A reminder of the critiquing rules:
- Each comment must begin with YES or NO, followed by a brief explanation of WHY you were either hooked (YES) or not hooked (NO).
- YES or NO comments without an explanation behind them WILL BE DISCOUNTED.
- Only ONE comment per reader per entry! Multiple comments by the same person on the same entry will be ignored.
- NO ANONYMOUS COMMENTS! Please use your regular screen name or Blogger account (if you have one).
Critiquing will close at midnight this Saturday (any comments that trickle in after then will not be counted toward the totals). The 15 entries with the most YES critiques will move on to Round Two.
Okay, let's do this thing!
This is such a cool idea. I wish I would've seen it right away. I would've tried to get in.
ReplyDeleteI'm ready!
ReplyDeleteJust have a bit of concern over the voting for this. I don't have one entered, but I follow your blog and these popped up. It's a really neat idea, but as I read through them, I noticed it seemed a bit odd. Some people had 28 or 39 or 30 comments and others had forty and more.
ReplyDeleteI'm just wondering what's preventing someone from telling their friends to say "yes" to their line just to move forward. It seems as though all the enteries should have the same amount of comments. I feel bad, because some of the ones with less comments are really good.
Kirsty -- Every crit round and contest I run shows this same disparity. Certains "chunks" of entries get fewer crits than others, and it has much to do with the entries' position on the blog. (For instance, those smack in the middle may get fewer responses than those at either end, because many critters will either start at the top or at the bottom).
ReplyDeleteThere really isn't anything I can do about it. And there isn't anything I can do people asking their friends to vote, either. I posted the rules, and that's as far as I can go. I'm SO not going to start trying to police things behind the scenes!
I just got finished voting (on every single entry, btw). This was really fun and extremely useful. I've always known whether a first line grabbed me, but I've never sat down and forced myself to analyze my own reaction before. This was a really great learning experience for me.
ReplyDeleteAs far as entries getting different numbers of votes... Discounting friends showing up to vote for friends, I imagine that people who aren't voting on everything are at least giving their top fifteen yes votes and possibly the ones they really hated no votes, and ignoring the ones in between (which I assume would be no, anyway). That sort of means number of totals votes is irrelevant. It's only the Yes votes that count.
On the bright side, I think I've finally figured out how to read the authentication codes. It's weird how they're *almost* words.
Thank you for the great writing exercise! I wasn't going to do this because I didn't have time (and I still don't), but I learned so much from reading and critiquing the first-liners, and from reading what grabs (or doesn't) the other readers, it was well worth it. Interesting and informative! Can't wait for Round Two!
ReplyDeleteI thought it would take forever, but it didn't, and like Heather said above, I've never forced myself to sit down and analyze why a first line works for me, or doesn't. Very useful, and I can't wait to see which ones make it to Round 2!
ReplyDeleteI'm noticing a lot of Anonymous comments. Are you going to delete them, or just discount them when counting?
ReplyDeleteUnless I have something constructive, I'm only commenting on the ones I'd vote Yes for. Since the Yeses are what matter in this (obvious constructive crits aside), if I can't add anything, I'm not adding No's. Maybe others are doing this as well on some of the entries, and that's why the numbers on some are lower.
Ugh, really? As in a LOT?
ReplyDeleteBleh.
Not sure what I'll do with those. :(
Okay, I looked again, and it isn't A LOT, but there's 6 or so of them. One entry has 2 yes votes that are both from anon sources, so that sucks for them if they can't be counted.
ReplyDeleteJust thought I'd point it out.