Week 2 Predictions and Chat/Discussion

[Certain]

Originally Posted by Split Eight

If you read the votes you'll see, though. That's why votes are there.

70% of the time, the entire league will think I wrote a story about something I didn't intend lol

Clarity is a bitch

It's happened to all of us, and I think it brings to light a few things that are worth discussing:

1. You're writing verses to the topic of someone else's choosing with the hopes of being voted a winner. You can no longer claim to be doing this just for yourself at this point. So the audience must become an important factor, right? If no one gets it, you didn't do your job as well as you could have.

2. When you go back through rap history and look at storytelling tracks, they often stand out among a rapper's catalog. For one, most don't have many. Usually one story track on an album suffices. But it's interesting to look at the way these tracks tend to be written. Whether it's Canibus or Jay-Z, 2Pac or Aesop Rock, rappers tend to pull back on their personal styles and flourishes when they're telling a story. Now, we demand a higher level of complexity from text, in part because it's easier to reread than to relisten. But maybe that sort of stripped-down approach makes more sense for storytelling.

3. Wouldn't it be great if we could force voters to read every verse twice? I try to whenever I have any lingering doubts about a battle. That still doesn't ensure I fully grasped what the writer was intending, but I'm a literate-enough person that if two or three reads doesn't accomplish the job, then what will?

Again, this has happened to me several times. But I think of it as an opportunity to grow and get a better sense of what I need to do as a writer and what I need to do as a topical battle competitor.