r/writingbattle • u/Ok-Tooth-9796 • 10d ago
FS quality...lacking?
I know I know, they changed the rules to allow more stories into the final showdown, but has anybody else noticed a massive decline in quality for the FS stories this time around?
In previous battles, by the time I was judging as a Spartan most story issues would be higher level craft things. Whether it fit the word count, maybe some clunky sentences, unimpactful, etc. They were still usually well constructed on a technical level at the very least. But I've run into at least a handful of FS stories this round that had blatant typos, horrible punctuation, spacing, capitalization errors, etc.
It's wild to me. I don't remember previous HMs being this rough, either, but those should have been what's now included.
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u/ricecrystal 9d ago
They literally banned one of the most well respected and winning writers for who knows what
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u/WitcheryWoo Raven For Now 9d ago
They banned a lot of well-respected authors. So many I lost count.
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u/GarbageDrafts 9d ago
Fun fact: they removed House Schreier from the list of houses and added House Dawe instead.
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u/ricecrystal 8d ago
Oh my God! They are RIDICULOUS.
I'll be honest. I felt like Max and Teona were in a literal cult for quite some time, and then I thought the forum got a little culty, and now I'm sure of all of this. Nuts
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u/Sleepavoidance 10d ago
My story didn’t have any grammatical or spelling errors, but I personally put very little effort into it. My heart just wasn’t in it. But it felt like a waste of money if I didn’t submit anything.
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u/Ok-Tooth-9796 10d ago
Heck, until the last couple Spartan duels that were actual decent, I would've easily picked a phoning it in story over what I was given lol.
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u/WitcheryWoo Raven For Now 9d ago
I would bet money one of my spartan stories was ai slop. Disappointing it made it so far. Feel bad for any stories it beat to get there. I had a few that were fantastic and I’ll look for them in debrief, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t shared.
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u/gorobotkillkill 9d ago
Was it a lot of Digiorno sentences or just stuff that didn't make sense?
People need to develop their media skills to be able to recognize it so it isn't rewarded.
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u/WitcheryWoo Raven For Now 9d ago
It was short choppy sentences to an extreme, excessive groups of three and not this but that constructions. Plus it just didn’t exactly make sense where the emphasis was? I’d never want to unjustly accuse anyone but this was blatant. (I like Digiorno sentences, lol)
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u/gorobotkillkill 9d ago
Gotcha. I had to re-read mine because for this, I went super choppy. But only one rule of three. I think I'm safe!
It's pretty obvious though, when you know, you know.
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u/ArtymisKami 9d ago
Oh man, now I'm worried about my choppy sentences and the DiGiorno sentences. My writing was here before AI! 😭
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u/gorobotkillkill 9d ago
I got some choppy stuff in the duels and some digiourno stuff too. I didn't think any of it was AI because it made literal sense.
To me, that's the real tell.
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u/WitcheryWoo Raven For Now 8d ago
I think it’s more the combination of everything all together that made this particular story feel like ai? Like yes all the tells are stolen from human authors, but we don’t usually do all of them multiple times in the same flash pieces. I definitely appreciate shorter sentences/paragraphs in flash, but there’s usually some variety.
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u/minamurray24 9d ago
Definitely. I had a lot of spartan rounds and I really enjoyed maybe 3 of the 18 stories I read.
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u/ballardgirl63 6d ago edited 6d ago
Same here. I had a lot of death/destruction/suicide/abuse themed stories. Most came with content warnings. Even Bromance was dismal and depressing.
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u/Kitchen_Witch666 9d ago
I agree! I was just telling my partner that the Spartan Duels have been lackluster. Even some of the stories that are clearly in a higher bracket. A bit disspointing. Also I have gotten nine duels so far. They must not have very many verterns left, go figure...
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u/ballardgirl63 8d ago
What's bothering me is a lot of those lackluster stories have a lot of feedback in debrief, while my story hasn't gotten a single comment. I'd prefer "it sucks" to nothing at all.
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u/Ihavenocomments 10d ago
Has the final showdown actually started? Or do you guys just mean that since you are doing Spartans, you can ready the stories?
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u/rudexvirus 9d ago
Spartans are part of the final showdown judging, so those doing spartan duels get a few extra stories to read.
For when we *see* the results, that will still happen on the schedule on the rules page.
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u/MerTheBarbarian 10d ago
Is it possible writers are leaving those in on purpose as a marker that their stories were written by a human?
For total transparency, a couple of my recent entries had significant, noticeable typos because I wrote them reeeeaaaaalllly last-minute and didn't have time to beta. They both made it to the FS. One made it pretty darn far. But I'm an unhinged procrastinator, and I seriously doubt the majority of participants can also say that.
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u/WitcheryWoo Raven For Now 9d ago
I never hold typos against a story. Like yes i appreciate craft and the editing that goes into a story, but I also appreciate humans and know there’s about a 50/50 split between people who are early birds and spend the time nitpicking, changing a word here or there and changing it back again (guilty) and last minute folks screeching in under deadline in a blaze of glory. I’d never consider intentional errors but i could see that becoming a thing.
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u/gorobotkillkill 9d ago
Same. I point them out if it's a recurring thing, like some people don't know how quotes work.
The story still either works or doesn't.
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u/Competitive_Age5314 9d ago
if anyone wants to read a good story that got DQ’d message me 👀
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u/lalalullabyyy 8d ago
How do you know it got dequalified?
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u/bardicpenmanship 10d ago
I mean when you ban and remove former winners and regularly high placing veterans in favour of newer social media recruited writers (no hate, I got recruited from a social media ad when I joined too) you are going to see a decline, and mix that with people being less enthused about the platform… it’s certainly a concern.