The following concern details for packet submissions for the 2003 ACF Fall Tournaments. If you plan to submit a packet, please read this post very carefully. WHO HAS TO WRITE A PACKET: Only one team from each program will be required to submit a packet for the Fall Tournament, unless one of the following exceptions are met: 1) Your program has not attended an official ACF event (Fall, Regionals, or Nationals) during the last two seasons; 2) all of your teams are composed of players in their first two years of collegiate competition. If you feel that your program meets the spirit of these exceptions but for some technical reason is still required to submit a packet, you may petition me for an exemption from the packet-writing requirement. FORMATTING: Last year, I spent way too much time fixing formatting problems. Please follow the official ACF formatting guide at http://www.dpo.uab.edu/~paik/acf/formatting.html. Otherwise, I will likely return the packet to you. DISTRIBUTION: This year, I am only asking for 25 tossups and 25 bonuses, divided into the following categories (with the usual caveat that topics should display appropriate diversity within each category, especially concerning the eras from which they are drawn): LITERATURE (5): Should include at least one and no more than two from American Lit, English Lit, and Foreign Language Lit. HISTORY (5): Should include at least one and no more than two from American History, European History, and World History (i.e. not American or European) SCIENCE (5): At least one and no more than two questions each from Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Also, at least one of the 10 total tossups and bonuses should come from something outside of these three areas (computer science, math, geology, etc.). GEOGRAPHY (1) SOCIAL SCIENCE (1-2) ART(1-2) MUSIC(1-2) RELIGION (1) MYTHOLOGY (1) PHILOSOPHY (1) OTHER (1): This can be another of the above, or something that doesn't fall neatly into any of the above subjects. This includes trash, but keep in mind that the trash question had better be fun, or I probably won't use it. DIFFICULTY: This is absolutely the most important part of this post, and the part that has been biggest problem with previous years' submissions, in that writers either chose to ignore the desired difficulty level, or failed in their attempt to write about readily- accessible topics. In my mind, experienced question writers categorize certain topics as "easy" for one of two major reasons: either they are topics that are familiar to younger players, or they are topics that have come up so many times that those of us who have been around for a while think of them as easy, when in fact they are often completely foreign to younger players, even those whose studies have provided them with a solid understanding of the fields in question. As an example, Heinrich von Kleist comes up so often nowadays that it is easy to forget that even well read freshmen will likely never have heard of him. For this tournament, I am looking for questions about topics of the first kind (i.e. with answers that a competent freshman team will have heard of and will have a decent shot of answering by the end of the question). That does not mean that they should be able to answer every tossup in the first sentence; using pyramid structure, the aim should be to reward deep, important knowledge about an answer of basic importance that can still be answered at the end by most teams if it isn't gotten early. On a similar theme, bonuses should offer at least one part that will probably be answered by a competent freshman team, and at least one part that requires deeper knowledge that will separate the very good teams from average ones. The rule of thumb that I use is to imagine how the group of freshmen on my team would do on my questions, and I think this method is a good one for you to use as well in writing for this tournament. RETURNED PACKETS: Because of the number of problems concerning last year's submissions, I am not going to hesitate to return packets for rewriting if they seriously violate the aims I have stated above. Packet discounts will only apply after an acceptable packet has been submitted. Also, in the interest of providing as good a tournament as possible, I've been writing a lot of material specifically for use in this tournament, which gives me the flexibility to be very picky about what I use, so if you want your questions to be heard, make sure they are top notch questions in line with what I am looking for. To this end, if you have any doubts as to whether your packet will be acceptable for any of the reasons stated above, please feel free to consult with me at any stage of the packet writing process. If you're not sure whether a certain answer would be useable, ask me. If you have a few questions written, send me the unfinished packet to get feedback about how close it comes to what I'm looking for. Being a much grumpier editor than I was a year ago, I'm much more likely to return packets for changes, so definitely take advantage of these opportunities to make both of our jobs easier. As always, should you have any questions or concerns about any aspect of the ACF Fall Tournaments, please let me know at ksmcke0 at hotmail dot com. Thanks, Kelly McKenzie
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