Monthly Story Competition - Winner: *SHINAN*

[Gord10]

*Coughs*
Here is the rules for the new Monthly Writing Competition.
- Participants will write a story not limited by length unless specified by the month's rules;
- It's impossible for a judge to be impartial in this kind of competition where, for instance, great writing can save a meager plot. So the voting will be public, and go on for at least a week after the deadline, when the winner will be announced.
- The deadline itself is, as said before, monthly, but as usual some slack is given. Don't abuse it, though. Five days after the "oficcial" deadline no further entries are allowed and voting begins, but this tolerance is not mandatory, rather left to the thread-starter's description.
- The competition should last a month. Therefore, this particular one will run until the 4th of September.
- The actual posts must NOT contain the story, but a link to it. The story MUST be hosted somewhere, even if temporarily - Rui suggests Microtech ( http://12.22.230.41/MicroTech/Hosting/FileHostingHome.html ), which automatically deletes your file after whatever time you select.
  - The object of this is to write a story. It can be a short story with 10 lines, it can be a whooper with 20 pages. It can have no characters, or a myriad of them. It can be in first person, or third; present or past of future tense. Your ONLY limitations are the ones the rules state, if any.
- The winner provides the theme and rules for the next comp.

And now the rules of this month:

FANTASY

Write a story which takes place in a fantastic world created by your imaginary. Like The Lord of The Rings, DragonLance.
-But the story MUSTN'T contain wars and any kind of violence.
I mean, you are not allowed to write a story which tells a knight's quest of finding a charmed diamond protected by skeletons. I'm putting this rule, because I think there would be more creative entries about fantasy. And a hint:
-The entry MAY be written in the style of the Situation Story (like Anton Chehov's short stories).
I mean; you don't have to tell some unexpected events in the story, but telling only a situation. For example; a short story about a universe that includes only two stars, and a ghost. The ghost has an eternal life, and all the thing he could do is lurking around the empty universe. Another example; a short story about a little, humanoid life form (like Smurfs ) which lives in a planet of tropical islands. Just tell what you imagine.

I hope the rules aren't too strict. I just wanted entries to be original.
Good luck

[Ubel]

I'll write something for this. Good theme

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Arright... see if this can be accepted as an entry. It's sort of situational, and it's in a fantasy world, though the world is very close to ours and not at all in a LotR fashion - I took fantasy simply as "non-existent and impossible", which IS pretty much it's definition. And there is peace. Boy, is there ever.

They Walk On - A Fantasy

If it's NOT a valid entry, just say the word, I'll understand and write something else.

EDIT - Damn, I'd forgotten all about this dead link. Fixed.

[Gord10]

Wow, teh quick!
Yes, I think it's a nice entry, and can be accepted.

[Ginny]

Ah, not quite the style that comes naturally to me, but who knows, maybe I'll come up with something, after all it's just the setting that's limiting me.

[Shinan]

How much violence is no violence? I mean can violence be referred to in speech (such as "I remember back when I kicked that merchant's arse real good") or in threats ("Give me all your money or I'll rip your throat"). Or can there be abstract violence far in the background ("The war had gone on for three years now and food was getting scarce.")?
And is hunting for food violence?


Maybe I'll write the story about the bard who faced off against twenty angry orcs by singing the Ballad of the Beardless Dwarf and winning them all over 8^)

[Gord10]

I mean can violence be referred to in speech (such as "I remember back when I kicked that merchant's arse real good") or in threats ("Give me all your money or I'll rip your throat"). Or can there be abstract violence far in the background ("The war had gone on for three years now and food was getting scarce.")?

It's OK.
The reason I put that rule is that I wanted to avoid the entries to be a simple stories of "And Alzakhar's orc horde attacked the hobbit village" wars or "Kill the skeletons, take the crystal" quests. So the entries would be something unique (like that two stars-ghost-empty universe story).

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

<bump>

Come on, I wanna read fantasy stories! Get your pens and word processors and show us whatever goes on inside your head!

[/motivational post]

[Gord10]

I hope everyone was pleased with the rules ._.

[magintz]

At the moment my internet is working fine, but it keeps going down. Should it go down I will enter. I do like the rules and believe it will bring out a lot of creativity in the stories. I won;t read any entries until I write mine, but I do have an idea brewing that needs a little more thought before starting.

[Fuzzpilz]

Not a real entry (old), but I'll link to this anyway. It's a wearisome exercise in metahumour and metametahumour, though at least it was amusing to write.

Unfortunately I'm generally unable to write anything even marginally serious because I basically finish two sentences, am then horrified by how pretentious and/or derivative and/or plain old bad they seem to me and stop writing (and all my other creative endeavours end similarly. Sometimes people say that they're their own harshest critic and how much this helps them, but I don't think I benefit much from it myself), but I'll see if I can come up with something quickly.

[Gord10]

Thanks for the entry Now reading it...

[Corey]

i have a great story in my mind. Can i post it here as a post ??

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Please don't. You can PM it to me and I'll upload it for you if you like, but the "don't post rule" is to avoid too-long and un-reader-friendly posts in this thread. Not to mention Word allows you some formatting freedom you're free to take advantage of.

[Corey]

ok prepare for my horrific story and my deadly PM 

[Corey]

now im sure and want to enter but i have a problem: the rules say the stoty have to play in a fantasy world ... the story i had in mind doesnt play there and it just cant be played there either....
now what??

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

You can take fantasy in a broader sense, like I did in my entry: fantasy simply as a place which isn't real. If that's still not good enough, and you can't find any other "excuse", then you have to write something else, I'm afraid.

[Corey]

i ll just write my story and send it to some1 so he/she can look if it good enough to enter

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

It's not a matter of "good enough", it's a matter of rules. Everyone can, and in fact is encouraged to, take the rules in the broadest sense possible, even think outside the box. That makes for very interesting, diverse and non-obvious entries. But the rule must be obeyed nevertheless. If you really will send it to someone send it to Lonely STar, it's his comp and his rules.

[Corey]

http://www.freewebs.com/coreysbt/AHYOF.doc

ok here's the link to my story file
Its a whole new look at the legends of Dracula.

Enjoy but keep in mind that:

1. i dont live in a country where english is the headlanguage.

2. Im only 15

3. the link might not work by clicking on it, so copy it and paste it at the top (if it doesnt, try 1st)


PS. my story is praborly was too long and not about a fantasy world...

[Shinan]

I've gone through at leas ten ideas and written down beginnings of three stories for this competition. The problem was I never had an ending 8^) But now on the last day I managed to finish one in a somewhat satisfactory manner.

http://www.surfnet.fi/~karell/cloudynights.rtf

[Gord10]

Alright; this is 4th of September today, and this is the deadline day. But I could scretch the deadline for a few more days if anybody wants.

[Tuomas]

I made my entrance to-day. Got it finished, not quite what I wanted to do. Well, at east this one covers the word "Fantasy"

Oh yeah, and beware, Parental advisory, this one may contain material that some people may find offencive, so if scared, don't read
http://rapidshare.de/files/4716622/EAMm.doc.html

[Gord10]

Thanks to everyone for their entries. As nobody requested any scretch for the deadline, the voting will be started tomorrow.

[Corey]

so i gues my story followed the rules enough to enter... or where you too lame to read it?? 

[Gord10]

The voting is started. I've read all the entries, there were very good entries.
And my vote goes to Corey, "A Hundred Year Old Friend". Although there were lots of typos, I liked the story much.

[Shinan]

Hmm. I rather liked A Hundred Year old Friend but I have to admit that the difficulty to read it did take away some of the enjoyment. I guess that my vote would go to Rui's They Walk On, because it is such a cute piece... It has the kind of weirdness I like.

[Corey]

C'mon , dont expect me to know every english word and grammatic... im only 15 lol 

[Tuomas]

Corey, hah any teacher would have failed you for that starting paragraph, but not to that...

My vote... Shinan! keep it up. I enjoyed reading it.

[Corey]

My english teacher would be surprised if i would tell him i've wrote a full lenght story in english...

btw... did i mention i live in the Netherlands??

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

It took me a long time. Not because it was a hard decision, but because I was lazy abour reading the entries.

Me votes Shinan and the soulless smoker.

[Gord10]

Alright, the vote endings today. It seems like Shinan is going to win, if there will be no more vote.

[Corey]

so he won??

[Gord10]

Indeed. Congrats, Shinan It's your turn for preparing the theme of this month.

[Shinan]

Yay, I've had a theme in my head for a while, let's hope it's not overly outdated 8^)

[Corey]

good i didnt win... i had no idea what to do then  and congratz btw