March Fiction Writing Contest
At the heart of every good Star Trek episode lies an exceptional story. The Stonewall Fleet community is brimming with many talented folk who have the ability to craft amazing adventures set in the Star Trek universe. Especially with the Foundry launching soon on Holodeck, encouraging these writers to generate and share their work is perhaps even more important now than it has ever been. As such, we'd like to give our Fleet's collective talent a public forum in which to share their work with the community at large and potentially walk away with some valuable rewards for doing so.
Kicking off this month, Stonewall Fleet is once again hosting a Star Trek Fiction Writing Contest to do just that. From March 1 through March 22, this thread will be open for entry submission. Simply cut and paste your story into a reply on this thread. This initial post contains all of the official rules as well as an involved breakdown of how submissions will be ranked by our panel of judges. Brandon (Bfelczer), Zepari, Solari, DoogieGood and I have all volunteered our time to review the entries and narrow down a winner.
After all submissions have been received, our judges will be poring over them from March 23-30 and rating them on originality, imagery usage, character development, story flow, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. On March 31, official results will be posted and winners will be announced on the forums. Prizes including a full Aegis set, rare tribbles and more will be awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners and their stories will be featured in an upcoming edition of the Stonewall Times.
We look forward to reading all of your creative entries and cannot wait to award some awesome prizes. The rating system breakdown has been included for your information below. Good luck to everyone! :)
- Brad (@Sturnack)
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Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation (30 Points):
On a point scale of 1-10 EACH, your story will be rated on how well it made use of proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Good usage of these elements can greatly enhance the reading experience of your story by preventing roadblocks like run-on sentences.
Originality (10 points):
On a point scale of 1-10, your story will be rated on how original it is. While borrowing elements from the Star Trek universe is in itself derivative, this category rates how well you made use of those elements and created your own story around them.
Imagery Usage (10 points):
On a point scale of 1-10, your story will be rated on how well it was able to conjure up accompanying mental images. For instance, there's a big difference between "The ship approached the nebula" and "The ship slowly glided towards the blossoming cloud of fiery nebular gases." Both technically get the basic idea across but the latter brings shape, color, and movement details to mind and makes for a more enjoyable reading experience.
Character Development (10 points):
On a point scale of 1-10, your story will be rated on how well it established the characters involved and fleshed out their emotions and motivations. Knowing why characters make the choices they do and what feelings are involved creates emotional touchstones that deeply engage the reader.
Story Flow (10 points):
On a point scale of 1-10, your story will be rated on how well it keeps the plot moving forward at all times. Stories that become bogged down with too much exposition or needless detail begin to lose the reader's interest. A well paced story is one that includes all of the elements above while also getting from points A to B to C and so on without extreme delay.
FINAL TALLIES:
With seven categories worth up to 10 points each, your story can earn up to 70 points from each of our judges. Point totals from each judge will be added together to create your final score. This means that your story has the potential of earning 350 points if it ranks a 10 in all categories. Once all point totals have been tallied, the stories that come closest to 350 points will win 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes respectively.
Final point totals will be available to the writer by request once the contest has concluded on March 31st.
Kicking off this month, Stonewall Fleet is once again hosting a Star Trek Fiction Writing Contest to do just that. From March 1 through March 22, this thread will be open for entry submission. Simply cut and paste your story into a reply on this thread. This initial post contains all of the official rules as well as an involved breakdown of how submissions will be ranked by our panel of judges. Brandon (Bfelczer), Zepari, Solari, DoogieGood and I have all volunteered our time to review the entries and narrow down a winner.
After all submissions have been received, our judges will be poring over them from March 23-30 and rating them on originality, imagery usage, character development, story flow, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. On March 31, official results will be posted and winners will be announced on the forums. Prizes including a full Aegis set, rare tribbles and more will be awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners and their stories will be featured in an upcoming edition of the Stonewall Times.
We look forward to reading all of your creative entries and cannot wait to award some awesome prizes. The rating system breakdown has been included for your information below. Good luck to everyone! :)
- Brad (@Sturnack)
-----------------------
Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation (30 Points):
On a point scale of 1-10 EACH, your story will be rated on how well it made use of proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Good usage of these elements can greatly enhance the reading experience of your story by preventing roadblocks like run-on sentences.
Originality (10 points):
On a point scale of 1-10, your story will be rated on how original it is. While borrowing elements from the Star Trek universe is in itself derivative, this category rates how well you made use of those elements and created your own story around them.
Imagery Usage (10 points):
On a point scale of 1-10, your story will be rated on how well it was able to conjure up accompanying mental images. For instance, there's a big difference between "The ship approached the nebula" and "The ship slowly glided towards the blossoming cloud of fiery nebular gases." Both technically get the basic idea across but the latter brings shape, color, and movement details to mind and makes for a more enjoyable reading experience.
Character Development (10 points):
On a point scale of 1-10, your story will be rated on how well it established the characters involved and fleshed out their emotions and motivations. Knowing why characters make the choices they do and what feelings are involved creates emotional touchstones that deeply engage the reader.
Story Flow (10 points):
On a point scale of 1-10, your story will be rated on how well it keeps the plot moving forward at all times. Stories that become bogged down with too much exposition or needless detail begin to lose the reader's interest. A well paced story is one that includes all of the elements above while also getting from points A to B to C and so on without extreme delay.
FINAL TALLIES:
With seven categories worth up to 10 points each, your story can earn up to 70 points from each of our judges. Point totals from each judge will be added together to create your final score. This means that your story has the potential of earning 350 points if it ranks a 10 in all categories. Once all point totals have been tallied, the stories that come closest to 350 points will win 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes respectively.
Final point totals will be available to the writer by request once the contest has concluded on March 31st.
