Story competitions

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Raziel02

Story competitions

Post by Raziel02 »

First of all sorry if this has been sujjested before, but recently there has been a higher level of posts, which are of a story. I take a large interest in reading and writting fluff and i think that it is important to incourage this to all members.

I have heard that there was once a form of a competition of these stories, and i think that this would be a good idea, as it incourages members to create there own work, improve there writting skills, and generally have fun while there doing it.

Well that is my sujjestion anyway, the history of the Druchii is one of my favourite forums and i think this would add a new level to it, so what do think?
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Post by Ansob. »

Can very easily be done; after all, you have two judges (the mods) already here. It doesn't even need to be a site thing; I can create an sticky in the forum and make a site announcement.
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Post by Lamehk the slavemaster »

it does sound a good idea and i would encrorage people to write more. but what would the prize be? if it does happen i would enter it, if only for fun.

well black it would be good if you can do it. it should be popular
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Post by Ilokir lúinwë »

Results of previous comp were never published... so why not publishing the best 4 - 7 in the hall of fame, and the best 1 - 3 in the Herald?
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Post by Lamehk the slavemaster »

well i think it should be on a sticky. and i suggest a word limit. say 1000 words?
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Post by Eldacar »

Can very easily be done; after all, you have two judges (the mods) already here. It doesn't even need to be a site thing; I can create an sticky in the forum and make a site announcement.

Being a moderator doesn't make you a genius at judging stories, Ansob. Often, the best judge will be somebody who is a very good writer themselves, and it'd be easier to just have a single judge anyway.

and i suggest a word limit. say 1000 words?

From personal experience, that's far too low.
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Post by Ansob. »

Eldacar wrote:Being a moderator doesn't make you a genius at judging stories, Ansob. Often, the best judge will be somebody who is a very good writer themselves, and it'd be easier to just have a single judge anyway.


No, it doesn't; but I presume that, being moderators of the History forum, we would have the slightest of experiences in actually reading story. A story isn't necessarily judges according to its rythm or structure, but according to how much the judges - who represent the people - liked it. And we can always have a poll.

Eldacar wrote:
and i suggest a word limit. say 1000 words?

From personal experience, that's far too low.


Actually, no. It makes it bloody hard to do (try a fiction contest where the word limit is five hundred if you want hardcore), but still entirely feasible, and prevents people from getting into something they'll never finish, makes it easily readable and, much like WFB at 1.5k, means you have to make choices about what you want in. From my experience, one thousand words is easily the best possible word limit.
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Post by Raziel02 »

Nice to see that is a welcomed idea, as for juding, i would think that a team of the moderators should judge, pick 3 favourites and give points for a number of catagories, and as for the prize i like Ikor's idea of the best three in the Herald. Thanks.
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Post by Rork »

Perhaps some of the people who came top in the previous contest (...whoever they might be...) would be good as judges. Add Tastyfish and some of Cult to taste ;).

If we're feeling generous then we could add in ansob :P.
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Post by Fingol darkwater »

:shock: 1000 words? That's nothing!

... I'm over it. Anyway, would the submissions be judged on readability and creativity alone, or would punctuation play a big role as well (because it should)?
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Post by Raziel02 »

Although punctuation can play a large role in how the story is read, shurely the creativity of the story is more important, afterall 95% of grammatical and speeling errors will be taken care of thanks to a spell checker, as for a word count, i dont there should be anything too specific, it would be very difficult to get a persons best work possible into a specific word count, not if its done properly anyway.
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Post by Eldacar »

No, it doesn't; but I presume that, being moderators of the History forum, we would have the slightest of experiences in actually reading story. A story isn't necessarily judges according to its rythm or structure, but according to how much the judges - who represent the people - liked it. And we can always have a poll.

Following that, you'd want the representatives of the people to actually be chosen by the people. Moreover, as I said, moderation <> ability to judge correctly. I've seen people who are hopeless at judging stories despite whatever other position they hold, and vice versa. So for that reason, I'd either elect the judges, or just have a poll on the stories themselves.

Actually, no. It makes it bloody hard to do (try a fiction contest where the word limit is five hundred if you want hardcore), but still entirely feasible, and prevents people from getting into something they'll never finish, makes it easily readable and, much like WFB at 1.5k, means you have to make choices about what you want in. From my experience, one thousand words is easily the best possible word limit.

I can go through a thousand words with comparable ease, if I'm actually trying to be descriptive and to show the actions of the characters within the story. My opinion would be to set it at around 1500-2000 words, personally.
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Post by Rork »

You could have a judging panel draw up a shortlist to put to a vote, assuming there is a longlist to start with ;).
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Post by Lamehk the slavemaster »

Rork wrote:You could have a judging panel draw up a shortlist to put to a vote, assuming there is a longlist to start with ;).


i agree with that. and i stick by what i said earlier, it needs to be readable, so limit of 1k 1.5k max. so when is it going to start?
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Post by Neves »

I very much like this idea! But should we have to subscribe or just enter something during a certain period?

About the judging: maybe two mods an two previous winners?

I myself would judge 80 percent on content and 20 on punctuation and grammar etc.

Hope the contest starts soon!
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Post by Ilokir lúinwë »

I thought you had experience with a similar contest? The previous story competition was only a year ago, if I remember correctly.
I somehow fear the winners of previous competition aren't known, their stories weren't published anyhow. What a pity Lethalis departed, as mod of this forum, he must have been involved in the previous comp...
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Post by Ansob. »

Fingol Darkwater wrote:Anyway, would the submissions be judged on readability and creativity alone, or would punctuation play a big role as well (because it should)?


The latter plays a huge part in the former. As far as I'm concerned, I won't even bother reading something which says "the elf went to the other room and he killed the orc but then the orc's buddies they came along and they killed him back but not before he killed another." Okay, that's overkill, but you get the idea. Punctuation will be penalised, especially if it detracts from the flow; as Raziel said, everyone has access to a spellchecker of some kind (if you don't, go to the OpenOffice website).

Eldacar wrote:Following that, you'd want the representatives of the people to actually be chosen by the people. Moreover, as I said, moderation <> ability to judge correctly. I've seen people who are hopeless at judging stories despite whatever other position they hold, and vice versa. So for that reason, I'd either elect the judges, or just have a poll on the stories themselves.


*cough* Since last I heard, here, to be a moderator, you had to at least know something about what topic the forum was concerned, in this case, being mod of the History forum means you know a fair deal about fluff and aren't illiterate. ;) As I said, I see little point in judging a story over technical matters alone, so having a doctorate in English literature is hardly needed. What matters is that the stories are well written and well researched (with the balance in the favour of the former).

I can go through a thousand words with comparable ease, if I'm actually trying to be descriptive and to show the actions of the characters within the story.


That's precisely why the word limit should be one, and not two, thousand words. The whole point of the exercise is not to take a stroll through story park, but to produce something refined. It has to be limiting, or else you might as well do away with word limits altogether. There's also the fact that reading 10+ two thousand words stories is a lot more of a pain than reading 10+ one thousand word stories.

Neves wrote:I very much like this idea! But should we have to subscribe or just enter something during a certain period?


No signing up necessary. The only requisite for your story to be considered a part of the contest is that it's in by the deadline.

For those of you who know Imperial Literature.net, I intend to run this much like they run theirs: one to two month deadline depending on what the participants want, word limit set by the moderators and then the winners are picked partly by the readers, partly by the judges (à la shortlist, as Rork described).

And staying on the topic of the judges: we could have the current two moderators of the History forum (Mornar and myself), two people from the Cult (darkprincess and Tastyfish) and two other people (either previous winners, elected or hand-picked, whatever).
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Post by Muse of harganeth »

It could work really well, yet i think the best thing to do is not have a word limit. I doubt that there are going to be any Novels, just short stories.
The prize as already suggested should be something like getting their story put in the Hall of Fame and/ or the Monthly. That is good.

The Moderators and someone chosen by the members should be judges, yet it might be a bit unfair in terms, if they want to get their story in, which is why we need 2 Members people from the COS ect.

Another thing would be where would we submit them? Emailing the judges would go into chaos, as it takes tim for large documents o travel, plus you have to email them to everyone else. To much Fuss.
I suggest a new forum under the forum list called "Story Compition" or "History Compition" and all posts would go there.
bit like the campaighn forum.

Other than that obvisly it should be Druchii Fluff only! make your story clear enough to read, write it on microsoft word if you can as it can be spell checked then transport it over to D.net via Copy paste.
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Post by Rork »

Muse of Harganeth wrote:Another thing would be where would we submit them? Emailing the judges would go into chaos, as it takes tim for large documents o travel, plus you have to email them to everyone else. To much Fuss.


A word document or such shouldn't be that big if it's just text (even if word has lots of junk tagged on). If there's a central e-mail address (as there was for the last competition), getting hold of them is less of a problem too.

Or it gets uploaded to a shared file space etc etc.

I think another forum would be unnecessary for this - the amount of traffic is going to be relatively low for those involved. But that is dependent on what the judges need. I'd suspect the first stage would be conducted away from public scrutiny, with the short list posted in the HoD forum.
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Post by General kala »

OK, I'll tell you what I know about the previous story competition.

When I was granted access to all the initiatives, I found the thread about the results of last year's story comp. Apparently I came in second (remember, this was before I was a moderator), followed by Damnation in third. King Ulric Flamebeard took the gold. BUT, I was asked to abandon that competition. I guess because it was Anaryn's baby and he's gone now. Anyway, the winning story is officially on mothballs, which is irritating as hell because it's really good.

As far as a new competition goes, I'm certainly willing to include the winner in the magazine. But I am not going to have the time to run the competition or judge the entries.

RasputinII is building the basis of a P&M competition. I think that we might be able to build out a new story competition on the same framework. So I will plant the seed in the Initiatives forum and see if someone is willing to run it.
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Post by Fingol darkwater »

It could work really well, yet i think the best thing to do is not have a word limit. I doubt that there are going to be any Novels, just short stories.


No. After thinking about it, a word limit is quite necessary. Although it could just be one thousand words give or take, rather than one thousand words period.

Another thing would be where would we submit them? Emailing the judges would go into chaos, as it takes tim for large documents o travel, plus you have to email them to everyone else. To much Fuss.
I suggest a new forum under the forum list called "Story Compition" or "History Compition" and all posts would go there.
bit like the campaighn forum.


Why? All they have to do is sticky a topic called; "Writing Contest Entries." Way less effort.

I'm just glad that we've established that flow and punctuation are important here. Creativity is important to, but what good is it if the story is too bloody hard to read?
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Post by Langmann »

I think it is a great idea!

I think the general population of the board could do a good job of judging the stories once they are done. Just put the stories up in a poll, select the top two vote winners, revote for the winner.
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Post by Muse of harganeth »

Hmmm. A one thousand word Average would be the way to go. How ever i dont' think it is enough, 2000 is more resonable. My story (Not BOTD) is about 1600 and it's only on the second part! one thousand words is a limitaion!

The sticky topic idea, though requires less effot, your asking for, 20 1000 word stories! thats a lot of reading for the moderators, and people might not get their storys read. Though it might take loads of effot, a new forum would be easy to sought, read ect. Also if some one wants a coment, or to know if it's been judged then that would be the way to go.
Yet you have more posts, and proberbly know how hard it is going to be, so for now it's your opinion.
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Post by Fingol darkwater »

I see what you're saying here Muse, and you've got a point. Perhaps instead of starting a whole new forum, just have authers post their entries as topics in the history forum and put "Contest Entry: <insert title>" as the subject.

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Post by The liger »

I think the point of the low word limit is to really raise the competitiveness, and shed light on the best. It's difficult, but not impossible, to condense a story down into 1000 or so words and keep it high standards, I'm sure, but it would show the best writers who could manage it. Perhaps I'm thinking too elitist, and forgetting the fun part, but it would put the writers under pressure, and perhaps force the great writers to the top, while also being easier for readers, judges and voters.

However, I'm really looking forward to this, firstly because it should produce a load of great stories for me to read, and also because it will be fun!
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