Many of you will remember the highly successful Thousand Words Contest that Bicyclette ran last year. I have particularly happy memories of it because it got me to publish something again after a full year's gap – and the story that I wrote for the contest, Echoes of a Song, is one I'm really quite happy with. I'd been thinking about writing another thousand-worder at some point, but now I have an extra incentive because...
...the contest is back! A Thousand Words Contest II is set up in a very similar way, but with a few differences that make it important to read the rules in full. (Okay, that applies to any contest.) There are still five categories, but not the same five as last time. In the new contest, they are: Drama, Slice of Life, Horror, Comedy (all of which require the respective Fimfiction genre tag) and Experimental. As before, fics have to be exactly 1,000 words on the title card.
Edit: please read the comments to see a clarification on the rules, but the important bit is: "someone can submit the same fic to multiple categories, but only one fic
can be submitted in a category. so Comedy/Slice of Life can be
submitted to both Comedy and Slice of Life, but if the author wants to
submit a second story they would have to pick between
Horror/Drama/Experimental."
The contest is now open, and its closing date is 30th July at 7:59pm ET. (BST is five hours ahead, so 59 minutes after midnight for those of us in this time zone.) The other rules I'll leave to folks to read for themselves – though note especially rule 11 on Bicyclette's DNI policy, which bars any account which features published foalcon from entering. As you might imagine, this is not a rule I object to! Depending on how many entries there are, I may well do a Ponyfic Roundup series on them after judging is over.
While I can't absolutely 100% Pinkie Promise, I most definitely intend to write at least one entry for the new contest. What it will be remains to be seen!
Probably says a lot that I couldn't tell which category had changed and had to look it up. And found out that, in a sense, four had, and also none had; they just swapped the prior vaguely-genre-analogues of Angst, Fluff, Grim, Humo(u)r with their genre tag equivalents of Drama, Slice of Life, Horror and Comedy, while keeping Experimental. If nothing else, this'll prevent that category double-dipping done with entries, or at least drastically cut down on it.
ReplyDeleteAs unsurprising as it is given the mammoth turnout this had (only non-Jinglemas contest to have over 100 entries in quite some time, I believe), I am happy to see this back, because it produced some great stuff from lots of people, really helped flex the brevity writing skillset for us all, and even got me out of my flux to write too! Whether lighting will strike again for me is unclear (my entry last year was repurposing vignettes I'd had for a while), but I'm already stoked in any case.
Whether it will see the turnout of last time? 106 entries is a tall order to match, this'll lack the freshness of the new, and the number of active authors on the site continues to trickle down. Though, despite 2022 having north of 1K less stories than the prior year, Jinglemas had only one story less. So, you know, anything could happen.
Relating to Rule 8 of the contest:
DeleteAuthors may submit a single fic into multiple categories, but can only submit up to one fic in any particular category.
I think it'll be interesting to see where the (I suspect) quite large number of [Comedy/Slice of Life] fics will end up, now that authors will have to choose one or the other.
Like you I wonder whether 106 stories was to an extent lightning in a bottle. Mind you, there are a couple of entries already, and there hasn't been a site post about the contest yet. (I trust that it will get one, given that the treefics contest did.)
oh no, i did a bad job writing the rules if this is how people are interpreting it! i meant that someone can submit the same fic to multiple categories, but only one fic can be submitted in a category. so Comedy/Slice of Life can be submitted to both Comedy and Slice of Life, but if the author wants to submit a second story they would have to pick between Horror/Drama/Experimental.
Deleteand thank you so much for writing about the contest! i was so glad to see your reviews of the winners last time, and look forward to any entries or reviews you end up doing this time!
well somehow i commented anonymously just now? will this work?
DeleteAha, I see. That's my fault for misinterpreting, not yours. I'll fix the past when I'm back on the PC.
DeleteRegardless of whether I end up entering, I certainly hope to review the winners again. And thank you! :)
I'll fix the *post*. Fixing the past is a bit beyond my magic. :P
Delete