About This Folder

[Kyra]

I find competition is a very productive way to help increase your writing abilities, as well as add an incentive for actually sitting down and writing when you have the chance. Every week, a mod will post a prompt for short stories and the like. It's encouraged that you vote and/or give feedback on the weekly entries even if you choose not to write, but it's not an enforced rule. However, if you do enter a piece, you must vote!!! And you cannot vote for your own. Any complaints or questions?

[Taliah]

What's the wordcount guideline?

[Kyra]

That's an excellent question!!! Um... try to aim for under two thousand words. If you go over, I won't scold you, but note that a reader can only read so much at a time. Especially online.

[Taliah]

Alright. "Fairytale" is a great prompt by the way, did you come up with it?

[Taliah]

Also what days do the week start and end on?

[Kyra]

Just one week. 'Till next Thursday. Then we'll vote on Friday and Saturday, hopefully get the next prompt out on Sunday.

I forgot to mention this earlier, but I'm not putting any limit on contest entries. You have an unlimited amount of stories you can send in. This group IS to encourage writing, after all. XD

[Robin]

Can I just vote this one? I feel like I gotta put my all into our romance one on Unknown...

[Mel]

Yeah, I'm kinda booked up right now on the romance thingy. But I'll do one soon.

[Kyra]

It's mot required by any means. Just a side project for those who may want to participate. No hard-core do-it-or-else stuff.

[Jocelyn]

:) I really can't ever write. *sigh*

[Taliah]

Kyra wrote: "Just one week. 'Till next Thursday. Then we'll vote on Friday and Saturday, hopefully get the next prompt out on Sunday..."

Things haven't exactly gone to plan with the few entries, but should the next promt go out today anyway?

[Kyra]

Let's keep it up for another few days. Hopefully someone (or me, if I ever get around to it...) can slip something in, and then we can have an actual competition.

[Taliah]

I thought maybe if we kept the first one open while we did the next one... there's always the possibility that 10 people are waiting to enter but don't think they have time or can't think of a fairytale! (Yes, I know, grasping at straws. I happen to love straws.)

[Kyra]

(LOL) That's a really good idea, actually. Sure, I'll set one up now.

[Kyra]

Okay, I'm sorry. I think I might need to close down these contests; along with the rest of the group, it seems to have died.

[Mel]

I don't think you should close down the group. People still comment and post and write on, and every once in a while the group gets a little life added back. Just let it flicker to life when it does and we can go with the flow.

[Jocelyn]

Why would you close down the group?

[Kyra]

I didn't say I would close down the group!!! I'd never do that. I said the group was starting to die, which means that if anything, we should try harder to save it. I just want to close down the competitions, at least until more people show interest in them.

[Mel]

Ochay, good. :3

[Jocelyn]

Ah, I see.

[Lynne]

I've never been that great at short stories. I tend to be a bit long winded. :-)

[Kyra]

Oh, me to. My stories typically start strong, but they end in a half-baked attempt at a dramatic cliffhanger-sort thing.

[Lynne]

I usually find they just go on too long to be considered short stories!

[Alfaniel]

I think it's better for a weekly contest to have a harder limit, such as 500 words or at most 1000. It's difficult to write a short story in a few days... A hard limit means asking for a glimpse, a fragment, an illustration of the prompt, and would make this contest into a writing exercise.