~} Fanfiction Writing Competition 2009 {~
 

Happy days are here again! More than five years after the first tried and failed attempt at holding a fanfiction competition, we're back for a second go!

Hello and Welcome to Oddworld Forums’ second (and hopefully more successful) fan-fiction competition!

This is a chance for all of OWF’s writers to pick up their pens and take up the challenge in a friendly competition to write the best short Oddworld story! Are you up for the challenge?

The rules:

• You must write an Oddworld-themed short story. It can be anything you like; comedy, action, drama, whatever floats your boat!
• Your story can be up to 5000 words long; it must be equal to or shorter than this limit! If your story goes over this, any excess words will be deleted before judging! :eek:
• You can use original characters and settings and/or characters and settings from the games, but you may not use any settings or characters that you have used in another fan-story. The story must be set on Oddworld with Oddworld species.
• Your story must be totally new; it must not have been posted anywhere on the internet before, but written especially for this competition! The judges for the competition will not be told who wrote which story, so your story must not tie into any other stories which you have previously posted.
• Finally, your story must be based on a specific theme; the theme for this competition is ‘CAPTURED’, so your story must some how relate to this theme.

What you have to do:

Write an original story set in the Oddworld universe and based on the competition theme of ‘captured’.
Give it a title.
PM it to me. Your entry must not be posted in this or any other thread, nor PMed to anyone other than myself! Break this rule and your story will be disqualified! All entries will be made available for public viewing after judging has taken place.
You may announce that you have given me your entry, but you must not tell anyone else it’s title or any details about it; this is to ensure that our judges do not know who wrote which story, as this may affect their decisions!

The closing date for the competition has been put back to November the sixteenth, 23:59 GMT; I must have received your entry via PM by this date and time!


A select team of judges will read all of the stories anonymously (by which I mean they will not be told who wrote which story) and will score each story on the following criteria:

• Characters – How believable are the characters?
• Plot – How creative and believable is the storyline of your entry?
• Quality of writing – How easy is it to read?
• Use of the ‘captured’ theme – How well do you incorporate the theme into your story?
• Reader’s enjoyment – How much pleasure did the judges get from reading it?

They will give 10 points for each of these themes, making a potential total of 50 points per judge!


When all the results are in, they will be posted in Fan Corner along with the stories, and the winner will be recognised forever in a Fan Corner Hall of Fame! They might also receive a custom title in honour of their success! (decision on that is awaiting admins' approval)

So pick up your pens, grab your keyboards, tune up your creativity and get writing!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Stories will be judged by a team selected by the FC mods; these may be people who are members of OWF and/or people who are not; judges are not allowed to enter the competition. All entries must comply with the regular Fan Corner rules; the FC mods reserve the right to refuse entry of any story that fails to comply with these or the competition rules.

Wow :) how exciting :D

This sounds like fun.

I would love to take part in this competition. I'll let you know when my story is ready.
Good luck to all participants!

Nice concept. I take it the selected judges will remain anonymous in return. Though, if judges don't know which story belongs to who, bribery has no real point... Ahem, so yeah, can't wait to see the results.


On another note, what happens to those who do this in this thread?:

Come on, you know it's going to happen.

Splat already mentioned that!

"Break this rule and your story will be disqualified!"

That seems straightforward to me ;)

DO NOT POST YOUR STORY HERE

All that said, the lesson of today is: read the rules thoroughly! *sneaks into shadows in embarassment*

I delete their story and, feeling rather embarrassed, they write a new one.

And the reason I haven't named the select panel of judges is because I'm still selecting a panel of judges :p Also, I don't want to force them all to commit when I know how busy they are in Real Life and I wish to give them the chance to pull out should they need to.

wow this sounds really cool!!!!! :D maybe I'll write something too just for fun ^^

anyway I'm looking forward to the awesome stories! *__*

I wanna write a story about oddworld bunnies capturing glukkons and then they turn them into carrodd seeds :D

Well, i'm going to give it a whack and see the results, whats the end date?

I strongly recommend you go and READ THE FIRST POST PROPERLY as you are going to miss other important rules. If you didn't even see the closing date even though it was highlighted, I imagine you missed other things too, such as the 5000 word's limit and the 'Captured' theme.

Also what to do with your story once you've written it. ScrabTrapMan, I want to make this obvious even if you miss all of the other rules. DO NOT POST YOUR FINISHED STORY IN THIS THREAD.

no i saw the others >=( I'm not stupid =( Naw but thx anywho for your dear concerns =)

Once upon a time...

JUST KIDDING!


Seriously though this is going to be so awesome. How many competitors will we expect (or need)?

Probably you and Scrabtrapman.

I don't know. Hopefully more than two.
T-nex, if you'd rather write than judge, feel free. You weren't bad back in the day. :p (What ever happened to Cath?!? :eek: )

It's so strange to be a newbie and not know who 99% of these 'old members' are... It would be so nice for someone do make a recap topic for all the newbies (or does it already exist?).

Not really. Sl'Askia and Teal were the greats from even before I was a member and I think the only 'classics' that everyone recognises as such.

I imagine that as far as anyone else is concerned, every member has their own idea of what stories were classics. T-nex's 'Cath' was a good read back in the day. Gretin wrote most of a good story, Munch's Master was and still is writing his epic (which has been going on for a looooong time) and I won't brag and mention my old stories, Splat, Amy and The Quest for the Orb. (I do not have any other old stories at all. I never wrote anything other than those. Srsly). OOH, and Dave's stories (Dante's Oddysee) was totally a must-read! Totally! Read it! If for no other reason than because it's about the only thing in this paragraph that was finished! ('Splat' was, but its sequel 'Amy' wasn't - I posted a summary of what would have happened if I hadn't lost interest in Oddworld for two years.)

Then I have a few other old favourites. Esus wrote a lot of very wonderful first chapters and never finished anything (gutted - they looked so exciting) but I went and reread his stuff after Aji started the Fanfiction Library. ParamiteAbe wrote an epic which I enjoyed, though I don't think I ever finished reading it - it was about these mudokons who got stranded on a different continent where muds were evil and glukkons were slaves.
And there was sO fReAkIn oDd, who's stories I loved when I read them, though he left in the end because he didn't like the number of readers he was getting (He had three! That's more than I get!)

I'm sure anyone else would give you a completely different list of names, though.

Anyway, this thread is about writing, not reading! Get busy!!!

Didn't you have this other story called Oddworld Story or something like that? o_o


Also... Boo to you for blowing my cover >:-C I was trying mingle in with the rest and keep my super-judging identity a secret.

best stuff i ever read here was Danny Rettick's work, top stuff that was. inspired me. especially his last one.

*Fingers in ears* have absolutely no idea what you are talking about la la la la.

Thanks for all of these story names, I'll be sure to check them out. Perhaps we should make a topic about 'favorite fanfictions' (or perhaps split this thread?).

Ha, well you mentioned my old story which is actually quite shaming when I go back and read it :p I really need to get organised with my re-write, I intend for that story to be totally redone way better.

Anyway, on topic, good luck to all the competitors who are competing in this, I sincerely hope it's going to be more than two :p

Well for now I guess we could discuss this in the fanfiction library.
Gretin, are you still thinking of making a gallery thread?

Yup, I'm working on it, only trouble is some of the older threads don't seem to still have the pictures so even if I did every single one it will still be somewhat incomplete. And then there's more recent ones like Dipstikk who removed his pictures before he left, so yeah... I'm not sure whether I should include the ones without pictures for the sake of completeness, or leave them out for the sake of usefulness.

Just link to the threads that still have pictures... The others ain't comin' back I fear...

That's what I thought, the only reason I had some doubts was just that some of the current ones are probably going to disappear too - image hosts deleting the pictures and what not. I'm also categorising them, i.e. digital art, hand drawn, etc.

Anyway, I'll stop de-railing your competition thread, don't want everyone forgetting what the original topic was! like the rest of the forum

There are only 18 days left to get your entries PMed to me people!

Just to let everyone know, I'm working on my story and will finish it in a few days!

OMG THAT IS SO IMPORTANT!

Actually I'd be inclined to say it is pretty important cus at the moment I've only got one entry and if I don't get a few more there CAN BE NO COMPETITION!!!! :eek:

So no pressure everyone. You know, it's not that important; it's just my years of planning and preparation and all my dreams crushed, crushed in a single month by the cold, cruel members of this forum- OH THE PAIN! OH THE PAIN OF IT ALL!!!

*Puts on white mask and retreats to secret lair in the sewers to play an organ for nine hours (it's a techno organ) before sneaking up to the surface to whisper story-writing tips into AlexFili's ear as he sleeps*