Fanfiction Prompt Challenge Discussion

[rhombus]

After over a week of deliberation Horizon and I have narrowed down the four-way tie... to a two-way tie.  Congratulations, Sovereign and Diddy, you are our joint winners for May's prompt.    Sovereign, you may use the new banner to your signature which is attached to this message.  Whereas Diddy you may pick any of the one-star banners here: http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=15338.msg458986#msg458986 or alternatively ask DarkWolf for a custom banner.  Though it was obvious that all four candidates could not win, I do want to thank you all for your participation, and all participants who did not win may select a zero-star participation banner from that same link.

Now on to other matters... The June prompt is still going on until July 31st - so I wish those of you who decided to participate the best of luck with your writing. Additionall the July prompt is now underway, which I will go ahead and extend its due date until the end of August.  The July prompt is:

Your theme for this month: there comes a time in everyone's life where a choice must be made, one which may irreversibly alter the path ahead.

[Sovereign]

Another win! Yay! I'm really glad that you and Horizon enjoyed my entry for the May prompt and thank you a lot for your decision (also, thanks to jassy who voted for me )! However, I don't see any new banners attached to the message...

[DiddyKF1]

Wow! I'm at a loss for words! I'm so happy that you liked my springtime drama, and thanks a lot to all of you (particularly Ducky123, who voted for me)!  And congrats to Sovereign as well.  And as I'm typing this, they're just starting off the Fourth of July fireworks! Well, that's one way to celebrate a win! 

[rhombus]

Another win! Yay! I'm really glad that you and Horizon enjoyed my entry for the May prompt and thank you a lot for your decision (also, thanks to jassy who voted for me )! However, I don't see any new banners attached to the message...

Oops!  Here you go!

[Ducky123]

Aww Not Supposed To Be fits a prompt challenge yet again

But this is another prompt I may come up with something for.

But first write that June one lol[\s]

[F-14 Ace]

Just a heads up.  I'm not doing anymore of the prompts if I have to post it on Fanfiction.net.  I've had that "VONDON E WILES" idiot spam the same cut-and-paste comment on the last story I posted three times in a row!  I've deleted the comment and he just keeps reposting it. I posted that story all the way back in January and he's STILL spamming me.  What's worse, this has been going on since 2013 and is one of the reason I stopped posting in the Land Before Time section on FF.net to begin with.  I swear he must be brain damaged or something to keep spamming the same crap for 5 years straight!    Whatever.  I'll post on my Deviantart account or someplace else, but if posting on FF.net remains a requirement, I'm done with the prompts.  I've already deleted the previous entry off of there.   

[rhombus]

Just a heads up.  I'm not doing anymore of the prompts if I have to post it on Fanfiction.net.  I've had that "VONDON E WILES" idiot spam the same cut-and-paste comment on the last story I posted three times in a row!  I've deleted the comment and he just keeps reposting it. I posted that story all the way back in January and he's STILL spamming me.  What's worse, this has been going on since 2013 and is one of the reason I stopped posting in the Land Before Time section on FF.net to begin with.  I swear he must be brain damaged or something to keep spamming the same crap for 5 years straight!    Whatever.  I'll post on my Deviantart account or someplace else, but if posting on FF.net remains a requirement, I'm done with the prompts.  I've already deleted the previous entry off of there.   

Well, ultimately the decision on how to proceed is up to you, but I don't think it is necessary to stop one's participation merely because of one spammer.  Especially this same spammer, which was the bane of my existence for awhile.  For fanfiction.net there are several options to deal with people like "VONDON E WILES".  Besides manually deleting the comment like you have been doing you can also select "disable anonymous reviews" in order to stop people like Vondon from spamming your story.

The reason why we have linking to fanfiction.net as a requirement for the challenge is to attract new people (who might not yet be forum members) to the prompt challenge and perhaps to the forum.  Additionally having them on fanfiction.net allows me to archive them in a prompt community so that they are easily accessible to everyone.  For the next season of the prompt challenge (after a hiatus during the forum awards) we might reconsider the fanfiction.net policy and perhaps merely require having the stories both on the forum and on another archiving site of the author's choice (like DeviantArt, AO3, or fanfiction.net) with a standardized disclaimer at the beginning of each story so that people know where to go if they are interested in the prompt challenge. That might allow for the same level of archiving and attracting new participants while giving everyone a bit of extra flexibility. 

[F-14 Ace]

As far as I can tell there is no option to disable anonymous reviews.

[rhombus]

As far as I can tell there is no option to disable anonymous reviews.

You are correct.  It seems that fanfiction.net got rid of that option in 2014 despite people on the site complaining about guest reviewers sometimes giving them death threats and other abusive comments. Because of this, in the future you and anyone else for that matter can use Archive of Our Own if you wish instead of fanfiction.net. An additional advantage of that site is that it is much easier in terms of formatting.  For the Seven Hunters, for example, I was able to copy and paste it there without any formatting issues, whereas with fanfiction.net it was always a pain.

Note that there is a waiting period of some time before one can get an invite code to Archive of Our Own, but I am flexible on the time issue.  As long as a person has a story posted on this forum in time I can simply mark the other link in the masterlist as "pending" until the invite code issue is resolved.

[F-14 Ace]

Quick question.  I've got my banner for the December prompt challenge, but I'm not sure how to actually use it.  How do I put it in my signature?

[rhombus]

Quick question.  I've got my banner for the December prompt challenge, but I'm not sure how to actually use it.  How do I put it in my signature?

You can click on it and click on it and then either:

1.  Right click on the image and select "save image as" and then from there upload it to an image-hosting site and save the link; or

2.  Right click on the image and select "copy image location" and use that link

And then in your signature you can use the [.img.] and [./.img.] commands (without the periods) to put in the link for the image.  Once you do that the image should appear in the signature.

[rhombus]

Wow! To say that I am impressed with the offerings for the June prompt challenge would be a great understatement.  Not only do we have six strong entries for us now to consider for voting purposes, but the quality of the offerings is easily among the best that I have seen.  Trying to choose a best entry is sure to be a challenging prospect. 

With that in mind, I wanted to clarify a few things:

First, voting has begun in the voting topic.  As I need a few more days to complete my own reviews of the some of the entries, I can understand if some people need time to consider their choices.  Nonetheless voting is now open on the matter.

Second, please keep in mind that the following prompts are still active:

July 2018 Prompt (open until August 31)
"There comes a time in everyone's life where a choice must be made, one which may irreversibly alter the path ahead."

And

August 2018 Prompt (open until September 30)
"Goodbyes are never easy. Write a story about a parting."

As always I look forward to your responses.  With the excellent work you have all done this month I am sure that additional enjoyable reads will be forthcoming in the future!

[rhombus]

This is just a reminder that the July prompt will be due on Friday, so if you wish to submit an entry it will need to be done in the next week.  Though, if there is a demand to do so, we could extend the time for it to September 30 to match the due date for the August challenge.  If anyone would like an extension on the July prompt then let me know.

[DiddyKF1]

I'm almost done with my July entry. I'm just down to the finishing touches and checking for any possible typos. I should have it in possibly tonight or tomorrow.

[OwlsCantRead]

Yeah, as with above I don't think I need an extension for the July prompt.

I might be rushing it a little but my entry was originally supposed to be finished up yesterday before the rabbit hole of the internet ensnared me. I should still have it up in a couple of days at worst.

[LBTlover247]

I'm almost finished my entry as well. I just have the ending to write and the final edit to do.

[rhombus]

Good evening, everyone!  Well, morning, actually.  I must apologize for my relative absence lately, but work has kept me distracted.  That being said it is once again time to conclude one monthly prompt and to look with eager anticipation towards the future.

First, I would like to congratulate @DiddyKF1 for winning the June 2018 prompt challenge!  As winner of the challenge you may now upgrade your banner to the two-star Seeker badge which I have attached to this post.  @DiddyKF1

Secondly, it is again time for a monthly prompt to conclude.  For the July 2018 prompt there were three entries, which all participants in last month's prompt can now vote for in the voting topic.  I will keep the voting open for the next two weeks, or until all three qualified voters cast their votes, whichever occurs first.

Third, please keep in mind that the August 2018 prompt will continue to run until September 30, 2018.  So if you have not already submitted an entry you still have plenty of time to work on an entry.

Fourth, I would like to clarify that the forum fanfiction awards (which are totally separate from the prompt challenge) will begin accepting nominations a week from today.  On that day I will post the rules topic for those awards and you may begin to PM me with your desired nominations.  The actual voting and leaving of reviews for the awards will commence on October 1, 2018 and end on November 30, 2018.  As we have had a massive turnout of great stories on the forum this year I would like to encourage you all to participate in those awards this year.

Finally, I want to clarify that the prompt challenge will be going on hiatus from October 1st to November 30th of this year in order to not interfere with the forum fanfiction awards and to allow me to consider how to develop next year's prompt challenges.  In this process I would appreciate your feedback.  If you have any ideas as to what you would like to see included, or potential prompt ideas, let me know in this discussion topic and they might be included in next year's iteration of the awards.  I eagerly look forward to your thoughts. 

[OwlsCantRead]

I would like to clarify that the forum fanfiction awards (which are totally separate from the prompt challenge) will begin accepting nominations a week from today.  On that day I will post the rules topic for those awards and you may begin to PM me with your desired nominations.  The actual voting and leaving of reviews for the awards will commence on October 1, 2018 and end on November 30, 2018.  As we have had a massive turnout of great stories on the forum this year I would like to encourage you all to participate in those awards this year.

Oh, nice! I'm interested, I guess... even if my bashfulness probably will lead me to not be in this as much as I'd prefer.

Also, I guess this means I actually need to catch up on Mender's Tale (I took a break due to being conscripted right at the first mention of hidden runners and dammit I don't want to know how convoluted things got when I was gone) and Separate Ways (haven't read it yet, hoping to find time to do so soon) to give them both stupidly lengthy reviews. Hehehe! That was the period in most of 2017 and half of 2018 where I went off the FFN site due to real-life issues and came back these behemoths now both hovering around the 300K+ word mark and was like... my time halp pls.

Finally, I want to clarify that the prompt challenge will be going on hiatus from October 1st to November 30th of this year in order to not interfere with the forum fanfiction awards and to allow me to consider how to develop next year's prompt challenges. In this process I would appreciate your feedback.  If you have any ideas as to what you would like to see included, or potential prompt ideas, let me know in this discussion topic and they might be included in next year's iteration of the awards.  I eagerly look forward to your thoughts. 

I never thought I'd suggest this, but one word prompts.

Britain's GCSE "O" Levels international examinations used to have five prompts for their composition writing topic, one of which was one-word prompts, but they took it out of the syllabus by the time I sat for their English Papers. From experience in writing them in English classes, I find that one word prompts can lead to wildly varying stories since people can interpret them in many different ways. Of course, the issue with this is that you have little control over the final output of the participants, but it's up to you whether unpredictability is a blessing or a curse.

[Sovereign]

Congratulations to Diddy for winning the June prompt! You truly deserved it! As for the future prompts, this year had far stronger ideas than the first one. It was especially great to see the June prompt draw so many authors to it so I'd certainly like to see a similar challenge again one day. I also enjoyed the last October's scary prompt idea and perhaps it could be a good idea to suggest simply some genre as the prompt again? Also, one thing I've thought is that perhaps we could once try a much more direct prompt some time, for example some character's actions in a certain situation to see the different visions of the writers of the said character. I'm also on board for OwlsCantRead's idea as it could be worth trying out.

[rhombus]

@OwlsCantRead @LBTlover247 @DiddyKF1 @Ducky123 @Sovereign @Horizon @DarkWolf91 @vonboy @jassy

Okay, just for clarification: THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL PROMPTS FOR 2019 - this is just a proposed rough draft.  I would appreciate all of your feedback on these ideas, are there any that you think might need to be revised?  If so what would you recommend changing them in to?  Also, just for clarification, my current plan is to have people choose any one of the prompts (one word, dialogue, or description) they want for each month.  This works as each triplet of prompts follows the same basic theme.

December 2018..............................Dec 1 – Jan 31

One word prompt: Belief

Dialogue prompt: “Some things you see with your eyes, others you see with your heart.”

Major prompt[/u]: Religious or not, we all have beliefs or certainties that sustain us, even in our most desperate moments.  Write a story showcasing a character relying on his/her beliefs, morals, or philosophy to overcome an obstacle or hardship.


January 2019..............................Jan 1 – Feb 28

Winter prompt exchange!: Everyone writes a prompt of their own choosing, then the prompts are shuffled and redistributed back to the writers. The writers must then do a story based on their new prompt!


February 2019..............................Feb 1 – Mar 31   

One word prompt: Love

Dialogue prompt: “You know, I think I’m falling for her/him.”

Major prompt: Write a story explaining how an established couple in the Land Before Time universe came to be.  For this prompt you may use canon LBT characters OR you can also use original characters established in your previous LBT fanfics.


March 2019..............................Mar 1 – Apr 30

One word prompt: Conflict

Dialogue prompt: "This means that we fight."

Major prompt: A rather straightforward prompt this time: write a story that features battle as a major plot point.  The battle may be to defend a herd (for leaf-eaters), find success in a hunt (for sharpteeth), defends one’s reputation or standing, or for training purposes.


April 2019..............................Apr 1 – May 31   

One word prompt: Jokes

Dialogue prompt: “The hardest part about pranking [insert name or species here] is all of the running involved.”

Major prompt: Write a story where a practical joke, a prank, or some other humorous antic goes way too far in a non-tragic way.


May 2019..............................May 1 – Jun 30   

One word prompt: Duty

Dialogue prompt: “It is required of you...”

Major prompt: Write a story where one of the characters is given a sacred duty or a quest.


June 2019..............................Jun 1 – Jul 31   

One word prompt: Lessons

Dialogue prompt: “Sometimes the hardest lessons are those you teach yourself.”

Major prompt: Write a story where a character learns a lesson about the facts of life.  This can be played for seriousness or for laughs.


July 2019..............................Jul 1 – Aug 31   

Summer prompt exchange!: Everyone writes a prompt of their own choosing, then the prompts are shuffled and redistributed back to the writers. The writers must then do a story based on their new prompt!


August 2019..............................Aug 1 – Sep 30

One word prompt: Greatness

Dialogue prompt: “In order for him/her to rise, he/she had to first fall.”

Major prompt: Write a story about a character rising to the occasion after experiencing a loss or hardship in life.


Hiatus for fanfic awards..............................Oct 1 – Nov 30

The prompt challenge will be on hiatus so as not to interfere with the forum fanfiction awards.  It will return on December 1.