Fireside Storytelling Contest

November 7, 2019 7:56 am

I just love this time of year; the tang of autumn on the breeze, the beginning chill of winter creeping in, and best of all it provides an excellent excuse to curl up beside a cozy fire and enjoy a good book! Ah, could there be anything more perfect? I think not. Which is why I am hoping to provide you all with a bit of new fireside reading material. I can’t do it alone however; Would you be willing to help gather tales from around Subeta?

I’m in search of myths and legends harking back to the beginnings of Subeta, those half-forgotten stories a grandparent might have whispered in your ear while gently lulling you into sleep. And tales of bravery and adventure too of course - variety is the spice of life after all! Although the spices of Fireside are also quite lovely; I’m quite partial to cinnamon myself. But I digress.

So please, if you have a spare moment or two to gather up an old tale and write it down for me, I’ll be ready to accept submissions in about a week and get started on turning them into a proper collection. Let’s work together so all Subetans can enjoy sharing some new tales from around the globe this Fireside!

How to Enter Write a short story about a NEW Subeta myth or legend for one of the following categories:

Celestial beings (Sun/Moon/Stars)
Water (Ocean/Rivers/Ponds/Rain)
Natural Disasters (Volcanoes/Hurricanes/Storms)
Nature (Plants/Animals/Geography)
Magic (Spells/Charms/Curses)
Supernatural (Spooky, Unnatural, Unliving)

Story should be 600 characters or less
Please keep story content to a PG level to help keep entries as reader friendly as possible.
Enter once Alexander opens up submissions! (This will be in around a week’s time, and submissions will be open for another week after that.)
One entry per person.
Users will get to read and vote for their favorites!

Prizes 12 lucky winners will have their entries used in Alexander’s upcoming storybook collection and will receive a complimentary copy of the entire set of books. All participants will receive a storybook themed to their entry category and a special forum title.

All prizes will be attainable after the contest ends, and the winning stories will potentially be used as inspiration for further content in the future - so please don’t submit something you wouldn’t want to be used!

November 20, 2019, 1:05 am by

i was struggling for a solid minute earlier because i misremembered the limit as being 60 characters and boy am i glad its actually 600, haha

November 17, 2019, 8:37 pm by

600 characters is just so hard!!! squints you sure you can't give us some leeway? ;)

November 14, 2019, 2:31 pm by

I may have a problem... I managed to write a tiny 600 character story (whoot)! However... my tiny story could be used in at least 3 of the topics we can write for. I can't figure out which topic it should be entered under!

November 14, 2019, 12:14 pm by

oh man. I thought it was WORDS. (600 words) oh man. How in the world am I going to cut this down!! lol

November 12, 2019, 5:38 pm by

975 characters ಠ_ಠ Time to do some major refining

November 10, 2019, 5:02 pm by

Can we use the '&' symbol instead of "and" to shorten the characters?

November 9, 2019, 6:55 pm by

As I see it, the challenge isn't creating a story, it's crafting one that makes sense with only 600 letters. ;)

November 9, 2019, 4:03 pm by

I sure hope only letters and punctuation count and not spaces because I'm still about 10 letters over. :(

November 9, 2019, 12:55 am by

What fun :D this was a great idea

November 9, 2019, 12:17 am by

My word processor counts words in a document but not characters. But if spaces count then I'll have to delete at least 1/3 of my story.

November 8, 2019, 8:59 pm by

cut off day?

November 8, 2019, 6:24 pm by

I really love the idea and will definitely take part. I just wish there were more submissions allowed per person, like two at least. I've got competing ideas and I'd love to have a chance to share more than one of them. :D

November 8, 2019, 1:33 pm by

Thanks for doing this contest. I wrote something up, it was hard though...600 characters goes by so quick.

November 8, 2019, 11:41 am by

november: PERFECT timing for all the ppl who couldn't participate in nanowrimo. good luck everyone 👀

November 8, 2019, 10:45 am by

I used to do NaNoWriMo every year, but haven't had the time or energy to do it for the last 3 years or so. I miss it. This will be a great way for me to get my "creative writing" fix! Love this idea and can't wait for submissions to be open :). Good luck, everyone :)

November 8, 2019, 8:28 am by

according to my word count that I was using, the buffer only counted for one character, despite being a new break. Regardless, I played it safe and kept mines around 550 characters while still keeping cohesion. I'd err on the side of caution and keep it under 600 characters unless something does awry. I'm assuming we'll get more details once the submission page is up. Maybe they'll code in a counter that will tell you if you've went over the character limit?

November 8, 2019, 8:09 am by

No, you still have spaces. Sometimes you count them towards the total, sometimes not. Like, is 600 characters the size of the buffer, or an issue of what looks nice in the mouse over.

November 8, 2019, 1:12 am by

Never mind - I did Maika's story for a warm up and then came up with something better and original to submit. I'm ready!! :D

November 8, 2019, 12:50 am by

Can I use one of my pet spotlight winners as inspiration? I'd love to take Maika's story and compress it down to 600 characters for this....

November 7, 2019, 11:37 pm by

i know, i'm just goofing. i'd assume it'd take spaces as characters or else the finished product would be unreadable. my submission has breaks in it but that didnt affect word count.

I have it like this, just for ease of editting, and that space didn't count. hopefully this is helpful ;v ;

November 7, 2019, 11:26 pm by

It’s kind of important to know before starting since it has a huge effect on word count and choice.

November 7, 2019, 11:16 pm by

it IS a paragraph! about 95-100 words. it is actually quite a fun writing challenge, to have something invoke something with such little words, like those two paragraph horror stories. It's a good exercise to be concise with your words, yet still make sense and leave a mark.

November 7, 2019, 11:09 pm by

600 characters?! That's... that's like a paragraph. That's nothing. How can you possibly write something compelling and interesting in that tiny allotment? How could you possibly get into it, and enjoy it, and express yourself, with that absolutely insignificant amount allowed? DX

This comment has been 323 characters. More than half gone.

November 7, 2019, 10:35 pm by

thank you! I'm relieved that the title doesn't count orz that'll make it much easier for me.

November 7, 2019, 10:33 pm by

All this information (including what's in the comments) will be on the submission page! :)

November 7, 2019, 10:24 pm by

seeing as theres excess rules in the comments section (like, i just read that titles don't count which gives me about 60 characters to play with) can the news post show these so we don't need to wade through comments to see kinda really important information? ;;;

November 7, 2019, 9:59 pm by

omfg if you could do more than one entry it'd be hilarious to seesomeonetypelikethistogetmorecharacterspacesintogetabetterstory

November 7, 2019, 9:19 pm by

wait a second, are those going to be ACTUAL books, or subeta item-books??

November 7, 2019, 9:11 pm by

Okay... i will try, im not good on english, but i will do my best for try to done something good :)

November 7, 2019, 8:35 pm by

~2 weeks to think of something. 600 characters max. Has to fit a theme.

STRESS

November 7, 2019, 7:32 pm by

Got caught by inspiration and wrote mine already ^.^ Good luck y'all, may the plot bunnies be kind!

November 7, 2019, 7:31 pm by

less than 600 characters is more, like a discription-contest.

November 7, 2019, 7:30 pm by

Thanks - I’ll be pondering this...

November 7, 2019, 7:23 pm by

Not for me this contest perhaps would be interested.

November 7, 2019, 7:04 pm by

This sounds so fun! Can we create myths/legends around existing Subeta characters? Provided it still falls within a category listed?

November 7, 2019, 6:49 pm by

MAGIC????? MAGICCCCCCC. THIS IS MY GENRE.

cracks knuckles Since I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year, this'll be a great opportunity for me to stretch the creative brain muscles.

November 7, 2019, 6:29 pm by

600 characters with or without spaces?

November 7, 2019, 6:13 pm by

OH YAY! A contest I can participate in! I'm excited!

November 7, 2019, 5:33 pm by

I'm at work (shhh) so can't read through dozens of comments, but I was just wondering when it says "new" myth does that mean we make up a brand new story/character/whatever or do a story about an already existing one that is new/recent to the site.

November 7, 2019, 5:27 pm by

What fun, wish I were feeling more inspired these days so I'd give it a try.

Good luck everyone!

November 7, 2019, 5:24 pm by

Sounds good. So basically a 100 word drabble challenge. A question - you have 6 categories and there will be 12 winners. So, does that mean two winners from each category, or will there be more in the categories that have more entries? (Say there were 30 entries for Nature, and only 6 for magic as an example) Or will it simply be the 12 most popular overall?

November 7, 2019, 5:18 pm by

Oh, wait. I definitely missed that line. Wow. Okay. Narrowing this down to one idea is hard!

November 7, 2019, 5:17 pm by

Will we be allowed more than one entry?

November 7, 2019, 5:08 pm by

If anyone needs help with spelling/proofreading I’d be happy to help :)

November 7, 2019, 5:00 pm by

Pass, if CSC was a prize I'd do it.

November 7, 2019, 4:09 pm by

I will participate, try my best, I will have to work on my spelling and grammar, but it makes me happy to be able to let my imagination run wild on this time of years.

November 7, 2019, 3:24 pm by

:) You'll find out at Black Friday.

November 7, 2019, 3:21 pm by

Oh this is going to be a toughie. Good luck everyone.

November 7, 2019, 2:55 pm by

Oooooh, I like this!

November 7, 2019, 2:23 pm by

Is there a deadline to join?

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Fireside Storytelling Contest

STRESS

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