The December 2013 Short Fiction Contest - Logistics Thread.

Cafe Society
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Hello, everyone. It has been far too long since we last had a Short Fiction Contest. Waiting for a lull in my busy-ness doesn’t work. I just have to bite the bullet and jump in, or we won’t get another one done before 2013 is over (and I couldn’t bear that!).

Here’s how it works - as of 12 Noon EST, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013, I will post three randomly generated words and one randomly selected photo in an out-of-office auto-reply message at sdmbpoetrysweatshop at gmail dot com . Send an e-mail to that address, and a few minutes later, the auto-reply will send you the words and photo prompts.

Use those three words and photo to construct a story of 2,000 words or less, in any style or genre. Writers will have 60 hours from the time-stamp of their e-mail to finish their story and send it, preferably in a .doc format, in a reply to the auto-reply. The contest will be open from 12 Noon. Dec. 4th until 12 Midnight, Dec. 18, covering two weeks. Find your clearest available 2 1/2 days within that two weeks, and join in!

Starting sometime after 12 Noon on Monday, Dec. 16th, I will start an Anthology Thread of all the stories I’ve received up to that point. I will do some minor editing (like adding double-returns between paragraphs and double-checking that any intended italics, bolds or underlines have come through properly. Some formats also have the strangest way of keeping their soft returns as hidden codes…). I will place the first ~100 words in the open part of the reply and place the remainder of the story in a spoiler box. The author’s SDMB user name will appear in a second spoiler box. Titles, logically enough, will go in the title box; untitled stories will simply be called ‘Untitled’.

After the close of the contest on Wednesday, Dec. 18th, I will start a multiple-choice poll. At the close of the poll ten days later, the story which SDMB readers consider their favourite will be declared the winner.

Sorry, but the contest is open only to Dopers - Guests, Mods, Administrators, Members, Charter Members, Goats, Squids, people with funny titles - but contestants must have the right to post here.

And if you have any questions about how the contest works, this is the thread to ask.
I’d like to congratulate our past winners once again -

The Hamster King, May 2010, for Quarrantine
Spoons, September 2010 for Homeward By Polaris
Spoons, Holiday Edition 2010 for He Knows a Lot of People
Justin Credible, February 2011 for Happy Valentine’s Day, Sweetheart!
MsWhatsit, April 2011 for The Brickites
Savannah, June 2011 for The Summer Place
jackdavinci, September 2011 for T-shirt Junction
cmyk, late 2011/early 2012 for Time and Time Again
DMark, May 2012 for The End
The Mighty Boosh, October 2012 for Spiral
Stealth Potato, Late 2012/Early 2013 for Tahafut al-Himar
DMark, May, 2013 for Magic.

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Great! Schedule permitting, I’m in. I really enjoyed the Poet Laureate contest.

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Thank you so much for organizing this again!
Looking forward to seeing the photo and words on December 4th!

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How is one supposed to use the picture?

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An interesting question, Oakminster. There’s no single answer, but among the possibilities -
The picture could represent an event in the story, at the beginning, middle or end.
Maybe someone in the picture becomes one of your characters.
Maybe figuring out how the picture came to happen gives you an idea.
Maybe the picture only gives you a setting.
The picture may be something that happens in passing.

In terms of the contest, the picture and the words serve two functions. One, they ensure that someone who is a regular writer doesn’t pull out something they’ve been working on for months that’s beautifully polished and ready to submit to an editor. And two, for those of us on the other end of the spectrum, the picture and words are a way of jumping past writer’s block. “I’m stuck for an idea.” says the student, and the writing prof says “Look at this picture in the newspaper. Tell me the story behind that picture.” And, with any luck, the student goes off to write.

Speed writing is a way of getting past some of the things that are in the way of most people’s writing - procrastination, over-editing, editing before there’s anything to edit, etc.

If it helps, pick one of our earlier contests from the links in the OP - have a look at the picture and the words, and then see what the various writers did with them.

Hoping you can participate!

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My calendar doesn’t look too bad in the coming weeks, so I hope that I can participate.

As for the picture, I second the suggestion to look at past pictures and stories. Beyond that, the best advice is to use it as you see fit. I’ve set stories in the photo, used an object in the photo as an important object in the story, and used the setting of the photo as a starting point. At the same time, I’ve dealt with the photo in as little as one or two sentences. It’s up to you; it always seems to me that as long as the reader can identify that you considered the photo and and included its theme or elements somehow, you’re good.

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Awesome! Hopefully my finals end before the deadline lol…

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I think the photo is best used as a jumping off point.
If you have ever looked at a photo, or painting, or sketch or graphic illustration, you might occasionally let your mind wander to that location or scene or moment in time.

It doesn’t have to be literally true to the photo.
For instance, if the photo was of a broken bicycle, you don’t have to write a story about a bicycle - but perhaps it recalls a memory of your youth when you and friends rode bikes through the woods and events transpired by the river, totally unrelated to the bicycles that got you there. So yeah - the bicycle got your juices rolling about that story you want to tell, but the bike itself was not the key element of the story. You might only mention in the opening paragraph, “We got on our bikes and rode out down the path leading to Wilson’s Cove, even though we were forbidden to go there by our parents.”

As far as the three words - those are not all that difficult to incorporate, although there has occasionally been a word or two that was perhaps a bit more challenging to fit into the story. But even if the word is “troubadour”, you could say, “My trusty dog, Troubadour, followed us into the woods.”

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We’re off, dear friends! The words and the photo are in the auto-reply message - write to SDMBPoetrySweatshop at gmail dot com when you think you have a clear 2 1/2 days in which to write.

Speaking of which, I really only have one day, and I’d better get busy!

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Done! I’ll walk the dog, give it one last proofread, and then I have tonight’s concert to worry about…

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Right. My story was finished and submitted with about 15 minutes to go, and I just received a submission from chrisk!

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I’ll be doing mine next weekend.

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And there’s a story from Savannah, bringing our current total up to 3.

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Well, it was too cold here in Victoria to go outside this weekend, so…!

(Seriously, I have snow on the ground. What? What?)

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Just sent mine to you - although I came close to tossing in the towel this time.

The photo threw me for a loop…I started one story and got about 800 words and just hated it.

Thought it over a night and started over with a whole new approach.

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And I’ve just received another story from araminty, bringing us up to five entrants.

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Hurrah for everybody who entered so far!

My idea fell into place quite quickly after I saw the picture and the words. It’s funny; I meant to hit the autoresponder late Friday morning so I could have some time to think about it before I left work, and kept remembering it only when I wasn’t sitting down at my computer. :wink: Finally sent out the email around 4pm, just as things were going crazy with other stuff I had to do before leaving.

But I walked to the bus stop, wrote 666 words on the bus Friday evening, over a thousand in four short sprints on Saturday afternoon/evening, and finished the whole thing up, (including cutting about 200 words worth,) in a coffee shop Sunday afternoon. I really like it so far, too!

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I have papers and finals until Tuesday so I probably won’t start mine until the last minute, but I’m looking forward to it!

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I will also start this coming weekend.

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Octarine’s story brings us up to six.