we can reject this idea. What if, after all of the stories are submitted, I post a list of contributors. For example, I would say - "There are 20 stories, written by the following people: Lynn, CC, Wendy, Tank, Paul, etc. Some people may have written more than one story."

Then people can guess - I'll do what Paul suggested and keep all of the writers as Writer X.

As for writers submitting guesses, I suppose we could have the writers e-mail their answers to me, to be posted after the contest has officially ended by before the big reveal, so we can all get a glimpse at their guesses as well.

Would that solve some of these problems? I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks!
Lynn

Wait. I'm missing something. Why post the list of writers? Oh. To except those writers from submitting guesses? (Sorry, took me a sec. That is the reason you had in mind, right?) It's a shame to narrow the guessing field so much.

Hmm. Seems like there should be a better way, but I'm not coming up with it at this hour.

You could have a rule that people can only make a certain number of guesses (3 less than the total number of stories, for example), but I guess that takes out the fun of seeing if anyone can get 100%.

Hmm.

I'm leaning towards the "If you wrote a story, pretend it was someone else. It's part of the game." method, but maybe that's just me. I do prefer to be more honest, in general, but if it's just part of the game, why not? Some games are just no fun if no one bluffs.

Or maybe not. Would people be comfortable with that? Would it be too much of a problem to try to come up with a reasonable decoy to "guess"?

I dunno. Anyone else have any bright ideas? I'm out.

Paul

I think you should keep it simple and just let writers post their guesses along with everyone else. A lot of the fun will be in watching the guesses and seeing the reasoning people use to reach their decisions. Also, I suspect that quite a few writers will use subterfuge to avoid giving themselves away when they submit their guesses...

Yvonne
(already putting together a cunning plan )

Call me , but I think this suggestion could make the game even more fun... Good idea, Yvonne!

See ya,
AnnaBtG. (who can't wait for the stories to begin getting posted!)

Okay, I give up, I have no idea who the secret writer is.

Tank (who thinks he might have missed something)

Um, Tank, none of the stories have been posted yet. Writers have until Aug. 21st to get their stories to me and I'll be the one to post them all. Then the guessing will begin.

Hope that clears it up <g>.

Lynn

I'm kind of confused. Does every story have to have the same plot -- Lois and/or Clark get(s) a pet?

- Laura

Laura - that's the basic premise. All of the writers need to write about the same thing.

The whole idea is to see if you can tell who a writer is by his/her style. So if we asked every one to write a story about Lois and/or Clark getting a pet, readers might be able to figure things out by stuff like what kind of pet the writer chose, whether they handled the premise as a comedy or a WAFFY vignette, if they used a lot of dialogue or more introspection, etc.

Some writers will use the premise as a springboard to go someplace else - "After Clark picked up his new puppy, he flew over to Lois's apartment..." Whereas maybe another writer will actually use that premise as the story - "Clark, if you get a snake, I'll never come over to your place!"

Hope this helps.

Lynn

By the way, Lynn, you do realise that as the only person 'in the know', you're likely to be inundated with requests for beta-reading services?

Yvonne

Yay! It's the 21st!

Hey Everyone!

OK, just got back from vacation this very night, and I've checked all of my various e-mails and have gathered the submissions. If anyone was just dying to submit and perhaps missed the deadline, I won't be actually posting the stories until tomorrow (it's simply too late to do so tonight - I'm kind of bleary <g>).

We've got some great stories - this should be a lot of fun!!

Thanks!
Lynn

AnnaBtG.

Ok, everyone, stories are up. Go here to read all of the stories and to find a list of titles which you can copy and paste into your own Guesses Post.

Good Luck!

Lynn