Hey everyone, thank you for clicking on this chapter, I appreciate it. This chapter is meant to help me improve and give you a better experience for this contest, my other ongoing contests, and my future contests.
I'm going to leave some of my ideas below, and I'd love to hear your thoughts and if you think these ideas appeal to you. Please read until the end.
Future Contest Ideas:
1) Genre Central
- This contest will have a crap ton of genres as categories. It's a little risky since I may include more niche genres that won't get as many applicants, but if you guys think the risk is worth it, I'll do it.
- Some of the categories I'm considering:
-- Superhero fiction
-- Experimental fiction
-- Gothic fiction
-- Cyberpunk and Steampunk
-- Flash fiction
-- Metafiction
- Like I said, a crap ton of genres. I'm thinking I'll do it differently and have 8 participants per category, and up to 15 for the more popular categories, only the 8 participant categories wouldn't have honorable mentions.
2) Flash Contest
- This contest will be small and focus on flash fiction, or stories that are about under 1000 words. Oneshot and poetry writers in particular may love this idea. I'll split it up by genre, but the common theme would be it'd have to be under 1,000 words. Writers can write a story specifically for the contest, if they'd like. I've never been picky about publication dates. It can be published 5 years ago or 5 seconds ago and I'd still accept.
3) Character Contest
- A contest dedicated to characters and will have different categories. Similarly to this contest, I'll have some main categories about characters in specific types of stories, then the huge categories like "Best Protagonist," "Best Antagonist," "Best Side Characters," etc., then a showdown that's "Best Character Work," combining all the characters and judging who has the overall best character work.
4) Prompt Contest
- A contest where I give a prompt and everyone writes stories based on the prompt. I was never the hugest fan of this since I don't want to make people write a gazillion words just for a chance at winning, though I see the appeal of this, and I know writers love to practice with prompts even if they don't win. If I do this, I would have a type of prize for all participants for taking the time to write and submit to the contest.
Future Prize Ideas:
1) Stickers
- I contemplated using stickers for this contest. I'm very uncomfortable with graphics and am not good with them, and working with others to get them makes me feel bad. However, one of the most common suggestions I see has to do with stickers, so even though I am not particularly comfortable with graphics, I'd like to try it in a future contest either through myself or with the help of my three musketeers, Seamlesslove and CJ_parkjennykim.
Future Judging Criteria:
1) Organization
- For certain categories, I may consider having organization as a small part in the judging criteria, worth about 5 points. This would judge chapter organization and the organization within the chapter. Are there so many pics/gifs that it's distracting? Are there like 10+ non-essential chapters before we even get to chapter 1? Are the chapter names coherent? Those types of things.
2) Overall Scores Totaling More Than 100
- My contests tend to add up the total scores to 100 since I feel this is easier, but I could judge more parts of a story if I were to add more to the judging criteria or make certain things worth more. However, I don't want to overcomplicate anything. Does anyone have thoughts on making the score over 100? Maybe like 150? I'd make it end with 5 or 0, not some random number like 172.
Those are all my ideas so far, and I'm curious to hear your feedback on them!
If you have a specific suggestion you don't see on here, I have an anonymous form you can fill out with your suggestion I'll leave in the inline comment here --->
Keep in mind I'm not totally comfortable with graphics as prizes, so I would appreciate it if the suggestions didn't have to do with graphics. But if you have suggestions for contest ideas, judging criteria ideas, prizes, etc., I'd love to hear them!
The form is anonymous, but you can include your Wattpad username if you'd like and I'll credit you if I use the idea.
Thank you for taking the time to read this!
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