Late Spring Writing Contest. (LSWC)

Sorry for the delay folks but here you go. Make sure all your submissions(limited to 2/member) are tagged LSWC.

Your mission if you choose to accept it will to be to incorporate these five elements into your story:

1- A telephone call.
2- A mode of transportation
3- Discussion with a parent(living or dead)
4- Contact with an authority figure
5- A party of any kind

The story can be about ANYTHING but those five elements MUST be present. It could be about one of them and the others revolve around it. It could be about none of them and they are all secondary aspects of your story. It can be about all 5 of them. It's all up to you.

Points awarded will be:

20,000 points- first place
10,000 points- second place
5,000 points- third place

10,000 points- Reader's choice award. The one with the most stars.

We've got some holidays and folks taking vacation soon so we will close this contest 11:59PM July 27, 2008.

Let's see what you've got folks. Should be good.

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Volume.

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Great idea. I have my first entry in. I couldn't resist.

I'm not clear on the submission process. Did you mean post a thread here tagged with LSWC? Could you please clarify?

Originally posted by SystemiK
I'm not clear on the submission process. Did you mean post a thread here tagged with LSWC? Could you please clarify?

Write the title of your story and put LSWC in brackets either before or after it.

Intrepid, "old friend," you didn't specify a length. How much do you want and how little can we get away with?

Cool intrepid Can't wait to read some more great stories from members. I love these writing contests.

Do we have to u2u you in order to have our story stickyd? or are you gonna go through periodicaly and stiky them whenever?

Can't wait. I may start on a romance one latter tonight once I have some thinkin juce in me :w:

Thanks Intrepid.
I have literally had this story in me for decades..
Luckily, I have 2 weeks off work.
May get around to writing 2.

Count me in.

This should be very interesting, now off to read the first entries...

I love the variables. I'm a new member to ATS, and this has really sparked my creative juices. (ew !)

I'm guessing that the length of the prose is up to us, yes?

Originally posted by argentus

I'm guessing that the length of the prose is up to us, yes?

That would be amusing. I see that a one Mr. Wupy has already taken the piss out of the lack of length specification. Usually they do ask for an approximate amount on their writing contests.

I'm seriously considering entering this one myself, but I'm not certain if I can cover criteria number 4 and 5 without several quite magnificent breaches of the terms and conditions. Could we have any leniency with the T&C if we save our work to .pdf format and upload it, Intrepid? At least that way a writer can handle and maintain a dialogue and structure paragraphs properly, as they would appear in print, which cannot be achieved by posting work on a web forum.

I'm not sure how much work this would be or if anyone can be bothered to do it or not, but I wonder if the literature specific forums on ATS could be modified so writers could avoid both the aforementioned problems as if they were working with a word processor? I'm not talking about implementing an entire word processing application, but I always thought something should be done about the paragraph and dialogue handling insufficiency (if it's even possible).

Originally posted by Cadbury

Originally posted by argentus

I'm guessing that the length of the prose is up to us, yes?

That would be amusing. I see that a one Mr. Wupy has already taken the piss out of the lack of length specification. Usually they do ask for an approximate amount on their writing contests.

I'm seriously considering entering this one myself, but I'm not certain if I can cover criteria number 4 and 5 without several quite magnificent breaches of the terms and conditions. Could we have any leniency with the T&C

In the creative writing forum I've found that some discretion is allowed, as long as the writing is exceptional.

Just don't get too carried away and remember, it's still going to be the call of the forum mod as to whether it's acceptable or not.

I once wrote the most graphic of stories, I was sure they would ban me for having published it here. Instead they left it up and just ignored it. When I became a mod I requested that it be removed so that I not look like I was being given special consideration. It was moved and only the mods and above can read that story now.

In the creative writing forum you are given some discretion. Just don't get carried away and respect the mod if he/she says it's gone too far.

This has been my experience in the forum.

Hope that helps,

wupy

Originally posted by Cadbury

I'm seriously considering entering this one myself, but I'm not certain if I can cover criteria number 4 and 5 without several quite magnificent breaches of the terms and conditions. Could we have any leniency with the T&C

Thats the great part about being creative, get your idea down in such a way that you don't violate the t&c but your story is just brushing the edge. Just enough to not get in trouble yet get your idea across.

Originally posted by whatukno

Thats the great part about being creative, get your idea down in such a way that you don't violate the t&c but your story is just brushing the edge. Just enough to not get in trouble yet get your idea across.

I think it was Thompson who said "the only people who know where the edge is are those who've fallen off it," and I'm a clumsy, clumsy man.

And Mr. Wupy, thank you for the clarification. I'd like to ask if you used any profanity at all?

1- A telephone call.
2- A mode of transportation
3- Discussion with a parent(living or dead)
4- Contact with an authority figure
5- A party of any kind

Hmm how about using my carphone to call my dad to invite him to a keg party being hosted by the president. Heh... compact or what.

Ok but seriously, Id love to give this a shot. Sounds like an interesting challenge.

Sorry guys, busy as hell. No length limit but it can't be a snippet.

Why is it that writing contests are more like a test in a writing class than a contest?

Let the writer decide what he or she wants to include in the story.


ATS is not alone here either.

A writing forum I frequent does the same thing.
Sometimes the parameters are so stringent that - for me anyway - it makes some of the stories posted clumsy and not a particularly good read.

Writers do their best work when allowed to write freely and pursue the subjects that are near and dear to them.

Writing inside a box is just that, in a box and restricted....

reply to post by Desert Dawg


Why? Because ideas were put forth and this is what the writers decided on.

Now that my little tirade is over, here's a few hints for writing on a website.

More than a few writers have been burned by posting properly formatted writing.
Some of the writers I've seen caught up in this little dilemma who posted properly formatted stuff were professional writers making their living writing tech and other stuff for magazines.
They do know how to format properly.

The problem with using the sites Word Processing (WP) progam to write with, is the inability to make proper paragraphs.

And if you do the copy and paste bit, the writing gets crammed into one large by huge paragraph making it hard to read.


This is what works for me and it works especially well in posting tech stuff.

Each sentence gets its own line.
Next sentence in the same paragraph gets its own line as well.
A paragraph break is delineated by a single blank line between the end of one paragraph and the start of the next.

A change of scene or location gets two blank lines between paragraphs.
Normally noted by one blank line, but you have to compensate for the sites WP program.

Sometimes two sentences can be run together in what is in effect one line, but it's a lot easier to follow if they are two separate lines.

Somewhat the same deal with dialogue.
Separate it from the preceding paragraph by one blank line, write the dialogue and add another blank line whether you go from one character to the next or to the start of a paragraph.


You can write your story in your word processing program, indent the paragraphs properly, drop in the blank line where required and in general, have the story formatted like any publisher would require.

Then, make another file and notate the title as "For ATS" or similar.
In this file, add a blank line to every blank line in the story.
Don't worry about the paragraph indents
Web site WP programs will get rid of the indents and your blank lines will indicate paragraph changes and changes of scenes and locations.

Not trying to be a know-it-all here, but this system works very well for me and it makes things easier for the reader.

Originally posted by intrepid
reply to post by Desert Dawg

 

Why? Because ideas were put forth and this is what the writers decided on.

If this is what the writers decided on, then that's what it is.
I have no problem with that.

The writing forum I noted above usually has one person running the contest and at times, the subject matter to write about can be quite convoluted.

reply to post by Desert Dawg


you could of course get your writer status here and pen your own work without being constrained by things in the writing contest. Doesnt mean you HAVE to write those things. It's a challenge to write something good while working within a certain amount of peramiters.

This is what we all came up with for this particular writing contest and I think that because everyone had an oppertunity to voice their opinion on what constraints to use that it is all fair all good and all in good fun.

I could just write a story about anything. Just put it out there. However within this writing contest we get a little guidance and perameters to have to meet and go by.

As far as using a word processor goes that does sometimes cause problems but if you know how it's going to behave when you copy and paste the text then you should be able to correct it in the word program.

Its all fun and it's all interesting. So join in and have a good time with it.