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

Do I get a fishy stick for my accuracy in guessing? *mALX whips out Heinz ketchup bottle*


@ Burnt - Congrats!

@ Everyone else - Congrats too, for writing such Awesome stories! I loved them all!





This post has been edited by mALX: Apr 20 2013, 07:37 PM

Eh, why not. Here ya go!

Are we having another contest anytime soon?

CRUNCH!

"Mmmm, tastes like chicken! Thanks!"

Now I'm hungry

I'll see about setting up the flash-fiction Read in a Rush contest soon. As for a contest with longer stories, maybe at some point in the future, though if we do hold another one I'd rather be an entrant than a judge.

Congratulations, Burnt Sierra!

Well done with the guessing, mALX!

Nice job, everyone!! This was fun!

Oh, yeah, and congrats everyone!

Congratulations to Burnt Sierra!

And also to everyone else- for writing stories that made it EXTREMELY HARD to vote. The difference between 1st and 5th (which was the only way I could do it)- was a matter of hundredths of a point.

Special mention to the brilliant mALX for figuring out all the writers.

Speaking of which, I hope you all that did reviews will distribute them still?

Congrats everyone. Loved the stories. Choosing who to vote for was hard and unlike mALX the psychic kitten, I did not know who wrote what. (Though in hindsight, I should have guessed Trey's at least.)

I've no problem with the "read in a rush" idea going ahead, but for a longer one I'm going to suggest one or two changes based on how this panned out. And it would be nice to see you be able to enter Colonel And, once again, my thanks for doing this one.




Yep, will do. Been a very busy week work wise, so I haven't gotten to it yet, but I will.

I want to know the insane people who voted for my story, lol

Reading people's stories you kind of get used to their writing styles. Burnt loves surprise endings, Trey's characters are noble, Uleni has a very unique writing style that is recognizable immediately (not to mention the Phillipino title).

Grits's and Liz's were both written like females write (but it was hard to pick who had done which, till I remembered Liz asked about a title. Only one story had no title).


And yes, thank you Mustard! (and for the tasty fishy stick).




This post has been edited by mALX: Apr 20 2013, 10:19 PM

So let us decide what the theme for the next one is.

I vote survival!

Of COURSE you do LOL

I wouldn't mind it either.

DEFINITLEY need to jump on this the next time the contest comes around!

*Applauds Sierra*...

Well done that man!!...

*Passes decent cup of Yorkshire Tea over*...

Nice one!!...

But...I have to congratulate all the writers on some excellent stories...I loved them all...

We'll have to see what the topic's about as to whether I try meself next time... ...

Yeah, you can take a break off of this one. Join us!