The Pick'N'Mix contest!

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It's finally here, ladies and gentlemen. After announcing it last week, we're officially releasing our latest contest today.

UPDATE: Once you're done, submit your entries to this Favourites gallery here thewrittenrevolution.deviantar… , or note us with a link to your submission and we'll do it for you! What you have to do is go to the folder we linked just now, click on "suggest a Favourite", then select the deviation from your gallery. Remember to include your dice numbers in your Artist's Comments!

Wooho, I know, right?

We already said in the blog linked above what this contest is about, but we'll do a quick revision for those of you who didn't do their homework. You know who you are. :paranoid:

The basic idea
This contest will have you write either prose or poetry following the guidelines that Lady Randomness will pick for you. You can insert as many other details as you like, of course: but anything She chooses for you, you must follow.

More simply, we have divided a number of instructions into sections. Each of these sections has a dice assigned to them, and we will roll them for you: the number that comes out will correspond to a specific aspect, character, or limitation that you will have to include in your submission.

Lady Randomness' guidelines

They are divided into six sections, and these are ordered from the least challenging to the hardest. HERE are our magic dice and each of them - apart from the d100 - correspond to one of the sections.

It's YOU who will choose just how much you want this contest to be difficult! The minimum of dice required to join the contest is three, but whether you want us to roll three, four, five or even six it's ultimately up to you.

Here below are the sections. Choose wisely!

Word Count
  1. Between 500 and 750 words (or 15 to 25 lines if poetry)

  2. Between 750 and 1500 words (or 25 to 40 lines if poetry)

  3. Between 1500 and 2500 words (or 40 to 50 lines if poetry)

  4. Between 2500 and 5000 words (or 50-75 lines if poetry.)


Protagonist
  1. Jamie, the 14 year old mathematician who uses numbers to think his way around situations.

  2. Leanne, the 37 year old car-boot saleswoman who's not above subverting the law for a little personal justice

  3. An individual from history - artistic license is granted.

  4. Salem, a homeless man in California who collects garden gnomes

  5. Jezebel, the bronze haired rocker who can't stand social inequality

  6. Omar, the agoraphobic who's native to Nebraska


Setting
  1. Some point in the 19th century

  2. Cape Cod

  3. Vladivostok, in January

  4. The center of the battle of the Falklands

  5. An abandoned railroad left to rust

  6. New York at Christmas

  7. Moscow, the year 2024

  8. Rural Scotland


The Crossing or Dilemma
  1. Soemthing's been stolen, something important

  2. The world may not be ending, but it certainly feels like it

  3. "YOU DID WHAT?!"

  4. It looks like it's just me, you and the road, buddy.

  5. Take it from me, you should not have pulled that lever.

  6. "Sorry, what was your name again?"

  7. We're out of ammo with nowhere to go, what do you suggest we do, sit down and talk to them?

  8. I swear that thing wasn't glowing before.

  9. Looks like an overdose

  10. I'd give anything for you to call me


The Twist
  1. Someone's not who they say they are

  2. None of your main characters has a penny to their name

  3. Someone only has thirty minutes to live

  4. "...and on top of all that, it seems like there's something following us."

  5. One of your characters has a gambling addiction

  6. There is technology available that really should not be available

  7. There is a non-native speaker involved.

  8. The protagonist is on the run.

  9. The antagonist holds all the cards

  10. Your main character is self aware, and fully understanding that the story must finish

  11. An allergy causes problems at every turn

  12. The would-be hero is afflicted with a drinking problem


Your added challenge
  1. No adverbs, silly.

  2. No dialogue allowed at all, poets, re-roll.

  3. The piece you're writing has to have a deeper, morally conscientious meaning

  4. Include yourself as a character. Be honest.

  5. Spur the entire piece from one song lyric, and continuously link back to it.

  6. Include as much true-to-life research as possible - CITE YOUR SOURCES

  7. Go with a genre you wouldn't normally touch.

  8. Break all stereotypes, but be realistic

  9. Inspire the piece from a single Haiku. Link to it in your artist's comments

  10. Write the entire thing as an account from one of the characters, given to a legal authority, entirely in dialogue

  11. Write completely detached from your personal feelings - don't include personal experience at all

  12. Design your story in such a way that it is half fiction and half nonfiction.

  13. Employ an unreliable narrator - i.e. a narrator who isn't telling the truth, in possession of all the facts, etc.

  14. If poetry, frame your entry in a poetic form of your own design. If prose, try to invent a completely unique style of writing.

  15. Create your piece entirely out of elements found on the internet. No stealing whole paragraphs.

  16. Poets: create a connection between your form, line count or line lengths and something that occurs in the narrative. Prosers, re-roll.

  17. Ignore your protagonist roll - your piece now contains no characters whatsoever, but still has plot.

  18. Start and finish with the same sentence or clause, but they have to have different meanings.

  19. Finish with the sentence "And he/she woke up and it was all a dream." Make it not suck.

  20. Re-roll twice - re-roll any results that mis-match. Take both results.


Prizes

We have been gathering prizes for the last week, and this is what we have so far. Keep checking, because it will most likely be a much longer list by the 1st of February, deadline of this contest.

FIRST PLACE:
one year Premium Membership from TheMaidenInBlack
300 points from Vigilo
100 points from WritersInk
3 critiques from starxchan
2 critiques from Vigilo
1 critique from Solarune

SECOND PLACE:
three month Premium Membership from TheMaidenInBlack
130 points from Vigilo
60 points from ozzla
50 points from WritersInk
1 critique from starxchan
1 critique from Vigilo
1 critique from Solarune

THIRD PLACE:
one month Premium Membership from TheMaidenInBlack
100 points from Vigilo
50 points from WritersInk
1 critique from starxchan
1 critique from Vigilo
1 critique from Solarune

ALL WINNERS GET, apart from their individual prizes above:
Feature from theWrittenRevolution, TheMaidenInBlack, AzizrianDaoXrak , Vigilo, Soul-Poets, HugQueen.
There will most probably be tons of random llamas too, because who doesn't like llamas? :P

The last details


As you might have noticed, although the contest is open both to poetry and prose, there is only one category. That is because of the nature of the contest itself, and it's a variation to our previous contests.
Not only that: there is only one category, regardless of how many dice you choose to work with! So that means that if the best submission came from a 4-dice rolling, it could be awarded the first prize. We didn't feel it fair to preclude great stories from getting a higher recognition based solely on the fact that the deviants who wrote them haven't rolled enough dice.

And last but not least: the dice.
Leave a comment on this blog, stating that you want to participate and how many dice you want to use. We will then proceed to roll them for you and give you the result here, publicly, as to avoid any kind of issue. If you decide halfway through that you want us to roll one more dice for you, just come back to this blog entry and tell us, we'll be happy to do so. But once we've done so there's no coming back, so be careful!

:heart: happy writing, and we all hope you will enjoy yourself with this unusual challenge we created for you! Show us what you've got.

© 2012 - 2024 theWrittenRevolution
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Garden1988's avatar
daaaaaaammit, I thought i had long since missed the deadline! I come back to find it was extended and I had only missed it by a day!!! Typical! :P