COMMUNITY

When I decided on hosting the first ever Unofficial Fan Fic and the Second Unofficial Fan Art contests, I decided to make them a bi-monthly contest to compensate for the Holiday season (as many will likely be engaged in holiday Festivities, shopping, and the works).

What this basically means is you get to submit two entries; one for this month, and the other for January. You may submit them one at a time, or all at once.

Now, because I am not a member of the Bioware Staff, nor am I a moderator, I do not have the authority to grant/award a prize. So these contests are here to give everybody something to do until the game comes out (and depending on how successful these unofficial contests are, and if circumstances allow, I may continue hosting these contests even after SW:TOR Beta and the full game are released).


With that settled, here are the rules:

1. Your entry, which consists of one story each, must be original (it must not be copied from anyone; I doubt this will happen, but this rule is in place just in case).

2. Your entry can be as long, or as short, as you like.

3. Be courteous to everyone; don't be a bad sport (I.E. don't throw a fit if your entry doesn't get any votes, or if someone submits a better story than you). Constructive criticism on the otherhand is allowed as long as it's polite.

4. During the voting process, you cannot vote for yourself; if you choose to vote, you must vote for someone else's entry.



This contest starts today (December 1st) and ends on January 27th; voting will commence immediately at 8:00 PM EST.

I almost forgot, if you're short on time, you are allowed to submit a story you've already written.

Although I am working on a story now and will be posting in the Fan Fiction forums soon, I won't start posting this story until I get it nearly finish which will likley be near the end of December. This story is an introductory story for some characters and I hope to write future adventures (using these characters) with other authors.So...I will not be submitting a story for this contest, but will likely do so in the future. However, if I finish my story before the deadline, then I just might submit. Regardless, this story will be for all to read in hopes of fostering authorships with others for future stories.

I have a few questions about this contest...

1. Submitting stories to who? The OP or on the forums or in this thread?

2. Can these stories already be posted on these or other forums?

3. If the contest stories are submitted to the OP, who will be reading and judging them? It soundls like the general public will be reading and voting on these stories, meaning these stories will be publically posted.

4. How will the voting be done? Public or Private? If public, then everyone can see who voted for who. In addition, this can get messy as many folks tend to emblish their comments with all kinds of humor and criticisms (constructive and positive and negative). If private, then who is counting the votes? The OP?

5. If your deadline for submitting is January, how long are you going to give for folks to read the stories before voting begins (which, as I read it, will be Feb. 1st?)?

Thanks in advance for clarifying some things for me.

Those are some good questions:

1. You are submitting your stories in this thread.

2. Yes, as long as it is your work.

3. The last part of your question is correct; you post your stories here, so it is read and later voted upon, by the public.

4. Voting will be done in public. I was going to do a private voting where people could pm me their votes, but I suspected I would have my PM's flooded with more votes than my PM box could hold.

5. I am assuming the public would read the stories as they are posted, but understand that this Fan Fic contest is an experiment. Fan Fic and Fan Art contests are totally different from one another in many ways. If anyone needs more time to read the stories before making a decision, I will happily extend the voting process.

The rules are also open to debate, so if anyone has a suggestions or additions they'd like to make, feel free to post them here.

Wow...posting in this thread? Sure, I think that is probably best, unless you want to have links to posted stories on the Fan Fiction Forums. Hmm...this might actually be best, because stories posted here would be "hidden", in a manner of speaking, from the general forums and might get "lost" and not read by many. Umm...you might want to consider that. Then comes the problems of...the stories need to be finished, I would think.

The reason I menion this is...there's a limit to the number of characters in a post. Like I said, I'm writing a story now and have only gotten two sections written. Posting these two sections or "chapters" would take at least 8 - 10 posts...and the story is barely 1/5 done. If you have 3 or more people posting stories of a similar length and then the comments and voting and such...you're likely to have many pages of posts. This might be far too daunting a task for folks to read through and follow conversations (with respect to comments).

So...you might consider the submitted stories being posted in the general Fan Fiction Forums and have the submitted stories linked in this thread...so that, this thread can be used primarily for posting comments and voting?

I'm merely making logistical suggestions. I've never hosted such an event on forums and can see how this would be difficult and complicated. I applaude your efforts and I hope to participate (if not in this current contect, then in) future contests.

Thanks!

So you would suggest restricting the size of a story? Hmm... I never thought of people posting novellas before. How about each entry being composed of chapters of a story? Would this alleviate the potential strain on the readers?

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=8608

I'm putting mine up for the contest.

Sample:


"Uh-huh, I know," Janelle laughed, standing up from Marik's bed, "You say that every morning, y'know. C'mon, I have a plan anyway. We're gonna make sure the Master doesn't fry us this time."

"Huh?" Marik finished putting on his right boot, stood up and began fixing his learner tunic. "What are you talking about? Another one of your fool-proof pranks again on Master Anarki?"

"No."

Janelle's face became dead serious. Her bangs brushed over her eyes some as her gaze raised to her brother, a rather sinister and evil looking smile curling over her lips. Marik tilted his head to the left in curiosity; his attention was raised now to this plan, wondering what sort of plot his twin had concocted. He had this feeling that things were going to change today, that for once... one of his sister's plans was more than just a mere prank.

"Today, we begin our quest for revenge," Janelle said, placing her hands on her hips. "After today, we'll be able to find that Sith scum who killed our parents. I promised you eleven years ago that we would, remember?"

"... are you serious?" Marik tilted his head to the other direction, trying to figure out if she was just joking or something.

"Dead serious. We've learned enough from that deadbeat 'Master' of ours anyway- we've gotten all the styles down and can manipulate the Force better than anyone in our learner group, right?"

"Well yeah, but-"

"AND, you're already becoming really good at Shien and Jar'kai, though I don't know WHY you'd want to use Shien OR Jar'kai, they're so unsophisticated..."

"I know, but-"

"Anyway, I've developed this new technique, I can tag someone with Force Push and use Siphon Life to create a sort of projectile that corrodes Force energy from within! But that's besides the point- we won't need the Force very much to do what we need to do. You'll see!" Janelle grinned at her brother.

"I'm not sure I like where this is going..." Marik ran his left hand through his chin-long black hair, making sure it was fine.

"Oh, don't be dumb!"

Janelle grabbed her brother's right hand and led him into the training room of their Master, rushing right by a few other, older learners and apprentices.

I will put up one of mine as well.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=8724

((edit- thx Auron, fixed. Sorry guys. I fixed it FINALLY ))

Jedi Meatbag saying: May the force be with you (mostly me)!

You might want to get rid of the second set of http:// as it kinda messes up your link.