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This is the announcement for NOVEL, a CO-difficulty, Long Fiction-only lit side event written by me, Kris Noori. The set will consist of 9 packets of 24 powermarked tossups.

FEATURES:

1. Questions consisting exclusively of information from the books themselves (i.e. “primary reading” clues drawing from “plot events, snippets of dialogue, memorable moments, and imagery”).
2. Very few common links: approximately 80-ish percent of questions will be about single works (and the “common links” will usually just be “from this country,” “this author,” etc.)
3. A general focus on major authors -- Woolf, Dickens, Tolstoy, etc. certainly can be asked about more than once. Even though this set will be very hard, it shouldn’t be inaccessible if you have some interest in reading literary fiction.
4. Quite a few “themed” tossups focusing on particular scenes, specific character traits, an action/object, etc. (there won’t be as many of these as initially advertised, though, as it starts to feel contrived when forced)
5. Some novellas
6. Relatively little “extracanonical” content (and this will probably skew contemporary, as I’d like to work in some modern works that aren’t necessarily one of the trendy canonized Booker/Pulitzer finalists)

Per 24 questions, the distribution is approximately:
6 American
6 British
6 World
6 European

And the breakdown by era is roughly:
2 Pre-1850
2.5 1850-1899
6 1900-1949
10 1950-1999
3.5 2000-Present

The set will be done by Chicago Open. Clearly I’m biased, but I think the set is comparable in polish to other literature side events like It’s Lit/RILKE.

Very excited for this! While I'll play 240 literature questions by pretty much anyone, it would be cool to see a sample packet (even like 5 questions would be good, I think).

aurochs-and-angels wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 4:26 am Themed questions might focus on, for instance, a particular event (“the riot at the end of The Day of the Locust”), a specific character trait (phallic associations with "Caspar Goodwood"), or a notable thing/object ("Queequeg’s tattoos," "Ahab’s harpoon"), among many others

The only part of this post that didn't thrill me was the choice of four ideas I would love as examples. Very excited for this!

Yeah, I’ll post 5-10 sample questions at some point down the road to give an idea of difficulty/length/style.

Also:

heterodyne wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 5:38 pm

aurochs-and-angels wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 4:26 am Themed questions might focus on, for instance, a particular event (“the riot at the end of The Day of the Locust”), a specific character trait (phallic associations with "Caspar Goodwood"), or a notable thing/object ("Queequeg’s tattoos," "Ahab’s harpoon"), among many others

The only part of this post that didn't thrill me was the choice of four ideas I would love as examples. Very excited for this!

Actually, the examples all come from past tournaments (2019 CO, 2020 Scattergories, 2016 CO, and 2018 NASAT, respectively) since I didn’t want to use up any of my own ideas as samples. Ideally all my threads will be unique and haven’t “been done” before.

For what it's worth, I don't think you should shy away from ideas that have "been done" -- this is just a general pet peeve with quizbowl writing, but I think (for instance) something like Queequeg's tattoos can sustain (and has sustained!) multiple tossups. I like hearing a new take on an idea. But regardless, quite excited to play!

The set is progressing nicely so far. I’ll have it finished in time for the weekend of Chicago Open this year, so if there’s sufficient interest, I’d love to have it played in person then. Alternatively, if there’s not sufficient interest, or there’s too many other side events planned that people would rather play, then it could played online any time after that.

(Though I must say I have no idea how I’d go about finding out if people would like to have this mirrored at CO. Perhaps someone could let me know if there’s already a full slate of side events, and if there isn’t, someone could guess if there’ll be enough people interested in playing?)

Sample Questions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13ZV ... sp=sharing

Will all or most of the questions be on English-language novels, or will there be stuff from other languages?

Also, there are a lot of sentences that are either missing the indicator, or have the indicator replaced with a pronoun like "he." You should try to include a clear indicator (e.g. "this book") in every or almost every sentence, or else some players will forget what it's asking for.

Carlos Be wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:12 pm Will all or most of the questions be on English-language novels, or will there be stuff from other languages?

The sample questions were arbitrarily chosen, and are not representative of the balance in time period, region, etc. There will be a lot of non-English language novels -- I'll post a breakdown of the distribution as soon as possible.

EDIT: I added the distribution to the original post now.

UPDATE: Working on this tournament has been extremely taxing, and as such I'm going to place it on indefinite hold. Perhaps some time in the (distant) future I'll get around to finishing it, or I'll contribute the already written questions to another set/event. Sorry if you were looking forward to playing.