The WARRIORS OF INK Contest

IMPORTANT

Hello everyone!

This is to discuss something very important regarding the contest and to make you understand the situation, let’s create a situation.

Let’s suppose, you are given a sum of 25 bucks to buy your favorite ice-cream. After giving it a lot of thought, you finally decide to buy the chocolate flavored one. Reaching a shop, with this strict no return policy, you place your order for take away and in a matter of minutes your ice-cream is packed and you pay the required sum.

But this simple situation takes a turn when the shop owner returns you five bucks. Something strikes you. When your usual chocolate flavor costs 25 then why is the owner returning you five?

Hastily, you check the ice-cream and find out that the owner has given you the mint flavored ice-cream instead of the chocolate one and mint is the flavor you’re not a very huge fan of.

When you go to ask the owner for the return, he says, “We have a strict no return policy. So, you’ll have to take this. If you want other flavor you’ll have to pay again.”

“That’s wrong. It’s your fault and I have no more money.”

“An ice-cream is an ice-cream. Just have this one only. It won’t make much difference.”

Is there really no difference between the two?

So, what you’ll do now?

Fight with the owner?

Ask your father or mother to give you twenty bucks more?

Or will you eat the mint flavored ice-cream half-heartedly?

This is our situation right now!!

For the contest, you were given three things. You’ve done really well when it comes to the word and the catch given. I really appreciate you for that. But… What about the genre?!

There are five marks for the relevance to the genre and that’s for a reason. Even a single mark can make a huge difference. I have read all the fifteen entries and as far as I have felt hardly any of you tried to find out what actually YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE is.

The genre you were given was YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE and not just ROMANCE. There’s a difference between the two and the aim of this SET of the contest was to make you guys understand this difference. Young adult romance is not at all about sex and one night stands. It’s a sub-genre of Romance.

Let me first explain the difference between the three main sub-genres of Romance.

# YOUNG ADULT : This literature is for and about teens, mainly 12-18 years of age. They basically bridge the gap between the children’s books and the adult books. Such stories deal with first love, how to come of age, tumultuous family relationships, sexuality, self-love, and self-respect. It’s the phase where the protagonist’s emotions are most vulnerable.

# NEW ADULT : This deals with the people in the age group of 18-29 years, i.e., the people just coming into adulthood. It tends to explore themes of identity, independence, sexuality, and education and career choices.

# ADULT : This is for the people of and above 30 years of age. They deal with the heartbreak, love, and sex.

I hope the difference is now clear to you all. But this is really disheartening as we wanted you to find this difference yourself, because what is being told to you, you may forget it in a matter of days or month. But what you try to find out yourself, stays with you for a really long time.

Almost everyone of you have concentrated your story in the New Adult or Adult sub-genre except for IshaniDurbaPurkayast whose story deals with the Young Adult, and RehanaSiraj and Nita_Reid who are somewhere between Young Adult and New Adult. What the prompt demanded was the back-story as the main part but everyone has pushed it back into flashback with just a couple of sentences.

You may ask that if you were to concentrate on this part, then why was the word ‘Misogamist’ given?! The word ‘misogamist’ never indicates that the lead characters are to be married, it just says that their thoughts are not in the favor of marriage.

Now, why am I telling you all this before announcing the results?

Because, your marks will be deducted in that category and to prevent any sort of problem after the announcement of the result, we are telling you this before itself.

Judges can contact me if they feel confused regarding how many marks can be given to one particular story. I have read all of them. And please make sure to submit both the documents of reviews and marks by 24th or 25th.

Now, the second important thing… WORD COUNT.

I may sound rude over here but... Everyone can give their best with infinite number of words, but your skills are put to test when you are limited. I know you guys feel that if the words would have been more you could have added a few more scenes to make your story even better. But no matter how many words are given, the story always manages to retain its essence, be it 300 words or 3000.

It’s just your decision how you prioritize the sequence of events keeping the word limit in mind. It’s not necessary for a short story to have a complete ending, it just needs to have a satisfying ending. An ending that puts the readers at ease and undoubtedly, this ending can be a new beginning as well.

In this contest, we are not giving you a relaxation of just 5-10 words, but 25 words. However, any story more than 1525 words will have negative marking. Judges please take a note of this as well.

Whatever I have said here, is just because I felt that the aim with which I started this contest, is lost somehow. I wanted the contestants to learn something new from each and every set. I hope I was not so rude that I have ended up hurting someone. I sincerely apologize for that.

Regards and wishes,
Stella