Hi all! I've been trying to brainstorm on some ideas to help get members more active in our forum, as well as give the members that are active some extra fun and new challenges this summer. I've got a few ideas, and while some may take a while to pull off, I'm going to see what I can do. I did want to share my ideas with everyone and get feedback on which of them you'd all like to see, as well as find out what ideas you all have also. :) --We have the Writers forum challenge in the contests every month, but I'd like to add some smaller type challenges directly into the forum from time to time. These would be for all to participate if they wanted too. There would be no winners, just some feedback from each other. I think this would help all of us in many ways, and it can be a lot of fun too. --I'd also like to have a joint challenge or something with one of the other galleries. Something like this was mentioned in a previous thread, and I think it's a great idea. If we could figure out to organize a challenge either joint with one other forum (i.e. poser or 2d) or just with all forums who wanted to participate, to have them illustrate our writing in some way. I'm still trying to figure out a way to do this where it would work well for everyone. So, I'll talk to some of the contest managers as well as the Mod and Admin over the contest area to see if something like this would be a possibility. --Once upon a time there was an in tandem story being written by people in the forum. I never was able to participate in the writing of it, but reading it was a blast. I'm not sure what ever happened to it, or if it was just finished or people lost interest, but, if others wanted we could start up another one of those. Lastly, I just wanted to apologize for being a bit absent lately. I've had a lot of things going on, and while I have been here and have been checking in, I've not been posting much. I am going to try to be better about that. I am always open to suggestions and ideas, so please feel free to drop me an PM or post in the forum. Midrael or I are usually always around somewhere, so we should be able to get back to you fairly quickly. Thanks a bunch everyone! You all are great! Diana Writers Mod.

I am not sure what you mean by an in Tandem story, but I am a member of a radio forum in RSA and we have a posting where members all get to write a story by adding their sentence to follow on from where the last member left off. The end result was hilarious to read. This brought a lot of would be writers out of the closet as well.

Great ideas! Lookling forward to seeing how the summer develops. :)

Re: SusiQ... That is sort of what in tandem is. Each person in order adds a paragraph to the story. :) It makes it hilarious and always keeps everyone on their toes. :)

I'd like to see more playing with a variety of meters and poetic forms. Most people can write iambic tetrameter (to judge by how much can be sung to the tune of Greensleeves!), but more decorative feet are ignored and the alliterative verse forms are pretty well neglected. By more decorative, I mean rhythms like those underlying "The Highwayman", "The Bells", "Song of Hiawatha", "The Lady of Shallot", etc., where they grab the reader and pull him/her along with the running words. The non-rhyming forms use the sound and weight of the syllables to frame the sense of the poem. The exact number of syllables isn't important, but the stresses and alliterations have to be in the right places. Just as haikus and sonnets tend to be on more serious subjects than are limericks, heroic age poetry had metric forms for regular stories, epics, and magical/mythological chants. If we had more practice and familiarity with a wide variety of verse types, we'd know what to reach for when a story needed to be dressed in poetic clothing. There are so many verse forms, that one a week would keep us busy for a loooooong time! Carolly

Diana, I love your idea of a joint theme challenge Sometimes I read a poem or a story and think wow, I wish someone would illustrate this. Or sometimes I see a great picture in the galleries that inspires a story or poem inside my head. I don't know how but I think it would be cool if we collaborate with the other galleries. The tandem story idea sounds fun!

I posted a suggestion for a cross-forum challenge, combining writing and art, both here and in Challenge Forum, and nobody responded. (It is 4 posts above this thread.) I'd have expected at least a yelp, if not an amendment or two. :sigh: I have houseguests arriving in a few days, so while we are gone, I'll try to think of a few more interesting things to try. Carolly