Styles of Expression - HS Writing Contest - CLOSED

GOALS - WHY THIS CONTEST IS UNIQUE

I thought some people might be interested to know why I created this contest. The following is a bit of insight into how the Styles of Express contest and writing challenge came to be, and what I'm hoping to achieve.

1. When I listen to music, I often wonder about the story behind the song. What does it mean? What was the songwriter going through? Sometimes, the lyrics create images in my mind, where I picture what might have been happening. But what I picture could be completely different from what the songwriter was writing about! That's one of the great beauties of music, it's open to interpretation. I got the idea that it would be really cool to challenge writers to create stories inspired by song lyrics. That was the seed of the idea for this contest. I created lists of songs I thought could tell interesting stories, and it just snowballed from there. The result is this contest and the chance to read NEW stories where Harry is the leading man.

2. It was both easy AND difficult to come up with the list of songs, only because there are SO many great songs to choose from! I wanted to find enough diversity to be able to inspire many types of stories. There are songs in the lists that offer the potential to tell stories of happiness, romance, humour, sadness, regret, betrayal, friendship, jealousy, cheating, death and so much more. Could I have chosen better songs? Probably!! But I hope that I've chosen enough that there's something for everyone.

3. This is a SHORT story contest. It can take years to write a full novel! There's no way that I'd expect anyone to write a full book in 6/7 weeks! However, writing a short story, is totally possible in that time frame. 5,000 to 10,000 words is what I'm expecting for each short story. It could be a bit longer or even a bit shorter. I think that's definitely achievable in 6 to 7 weeks.

4. The short story doesn't have to end. When the contest is over, maybe some of the writers will be inspired to continue the short story and make it a full-length book! I would love for this contest to inspire a new book for one of you brilliant writers. Perhaps you might not have come up with the story idea if it weren't for this. How cool is that? The only request I make is if stories are going to continue beyond the "short story" for the contest, please keep any additional chapters you might have written unpublished until the contest is over.

5. I think of short stories like a slice of cake. It's not the entire cake, just a piece. A short story has a different structure. The story can begin in the middle of the action! You do need to give a few snippets of the history to provide context, but not necessarily a lot of detail. Have you ever imagined or written a great scene or story arc but it's only one piece of the whole story you intend to tell? Perhaps it's a break up scene, or a scene where your couple get together for the first time or back together after a separation, or where your character makes a major life choice, or even a death scene. Maybe that's all you have, just one scene or one arc. That could be all you want to write! That could be a short story! Perhaps it could inspire an entire novel, where you can focus on the details of the past and future. But the short story can stand alone, all by itself.

6. Writing short stories can help overcome writer's block. I did a bit a research into writing challenges and learned that many writers feel that sometimes, focusing on writing something different can help overcome writer's block when you feel stuck or uninspired. Getting into new characters for a short time and possibly telling a completely different type of story can help bring fresh perspective and new creativity to your writing, helping to smash through your writer's block.

7. Step outside the box and challenge yourself. Maybe you want to tell a different type of story, just to change things up or to simply see if you could. Are most of your stories about romance and you want to try to tell a zombie story instead? Maybe you want to write Harry as an egotistical asshole for a change. Or you want to write a sad ending instead of a happy one. Have you ever tried to tell a story about a friendship instead of a romantic relationship? This is your chance! Do it! Get out of that box and do something unexpected! You've got nothing to lose!

8. SHORT story = Less commitment!! I don't know about you, but there are many times I welcome a task that I can complete quickly, that won't involve a long commitment. I've seen many times where writers on Wattpad feel pressure from their readers to "please update". This can be really frustrating for a writer, especially if they have a lot going on in their life. But writers love to write. Writing a short story gives you the chance to do what you love and then be done with it! No expectations or pressure to keep going. Done and dusted.

9. You've been a reader for years. You've have never written a story, but you'd often thought you'd like to give it a try. You listen to the songs, read the lyrics and a story starts to form in your mind. You can picture it and think you could writ it, but you've never written before and don't want to commit to writing a book. But a short story is much less daunting. Why not give it a try?? This is a SAFE place to do just that! You never know. You could discover a whole new talent and passion. Or maybe it would be enough just to feel the sense of accomplishment, happy to say, "There. I did that." Good for you!!

10. This is a great opportunity to LEARN and improve your skills as a writer! Reading the work of others, seeing what works and what doesn't, is a great learning opportunity for any writer.

11. Your work will be introduced to a whole new audience!! Every writer who enters will be bringing their audience to the contest so your work will be exposed to new readers if you participate. Readers who enjoy your short story might decide to read your other work too. And, you could discover new writers you never knew about. I love this! I find a story I enjoy by and author I've never read before and suddenly, I found a treasure chest of new books to enjoy!

12. This isn't a popularity contest!!! Many of us have voted in other Wattpad contests but let's be honest here. I will admit right now that I did NOT read every story in the category!!! If you look at the Watty's and other FanFiction awards, there could be 50 full-length books in each category and 1 month to vote. How am I going to read that many books in that short period of time? I can't! So how can I truly judge which one is the best if I haven't read them all? And there are long-time writers with thousands of followers on Wattpad. How can a new writer with less than a hundred followers have their story compete with a writer with a huge fan-base? That's just not possible in those types of contests. BUT, in the Styles of Expression contest, readers CAN actually read all of the stories entered during the voting period! A typical short story takes less than an hour to read!! It would be easy to read 2 or 3 (or more) stories a day. And since every story is NEW, it's not like any reader will have been faithfully reading the story for several months (or longer) before the contest began.

13. The stories are Harry Styles fanfictions only!! Another reason that I'm not a fan of the Watty's and other contests like it is because I don't believe they are accurate measures of the quality of the stories that are entered. It's like comparing apples to coat hangers. For example, there are lots of entries in the FanFiction category of the Watty's that I have no interest in reading, EVER. No offense to the Army of BTS fans (love you all), but I have no intention of reading a story about the members of BTS. They could be fantastic stories, expertly crafted, compelling, beautiful and all those other positive adjectives. But I DON'T WANT TO READ THEM. Even within the 1D world, I'm not really interested in reading Liam-focused or Zayn-focused stories either. But that's ok!! We all have our own reading tastes. In this contest, Harry is a central character of every story, so we ARE comparing apples to apples. And I don't know about you, but I've read many versions of Harry that I never thought I'd like, but was happily surprised to really enjoy every version! I can't wait to be introduced to even more Harrys!!! Damn, that sounds a bit like an X-rated dream. Maybe it is...

14. Last (so far) but not least, I want everyone to have FUN and be happy. That includes readers and writers. For at least a brief time, I'd like us all to come together, enjoying something we all love:  stories about Harry Styles. We're spread across this great big world, we're people of all ages, all colours, all religions, all sexualities, all cultures. We're about as diverse as any group can get! But the one thing we all have in common is we share a love for fanfiction stories about dearest Harry. Here's a chance to bond with each other, spreading happiness and support to people we'd likely never encounter in our real lives all because of our shared love of these stories. And isn't that just the coolest thing ever? I want to be a part of that. I hope you do too.

That list is longer than I thought it would be when I started to write it! Feel free to share your thoughts with me. I'd love to hear them!

Xoxo

Rox1968