Rebecca Scoble
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Welcome, Tofu! We’re happy to have you :D
Your arcade comic was great, btw!
Princess Jellyfish is THE BEST! I love that show so much. More series about weirdo girl nerds, please!
Finishing anime is really hard–especially if you’re watching with subs, you have to pay complete attention and who has time for that? That’s why I’ve been trying to watch things as they come out–I can handle 23 minutes a week, less so catching up with some 52 episode series. Lianne and I watched some of Yowamushi Pedal and were enjoying it, but that was a lot of hours of anime to introduce four characters and show two bike races.
I’ll have to look up 50% off–I’ll happily admit that I’m enjoying Free season 2, but there’s definitely a lot to make fun of in the average episode.
Maybe you have a bit less than a month to wait :D
We haven’t announced it anywhere that official yet, but we’re changing our publishing schedule next month. So Awake 10 is coming sooner than you’d expect.
Just so you know, I recorded some Naveen dialogue today. Does that count as a teaser? :D
Oh man, take care of yourself, Neila! As someone with a big history of repetitive stress injuries, I know how miserable it is dealing with pain every time you want to work on your art. So keeping yourself as pain-free as possible is the most important thing! I hope things improve for you soon.
I like the idea of a writing contest, though I think restricting the word count to 500 or 1000 words is important–both to make it possible to judge entries fairly easily, and to level the playing field between really fast writers and people who construct their stories more slowly. Also, I think flash fiction is really fun–I love to see how people set up a scene and characters in such short stories. They can be such good idea generators for longer works, too :D
I also think, any rights issues aside, it’s more fun to do this kind of contest with original characters than fanfiction. It’s a little weird to judge original fiction and fanfiction against each other (especially with a short prompt, since fanfic doesn’t need to establish characters the way original fic does), and I think if you have to choose one original fiction is the way to go.
Anyway, go ahead and announce a writing prompt. I assume you were planning to do it for the month of August? That’s fine with us.
The internet will also never forget the time you posted the pun about stabbing :D
Thanks, NoNane! We’re excited to have another print book on the way!
When you find yourself agreeing with Travis, that’s a very bad sign.
:D
Ooh, I love all the theories! Rosa is awfully suspicious, isn’t she? :D :D :D
I wish I could taunt you with tiny details, but we’re getting too close to the mystery being revealed…
Heh heh heh…very interesting theories!
Re: Rosa…as a general rule, if you think any character in Awake is a functioning person without any major issues, you just haven’t listened far enough yet :D
Hey everybody, just a reminder–all audio pitches are due at 11:59 (EST) on Sunday night. I can’t wait to read everyone’s pitches!
:D :D :D
And that’s all I can say about that.
Official Sparkler policy is to make listeners/readers flip out with feelings at least once per chapter. So I’m glad to see it’s working! :D
Hey Najela, I think you’re closer with this pitch than you were with your last one, but I worry that you’re trying to do too much at once. This feels like two separate stories crammed together–a 20’s mafia heist/chase story, and a supernatural powers/zombie story–and even those two plotlines are made up of a lot of very different elements, some of which conflict with each other. Do you have a plan for how all these elements are going to connect to each other without feeling scattered and random? I can hypothetically see this story working, but it would take EXTREMELY deft storytelling to get all the background worldbuilding out, and strong unifying threads tying everything together. Remember, right now we’re looking for a story that’s fairly short and self-contained, which makes this an even harder sell for this particular round of submissions.
My suggestion is to simplify this as much as you possibly can. Think about your story, and decide what’s the most compelling part of it–the strongest idea or relationship–and cut everything except that concept and any necessary story elements that strengthen and feed into that concept. For example, if you thought the strongest part of this story was the relationship between the reformed criminals and the detectives chasing them, you could cut the supernatural aspect entirely and come up with a mundane way for Iona to reform herself, and focus entirely on the chase and the antagonistic cops and robbers relationship. If you think the supernatural aspect creates the best plot, you could either cut the detectives or have them team up with the criminals early on to deal with the zombie menace–if Iona’s powers caused the zombie problem, finding a way for her to fix it sounds like a goal that would make sense.
A storytelling trick that might help you zero in on your story–you should be able to describe your plot in one sentence. Right now, from the description you gave I can’t even really tell what the main conflict is. I think there’s something in here that could work, but focusing and refining your ideas will give you a much better shot.
Hey brianwithcheese, I think this second plot has a much better chance of working for Sparkler. It’s an interesting idea that could go either very funny or very dark, bring up some interesting ideas, etc. My big suggestion for you and anyone else writing comedies (based on some similar pitches I’ve received) is to make sure the humor always serves the story–don’t let yourself get caught up in long, jokey tangents, make sure the story is always moving forward, and CUT MERCILESSLY anything that doesn’t fit, no matter how great the material is.
Note to everyone: because multiple people have asked me for extensions and it seems like the end of this month is falling at a bad time for everyone, the deadline for audio pitches has been moved back to Sunday, March 9th. I think the due date falling on a Friday has ended up being a problem for a lot of people, and I’d rather wait a week and let people write me the best pitches they can.
Hi Brianwithcheese, thank you for pitching your story! Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re on the right track with this one–this premise simply feels too young for us. The main elements of this story are all so tied to YA and children’s literature that I think it would be very difficult to age the story up enough to work in Sparkler. I can see an adaptation of this premise working well as a story for kids, maybe, but it would be very hard to write it in a way that older teenagers or adults would enjoy.
Your pitch also doesn’t mention any story elements I haven’t heard many times before. You do leave things open enough that the specifics of the adventure could feel more innovative, but what you’ve told me here so far feels like treading the same ground as a hundred other stories written for elementary and middle school kids. We don’t have any problem with people using common tropes, but some element of your story needs to go beyond them.
Sorry to give you bad news, but you’re welcome to try another pitch here if you’d like. If you aren’t sure how to get away from that young-YA feel, I suggest forgetting about teenagers for now and trying to write something with adult characters.
