CAW #19 Reading Phase

First, thanks go out to the authors who have contributed to this CAW. If you want to reply to a comment on your story, you MUST do that through CAW SOP. You cannot comment under your name or you will break anonymity! To comment, do this:

1. Send a PM to CAW SOP
2. Tell us which story you are responding to (since you might have written more than one), and which post number.

If you don't reference a post number, we'll just post it to your story.

Second, we had to do some formatting work on many of the stories in order to get them to post properly. If you are the author of a story and notice that the formatting is off in some way, drop a note to either NEW, or ahorsewithnoname, or CAW SOP, and give us the specifics and we'll handle it discreetly.

Okay...to recap a couple of things. If you have written a story for this CAW, or you have written an official entry for a previous CAW, you do NOT have to comment on every story to have your vote count. However, if you have not done the above, you'll need to leave a minimum 25 word comment on each entry in order to have your vote count. Please do not copy and paste your comments. We want original comments for each story. We reserve the right to disallow votes that appear to be trying to avoid the rules.

Now, for those not required to leave a comment...please consider doing so anyway. You know, as an author yourself, how important it is to get feedback.

Reading Start Date: May 11, 2014

Reading End Date: May 31, 2014

Information about voting will be posted at the end of the Reading Phase.

STORIES:

Black by Pearl Jam
Before He Cheats
Kung Fu Fighting
Por Una Cabeza
Take the Pill by Emilie Autumn
Take My Breath Away by Berlin
I Think We're Alone Now
Almost Paradise by Ann Wilson/Mike Reno
I Wanna' Fuck You
Ultimate Devotion
Love Bites
State Fair
Born To Be Wild
The Werewolf
Seduced
Roxanne

 

16 stories and only one appears to be of a song that I am even aware of. This is a good chance to expand my already wide music appreciation.

Now to find the time to read all those stories (what a chuckle - ME finding time to read a short story).

 

.

 

Glad to see you caught my good side this morning. And here I assumed the mirror cracking meant it would be a bad day...

 

How? Which one? I can't even think which is the most obvious from this list... there are a lot that are songs I don't know on there. However, the four most famous ones I expected everyone to at least have a passing acquaintance with (Roxanne by the Police, Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf, Kung Fu Fighting and Take My Breath Away) I also knew The Pearl Jam song (as I was a kid growing up in the 90s) and Almost Paradise as its one of those 80s songs I expect most people to have heard fairly regularly. I also knew Werewolf because its an old song covered by a bunch of people I knew one version while the author used a different one.

 

Well, having taken a preliminary look through the stories, commented on a few, and came to this conclusion:

As usual, when the voting phase comes, its going to be a tough nut to crack in narrowing down the entries.

 

Agreed.

Guess I'll start the ball rolling:

We need to be able to vote for more than one entry.​

As usual, there's too much good stuff here to narrow it down to a single individual favorite. I've only read a few quickly so far, but that much is obvious.

 

Even if we had a pool of points to spread over multiple stories I would be hard pressed to judge this time around. I'm already seeing some of the stories are subtle in their themes, or have some little twist here or there. I think there are at least two new authors present in this competition, though I cannot be sure.

Unlike most previous CAW's I am going to try and give a more detailed analysis of each story as I see it, both the good and the bad. Though given the length of some, it may take a few posts to get to all of it.

Forgot to add: We need to be able to vote for more than one entry.​

 

forgive me - I have a passing knowledge of TWO songs: Born To Be Wild and Kung Fu Fighting and one of those is passing in the night going opposite directions on the interstate.

 

Now I don't feel so bad for not knowing a lot of the songs on the list.

It's unfortunate that we didn't get any stories based on classical/purely instrumental songs, like some people hinted about in the other thread. I was seriously considering writing a story to Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," but I didn't feel up to the task.

On the other hand, we can all be relieved that no one wrote a story to Disco Duck!:excited:

 

Be glad I gave up on my Scuzz Twittly story, too.

[YOUTUBE]gscM2vpUXIc[/YOUTUBE]

 

Not for lack of trying.

 

Details will be forthcoming, as we get closer to the voting stage, but, I can tell you that you'll be able to vote for three entries. Happy?

--Horse

 

Out of curiosity, are you going with the 5-3-1 system you mentioned on the other thread?

 

Crikey moses, we've got to vote for three stories?

I've read all of them - oyessirindeedihave!! I shall comment on each and every one and keep my eyes open for the voting phase announcement before setting a reminder - not that I'm forgetful or anything...:laughing:

 

Roughly halfway finished with the initial reading and commentary. Some stories are so detailed and woven so well, I'll be making follow-on comments as something new comes to the fore, and is deemed worthy of mention.

 

I'm finished with round one of reading, I may go back and read some of them again as time permits.

I do have an idea for a "speculation" phase. Perhaps one or two days after the voting is closed, before a winner is announced we could have a thread where we all put down our guesses as to who wrote what. I'm 99.9% sure about one story, and 50% sure about a few others. I'd love to see how wrong we all can be.

 

Okay, if my tally is correct, I have finished the initial round of commentary and reading.

1. This CAW, as with most others, is not going to be an easy one for narrowing down the final to-vote-for list. I feel the quality and diversity of entries is that good.

2. I only found two stories which were dropped from consideration, and three that, while I did not get into them due to the nature of their content, still are worth due consideration. I prefer to not eliminate a story on the first, or even the second, read through, but of the two, one is due to context and subject material, the other is mostly due to its length and inconsistencies.

Now comes the next hard part:

Smashing my way through the narrowed list, long as it is, and to find some means to narrow it down even further: assuming such is possible.

 

If I recall correctly such a 'speculation phase' has been considered in the past: I think there was a stink raised over it as nearly everyone wanted to know who won.

It might be nice to have an informal guessing game just before closure of the voting phase; though given my near 100% failure rate at guessing the stories/authors, I might pass on attempting to guess most of them.

 

Everybody's epic failure at guessing correctly would be funny, I think.