[Erebus]

Greetings fellow members...

Exciting news for those budding writers among us; the very first SFFWorld.com Short Story Contest has just been launched!

Full details are available from the Contest Guidelines (http://www.sffworld.net/members/sff/home.nsf/frmInputFictionCont!openform) page.

Good luck! http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

Cheers, Neil

[This message has been edited by erebus (edited April 25, 2002).]

[Lawson]

Yay! I love writing contests. Though I never win. http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[Feacus Fidelle]

1000 word limit puts a big red X across my name.

[Lawson]

Economy of words. It's a great thing.

[Nathan Carter]

Further Contest Rules

junior members must relinquish all good story ideas to members of the "inner circle"

Further more... should a junior member (against all reasonable odds) manage to win the contest. They are obligated to forfeit their winnings to the closest runner up of the "inner circle"

That is all

[Lawson]

Story ideas are a dime a dozen. I'll give you twenty ideas if you want.

[LeMort]

Erebus,

Is there any chance that the word limit could be increased slightly?

Surely a 1500-2000 word limit (and that's still a conservative number of words for a short story) would result in more interesting entries.

People would have to write efficently and concisely, but it would allow them to develop their central idea more thoroughly.

I'm sure that it wouldn't significantly increase your work because there probably isn't going to be a *huge* number of entries http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Lawson]

They probably kep the word limit down because of the volume of work they may have to read, an issue you addressed in your post Lemort. That's my guess anyway.

I am sure people can make interesting stories in 1500-2000 words. There is a lot of talent on this board that will perform well in this unique challenge.

Besides, if you are writing for mags or papers, you are given an inflexible word limit. This is a goo chance to practice fitting something interesting within that limit.

[Erebus]

Sorry, LeMort, the challenge for this contest is for a 1000 word story or less, something which I've always enjoyed doing myself with other sites' contests. The real tough ones though are the micro-fiction challenges, where even 500 words is considered a tome! http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Alucard]

Some quick questions Erebus...

First of all, what if your story is a little over, say, 1016 words? Will it be eliminated?

Secdonly, as far as content is concerned, when will we know if our submission is unacceptable? I have written a little story and widdled it down to the word amount above, but, because of it's content, I don't know if it will be rejected or not (it's nothing extreme, but it involves a bounty hunter going after a leader of a hate crime organization--neo-nazi's, to be more exact--and there's a little bit of profanity in the dialogue). I'm not sure if this will be considered too extreme, and really, with the word limit, there was no room for much detail, but I'm trying to decided whether or not I should write some other stories in case this one isn't suitable.

Any info will be appreciated.