Longer short stories

[Bella Donna]

Would anyone be interested in taking part in a longer short story challenge? Judging from the opinions I've had, I think that a length of between 500 and 3,000 words is reasonable.

It's just a thought. I realise that most of you may well be busy with NaNoWriMo or your own projects, and are therefore unable to take part now, but perhaps in the future?

 

[beadchaser]

I'm willing to give it a go I think it would be good practice.

 

[Bella Donna]

Great! I hope more people will be interested.

 

[beadchaser]

I need the practice. I am in the "early learning stages" of writing. I find it far easier if I've been given certain parameters.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

To make it work, I think the challenge would have to last much more than a month to give people time to write their stories. Maybe two or three months.

 

[sloweye]

Dang! i'd try but i think it would take me a year

Maybe quarterly?

 

[Bella Donna]

What if it wasn't a contest as such, but something whereby people are given a prompt and can keep submitting entries months and years later? We could have one thread per prompt. Thoughts?

 

[sloweye]

I think people would be less likely to post then to be honest, after working on something for that long they might want to keep it for themselvs.

How about seasonal challanges? Spring, summer, autumn, winter challanges?
That could work.

 

[Bella Donna]

That sounds reasonable. I tend to knock stories out at a fairly fast pace, and find it easy to get a thousand or more words out. I don't want to leave people who don't find it quite that easy feeling left out.

Okay, what about defining when Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter are? I tend to think of November - January as being winter; February - May as spring, and so on. If we agree on that, I'll start the first one now.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I would suggest the first of the year. Time to see if enough people are interested. And then if there are, you could divide the year up in neat quarters so that no one would be confused about when the challenges begin and end.

Also, December is a busy month. People might be too stressed out to think about doing something new.

 

[sloweye]

How about the Solstices and Equinoxes?
Evenly spaced.

 

[Culhwch]

How about the third Tuesday of every fourth month? Simple... I think Teresa's idea is best.

Intriguing, but I'm not sure if I'd participate. Firstly, I'm terrible at shorts. And secondly I tend to agree with sloweye - if I suceeded in writing a good story, I wouldn't want to post it here, I'd look for a market for it.

 

[Bella Donna]

I get your point, Cul, but I've always thought that there's a middle between a beginning and an end, and we have to get there somehow. Ergo, we have contests. If we post stories of the length that the short story publications are interested in, we can give ourselves the practice we need to become good in the first place -- well, that's the idea behind this endeavour.

What I'm saying is, I'm not sure whether my opinion of what constitutes a good short is the same as a submissions editor's, and I don't know how to get there without getting some experience under my belt.

Start in January? Okay, that seems reasonable.

 

[sloweye]

Solstices and Equinoxes

21st december (winter solstice)
21st March (spring Eq)
21st June (summer sol)
21st sept (autumn Eq)

 

[Bella Donna]

Let's do that!

 

[chrispenycate]

If you're going to make this a comparative/competitive exercise (like the seventy-five word challenge) you're going to need some down time for voting/discussing/insulting the different entries (and if you get anything approaching the response to the other challenge, imagine how long you'll need for thousand word stories).

Without the – you know, it's not really competitive, more like infant school show and tell – comparison edge, I don't think you could hold the enthusiasm.

 

[Bella Donna]

I think two weeks would be a reasonable timescale for voting. What do you think?

 

[sloweye]

Cut off 16th, new start 21st?

 

[Bella Donna]

Sounds about right.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

So we would start on December 21st and have until ... sometime in March, allowing for a voting period before the next start on March 21st? Ok with me, although I would be just as happy with Teresa's January 1st and even quarters that direction. I'm not picky. And I can't resist a contest, no matter (well, almost no matter) what kind!

***added*** Oh dear, I missed the fact that there was a second page before I posted this, sorry. I do think that five days is very short for voting on thousand-or-more-word stories, given that we have that long for 75-word stories. Perhaps March 7th and have two weeks? *Shrug* I dunno.