Hello and welcome to the Young Writers Society's 8th birthday story competition. This year, the competition is hosted by, yours truly.
For the sake of order, I think we should begin with a couple of rules.
Rule #1:
The first rule of this story competition is don't talk about the story competition.
Rule #2:
It is November, and so as not to discriminate against those of you doing NaNoWriMo, I will not limit this competition to short stories. You may post a section of your Nano novel, or a short story, or any piece of prose between 400 and 1500 words.
Rule #3:
You have artistic license, but certain obvious boundaries need to be enforced. To begin with, it is not possible to write a good YWS eighth birthday competition story without the overt inclusion of octopuses. Because squids have ten tentacles they do not fit the bill.
You must also include the magic eight ball and a venomous arachnid in your story to be successful.
Rule #4:
The competition starts now and finishes with the completion of the birthday celebrations next Sunday. You may post your fiction to YWS and a link to it in this thread to be considered for victory!
Guidelines:
I judge competitions differently to many judges, and so I have included a description of what I value in writing for your convenience.
#1:
Most important in any story is the characters. They must be engaging and interact with each other dynamically to produce chemical explosions and tight tension. Characters should exist in the writer's mind outside of the stories that bind them.
#2:
You must write with impeccable English. You need not be a master of rhythmic prose, but I will not read anything that has clearly not been proofread. If I don't read, you don't win.
#3:
This is important especially for those of you writing literary fiction. I like stories to have progression. Things must have moved forward in the story if it is to catch my attention.
#4:
I love emotions, but I don't like emotional generalization. That is, Iike being able to feel emotions from a close proximity to the characters. I do not like seeing characters from a close proximity to their emotions.
With that said and done, I bid you all good luck. You're gonna need it! Mwahahahahahaha!
