My minimum is somewhere around 3500-5000 words, so if it's much less than that, I may not enter. On the other hand, I might. So...uhh...carry on, and have a pleasant nondenominational festive period. ;)

Anyone have any suggestions for the challenge?

Quote:

Original post by sunandshadow Anyone have any suggestions for the challenge?

I have in mind already what the challenge of the story will be... however, I'm waiting on two things before I post any information about it.

The first is for the holidays to end. Everyone is kind of out and about this time of year, and will continue to be until January 5th or so doing whatever. The second is that I'm still not certain if this contest is going to be backed by the admins or not to help supply a reward for the winners. All I know is they've expressed interest in the idea...

But other than that, I'm all ready to go. :)

Booleans stupid idea of the day:

It costs $10 to enter with the money going to charity. We get as many people from GDnet involved as possible, not just the writing forum. The winner gets the GDnet+ account mentioned.

---stupid idea over.

Just as a heads up, and as a bump for the thread, full information on what's expected of the writing contest's submissions and where you can submit them to will be posted either this week or at the beginning of the next. I can't decide if everyone's back yet or not from all the holiday cheer and of course, the new 2005 year. But keep an eye out, and try to get others involved; the more submissions, the better the contest will be. :)

Until then...

I'm not quite sure I understand the format that would be requested for the contest. For instance story scenes? Could somebody point me in the right direction of decent tutorial to explain this?

Quote:

Original post by Think128 I'm not quite sure I understand the format that would be requested for the contest. For instance story scenes? Could somebody point me in the right direction of decent tutorial to explain this?

All this will be explained. I'm gonna post the requirements and what to write about and everything soon as I get done workin' things out with the admins. But if you still have questions after that, feel free to message me and I'll see what I can do. :)

well hurry then, I'm in the writing mood and I dont' know how long it will last

At the risk of sounding like an expert in this field, I do know a couple of professional editors who have told me of their slush-pile nightmares. (I'm also a published non-fiction writer and have written for games in the past.) For the sake of the judges' sanity, might I offer some suggestions?


Compare Apples vs. Apples.

It would be better if, rather than having to compare "Background Mythology for an MMORPG" with "Character description for an FPS", the competition chose a limited number of official categories and forced entries to adhere to one of these. For the first compo, I would suggest no more than three. Future competitions could extend or reduce the categories according to the judges' experiences with this first attempt.


Provide strict submission guidelines.

All the editors I've spoken to about this matter tell me that they generally refer newcomers to their company's official Submission Guidelines and any violation of these is *instantly* binned. No exceptions. (Unless you're already a bestselling author, in which case you can get away with murder.) Editors use this system primarily as a 'first level' filter and it's not really personal. The assumption is that a good writer should also be able to read.

Applying this rule isn't being fascist: it's preparing newbies for the Real World(TM). Game developers aren't immune from this need. If anything, the need for consistent styles and structures is even more important when scripts could well run for _thousands_ of pages.

For this reason, I would advise creating strict submission guidelines for _each_ category in the competition. (They can always be recycled for later compos.) Anyone who muffs the guidelines gets automatically disqualified, (or penalised, if you prefer).



The themes should be set by the *judges*, not by the entrants!

The judges will have to read *all* the submissions. It's only sensible that they should get to choose what they'll have to read _about_. If you leave the theme too open, you'll end up with judges simply voting for the stories that happen to be closest to their tastes anyway. (A judge who hates Tolkeinesque 'High Fantasy' novels is unlikely to award a high grade to a treatise on the cultural background of orcs.)

Care must also be taken when choosing a category theme. Limits are often a good thing for writers who like a challenge, but you need to be careful how many limits you place: a compo category like "Mythology Backgrounds for a romance-led RPG set in the Toltec civilization", only makes sense if the judges are willing to read reams of historical romances and little else. But make it too broad -- "Mythology Backrounds for an RPG" say -- and you will open yourself to thousands of words on _anything_ from Tolkeinesque 'High Fantasy', SF historic and contemporary settings, even into the realms of surrealism.

I would suggest defining a category using a cookie-cutter approach like this:

1. Key Purpose of Document
E.g. "Mythology Background", "Cut-scene Script" or "Character Description".

2. Theme or Premise
E.g. "Historical", "Contemporary Middle East", "Neolithic Britain"

3. Game Type / Genre
E.g. "MMORPG", "RTS", "FPS", "Racing Game", etc.




Anyway, I think I've bored y'all enough.

Regards,

--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

Ok thanks :)