• The forum software have been upgraded to the latest version.

    If you notice anything that looks off, or does not work, please let us know.

    For more information, click here.

Discussion Lets talk about Fluff Forum Contests in 2015 into 2016, Put Forth your Ideas and Criticisms here

Scalenex
Slann

Scalenex

Keeper of the Indexes
Messages
11,452
Likes Received
20,359
Trophy Points
113
Red Devil and the whole Lustria-Online staff is plotting to have a truly epic painting/modeling contest in 2015.

But we can do multiple awesome things at once.

I'm pretty set on keeping our short story contest pattern on the calendar. Name a theme and have writers submit entries for a month. Post the entries and have readers submit votes for a month. Then we take a month off. As long as we have two entrants per contest, We will not break the January-February, April-May, July-August, October-November pattern next year.

I don't think I'm going to use a formula but if we have fairly large numbers of stories we'll continue have multiple votes per person. If I used my previous formula there would have only been three votes per person this contest, but I don't feel bad about winging it.

Themes

We can continue with having a moderator pick the theme. I doubt I'll enter the next one because my job is getting busier and I still want to finish my WHF noir detective novella, but I have yet to be inspired to create a theme for the next contest. I pay the buck of contest theming back to Arli. Or we can open it up to regular forumites.

One option is to have people sent private messages to me suggesting themes. Preferably people not intending to write a story in that theme, but that's not a hard and fast rule. Especially if the they think of the theme right before the contest.

Another option is to have players publicly nominate theme ideas and then have a poll vote to determine the next contest theme. The Under-Empire forum is trying that right now. The results are lukewarm for driving up participation but our fluff forum has more active members.

Another options we could steal from U-E is to simple come up with dozens of loaded words "loyalty" "honor" "faith" "treachery" and put them into a hat. Every contest we randomly draw two loaded words.

Rules

I've thought about shortening the max word count limit to make stories shorter but that's most for me. No matter what the max word count I pretty much always am less than a hundred words short of the ceiling. I have that problem on U-E. Though no one has really seemed to notice which pieces have large word counts besides me or Bob and no one really seems to be bothered by it, so we'll probably leave it as is.

Bob winning twice and Lord King Crow winning 1, 3rd, and 4th in our first contest is making me thinking it might be a good idea to limit future contests to one per entrant. Then again if it doesn't bother anyone, we should probably avoid rules that lead to fewer stories.

Another thought that's come up informally in discussion about this contest. Should future story contests allow drawings, illustrations, and comics?

Any other thoughts on rules to add or remove?

Spinoff Contests

We could do a drawing contest or a comic contest. Probably a comic contest would have at least a two-month entry period because they tend to take longer for people who are not Bob, or people who are Bob using pencil rendering.

We could even do a longer story contest but that would need a very long entry window.

We can do more meme or humor contests. Bob organized his Least Successful Skaven Invasion Contest with many entrants, a Boromeme contest with a few entrants and the informal haiku contest. We could make these contest more formal, or not.


Any other thoughts to make 2015 another year of great fluff writing?
 
I like the idea of efficiency gaining a benefit of more opportunity. Sometimes a theme taps into your muse and you can just write multiple stories in the subject. So multiple entries per person should stay.

I also think the comics should stay with the writing, being 12 stories in this last and only one of them was a comic, we might be spreading the talent too thin, ot hve a one entry comuc contest! That being said, a comic only contest formal or informal would be interesting.
 
I like the story contest format, don't change that. Let people do drawings...somebody might decide to illustrate a story...or do a graphic novella / pictures with very long captions, i.e. lots of words.

I'd be up for some kind of pure drawing/comics contest.

A trifecta contest where: entrants convert a model, paint it, and write up a story about it would be quite ambitious.
 
I like the idea of one entry per person, because then the forum has more stories posted in between contests.

Otherwise the way it is seems good to me.

In relation to themes, any of them is a good idea, however it gets picked I don't think it matters too much. I like the idea of a poll in the "off month"
 
I think themes would be the most tricky part, and really serves as the key driver to contest entries. For example, the "Spirit of Horror" really captured some attention. To make it easier, the draw-themes-from-a-hat idea would be ideal however I'd keep it far more fluid that the loaded concepts stated above. Throw in genres too (horror, thriller, supernatural,.. etc) and perhaps less socially derived loads (the unknown, existentialism, discovery, etc.) - I think they're all general enough to yield a diverse crop of entries whilst also (hopefully) serving as a good source of inspiration.
 
Idea for a spinoff contest; multimedia contest. This would keep the door open for comics and other drawings and whatever else people come up with. This might step over model painting contest too much though. Food for thought.
 
Tlac'Natai the Observer said:
Idea for a spinoff contest; multimedia contest. This would keep the door open for comics and other drawings and whatever else people come up with. This might step over model painting contest too much though. Food for thought.
Click to expand...
This could be good, there could be animated cartoons, voice acted stories, stop motion battles, rpg maker style story driven games even scenarios to go with a story, a lot of possibilities here!
 
These are my feels - no need to be influenced by them :)

Short story length up to 2500 is OK - We've had a number exceeding 2000 words in 2015, and they haven't been a chore to read.

Number of Votes - 2 wasn't enough. 4 might have been too many. Too few votes and worthy stories don't get recognition, too many and the real gems don't get elevated. I think would prefer 3 votes for comps with more than 6 entries.

Graphic Novels? I am really not sure if they can fairly compete with prose stories - it is probably OK. If a number of people think it is unfair / find it hard to vote fairly then putting a limit on illustrations (3?) or "more text than illustrations" limit would probably work. Having said that, I would love to see more illustrated stories, but the whole "anonymous entry" really makes it difficult - it killed me to do art in not-my-natural-style, and I could spot Essmir from several bananas away. I am almost ready to stop trying to be sneaky, so I might try some illustrations next time.

Art or Other Media Comps - Given the technology curve, taking a collaborative ( rather than anonymous) approach might be better. Having the ability to ask for help / get someone else too do the shading halfway through would be good. With writing, I try not to offer help until my own ideas are settled so I don't accident ly steal someone's ideas. With visual art, everyone's vision and style is so different that I think it wouldn't matter.

Competitions aside, the offer is out for me to give some basic art technology advice. The skillz are up to you.
 
spawning of Bob said:
Art or Other Media Comps - Given the technology curve, taking a collaborative ( rather than anonymous) approach might be better.
Click to expand...

spawning of Bob said:
Competitions aside, the offer is out for me to give some basic art technology advice. The skillz are up to you.
Click to expand...
Actually a collaborative story, or several short stories with a common theme that can be tied into a cohesive ending would be challenging, but could produce something great! Instead of stomping on the current competitions it could be it's own entity, opening up to multimedia story telling. Or something.

So what program do you use for drawing on your tablet? I have been checking reviews for several different apps lately. Would like to try some sort of app out instead of pencil and paper and scanning!
 
discomute said:
I just had a cool idea - what if the winner of the contest selected the theme for the next one?
Click to expand...

Then your benevolent despot Scalenex would no longer have absolute power and anarchy would ensue...

In all seriousness it's a good idea though. The theme selection thing, not the anarchy thing.
 
discomute said:
I just had a cool idea - what if the winner of the contest selected the theme for the next one?
Click to expand...

Scalenex said:
Then your benevolent despot Scalenex would no longer have absolute power and anarchy would ensue...

In all seriousness it's a good idea though. The theme selection thing, not the anarchy thing.
Click to expand...

Power to the people! ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top