Greetings, ladies and gentlemen of the Chorrol forums!

This the official thread for the Chorrol 1Q 2013 writing contest (because there might be more later. I don't know). That is right, a contest; a competitive scene pitting you writers against one another in a blood-soaked battle to the death that won't actually have any blood in it and if there is any death it's almost certainly unrelated to the contest itself.

The winner will receive nothing more than bragging rights, but this is an excellent opportunity to push your writing skills above and beyond their usual level and earn yourself some nice, lovely forum kudos. Maybe you'll get a badge or something, I don't know.

How it will work

In order to make the competition as fair as possible, all entries will be posted up anonymously; to enter, you PM your entry to me. Once the deadline is reached, as the official* competition judge I will read and evaluate every story and from there create a shortlist (there will be either five finalists, or ten if the volume exceeds thirty). I shall then post up the shortlisted entries, either on this thread or on a new one, and then will follow a one week voting period where people will PM with their vote on who they think should be winner. In the event of a tie, the tied entries will go to a second round of voting. From there, our victor shall be picked.



*Okay, it's not official, but I've got mALX, Elizabeth Hollow and King of Beast's votes. Do you?


Vitalstatistix

In order to give writers something to work with, a common thread to tie the competition together and to discourage people simply being lazy by dusting off an old work of theirs, the competition is centred around the theme of Absolution.

In order to make reading things managable within a reasonable timeframe, the wordcount for entries is going to be 3000-7000 words

The final deadline for entries is Midnight GMT, Friday 15th March 2013. An entry can be sent to me at any time between now and then.


Rules

1. All entries cannot have appeared on this forum before, and must only be sent to me via PM, with the wordcount included in your entry. Any entries that have been posted on the forum or anywhere else before will be disqualified. Any entries that I find are just an 'Elder-Scrolled-up' version of existing stories will also be disqualified.

2. In order to make the number of entries being read managable, there is a limit of one entry per person. The first entry you make will be the only entry considered, and all others will be disregarded.

3. To make sure that all voters and readers are able to appreciate every entry to the fullest, and to make the competition as fair as possible, entries are to be set in the Elder Scrolls universe only. Works of original fiction, or set in other intellectual properties such as the Fallout or Mass Effect universe will not be considered.

4. Stories that are either above or below the wordcount or sent after the deadline will be disqualified.




Any questions or queries about the contest can be posted up on this thread here, I'll try and answer them as quickly as possible.



Also, while I'm here, I have an offer for you all. As part of my position as not-so-official official judge, I'm going to be making thorough notes and collations of my thoughts on entries in order to help me work out the shortlist. If you want to hear the thought of somebody who's only real qualification for this role is a few book reviews, a job as an advance reader for a publisher and an English A-Level on how good your story is, just add that in to your PM and I'll send you what I've put down. I will be in full-on dickhead book critic mode, mind, so don't start crying about me being mean about your story if I'm harsh towards it. It's nothing personal; I'm going to be like that with every entry unless it's up there with Shakespeare.



Now go! Write, my pretties! WRITE!!

This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Feb 13 2013, 08:50 AM

I'll have you know I don't look a day over 102! ROFL !!!

Are we supposed to title these entries? Or no? Or will they just be "Absolution 1" and so forth?

They can be titled, all the contests I've seen had titles on the submissions.

The submissions are due today or tomorrow?

Two more days. The 30th.

You don't have to title them, but it would probably help.

Phew. Just enough time for me to make some final changes.

Hey, in that case we might actually hit five whole entries!!

Provided the person who sent me the partial one gets their act together and finishes it.

I'm excited!!!! I'll have to be a bit lax on my fic, but hey, I'm having fun.

24 hours left, right?

So what kind of Time are we using here? American time or European time?

What's the date where you are?

*stares desperately at KoB*

March 29.

29!!!!!

I distinctly remember the Colonel being in London, so uhhh, GMT?

I'm not even in this contest...

Unless there's a 30th of march, you have until the end if the day to turn in your entry, lol

But yeah, you've got a point.

Greenwich time. (European).

*Le shrugs*

Well, now that we got that out of the way, it seems I still have many hours left before the deadline. Sometimes I wish that I lived in places that matched your guys' timezones.

The end of the 29th, right? Because midnight March 30 GMT is the start of March 30... I think. So that's about 21 hours from now.

Or does he mean the end of the day March 30? Lol.

I wish everyone was in the same timezone, lol

It would make everything so much easier