What's the fourth contest?

[big soft moose]

This is a new initiative wherein we try out new contest ideas to see if you folk like them, love them or loathe them. If something's a banger then it may become a regular or semi regular feature, if something's a clanger, then we'll consign it to the dustbin of digital history. We might be good, but we're not perfect so things have to be tried to know if they're going to age like a fine wine, or like milk.

If you have ideas for things you'd like to see us try, drop them below, we won't necessarily be able to do them all, but even an idea that doesnt stick is useful and welcome.

Things i have washing around in my grey matter include in no particular order

A Critique contest (trying that this month)
A blurb contest - where entrants write a marketing blurb for a notional book
A cover design contest where people design a cover for a notional book
A first chapter contest to engage the novelists out there
A year long novel/novella contest - we'd have to work out how the heck we'd judge that
A song writing contest
A screen play/play writing contest
A non fiction, article, or essay contest...

We'd love to hear your ideas too

 

[MoonChild]

An idea I've nicked from Scribophile... The Octagon. Flash fiction challenge. Once a year only.

32 people sign up. Those are split into four groups, with a leader of each group. There's a separate leader for the whole contest, the current one is The Queen.

In each group the contestants are assigned by the leader into pairs and each pair is given a prompt. It's 100 words exactly. You get three days. You submit your title to group leader and title plus story to the queen. Then after 3 days every Octagon contestant votes. Only likes are counted. If a pair gets the same score they go into death match - 24 hours in which a new prompt is given and a new 100 flash is written.

After round 1 the winners go through to round 2 and again, it's done exactly as round 1.

Eventually there will be only 4 contestants left, the winners in each group. Then they face off. There'll be only one winner eventually.

On Scrib the winner gets karma and bragging rights. Not sure what you'd award on this forum.

(I was bested on round 2 this year)

 

[Trish]

A Critique contest (trying that this month)

For June, or current month? What will it be a contest of?

A first chapter contest to engage the novelists out there

I like this.

A year long novel/novella contest - we'd have to work out how the heck we'd judge that

Judging would be rough, though I would assume the number of entries would be fairly low overall so maybe manageable.

 

[Naomasa298]

A Critique contest (trying that this month)

Interesting idea. Will be interested in seeing how this will work.

 

[Naomasa298]

Duh. For some reason, my post above had the tickbox checked by default and I didn't uncheck it.

 

[Trish]

Duh. For some reason, my post above had the tickbox checked by default and I didn't uncheck it.

I very nearly did the same

 

[MoonChild]

Duh. For some reason, my post above had the tickbox checked by default and I didn't uncheck it.

Yep, almost happened to me as well

 

[IgnitedxSoul]

I'm loving the first chapter and whole novel ideas!

I think I'd also like 2 or 3 month long Novella contest!

 

[Louanne Learning]

A cover design contest where people design a cover for a notional book

We'd have to allow AI images, I think?

A non fiction, article, or essay contest...

I like this idea very much. We might have to narrow the scope, maybe make it a "Nonfiction Philosophy Article" or something like that.

Maybe each month, a different topic. One month "Is Truth Dead?" another "Can We Learn From Animals?' and so on, and so on...

But don't make it too long. 1000 words max.

 

[Naja Noir]

I'd like the last three.


It would be neat for authors to narrate a favorite story of theirs. The best narrated story could win.

I don't know if such a thing is even possible on this site, or if anyone would be interested, but could be fun? I say this knowing my own shyness would probably stop me lol.

ETA: anywhere from 500-5000 words.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Duh. For some reason, my post above had the tickbox checked by default and I didn't uncheck it.

Revealed! It's the same deal as the Short Story contest where the node is targeted for anonymous posts. It's kind of and all or nothing thing. I little annoying but it is what it is.

 

[big soft moose]

For June, or current month? What will it be a contest of?

Its open now - submissions will close on the 7th of June, its a contest on how well you can critique a piece of writing, moree info on the competition thread

 

[big soft moose]

We'd have to allow AI images, I think?

Nah that'd defeat the point of doing it... that ones quite involved soi we'll hold on to later if ever

 

[Bruce_Johnson]

I was thinking about maybe some contest where instead of a theme it's a first three sentences and then the users have to finish the short story or flash fiction based on those sentences. But that might require the use of AI to come up with the three sentences or at least some semi-random way.

But then I thought, what if instead of the first three sentences it was the last three sentences or the last few paragraphs? And then the contestants had to write a coherent story that leads to that ending and still make it satisfying.

Anyways just my brain wondering today.

 

[Naomasa298]

I was thinking about maybe some contest where instead of a theme it's a first three sentences and then the users have to finish the short story or flash fiction based on those sentences.

That just a longer theme, isn't it?

 

[Bone2pick]

For your consideration:

Clobberin' Time Competition — Show us your best attempt at a combat focused scene. Boom! Pow! 1k word cap.

You could rotate genres to keep things fresh: western, military, fantasy, sci-fi, etcetera.

 

[Naomasa298]

That just a longer theme, isn't it?

Oops, I did it again.

 

[Luxuria]

Late to the party here, but

A first chapter contest to engage the novelists out there

YAY! I love this idea. Thanks for thinking of me and other novelists. It's very considerate.

A year long novel/novella contest - we'd have to work out how the heck we'd judge that

Wow. This feels like a lot, but could be really, really fun! I would be down to try this, too. Not sure how we would do it, though.

 

[bACK iN mY dAY]

Very much out of left field, and perhaps not as much a contest idea, but there was an old comic war called War For Rayuba (You can find its traces in certain places and I've just joined the group on discord). And in that basically comic artists had a 'war' of sorts. They would create a character, be set against eachother on battlefields, and then each comic book artist would write about how their guy would defeat the other. Then votes would be cast to determine which comic should be canon I believe, and that story was added to the greater War.

Honestly there's a lot of potential in that sort of big group project I think. Here's a youtube video from Quinn (Shut Up And Sit Down) which goes into more detail.