Gauging interest for before-and-after contributions

[Dominator]

I am interested in putting together a set of before-and-afters, like those end-of-year ones written by John Lawrence or those found here. I do not have an event in mind for these, but I figure it would be nice to have them for moderator scrimmages at invitationals or nationals or something. As such, I do not have a deadline in mind, but I'd like to finish this before the school year starts up again.

I am looking for people to contribute half-packets of 12 tossups. I will then edit and assemble the contributions.

The style should be that every answer line combines an academic and a trash answer line. The distribution of academic answer lines should follow ACF distribution (but only half of it), and the trash answer lines should follow (half of) a reasonable trash distribution. I will trust writers to adhere to the spirit of those guidelines, especially when rounding the number of questions in a particular category up or down, to encourage interesting questions that lots of people will enjoy.

If you are interested in submitting a half-packet or you would like to play the questions at some point, please post in this thread.

[RexSueciae]

I'm interested in writing and/or playing this event.

[alexdz]

This sounds pretty fun and a good way for me to exercise my creative writing chops. I'd be up for trying to write if my schedule cooperates.

[Louis XIV and Twenty Million Henchmen]

I'd also be interested.

[The Lutes of Dependency]

This is fantastic! What is the target difficulty?

[Lighthouse Expert Elinor DeWire]

I'm down to write for this. I'm also up for this task. Which makes me ... ?

[Dominator]

Excellent! Thanks in advance for your contributions.

I will lay out my expectations for submissions here. If you have any questions, please post them in this thread.
(1) I would like these questions by September 1. These sorts of questions are fun to write and can generally go quickly. Also, if we wait until next season starts, we'll get distracted with other things. So let's get them out of the way this summer.
(2) Every clue should actually combine both answerlines. For example, in my tossup on Blues Brothers Grimm, the leadin was "An early version of this group’s most famous work, which was found in the church of St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud, is called the Olenberg Manuscript". The Olenberg Manuscript is a Brothers Grimm clue (it was found in a church, btw) and St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud is a church in Blues Brothers. This is nice for two reasons: (a) the aesthetics of actually writing a clues about a hypothetical double-thing instead of two more or less separable things (b) increasing playability by making clues for each half come up equally often.
(3) I was asked about the target difficulty. Basically, before-and-afters are hard to play anyway. You'll rarely see an impressively early buzz. It's simply hard to figure out two things in one question. So, you should not go out of your way trying to make things difficult. Try to find two well-known answers, one trash and one academic, and have fun combining them.
(4) The length should be 600 to 700 characters. Since every clue is made from the contents of two clues, questions will fill up quickly. These questions are hard enough to play by their nature. Do not let yourself include too many early clues, and follow a steeper-than-average clue gradient.
(5) My only advice in constructing these questions is to start with your giveaway. For example, when I wrote on water polonium, I started out by looking through the periodic table trying to find something the build on. Once "water polonium" popped into my head, I needed to figure out how I would describe it: do I call it a game or do I call it an element? I decided that the giveaway would be "game with chemical symbol H20Po", and from there the question basically wrote itself.

I look forward to seeing your questions! Thanks again!

[mattfleischer]

I have completed a packet for this and have emailed it to your IMSA email. If for any reason you need it sent elsewhere, let me know!

[alexdz]

Any word on if these will get played/scrimmaged at any tournaments? I'm itching to hear what other people wrote.

[Dominator]

Great question. I sort of forgot about this project after putting it on the back burner for a while. I should be able to finish it fairly soon since there were only three completed half-packets. When would people want to hear them? If nothing else, we can put them in Wodern Morld 2.

[Joshua Rutsky]

Dr. Prince-

I have a short (24 question) packet of pretty bad but possibly salvageable mash-up questions that I wrote for a local bar trivia night. Objects were thrown, leading me to believe that the packet has potential. I'll send them to you and if you can use them, please feel free.

[Dominator]

Coach Rutsky: That sounds great! I figured at this point that I'll just throw in the packets I have with Wodern Morld 2, so these can go in there.

[Peter13]

I was already was in the middle of a mashup side-event when I saw this post. It will eventually include 60 tossups of about high school difficulty, with an academic distribution. I was originally going to have it as a side-event for MacVanity III, but could add it to this after the event commences.

[Dominator]

Hey, remember this thread?

Well, I ended up getting a few submissions, and took my sweet time editing them. I now have a 3-half-packet set with contributions from Alex Dzurick, Matt Fleischer, and me with several replacement tossups by Vasa Clarke. If you want them, PM or email me.