This is just a reposting of the rules with all of the active amendments included. It is my hope that having everything together in one post helps to avoid any confusion going forward.
Rule 1: Concerning Monthly PromptsEach month I will propose a series of prompts for potential stories in the Land Before time universe. This may be a plot detail that would need to be in the story, or it could be a piece of dialogue that must be used, or it could even simply be a plot idea. You may choose any of these three prompts for your story. As soon as the prompt is posted there will be a two month period in which participants may write and submit a story or poem in response to the prompt.
Rule 2: Concerning Acceptable StoriesMust be submitted to both fanfiction.net and the Gang of Five: If you wish to participate please place a copy of your resulting story or poem for the challenge on both the Gang of Five fanfiction section and on fanfiction.net.
Must mention the prompt challenge in an author's note for the story: In an author’s note in your story mention that this is a response to a prompt challenge, mention that this is organized by the Gang of Five forum, and mention the specific prompt that is used.
Must be at least 1000 words long: The only length requirement on stories is that they need to be at least 1000 words or, in the case of poems, 500 words.
Must not be more than 25000 words except in one particular case: We do discourage extremely long fics as prompt responses (25,000 words or more) except in the specific case where a single story is used for multiple prompt responses in one year, with individual chapters being used for separate prompts in that year. This rule is just in place to ensure that everyone can have time to read and review a story before the 2-week voting period for a prompt is over. This can be done with a long fic that is started and slowly added upon during a prompt challenge year, but it would not really be possible with a 500k story that was posted for one prompt, for example.
Additional requirements if you submit a song fic as an entry: Songs can be submitted as poetry, but to prevent abuse and ensure originality a few conditions must be obeyed:
a) They must be original works, that is to say they should not be based on existing music.
b) They still need to adhere to a poetic formula. Obviously this is pretty loose, since poems can take many forms, but essentially it needs to be visually organized like a song (lines, stanzas, etc clearly defined).
Rule 3: Concerning Submitting Your Prompt ResponsePM me with links to
both the Gang of Five and the fanfiction.net copies of your story. I will then add a link to the prompt masterlist in this topic.
DO NOT post your story to this topic – we are trying to keep this topic as uncluttered as possible. Rule 4: Concerning Voting and BannersAfter the month is complete there will be a vote between the participants on which story (you cannot vote for yourself) was the best prompt response. The voting will take place in
the voting topic. If a tie happens that is resolvable by a second round of voting between the top two stories, then I will impose that. Otherwise I will break any ties.
Everyone who participates will be entitled to a participation banner with the Land Before Time character of their choice on it. The winner of each month's vote, however, will also be entitled to add a star to their banner as an acknowledgement of their success.
Rule 5: Concerning Forum Fanfiction AwardsPlease keep in mind that submitting your stories as a prompt response does not disqualify them from the annual forum fanfiction awards. In fact, I encourage you to participate in both of them if you are interested.
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It is my hope that this exercise will result in the inspiration of many good stories from the exceptional authors we have on the forum. I truly think that the creative side of this fandom is where it really shines, and I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.
If you have any questions about this challenge, the rules, or any prompts please mention them in this topic – as it is meant for discussion. The Prompt Masterlist topic will only have the monthly prompts and links to any stories and
the voting topic will only be for voting at the end of each monthly prompt.
