How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

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How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

Post by csa2125 »

[Inspired by and borrowing from recent conversations with several quizbowl writers]

Is writing a quizbowl question an art form? Is curating a set art? How should we balance the "art' and "accessibility" of the questions and sets we create?

First and foremost, knowing how to make solid "standard" and "bread and butter" questions is important, as people such as Matthew Lehmann correctly emphasize. "The canon" can be a huge limitation on writing, but doesn't have to stifle creative question writing completely by any means. We should definitely balance how we express ourselves in question and set form while considering the audience(s) for whom we write, edit, and curate.

Regarding individual questions, I think the distinction between a "standard" and "creative" question is mostly down to how you diverge from or improve upon or reimagine old questions in positive ways. A "bad but divergent" question isn't always creative, and especially not in the positive sense of the word. Because QB writing is also an art form and form of artistic expression, in my opinion.

See these older threads, among several others, for more:
https://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewt ... 63&t=18646
https://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewt ... 30&t=19855

I see a lot of parallels with short form and constrained writing on a question by question basis: how can I get this across and effectively in so many characters? In addition to the question of getting across the right kind of information in an accessible but not expression-hampering manner. Further, consider the grammatical constraints on your questions, since they have to be read aloud, have a "this X" in there most all the time, etc.

Also, set curation is a subject all of its own. Do I put these related questions nearby each other to emphasize them? Which categories should I represent, how, who should they be accessible too, how do I remain inclusive but control difficulty for gameplay purposes, how do I use humor, etc?

On editing and curation:

When editing, one wants to balance the "writer's vision," "editor's vision," "head editor's vision," and gameplay / accessibility concerns.
Feng shui and gameplay concerns are for sure problemata for doing any creative curation. I think showing similarities across materials from different categories and different regions via question proximity, while balancing gameplay stuff, could be done, for example of a creative way of curating or editing. Within-question creativity is definitely more emphasized than between-question forms of creativity at the moment, but there is certainly room for experimentation in the latter.

Further, more specific examples of [a turn on Vishwa Shanmugan's phrase:] treating the "packet as an artistic medium," and what I began talking with Caroline Mao about not treating questions like they exist in a vacuum, counter to, but not intending to entirely overturn the practical concerns of the prevailing ideas about packet feng shui:

Consider how putting African masks content in the same packet as a Noh bonus (the Japanese dramatic form heavily featuring masks) emphasizing its origins from Shinto rites would be cool, and not affect gameplay too bad unless some one learned everything there is to know about masks for some odd reason (like trying to get QB points :lol:). I'd like to draw attention to the use of masks in originally religious contexts and the changes in their meaning in examples from entire continents away with this curation decision.

Could be some ideas like placing two tossups on audiology and Classical music next to each other, because they appeal to different kinds of player (science, FA, to use the stereotyped roles) but could bring to light their overlap: both touch on sound and sound perception, but in manners based in usually scientific and artistic contexts that usually don't interact directly, or don't appear to interact much that way immediately to most. No obvious gameplay conflict there because of the different categories still having boundaries such that "the audiology question doesn't automatically go to whoever got the classical music question" and vice versa.

The latter inspired an idea of a packet with questions ordered according to the five senses used to perceive the question subject matter (specializing in the 4/4 Taste subdistribution). There are probably some more "artistic" ideas on packet curation and theming that other people will have too, as well as reasonably grounding practical concerns; just wanted to write this thread to spark a good discussion of these ideas, and put some new energy and resources into the writing subcommunity; maybe even get in some fresh blood through inspiring new people to pick up writing for quizbowl!

[I also want to write a separate thread about inclusivity and about accessibility in writing, which are both highly related and highly important, but do feel free to touch on those topics here]
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Re: How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

Post by jmarvin_ »

I want to make a full-scale, perhaps embarrassingly manifesto-like post about quizbowl writing theory once the set Clark, others, and I are working on is released in a year or so, so that I will be able to use our writing to illustrate my points. For now, I'll say just a few quick things. The Westbrookian approach to quizbowl writing as the "ultimate tertiary source," presenting carefully chosen facts of precise levels of obscurity in curated order, is in my estimation a profoundly limited vision for the potential of quizbowl as a medium. There are so many more things that could be done when writing questions than that: one can draw novel and subtle connections between things for the player or reader, introduce people to topics in a way that communicates intrinsic motivation for interest rather than merely relying on the motivator of "getting points for knowing this next time," tacitly highlight and explore themes without explicitly mentioning them, and so on. One can even deliberately and carefully account for lateral thinking in such a way as to reward players still in perfect pyramidal fashion for forms of knowledge otherwise than rote recognition of facts. In my estimation, all of the aforementioned and more can be done without sacrificing the playability of questions at all, though admittedly it will often require great cleverness or effort to balance all these things, and (especially at lower difficulties) it is usually pragmatic to put aside loftier goals and just write solid material.

(Perhaps I am too uncharitable to the Westbrook school here, in which case I apologize, but it's the closest thing to a foil for my personal perspective on the game that I can think of.)

I think quizbowl writing is quite clearly an art form, in the following way: quizbowl writing is to nonfiction writing in general as video games are to film. Quizbowl writing is a dance with the abstracted player, attempting to create certain experiences for another mind. One can make a video game which is a tight and pleasurable mechanical experience to engage with repeatedly, and through which one can have deep and meaningful competitive encounters. One can also make a video game which is a joy to explore aesthetically, full of surprises and ideas, enough that it might subtly change one's life in the way only art can. Some of the best games do both. I don't see why we can't also strive to do both in quizbowl writing.
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Re: How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

This is a great thread! I'd like to discuss my personal experience in trying to bring a good amount of creativity to my questions over the past year. I'd love to talk about just some of the lessons I learned and some of my ideas on what "creative writing" is.

1. Creative questions don't always need a creative answerline.

So one of the biggest things I learned the *hard* way is that having a "cool" question doesn't require you to have a zinger of an answerline. Don't get me wrong, my favorite buzz ever is managing to spit out "the orangutan who kills people in Edgar Allen Poe's the Murders in the Rue Morgue" at my first ICT. However, when I was writing for DECAMERON, I wrote questions that I thought were really nuanced and cool, but just didn't play well. Again, there's a room for these questions, but there's also a lot of room for doing creative questions on core topics. Methods of doing this that have worked for me:

Writing about a very famous person from a different perspective. For instance, modern interpretations of Ancient Greek plays with the play as an answerline. Or famous depictions of a historical figure in art you've probably seen in a textbook or in real life, but haven't been asked about before.

A relevant cut from an important event. Let's say there's always another person, place, or thing mentioned in tandem with a more famous person. Then that thing probably has enough clues or relevance to core topics as well as its own fame that its fair to ask about. This also applies to having questions on things like locations or objects from famous literature. This is one of the reasons why I really really love Shakespeare: there is so much to write about!

2. Expand the Venn Diagram between Quiz Bowl Knowledge and Real-World Knowledge.

Imagine two circles: one is quiz bowl knowledge. We go significantly deeper into different topics than the public (or sometimes even experts) do in their fields. The other circle is harder to describe. I like to think of it as "stuff that is considered very important but just hasn't made it's way into the game, often because it's hard to categorize or just hasn't come up!" An example of this off the top of my head is my TU on Jacques Costeau from ACF Winter 2020. i had never really seen him come up, but he's one of those eclectic dudes that there is a collective knowledge of in society.

My mom is a good litmus test for this. I remember when I would watch Jeopardy with her growing up, I'd get a lot of the more academic clues I see in quiz bowl, but she'd get other "big things" and then wouldn't let me live it down for the rest of the night... :roll:

This is also a good way to incorporate a lot of world content into the distribution, even at a low level. There are certain things we know are emblematic of cultures, that we make comparisons to, and we'd be able to get if it came up in quiz bowl!

3. You can mix "quirky" clues with really important core clues.

It is pretty easy to mix crazy interesting anecdotes with standard knowledge. This makes the question more fun to listen to, teaches you something you probably didn't know beforehand, and is overall pretty fun. Which would you rather hear as a question (both of these are completely made up by the way):

This emperor was defeated and killed by Ganon I at the Battle of Desolace.

This emperor was boiled alive by Ganon I and thrown into the pits of Desolace.

Now, you want to be careful not to chalk up your questions with too much fluff, but in the above example, both clues are roughly the same length, convey the same knowledge, but the second line adds a bit more interesting "spunk" to the question. At least when I played, I would always raise my head if I heard I didn't expect.

4. Diversity isn't just one part of your distribution: it should be across it all.

I'm very excited for the upcoming discussions about diversity in question writing this year. As somebody who grew in Midwest schools, one of my favorite parts of quiz bowl is how much its exposed me to stuff I wouldn't have ever learned about around the world. There are so many cool stories of people interacting around the world in ways we didn't really expect or know about. It's super easy to put in diverse or worldly content into a question even if its a topic that you normally wouldn't expect it to be there. I think its cool to find a really awesome person who did great things and put them into the question, because hopefully, that encourages someone else to go out there and learn about them as well.

5. Talk to people who have those interests outside of quiz bowl!

One of the best parts of writing is engaging with people in the fields they love. I asked my friend who studies literature for her advice on a bonus for a book she loves. I asked my friend who is a speechwriter for the Fijian President about a bonus I edited on Fiji (true story!). I asked a Georgian friend (Caucuses, not yeehaw) about food she likes for a geography question. These are some of my funner examples, but it really helps to engage with people who know what they're talking about and who like to talk about it! They often times have a good understanding of what's important, whats not, where to go to find new information, and best of all, if there is any insane crazy stories to put in, they'll know.

I'd love to chat more about any of my thoughts above - I'm always a DM away and I'd love to share some of my questions in the past, my favorites, and more.
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Re: How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

Post by csa2125 »

jmarvin_ wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:20 pm I want to make a full-scale, perhaps embarrassingly manifesto-like post about quizbowl writing theory once the set Clark, others, and I are working on is released in a year or so, so that I will be able to use our writing to illustrate my points.
Very excited for this to come out and spark even more great discussion!
jmarvin_ wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:20 pm For now, I'll say just a few quick things. The Westbrookian approach to quizbowl writing as the "ultimate tertiary source," presenting carefully chosen facts of precise levels of obscurity in curated order, is in my estimation a profoundly limited vision for the potential of quizbowl as a medium...

(Perhaps I am too uncharitable to the Westbrook school here, in which case I apologize, but it's the closest thing to a foil for my personal perspective on the game that I can think of.)
I think the Westbrook approach is a solid starting point for the ideal quizbowl question in terms of function. Once you can write solid, functional questions, and once you can write wild, creative questions, you should clearly begin mixing these two approaches and balancing these two aspects (which I find to be the compelling "challenge" to this art form as a craft).
jmarvin_ wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:20 pm There are so many more things that could be done when writing questions than that: one can draw novel and subtle connections between things for the player or reader, introduce people to topics in a way that communicates intrinsic motivation for interest rather than merely relying on the motivator of "getting points for knowing this next time," tacitly highlight and explore themes without explicitly mentioning them, and so on. One can even deliberately and carefully account for lateral thinking in such a way as to reward players still in perfect pyramidal fashion for forms of knowledge otherwise than rote recognition of facts. In my estimation, all of the aforementioned and more can be done without sacrificing the playability of questions at all, though admittedly it will often require great cleverness or effort to balance all these things, and (especially at lower difficulties) it is usually pragmatic to put aside loftier goals and just write solid material.
Yes! The combination is the key, between "playability" (in a narrow-sense, and broad-sense) and "creativity" or "expression"; I find the latter much more compelling, but don't think anyone believes quizbowl questions should as a general rule be unrewarding and unfun to hear and play in a match, e.g.. The "cleverness" and "effort" are big; you can, once you have a certain proficiency, just dump out the standard questions with enough variations in content to maintain playability, but I do think there that "anything worth doing is worth doing well" and, in a more Allan Kaprow / "Art Which Can't Be Art" sense, "anything worth doing is worth doing creatively."
jmarvin_ wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:20 pm I think quizbowl writing is quite clearly an art form, in the following way: quizbowl writing is to nonfiction writing in general as video games are to film. Quizbowl writing is a dance with the abstracted player, attempting to create certain experiences for another mind. One can make a video game which is a tight and pleasurable mechanical experience to engage with repeatedly, and through which one can have deep and meaningful competitive encounters. One can also make a video game which is a joy to explore aesthetically, full of surprises and ideas, enough that it might subtly change one's life in the way only art can. Some of the best games do both. I don't see why we can't also strive to do both in quizbowl writing.
Absolutely mind-expanding conception, as I've told you privately. Need more time to honor this with the response it deserves, but "doing both" is very much my goal and vision.

Ganon's post is so amazing, but I do have to mull it over more, so I can say more than just "Ganon is right. Listen to him"; I am promising a follow up!
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Re: How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

ganman0305 wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:22 pm This is a great thread! I'd like to discuss my personal experience in trying to bring a good amount of creativity to my questions over the past year. I'd love to talk about just some of the lessons I learned and some of my ideas on what "creative writing" is.

1. Creative questions don't always need a creative answerline.

So one of the biggest things I learned the *hard* way is that having a "cool" question doesn't require you to have a zinger of an answerline. Don't get me wrong, my favorite buzz ever is managing to spit out "the orangutan who kills people in Edgar Allen Poe's the Murders in the Rue Morgue" at my first ICT. However, when I was writing for DECAMERON, I wrote questions that I thought were really nuanced and cool, but just didn't play well. Again, there's a room for these questions, but there's also a lot of room for doing creative questions on core topics. Methods of doing this that have worked for me:

Writing about a very famous person from a different perspective. For instance, modern interpretations of Ancient Greek plays with the play as an answerline. Or famous depictions of a historical figure in art you've probably seen in a textbook or in real life, but haven't been asked about before.

A relevant cut from an important event. Let's say there's always another person, place, or thing mentioned in tandem with a more famous person. Then that thing probably has enough clues or relevance to core topics as well as its own fame that its fair to ask about. This also applies to having questions on things like locations or objects from famous literature. This is one of the reasons why I really really love Shakespeare: there is so much to write about!
Yes! The highest form of art in quizbowl is to write an interesting, creative tossup on a "core topic". Any idiot can write a groundbreaking tossup on a thing that has never come up before, but it takes a true artist to write a creative tossup on something that comes up all the time.
2. Expand the Venn Diagram between Quiz Bowl Knowledge and Real-World Knowledge.

Imagine two circles: one is quiz bowl knowledge. We go significantly deeper into different topics than the public (or sometimes even experts) do in their fields. The other circle is harder to describe. I like to think of it as "stuff that is considered very important but just hasn't made it's way into the game, often because it's hard to categorize or just hasn't come up!" An example of this off the top of my head is my TU on Jacques Costeau from ACF Winter 2020. i had never really seen him come up, but he's one of those eclectic dudes that there is a collective knowledge of in society.

My mom is a good litmus test for this. I remember when I would watch Jeopardy with her growing up, I'd get a lot of the more academic clues I see in quiz bowl, but she'd get other "big things" and then wouldn't let me live it down for the rest of the night... :roll:

This is also a good way to incorporate a lot of world content into the distribution, even at a low level. There are certain things we know are emblematic of cultures, that we make comparisons to, and we'd be able to get if it came up in quiz bowl!
Yes! People, even students, do so much more than take classes. They read books in their spare time, they watch documentaries, they visit museums, they see performances of plays. It is good and just to reward such intellectual curiosity.
3. You can mix "quirky" clues with really important core clues.

It is pretty easy to mix crazy interesting anecdotes with standard knowledge. This makes the question more fun to listen to, teaches you something you probably didn't know beforehand, and is overall pretty fun. Which would you rather hear as a question (both of these are completely made up by the way):

This emperor was defeated and killed by Ganon I at the Battle of Desolace.

This emperor was boiled alive by Ganon I and thrown into the pits of Desolace.

Now, you want to be careful not to chalk up your questions with too much fluff, but in the above example, both clues are roughly the same length, convey the same knowledge, but the second line adds a bit more interesting "spunk" to the question. At least when I played, I would always raise my head if I heard I didn't expect.
Yes! So many questions I wrote had their genesis when I learned an amazing anecdote, and then was able to figure out how to write an accessible tossup incorporating that anecdote. And part of my motivation was the knowledge that when this anecdote was read in every room of the tournament, it would cause joy in the hearts of the players. Editing and writing questions has few material rewards (especially given how time intensive it is) so the emotional joy of sharing an amazing fact was part of the payoff for me.
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Re: How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

The video game analogy is the best piece of aesthetic quizbowl writing theory I've ever read.
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Re: How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

Post by The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island »

naan/steak-holding toll wrote: Fri Sep 17, 2021 6:11 pm The video game analogy is the best piece of aesthetic quizbowl writing theory I've ever read.
seconded ^^

one of the ways I've been trying to approach questions recently when I have more time is "how might this information benefit someone in life outside of quizbowl points (or encourage engagement with academic material that might do this indirectly)?" To some extent pretty much any valid clue does this in some form, but I find that the coolest/most interesting clues are good conversational material, for people in communities outside quizbowl or even just cool facts you can tell your friends or strangers. Easy ways this can manifest include e.g., cluing widely-read contemporary literature in your set, or bringing in cross-distributional clues in the religion and myth distribution to emphasize the broader cultural impact of myth outside of just the substance of the story itself (small plug for CMST II, which is really running with this idea in how it classifies myth.) I've found that running through this framework, more or less just running through your clues and asking "why would someone care besides the quizbowl points?" is a great way to write questions players enjoy engaging with, both while playing and even after when reading the set. This also gets at Ganon's point - I've found that as a writer who learns a lot of things by engaging with / studying for quizbowl, it's really helpful to step back and talk to knowledgeable people who aren't carried along by the quizbowl zeitgeist to find new sources of fresh ideas and questions.
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Re: How do you write and edit quizbowl creatively?

Post by Limonana »

Ganon's post does a fantastic job describing what (and where) to draw upon when writing questions. I think he makes several points that also apply to editing a category as a whole. I'm speaking mostly from my experience as a belief editor.
ganman0305 wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:22 pm 3. You can mix "quirky" clues with really important core clues.

It is pretty easy to mix crazy interesting anecdotes with standard knowledge. This makes the question more fun to listen to, teaches you something you probably didn't know beforehand, and is overall pretty fun. Which would you rather hear as a question (both of these are completely made up by the way):

This emperor was defeated and killed by Ganon I at the Battle of Desolace.

This emperor was boiled alive by Ganon I and thrown into the pits of Desolace.

Now, you want to be careful not to chalk up your questions with too much fluff, but in the above example, both clues are roughly the same length, convey the same knowledge, but the second line adds a bit more interesting "spunk" to the question. At least when I played, I would always raise my head if I heard I didn't expect.
This is great advice at both the level of an individual question and a category. Every category needs standard, bread and butter questions that reward players for studying common, important topics. However, categories can also be spiced up with more creative, gutsy questions. These questions can have a unique theme or include fresh clues on otherwise standard answerlines, or they can be on riskier (but not necessarily harder) answerlines. There is a fine balance between non-standard, playable answerlines, and confusing ones that require players to read the writer's mind in order to understand what they were looking for. I've struggled with this balance, but I encourage new writers to take some occasional risks (under the guidance of a more experienced editor) to gain a better sense of how to write creatively without going too far.
ganman0305 wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:22 pm 5. Talk to people who have those interests outside of quiz bowl!

One of the best parts of writing is engaging with people in the fields they love. I asked my friend who studies literature for her advice on a bonus for a book she loves. I asked my friend who is a speechwriter for the Fijian President about a bonus I edited on Fiji (true story!). I asked a Georgian friend (Caucuses, not yeehaw) about food she likes for a geography question. These are some of my funner examples, but it really helps to engage with people who know what they're talking about and who like to talk about it! They often times have a good understanding of what's important, whats not, where to go to find new information, and best of all, if there is any insane crazy stories to put in, they'll know.
I cannot stress how important it is to take a step back and consider what people, particularly non-quizbowlers, genuinely care about. Religion is a universal phenomenon and people may prioritize a variety of religious concerns in their everyday lives that may get overlooked in academia. I certainly don't expect writers and editors to be religious scholars, but it's imperative to gain a feel for what religious people truly care about and stress within their faith. By only relying on previous questions (or even simply turning to academia) when trying to create an acceptable canon, writers and editors will miss a great deal of information and intuition about a religion/sect/tradition and fail to capture it in their questions. I admit to relying on a more "common man" approach to writing religion by choosing to stress practice and major texts that practitioners frequently interact with, rather than scholarly approaches to religion or increasingly more obscure traditions and practices; I think that this emphasis results in more playable questions that speaks to players about what they would encounter, while also rewarding more astute, diligent players who choose to closely study these topics.

Overall, I would advise new writers to strive for good, technical, playable questions that satisfy basic requirements before attempting to be too adventurous. As they become more familiar with writing questions as a practice, they can strive to implement a more artistic vision for an individual question, or even an entire category.
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