The First Ever Fox-y-redEva Story Challenge

[kym]

i am very happy to hear a new story contest is in the planning and am willing to offer my two cents worth of opinion.

First opinion, i agree with Red about keeping the length short, making it a "short story" (if 10 pages can be called short) contest as opposed to the feature length stories that are submitted in the library. Perhaps too, if kept short, a few more of the none winners might also be published. But i also agree with bill's suggestion of requiring the story to be complete. The entries should have a beginning, middle and an end, no continuations. Yes, it may be more of a challenge to do all that in the limited space of 10 pages, but isn't it part of a good contest to be challenging?

Second opinion, i personally, really like the picture inspired challenge best. i was very impressed by how one picture could inspire such different ideas. i liked being able to look at the picture thru the eyes of the writers and their stories and each time see something different.

Lastly, i will close with a question. What are your requirements for being a judge? As a newbie to the library, i may not qualify but would gladly offer my help.

simple thoughts from a simple mind
kym

[Phoenix]

I agree with Kym with having a picture as a frame of reference for the story. (I thought it was a brilliant idea when I first saw it in the original competition.) It just seems to make the stories more ... visual. What's the often used phrased, A picture's worth a thousand words. Hey, that's nearly a page of writing gone in one foul swoop. <Grin!>

I'd recommend not putting too many restrictions on story writing ... I was involved with another story competition a couple of months back where the website owner said what the story theme was going to be, then he said what the story had to be about, then he said he only want three characters involved and described their occupations, desires, history, etc ... the only thing the authors could write about was how the characters physically look. The rest of the story was done.

Needless to say the webmaster only got a couple of stories (I didn't bother writing anything after reading the rules) and the competition was really a waste of time. The webmaster then amused us by writing a nasty forum message saying how disappointed he was that no one cared enough to write anything.
Homer Simpson, you're not the dumbest dude around.

The only rule I'd recommend is page length. When I write a chapter in my stories I routinely keep the chapter to approx 8000-10,000 characters. Anymore and readers will often get tired, bored or worse, won't finish the chapter. So let's say one story with a max of three chapters, and the story has to have an ending.

[Fire-bird jumps down from his soap-box and dusts it off for the next person.]

Fire-bird

[GaryWilcox]

Originally posted by Phoenix
Homer Simpson, you're not the dumbest dude around.

But subs, don't let Homer Dom you.

Seriously, I think you make an excellent point about how demanding too much can injure the storyteller's process. And then there's the issue of writing credit-- the last thing I want, or would want to do to someone else as a Mod, is have my name tacked on to something someone else wrote because they had to use a scenario I suggested in detail.

I have been looking for photographic images to suggest for the contest, but all I seem to come back to are Alebeard's pics, and some of Roberts. Since I think Alebeard would want to participate, I'll have to keep looking.

[e.e. norcod]

Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy! I would not automatically pass on Alebeard without consulting him first. In my opinion, and it is not a humble one, Alebeard and emma do the finest work in North America and maybe the world. I would love to write a story based on one of their photos.

Another one to consider is Masterkurt. Perhaps in his archives he has something, particularly black and white, he would consider sending.

In any case both of the above choices have been contributors to this site in the Personal Photography Forum. Dedicating one of their pictures as the theme photo would honor them for their contribution. I think that it would be a neat artistic cross-over combining two of this sites themes, fiction and personal photography!

[GaryWilcox]

Perhaps he could take something new for the contest and agree to be a judge!

Alebeard, are you interested...?

[Aurelius]

Another suggestion was to set just the mood, word or colour. Somewhere on the forum there is suggestion to have a set of words that need to be used in a story…

I think you might be refering to my suggestion. Actually the words I mentioned were literary devices (tropes!) like metaphors, puns, irony, alliteration. Designed mostly as a way to make the story amusing and witty, as well as stimulate the writer towards a bit of humour.

Having volunteered to be a judge I suddenly find myself greatly in favour of a word limit! Though for me 5000 words is around 15 minutes reading time maximum, which isn't much really. I don't mind if they are a little longer than that.