Amph SFF Writers' Guild Writing Contest! VERSION THREE --- contest closed

Welcome to the SFF Writers' Guild Writing Contest!


This was first talked about in great depth Here
and as a result of that discussion we got the First ever SFF writing contest hosted by the Dorkman.
After that our ex mod Droideka took on the mantle and brought us the second contest


I have volunteered to take the next (and future) contests so we now arrive with CONTEST THREE

RULES:

- Entries must be entirely original stories written by the submitting author within the contest period, based on that month's prompt (see below).

- Entries must be either science fiction or fantasy stories. Either genre is acceptable, as well as subgenres.

- Fan fiction (stories based on pre-existing characters or worlds from film, television, or books, including but not limited to Star Wars) is not accepted.

- This contest is open to all registered posters of the Jedi Council Forums. You do not have to be a regular poster in the SFF Writer's Guild thread in order to enter this contest.

- Entries must adhere to the JC Terms of Service. If you have a question if your story or a story element is within the TOS, PM the host or a sponsoring moderator to ask. Stories that violate the Terms of Service in any way will be disqualified. Keep it clean!

- From the date of the prompt (July 8th) you have approximately one month to write you story (deadline is August 12th). You may submit your story any time, but it is recommended that even if you finish early, you take the remaining time to revise and strengthen your story, you may also enter multiple entries if you so wish.

- Final entries have a minimum wordcount of 2000 words, and a maximum wordcount of 10000 words.

- Entries must be submitted in a common text format (Microsoft Word, .txt, or .rtf) and emailed to the contest host at lynsntel@talktalk.net

JUDGING:

- Entries will be judged by a group of volunteer judges, to be selected by the host. The number of judges will be no fewer than 3. Ideally, I'd like to have 5 or 6 or even more.

- Entries will be distributed to the judges without the names of the authors.

- Judges will score each entry out of 10 possible points in several categories:

Overall Creativity

Writing Ability

Grammar/Mechanics

Use of the prompt

Entertainment Value

The scores for each story will then be averaged, and the story with the highest score will be deemed the winner.

- Along with the score, each judge must write a brief paragraph describing why s/he chose their particular scores. These paragraphs should be honest, but constructive.

- Judges must read all stories assigned to them in full.

- The judging time will depend upon the number of entries. As a basic rule I will be looking at 3 entries to be judged per week so if we have 5 entries we'll have a two week judging period. All judges will be told when their submissions have to be in by when they get the entries sent to them.

- Any judge who does not fulfill his or her commitment will not be allowed to participate in the contest in any form the next time around. People were counting on you!

- Judges may submit an entry for contest period in which they are judging but they will obviously not grade their own..

DISCUSSION:

- Once judging has concluded, the stories will be made available for public viewing, unless the author specifically requests otherwise. This thread will then facilitate any discussion about any of the stories, until the next contest comes around.

 

Looks very nice

 

challenging but interesting. time for some brainstorming

 

Looks good. Looks very good . . .

Just a clarification on the prompt: do we have the choice to use just pt 1 [very general], pt 1&2 [more specific] or all three [very specific] or do we have to use all three?

Either way there's ideas bubbling away. Let's get this going

 

You have to use all three.



the idea is to write a story based on human/alien interaction.


e.g you're on the titanic and it's sinking. You and one other person get saved along with hundreds of others. 1 person gets loads of money from selling their story but someone they know struggles to come to terms. Over time one persons life goes downhill and the others comes up roses(it's up to you whos), Does the person who's life is now roses then help out the person who's life has gone down the toilet or not?

 

All three? Cool, just checking

I notice you've upped the word limit to 10k - thanks It's nice to have a bit of headroom, particularly as the story has several distinct sections already in place, as it were.

 

that was the idea.



It's really a story of three parts.


It's all down to planning for you guys to ensure you mnage to get it all to fit in without seaming rushed, you know, like AOTC and ROTS.

 

Well, that's me done for

This is going to be interesting . . .

 

10,000 words max! How could I have missed that? That's great

Well, I've already done some advertising in fan fic, and I've already started writing.I haven't done much fiction writing since I started writing for the paper a couple months ago. Boy it's great to be back.

 

Personally, I don't like the prompt on this one, I find it too restrictive, however I really support what Fatburt's trying to do, so I'm in. Work is underway!

 

To the drawing board, AWAY!

 

Master-FatBurt, your link to the second contest actually links to the discussion thread.

 

After proof reading over umpteen hours yesterday and I still make a mistake

 

Time to hit the ol' Office 97 version of Word.

 

So when should we have our summaries ready? Is there a deadline for that yet?

 

If you want ot post a quick summary/breakdown of your plan (I left that out of this contest) you may do so at any time.


This is just really to see how people tick with plans and if the final story comes out as they originally anticipated.



TBH though, to prevent idea nickage if you do want to give me a breakdown/summary of your idea then PM it to me and I can put up an anon abbreviated version.

 

I have begun a little bit of preliminary work on it.

 

I learnt long ago that stories rarely turn out as planned, so I stopped planning and let the stories tell themselves.

 

I find planning to be very helpful.


The story may not turn out exactly as planned and TBH I'd be concerned if it did, but it allows for a base guideline.

 

~Woke up this morning and got myself a gun!~

I think this is a good prompt. I do have a few questions. Now in part one you state a disaster. In some of my other writings I can make Quentin Tarantino look like Mickey Mouse. I am not joking. Now I do realize there is a *TOS* here so I will refrain from profanities and tone down some violence. BUT, there must be some real hardcore choices. I could go a bit overboard.

This is also Fantasy, So I could set this in some mythological world?

If 10,000 words is the max there is the possibility I could exceed that. Seems I do not count the words as I type them. In any event, you will be entertained.

I hope you like it. You will have it in a week or so.

Fix this server someone. It hurts to look at it in this state.

 

Please refrain from going overboard on the violence, because there is a TOS and the limit is PG.

 

I'm a little confused because the way the prompts are worded it seems like maybe you meant to say outlook twice.

Part 1 Write a story in which two people have been involved in a disaster. One is to have a positive outlook and the other is to have a negative outcome

Part 2 One person is to have a successful resolution to the story and the other is to have their whole world fall from underneath them

Part 3 It is up to you the author to decide if the person who has a good resolution helps the poor misfit who's life has crashed around him.

It seems to me that with "negative outcome" at the end of prompt one it is the same as saying that the person with the positive outlook is supposed to have the successful resolution. Did you perhaps mean to use "outlook" there as well as earlier in the sentence? Or did you really mean it to say "negative outcome"?

If that is really what you meant (as opposed to "and the other is to have a negative outlook" - emphasis mine) that's fine. I just feel a need to be obsessive-compulsive and find out. I suppose it is possible for one character to have a "successful resolution" to the story that is also a "negative outcome" but I'm not having any luck coming up with a how just now.

KD

 

Outlook twice

 

Oh good. Lots more possibilities that way!

KD

 

I Agree!

Tone down the violence and make it PG! Jolly good idea.('Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' all over again.) Crap. I had a good scene with aliens being eaten. Arms, Legs, blood everywhere. *sigh* I can tone that down. What about thermo-nuclear weapons? Ala Battlestar Gallactica? Some serious stuff has to go down.


Don't worry. I will make it work but you are missing out!