What follows is Fourth Fiction in its entirety from the pre-competition month on Twitter to Round 1 through Round 12, which features the winning post.

Pre-Competition Month on Twitter

Although the contest began on August 4th, the contestants all wrote on the Fourth Fiction Twitter page over the month of July as a way of introducing themselves to each other and to the readers. I’ve compiled their tweets in the posts below. For a more detailed explanation about the Twitter posts click here.

VIDEO: Fourth Fiction launch

Contestants’ First Ten Days on Twitter

VIDEO: Pre-Contest Literary Dares

Roundup of the Ten Literary Dares

VIDEO: Pre-Contest Chain Story

The Chain Story

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*The links below don’t refer to contestants by their names but rather by numbers corresponding to the order of posting. The first writer to post in a round is referred to as “Contestant 1,” the second “Contestant 2,” etc, such that one number isn’t consistently assigned to any particular writer.

Round 1 Video -- “Fire”

Write the opening sentence of your novella.

Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4
Contestant 5
Host
Contestant 6
Contestant 7
Contestant 8
Contestant 9
Contestant 10
Contestant 11
Contestant 12

Round 2 Video -- “Canoeing”

Write your opening paragraph. It should be about interactions over the web. (300 words)

Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell
Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4
Contestant 5
Contestant 6
Contestant 7
Contestant 8
Contestant 9
Contestant 10
Contestant 11

Round 3 Video -- “Speakers’ Corner”

Incorporate the death of a dog into your next passage. (400 words)

Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell
Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4
Contestant 5
Contestant 6
Contestant 7
Contestant 8
Contestant 9
Contestant 10

Round 4 Video -- “US Open (Tennis)”

Weave an element of Fyor’s story into your passage. (450 words)

Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4
Contestant 5
Contestant 6
Contestant 7
Contestant 8
Contestant 9

Round 5 Video -- “Poker and Magic”

Incorporate this image into your next passage. (500 words)

Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell
Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4
Contestant 5
Contestant 6
Contestant 7
Contestant 8

Round 6 Video -- “Lebowski Fest”

Incorporate a White Russian and the words “over the line” into your next passage. (500 words)

Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4
Contestant 5
Contestant 6
Contestant 7
Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell

Round 7 Video -- “Blessing of the Animals”

The Round 7 challenge is different for each contestant. See video for details. (600 words)

Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell
Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4
Contestant 5
Contestant 6

Round 8 Video -- “Frogs and Torture”

The readers assigned the Round 8 challenges. See this post for details. (600 words)

Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4
Contestant 5
Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell

Round 9 Video -- “Biking and the City”

1) Incorporate a hoax; 2) Incorporate a revelation; 3) Incorporate the number four; 4) Incorporate Stephen Colbert. (444 words)

Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell
Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3
Contestant 4

Round 10 Video -- “Marathon and Masquerade”

Kill off one of your characters (1200 words)

Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell
Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Contestant 3

Round 11 Video -- “The Video Challenge”

Put your main character in danger in a new and hostile environment. There should be a struggle for survival through which new aspects of his or her personality are revealed (1500 words).

Contestant 1
Contestant 2
Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell

Round 12 Video* -- “Tournament Final”

*I asked commenters to send a video or photo of themselves for inclusion in this YouTube. Also, there was a change in the season finale timetable.

Assign the challenge to yourself. It should be the most challenging one of them all (no word limit).

Eliminated Contestant’s Farewell

VIDEO: Stephen Fry Congratulates the Fourth Fiction Winner

FOURTH FICTION FINALE

*              *              *              *

And for those of you crazy enough to have made it through the entire season, you can mull over the season a little more with a final Fourth Fiction cryptographic wrap up.

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Polls

The readers voted off writers along the way. Click on the following links to see the poll results. The first poll was for the favorite writer during the pre-competition month on Twitter (the winner was exempted from the first round of elimination voting). In the final four polls, the readers voted for their favorite contestants. The contestant who received the least votes was eliminated.

Pre-Contest Vote for your Favorite Poll
1st Elimination Poll
2nd Elimination Poll
3rd Elimination Poll
4th Elimination Poll
5th Elimination Poll
6th Elimination Poll
7th Elimination Poll
8th Elimination Poll
9th Elimination Poll
10th Elimination Poll
11th (Final) Elimination Poll

]]> http://www.fourthnight.com/2009/12/fourth-fiction-complete-season/feed/ 0 http://www.fourthnight.com/2009/12/radio-interview-about-fourth-fiction/ http://www.fourthnight.com/2009/12/radio-interview-about-fourth-fiction/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:39:13 +0000 Constantine Markides http://www.fourthnight.com/?p=3606 Cyrus Webb of Conversations LIVE! Radio interviewed me about Fourth Fiction on Monday, Dec. 14th. You can listen to the full one-hour interview HERE. (Don’t ask what I was getting at in my first response…)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZLDX9ATiF8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP2O3mkJJOk

See the YouTube video of the Fourth Fiction Launch for an overview of the reality show. You can also read the initial competition announcement for more details or see the ‘Similar Posts’ links below. Anyone interested in being an outside participant to the competition should read the Open Call post.

THE CHAIN STORY

HOST: It was a dark and stormy night. There was a knock on the door.12:00 AM Jul 25th from webOMAR: The rain whipped in gusts against the windows. There was another knock. But louder. She couldn’t remember if she had locked the door.2:43 AM Jul 25th from TwitterFonCOCO: She thought of man who humiliated her last night. She hated herself for giving in to him. For enjoying it. Was it him at door?10:49 AM Jul 25th from webOLAF: The knocking stopped. Then the phone rang. She yanked the plug. It was a stupid thing to do. Almost as stupid as not getting caller ID12:05 PM Jul 25th from webFIDO: wasnt till knocking & ringing stopped she remembered she’d ordered pizza. Damn! Hot dogs again. While squeezing mustard, another knock1:02 PM Jul 25th from UberTwitterTUCK: “Enough pansying around,” she thought. She finished her dog, wiped her mouth, grabbed a butcher knife and went to the door.1:50 PM Jul 25th from webNORA: She looked through the peephole. A girl stood there, alone, soaking wet. She hid the knife in the wall cabinet and opened the door.2:58 PM Jul 25th from TwitterBerryIGOR: As if defying the slanting torrent, stripping the ancient sky gods of power, the girl stood unmoved in her own puddle. She was blind.6:22 PM Jul 25th from webISIS: Willow asked where she came from, who she was. The girl maintained a holy silence. So Willow took her hand, kissed it, and led her in.7:40 PM Jul 25th from webUTAH: Willow walked her to the bathroom, turned on the shower. She then fetched some of her daughter’s clothing. She had kept all of it.8:45 PM Jul 25th from webTESS: The girl took the clothes from Willow. “Your daughter is dead, isn’t she?” There was a pause. “So you do speak,” Willow finally said.9:17 PM Jul 25th from TwitterrificRHAE: “Just because I’m blind, doesn’t mean I can’t see.”11:17 PM Jul 25th from webCOCO: What arrogant girl. I bet she can’t see stains on bed. The tears. The struggle. The pleasure. Children think they know everything.3:28 AM Jul 26th from webNORA: “Yes, my daughter Sarah passed away four years ago,” Willow said. She noticed the girl stiffened. “Where are your parents?”9:18 AM Jul 26th from TweetDeckISIS: “They are resting with your daughter, waiting for us. But it’s not our time yet. We have a journey to go on. Thus spoke the oracle.”1:30 PM Jul 26th from webFIDO: Oracle? Damn this girl was a trip, yo! But willow dug her. So they left the next morning. On the road they met w/ a pack of thieves…3:29 PM Jul 26th from UberTwitterTESS: The thieves bound their wrists and began blindfolding them. “You don’t need to do this,” the girl said calmly. They missed the irony.4:21 PM Jul 26th from web

IGOR: A man tore the blindfolds off them. A cave. Weapons. Loot. Three dozen or so armed men. “This way”, he said. “Ali Baba is waiting.”6:45 PM Jul 26th from web

NEXT PAGE →

www.youtube.com/watch?v=awUi_nrhS84

See the YouTube video of the Fourth Fiction Launch for an overview of the reality show. You can also read the initial competition announcement for more details or see the ‘Similar Posts’ links below. Anyone interested in being an outside participant to the competition should read the Open Call post.

Fourth Fiction Dare 1: Write a caption for this cartoon

Each Fourth Fiction pre-contest dare was posted at midnight on the Fourth Fiction Twitter page between July 14th and July 24th. The contestants had 24 hours to respond to each dare. The outside responses by non-contestants are also included (after the contestants’ responses) in many of the posts. For more details about these pre-contest literary dares, see this video.

The 10 Dares

DARE 1 -- Come up with a caption for this cartoon.

DARE 2 -- Tweet a story that involves an act of cannibalism.

DARE 3 -- Write something from the perspective of a sperm.

DARE 4 -- Write an alternate ending to the fairy tale “Three Little Pigs.”

DARE 5 -- Write a sex scene that incorporates a Michael Jackson song title.

DARE 6 -- Make a rhyme that includes the words “Obama” and “Osama” without using any vowels besides “o” and “a” (no “y”s allowed)

DARE 7 -- Write a Twister, a short story of 140 characters, in the style of @arjunbasu (140 char includes #4thfiction tag)

DARE 8: Write a caption that relates to current news

DARE 8 -- Write a caption for this cartoon that relates to current news.

DARE 9 -- Write an elegy to the Taco Bell Chihuahua, who died today.

DARE 10 -- Begin with the words “It was a dark and stormy night”

As of today, July 14, there will be pre-contest literary challenges known as ‘dares’ posted at midnight EST each day on the Fourth Fiction Twitter page. The contestants will now write a maximum of one tweet per day and only in response to the dare. Watch this brief video for details: 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hvr5Wq8pkg

See the YouTube video of the Fourth Fiction Launch for an overview of the reality show. You can also read the initial competition announcement for more details or see the ‘Similar Posts’ links below. Anyone interested in being an outside participant to the competition should read the Open Call post.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXKK4E9TmM

You can read the initial competition announcement for more details or see the ‘Similar Posts’ links below. Anyone interested in being an outside participant to the competition should read the Open Call post. 

*If you’d like to link to this website with the following button, please copy and paste the HTML code below (if you want to make the image larger or smaller, just change the width and height):

<a href=”http://www.fourthnight.com” target=”_blank”><img title=”Red Moon” src=”http://annasbones.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/red-moon.jpg” alt=”Red Moon” width=”64″ height=”64″ /></a>

REVIEWS of Fourth Fiction:

Fourth Fiction: The First 10 Days

Fourth Fiction: Yet Another Literary Show

The New Spin on Reality TV

Survival of the Fictionest (in Russian)

Первое реалити-шоу в блоге (another review in Russian)

Fourth Fiction Lit Crit

The competition will begin on August 4th. So why the July Twitter launch? Primarily to introduce the writers to the readers and give them a chance to get to know their fellow contestants (insofar as that’s possible considering their identities will remain undisclosed during the contest). Since Fourth Fiction is a writing-based reality competition, Twitter’s text-based anonymous format is ideal.

I initially intended to have each of the 12 contestants set up a separate Twitter page. I decided against that because it would require readers to keep up with 12 separate pages and it would confuse those unfamiliar with Twitter. Having all the content under one URL simplifies matters. With one page I can also stream a live feed on my website. 

Of course, 12 writers—or rather, 13, since I’ll also be updating as the host—all posting under one username may make for mildly schizophrenic reading. Not much can be done about this. The contestants will identify themselves by a capitalized four-letter name with a colon, which will be appended at the beginning of each Twitter post (giving them 134 characters to work with instead of 140). For example, I will identify myself on the Fourth Fiction Twitter page as HOST:

I also plan to aggregate the tweets of each contestant here on Fourth Night on June 14th, 24th and July 4th so that readers can access all of the Twitter posts from each contestant in one place uninterrupted.

There will also be limits on the number of tweets that each contestant can post so that nobody dominates the feed. It’s my hope that all 12 contestants will participate to some extent in this July pre-competition introduction, but I know that a few of them presently have some reservations, to put it diplomatically, about my having incorporated Twitter into the mix. 

Those who know nothing about Twitter need not sign up to read the posts. Anybody can access the page at http://twitter.com/fourthfiction. For those already on Twitter, if you follow @FourthFiction you will be followed back. (Note for the Twitter-savvy: I’m using #4thnight as the hashtag identifier. If you have suggestions for a better search term, please let me know.) 

You can also follow all of the July pre-competition tweeting without leaving this website. I will have a full live feed of the Fourth Fiction Twitter page running in the sidebar (the abbreviated feed that you currently see to the right is linked to my Fourth Night Twitter page). That way, you can just go to www.fourthnight.com whenever you want to read all of the contestants’ latest Twitter posts. 

On June 14th I issued an open call to anyone interested in being an outside participant in the competition. There was sufficient interest so I plan to go ahead with that. The actual writing contest, which takes place on this website, doesn’t begin until August 4th so there will be more details for outside participants as the date approaches. If you know others who may be interested, please direct them here. They can post a comment under my Open Call post (preferred) or contact me by email.  

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the Obama administration and to state and municipal governments for generously organizing and funding the innumerable firework displays that will take place throughout the U.S. on the night of July 4th to celebrate the launch of Fourth Fiction.

I recently announced that Fourth Night will soon host a blog-based literary reality show-- Fourth Fiction--where twelve writers will vie to complete a short novel while readers vote them off, one by one. After the announcement, a number of other writers expressed interest in participating, which has led me to reconsider the format.

The contestants have already been selected. But I will add a page of links that will direct readers to each guest participant’s web page* where his or her Fourth Fiction responses are posted. For those without websites, I could set up a page where they can post their entries directly, you can always set up a free blogging page at WordPress, Blogger, or any other of the free blogging services.

Obviously these guest participants wouldn’t be competing (although I’m considering forms of integration). But there are advantages to non-competition. Unlike all but one of the contestants, they’ll be able to complete all twelve of the literary tasks since they’re not getting voted off.

Why would anyone want to be a guest participant? Here are a few possible reasons:

• To draw visitors to your website (if you have a website) and to instantly have readers (if you don’t).
• To complete a novel—or, rather, novella—in four months
• To be part of a unique literary project
• To have fun (insofar as the excruciating demands of fiction writing permit it)

Unlike most reality shows, this one is designed to judge writing rather than image or reputation, so the identities of the contestants will remain anonymous during the competition. A guest participant, on the other hand, can choose to be anonymous or not.

Participation is open to anyone, regardless of writing experience. In fact, some of the contestants have never written any fiction. If you feel intimidated or shy (or plain diabolical), just write under a pseudonym.

Although the twelve contestants will be introduced via Twitter on July 4^th, the competition rounds begin on August 4^th and end on December 4^th. The writing challenges—issued on every 4^th, 14^th, and 24^th—won’t require a major time commitment: they’re 21^st century-friendly. Your completed work—which will be the length of a short novella—will have nothing to do with those 19^th century novels that Henry James disparaged as “large loose baggy monsters.” Even if it is a monster, it will be a little one.

And of course you can always drop out anytime you like. There’s no fee to participate so the only thing you have to lose is your pride, which isn’t all that bad considering it’s the most serious of the seven deadly sins.

If you are interested in participating or have suggestions, please comment below or email me.

See the Outside Participants page here.

ADD A BADGE linking to Fourth Fiction

*Guest writers who are participating through their own websites should link back to the Fourth Fiction homepage with one of the following buttons. Just copy and paste the HTML code below your image of choice at the beginning of your posts or as a widget on the sidebar (if you want to make the image larger or smaller, just change the width and height dimensions):

BADGE 1 (64 by 64 pixels)

<a href=”http://www.fourthnight.com”><img title=”Red Moon” src=”http://bit.ly/19j5U6″ alt=”Red Moon” width=”64″ height=”64″ /></a>

——————————————--

BADGE 2 (128 by 128 pixels)

<a href=”http://www.fourthnight.com”><img title=”Red Moon” src=”http://bit.ly/19j5U6″ alt=”Red Moon” width=”128″ height=”128″ /></a>