Short Story
Did something early this evening that was a good deal of fun and I will be interesting to see how it turns out in the long run. Basically I entered a contest that was tweet me a short story. The basic rules, as original SMS says, can not be over a 140 characters long. In addition you had a keyword that you were given at a certain time and with a window of time you had to turn in your story. More about that in a minute.
Before I go into that too much though, one or maybe two other thoughts. Over there on the left is a new poll. Please take a minute and see what you think. It is the result of a conversation I had with a friend not to long ago and this poll is to maybe help us settle a point. Please take a minute and vote on it so I can point out to this friend that I am indeed right. And no worries, I will not change the results in my favor, scouts honor!
Back to the contest. I like the idea and want to give it a bit of a try here on the blog. First I will mention that the place I was doing the contest at is NYCmidnight.com. They have several writing contests, from a variety of different formats, some of which are free to enter, some of which cost a bit with some really nice prize moneys. They also do short films and such as contest, so if you are into either kind of thing definitely check them out.
So in this tweet me a story contest, instead of actually making a submission by a tweet or text message from your phone, you had to send it to the official entry. Oh, and you can make up to three entries on one form, so if you are feeling really creative you have a bit of a chance. It will go through a round or two with voting or something – perhaps more to come on that front. And sorry if you think you have the perfect one, as you have a word assigned at random and beyond that, you had to enter before hand. But the good news is, my contest here is open to any and everyone and you may submit at anytime. I am not sure how I am going to do the judging at this point, but I am thinking I am going to ask a couple of select people to choose a top 5 or maybe 10 depending on the number of entries and do a voting poll.
To enter, you need comment your story back to this post. Remember, 140 character maximum. This includes all the spacing and any punctuation you may choose to use. I will keep the submission window open until Saturday a week hence, which is the 19th of December. Oh, at is midnight local time, which is Eastern Standard here in the USA in case you are wondering.
Now in a bit of irony, considering some of the thoughts and discussions I have had the last couple of days my word was family. Official rules say that you have to use the word just as it is, in other words you can’t make it families, family’s or especially not familiar. You can, when appropriate change the case, for instance Family is fine if it is acceptable usage of such. I will likewise accept up to three entries from each person. In your comment, please begin with Entry #X – line feed, have your message.
Make sure and put in your email, as when all is done, I plan on giving out a prize to what is determined the best overall entry by the readership here on the blog. And lastly, just because it is likely going to be more fun with more people, spread the word – tell your friends and so on. Okay, really lastly, sometime, either in the next couple of days or after the contest closes, I will post the three stories I tweeted for the NYCmidnight contest.
Best of Luck!
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