Competition Inquiries

We wanted to do something a little bit different. Competitions have always been a fun way to bring buzz around here. Since you are the brilliant minds behind the site, we wanted to allow you to give your opinions on future competitions. I’ve attached a poll to get an idea of what categories you would like to see more of or ones you’d like us to avoid. Please feel free to discuss ideas below. There’s no guarantee we will pick any of them, but it’s always nice to see fresh ideas.

I voted for Flash Stories. Ideally, a short story between 1,000 to 5,000+ words I would prefer. The genre I am most drawn to is Drama. I do not think I could write humor, whether it be Micro or a Longer Story. I could see Crime being a fun challenge for a competition. I think if a Micro were ever to be done, it would be best with additional categories, i.e. Cheers To 10 Years competition. I hope this helped. Thank you for asking for the writers' opinions.

Quote by Cora
Ideally, a short story between 1,000 to 5,000+ words I would prefer.

Flash is actually 100-1000. I kind of like that length for some themes and ideas. Forces me to rein things in and focus more tightly, but can still tell a full story, vs. a micro where you're really just giving the bare bones.

Genre-wise, I am generally open to anything. Some of the best comps I have been in are ones where there is a broad theme that can cut across genres rather than a specific genre. So there was a "punk" comp I was in one time that was basically open to anything themed around "punk" genres like cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, and so on. And, of course, just punk culture and music. I think for a comp that works better as a focus than genre. Even a "space" themed comp could work that way. Even if it leaned heavily to SF, you could also have stories about modern space exploration (e.g. something involving astronauts on the ISS or its Chinese counterpart), astronomy, and such.

I'm good with Flash stories – you have to be skillful AND creative – but the question was: What would I like to see more of?

I'd like to see more humour stories. They're not easy to write, especially for someone like me who has no sense of humour.

Fantasy is always fun as it opens the door to just about anything you want to do – although most people seem to devolve to werewolves, vampires, and other such. Hunh. About as believable as a talking Bear, right?

Long stories are hard to write, and even harder to write well because the plots have to be so intricate that there are a lot of moving parts. They're also harder to read – unless they're truly gripping.

I love science fiction. After Dr. Seuss, it's what hooked me on reading. But I'm desperately intimidated by the great SF writers of my youth, notably Heinlein and Clarke, and, more recently, Spider Robinson. That makes it hard for me to write.

Horror is really not my thing, although I have written a couple of horror stories. I don't like being scared, nor being scary. I'm the cute, cuddly type, y'know?

Crime is an interesting genre. I'm not very good at it, but it does seem to bring out the creativity in people. Hmmm…What does that say about us?

Historical fiction is a little rare around here, but very popular in published works. It requires some research to make it work, and that's often the least enjoyable part of writing. By comparison, with Fantasy, you just make it up and let 'er rip.

Not sure if any of that rambling helps, Molly, but that's my stream of consciousness, and I'm sticking to it!

Quote by JamesPBear
I'd like to see more humour stories. They're not easy to write, especially for someone like me who has no sense of humour.

Funnily enough, I have a sense of humour, albeit one that leans to the goofy, weird, and absurd at times, and find humour very hard to write. I think the only really funny stories I have written have been micros just because 100 words is basically enough for a long joke or short sketch.

Thank you all for your input. So far it seems like Flash and Humor are the top runners here. Humor is tough, I find myself hilarious (yes, humor is subjective), and even I haven't tried writing in that category. Hmm, I'll give this more time, but let's see what I can come up with.

There's an interesting discussion about time travel happening on another site I am on and that's a genre of SFF that could be fun to play with in a comp and isn't confined to SF, even if that's usually the genre for it. Fantasy time travel is an option (magical time travel), even horror (a gateway to the past where some horrible thing or event awaits). Could even be a dream in a non-fantastical setting. One could even put the actual methodology as background and focus on the drama or romance or whatever that happens when people from different time periods meet up (think Outlander). So time travel in a broad sense of what happens when someone from one era visits or meets someone from another. Just a thought.

I’d vote for crime, You don’t see it much in writing, though it’s all over television and movies as a genre. And I think 3000 words is a good sweet spot. Frankly, all these are pretty interesting. Humor is, I agree, pretty subjective, and hard to write.

Hiya, for me 3K and under comps. I love flash, micro, crime, and mystery for comps!

😊

Flash fiction is always fun. It makes me really stay focused when writing, and it makes it easy to read more stories because they are the perfect length.

Only just seen this thread. Whilst I like Flash, I also like stories of 2k, 3k, 3.5k words - long enough to develop your characters and story, but still short enough that you need to keep it quite tight. I also enjoy broader themes in comps and think sci-fi, history, fantasy, crime, and horror are all good genres to explore for comps. By all means, narrow it down, but not too much as it also narrows the creativity.

Just my two-penneth, for what it's worth 😊.

While flash is very doable in a shorter time span it doesn't stretch me as a writer so much nowadays (it used to as I had never written less than about 14,000 words and so flash was so very hard to do.) I like the idea of longer stories (3-5,000) though getting them done is more taxing time wise.

I love humour and think I write it well, (lol, though my competition results don't really support that.) Other than that I actually like going with the flow of a competition theme and the more unexpected the better in a way as that makes the plot construction more of a challenge (I was bereft of ideas for the Sounds of Silence originally, but google and a lot of thinking gave me what I thought ended up as a good story which I took more pride in as it had not been easy.)

Although not on the list, I’ve always enjoyed competition themes where writers interpret a supplied picture. It’s intriguing to see how differently people are inspired by the same image. In addition, if the picture portrays, for example, a crime scene or historical image or something, that can help focus the theme of the competition.

Flash is good — and has a great difficulty level — but as TheShyThespian and others say, 3-3.5k is a decent chunk to develop an idea.

As for genre, I love sci-fi because it has broad scope (not just space, aliens or the future). But crime also is a top idea simply because there's always an inciting incident to drive the story.

Quote by Ping
Although not on the list, I’ve always enjoyed competition themes where writers interpret a supplied picture. It’s intriguing to see how differently people are inspired by the same image. In addition, if the picture portrays, for example, a crime scene or historical image or something, that can help focus the theme of the competition.

Agree!

Quote by Ping

Although not on the list, I’ve always enjoyed competition themes where writers interpret a supplied picture. It’s intriguing to see how differently people are inspired by the same image. In addition, if the picture portrays, for example, a crime scene or historical image or something, that can help focus the theme of the competition.

Me too!