time limit Short story contest

[Wolfeborn]

Have been looking at other forums to do with art etc and many of them have contests/competitions where the members are given a set time limit to create a picture, 3d object, poem etc.

I was thinking would people be up for doing a similar thing with short stories? You will have one hour or so to create a story on a specified subject/ premise, not including time for editing grammar and spelling.

I think this could be useful to hone those creative writing skills putting a time limit on it gives a deadline to work to and an hour - hour and half to do your story/ stories (probably no limit on how many entries you can have)

Then we all vote on our favourites

So people what do you think? Would you be up for giving this a go?

[ray gower]

No objection to entering a challenge, but time scales must be in terms of 3-4 weeks or a lot of folk are going to miss out.

Also need to regulate subject matter by using any combination of: Genre, title, max/min length, keywords, sentences and props or people will be trying to compare Noddy with Lord of the Rings

[Harpo]

Originally Posted by ray gower

compare Noddy with Lord of the Rings

1. The Fellowship Of The Tiny Bell On Noddy's Hat Which Goes Ting-A-Ling
2. The Toy Towners
3. The Return Of Mr Wobbly Man

[Wolfeborn]

oh yeah the contest would run prob monthly to give people plenty of time to get entries in, and yeah would def have to have a subject for the competion as to genre or character etc. Was thinking along the lines of a theme for the month which could either be a genre or a certain character (your darkside for example) or some other type of theme.

word limit not so much of a problem but would need to have some sort of upper limit though can't see many people writing more than three thousand words in an hour unless they have crazy typing skills :P Though would prob be more like 1000 or 1500 as people will need to read them in order to vote on their favs. again voting would be over a reasonable period of time once the contest ends to give people ample time to read through submissions and of course no voting for yourself hehe.

[j. d. worthington]

While having an execise set up to write such a story to a time limit might not be a bad idea, there are reasons for not instituting a contest on this. The idea of story-writing contests has been broached before, and the general feeling among the staff has been that such things have a tendency to generate friction, especially when it comes to voting on the quality of someone's work. Haven't heard back from Brian on this yet, but I'd say it's unlikely to fly, as there's too much possibility for bad blood as a result....

[ray gower]

Avoid the term 'Contest' and call it a 'Challenge'

No winning cup or medal, but a good chance to compare each other's approach and get honest comparitive feed back?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by ray gower

No winning cup or medal, but a good chance to compare each other's approach and get honest comparitive feed back?

But then people would not be getting comparative feedback on their actual writing skills, only on what they can produce within a set time limit. You would still have the contest aspect ("how many favorable remarks can I get") without necessarily getting useful feedback -- unless someone plans to make a career of flash fiction.

I think it would be better to just have the challenge, let people post their own contributions, and leave the participants to (privately) assess how their own work measures up.

Also, in an international forum like this one, with people in different time zones, it would be hard to set up a time limit that didn't leave people out, require them to get up and write in the middle of the night, or otherwise find themselves at a disadvantage because of where they live.

[I, Brian]

It's something on the radar for the future, but not something we're going to encourage here until then as you can guarantee it'll end up in tears and tantrums, and chronicles would get blamed for it.