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EVENT: Summer 2019 Themed Oneshot Competition Announcement

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unrepentantAuthor

A cat who writes stories
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Hello, everyone! I'm pleased to announce our first Themed Oneshot Competition.

This is a new kind of event that we're hoping will provide a competitive environment in the absence of the classic Awards. In short, it will last two months and pit entrants against each other to write excellent short fiction to a short and fairly permissive brief. For more details, see the full rules below. I and the moderator team have given this one quite a bit of thought and we're confident that this format is a worthy addition to our pallette of events, but it's the first of its kind and so we're more than ready to receive feedback from the community.

Rules

  1. :bulbagarden: The theme for this competition will be Undelivered Messages. Your entry should be appropriate to that theme, although you're welcome to take it in any direction you please. We're looking to receive stories which are fundamentally about communications that never make it to the recipient, but the exact nature of the "message," and of course the context, genre, tone, and everything else are all up to you.

  2. :bulbagarden: You have two weeks to register your participation, starting with the posting of this thread and ending 23:59 GMT on August 11th. Please use this time effectively to come up with a concept or plan for your story.

  3. :bulbagarden: The wordcount bound is between 2000 and 10,000 words. So long as your wordcount is between these values, your entry will qualify. Writing a longer or shorter fic will confer no advantage or preference. To hold everyone to an identical standard, please check your wordcount using this link.

  4. :bulbagarden: You will have one month to write your entry, (assuming you leave it til the last moment to register), with the deadline being 23:59 GMT on September 8th. No submissions will be accepted after this time. If you're unsure of your deadline based on your timezone, please don't hesitate to ask.

  5. :bulbagarden: To afford roughly equal time for reading to the community and judges, please publish your entry within 48 hours of the deadline. You may publish your work in its own thread, but please link to it in this thread when you do so. To be doubly clear: do not post your story until the last two days.

  6. :bulbagarden: The judging & voting period will last two weeks. The panel of judges will read and judge every entry, and pick a winner in each of two categories, these being the best overall writing quality and best use of the competition theme.
    1. A judgment need not be more than a sentence or two, but it should demonstrate that you have read and formed an opinion of the entry.
    2. Judges are strongly encouraged to write at least a few reviews.
    3. Judging takes place in threads corresponding to each entry, with entrants not present in the threads corresponding to their own entries.
    4. As the host and vote-counter, I, @unrepentantAuthor, am ineligible to receive votes from judges.
    5. Judging guidelines will be provided.
    6. All effort will be made to ensure all entries are reviewed.
  7. :bulbagarden: The judges for this competition will be volunteers from the community and moderator team. Please register your interest in being on the judge panel in this thread. By registering as a judge, you promise to read and judge every entry in the competition in a timely fashion, and to not vote for yourself. You also promise not to provide beta-reading services to other entrants.

  8. :bulbagarden: The winners will be selected using Single Transferable Vote voting, in two separate votes, with each judge selecting at least their top three entries. The top three results of each vote will be publicly revealed. Naturally, entrants may not vote for themselves. In the event that a single entry comes first in both votes, it will be considered to have won the vote in which it received the greatest margin of votes, i.e. one entry cannot win both prizes.

  9. :bulbagarden: There will also be a community vote for a third winner via straw poll, i.e. the most popular entry overall. Voters are strongly encouraged to write at least a few reviews. We recommend that one of your reviews be for your chosen winner!

  10. :bulbagarden: Reviews written for any competition entry (whether by a judge or not) will receive a considerable 4 extra points in the Review League.

  11. :bulbagarden: All three winners will receive prizes! Namely, a classic-style victor's banner, prestige in the community, and 60 points of Review League credit. Naturally, all participants will recieve a number of reviews!

  12. :bulbagarden: Following the conclusion of the event, I will post a community feedback thread to invite your opinions and determine if there's a demand for this to be a reoccuring format. The moderator team will then conduct an internal review to gauge how robust it is and whether it's logistically viable as a regular event.
Naturally, all normal forum and section rules apply, and please conduct yourselves with good sportsmanship.

Remember to register as a participant and/or judge before the deadline! Feel free to ask me anything if you have questions. And lastly, good luck to all who get involved! It will be my pleasure to read every single entry.

Participating Competitors: (16)
  • Beth Pavell
  • unrepentantAuthor
  • Felly
  • Lumilite
  • LightningTopaz
  • kintsugi
  • canisaries
  • AceTrainer14
  • Misfit Angel
  • Cresselia92
  • The Walrein
  • UselessBytes
  • Swiftfox
  • namohysip
  • PeaceSign
  • InfiniteBakuphoon
Participating Judges: (4)
  • Beth Pavell
  • unrepentantAuthor
  • kintsugi
  • AceTrainer14
Contingency Judges: (3)
  • Misfit Angel
  • Cresselia92
  • namohysip
 
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Glad to have some participants signing up! Good luck to all of you.

Now of course I'm not at liberty to discuss any of your story ideas beyond the very broadest strokes with you given that I am hosting/judging, but please do contact me with any other questions you might have.
 
Do the stories need to be Pokemon-themed?
 
Looks like we have seven participants and three judges signed up, everyone. That's fairly respectable, but I'd love to see a few more people before the week is out. Remember, you have until midnight on Sunday 11th (GMT) to put yourself forward. That's 7pm on the US east coast, to be clear.
 
I have neglected this section for far too long, and my writing/productivity has really suffered as a result. Need to get back into the swing of things and the pressures of a forum to keep me going, so sign me up as writer and judge!
 
Signing up as a participant, and as a tentative judge if there aren't enough (that's a decision that will be made when the event launches).
 
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