Whew. Looking at some of my stories, I've been left slack-jawed and wondering, "Did I really write these?" Wow. I was, what, 14 at the time? Spank my behind and call me Kimberley....

Oh, he's that guy!

Cool beans!

Danke, mALX!

That's fine by me, yeah. Kind of kneecaps the anonymous side of the competition for your entry, but if that's what you want to write then go for it.

Apologies for the double post, but an idea has occurred to me for a more regular contest after this; Read in a Rush.

The premise is simple; a monthly contest to write stories of a length between 850 and 1150 words, based on a new theme each month. The actual contest window is open for the first three weeks or so of the month, with people posting up their stories on a contest thread and providing feedback and comments on other people's stories at the same time along with their stories.

In the last week, the contest window closes, and a voting thread is opened; people vote for which story they think should win that month's Read in a Rush contest, a new theme is decided upon (there could well be a running thread for theme suggestions) and the same thing is done the next month with the new theme.

Your thoughts?

I like it.

Great idea !!! Or one contest per quarter (every three months) with a different subject each quarter.





*Smack!*

"Yes, you were fourteen at the time, and the most awesome writer on here, Kimberly!"

This post has been edited by mALX: Mar 21 2013, 04:04 PM

DE, I don't think you can post it till the contest is over, or it be attached to any posted stories till the competition is over. After that you can do what you want with it. (So don't use a known character from one of your existing stories either. You can always Edit/Find/Replace the name after the contest is over).

It's supposed to be anonymous for voting, you can't even tell friends which story is yours till it closes and Mustard posts the results showing who wrote what story.

Bahahahahaha -coughs and spews-

Technically, using a known character is perfectly within the rules; so long as the text itself hasn't been posted up here on the site before, then it's legal. As I said, though, it's probably best for the sake of complete fairness not to use character you've used before, as it does kind of make you shoot yourself in the foot by de-anonymising the entry and thus meaning it'll be judged less impartially.

JEEZ! 7 pages.. about how to do this! Why guys you certainly are amusing, I do love you!...I saw the thread and thought YAY i will consider participating..then I noticed the first deadline..hmmm
BUT this last idea....is good! Than you can choose to write any month you like...I mean thare is a RL out there and everyone has their schedule...

But I still don't get where the entries end up! A long time ago when we had a competition the entries were posted in a secret thread....just those who arranged it and the judges could see them.

So where to send an entry?

To Mustard's PM box. He will post the best five or so when all are in, and the rest of us can vote on it.

MINKEY!!!!!

Sounds great. I like the frequency of a contest every month. That way missing a posting opportunity does not amount to a tragedy, as there will be another theme coming up soon. The short entry length would encourage me to tighten up my writing and get to the point. Also if folks are writing short pieces it’s much easier to keep up with reading them. And finally the Rush nature of the contest encourages writing RIGHT NOW rather than waiting for the stars, planets, and moons to align, and that encourages the habit of writing every day. I don’t know about everyone else, but I find it’s much easier to re-write something I’m not happy with than it is to try to spit it out perfectly the first time. So that's also something I'm personally working on.

So that’s a big yes from me.

Question: would we stick with a TES setting?

Holy crap, Minque is back!

In answer to your question, Minque, the entries to this current competition will go into my PM inbox and then I'll post them up with my account, keeping the authors anonymous until the voting window has closed and I can do the big reveal of the authors.

For the Read in a Rush contest, all I'd do is post up the themeed contest thread (say, there's the theme of 'Hunger') and then people can enter their short pieces just by posting them on the thread, so if you want to enter a piece, you just write it up and stick it on there. Then, when we get to voting, we set up a voting thread, and people just saying something along the lines of "I vote for Colonel Mustard's Story, 'The Splendiferous Adventures of Doctor Fandangotache'", the votes are tallied up once the deadline window is hit and the winner is declared to much pomp, ceremony and pomperous ceremobilia and I don't know why I'm suddenly using so many fake words.

Grits: I personally wouldn't be averse to using worlds beyond the TES-verse or have problems with people writing original fiction. It may, however, leave some entries at a disadvantage with people having trouble contextualising them propery, but provided that they're well-written enough to stand on their own merits I don't think that'll necessarily be too big an issue.


Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write The Splendiferous Adventures of Doctor Fandagotache.

This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Mar 23 2013, 06:02 PM

I want to throw another idea out here. How about worst writing contest?

So bad, its good.

Parodies, slapstick, ultra-drama, that type of thing. Of course it has to be well-written, bit bad on purpose.

As a one off thing, that might not be a bad idea. Or possibly a comedy contest, perhaps.

"Hey Mom, I won the 'Worst Writers on the Internet' contest!"

A comedy contest sounds good...

"Good, now go get a job. You're fourty "

Dude.