Inspired by a Picture: "May I Help You?" - A Writing Challenge
This challenge is to write a story based on the picture below.
Any picture is provided here under the doctrine of 'fair use' which is believed to apply. It is not the site's intent to infringe copyright. Copyright owners considering that this does not apply to their work should enter into dialogue with the webmaster by email [for their convenience they may use the submissions email address]. Items where copyright is asserted will either be taken down, or attribution made, at the copyright holder's choice.
Please note that the authors may chose to alter the (assumed) age of anyone in the picture. The picture is an inspiration, not a literal model. You should consider the spirit of the picture when casting your votes, not precision of literal interpretation.
Submissions and Dates
Opening date
Voting is now open. There is a six week period between the opening and closing of submissions. For the avoidance of doubt, all times are UTC taken from our server. Check your time zone! All submisions will be acknowledged. No acknowledgement means no arrival.
Runners and riders
Full entrants
The stories are as follows. The order changes each time the page is refreshed, to try to get folk to read and rate all the tales:
- Black Eyed David
- The Elephant in the Room
- I Do Like to Be Beside The Seaside – Getting There
- Fifty Yard Line
- Thrift Shop Nation
- The Boy at the Park
Until polls open this is just a list. Once they open the titles link to the tales.
Cast your vote
There are two ways. Each story has a survey at the foot which relates to how well you judge that it met your needs as a reader. That's probably the most useful for the authors. After that, once you have read them all, please come here and rate them all, if you like, one against the other.
Voting period
Voting lasts for three weeks only. Polls open on 18 October 2016 at noon, and close at noon on 8 November 2016. Poll opening and closing is programmatic
Rules
The basic rules are simple:
- There is No Minimum word count, though aim for a broad minimum of 3,500 words. If you don't get that many, you don't get that many. It's an aiming point! If yours is shorter then it's shorter. Submit it anyway
- No maximum word count. Sometimes more is better. Sometimes less is more. It's your story, so you decide.
- The author may be one person, or more than one writing in collaboration.
- A short story is as valid an entry as a novel, and vice versa. Multiple chapters are fine.
- Format is to be .doc, .odt ideally, .rtf, .docx and .txt if you must, .htm and .html are acceptable. If you really must you can put your text in the body of an email, but I will hate you for ever. Do not send pdfs or any other format. They will simply not be considered.
- The story must be submitted as a file. We will not scrape it from another site
- At our sole editorial discretion stories may be accepted or rejected.
- The title of your story should be your own invention. It really ought not to be whatever we have called the challenge.
- The email address for submissions is its_onlyme@iomfats.org
The story may be a new story, an existing story published in this site or elsewhere, or current work in progress (ie part of a serial that you also enter in the challenge). For this challenge, the more so since the picture is a cliché, absolutely no stories with adult/youth themes or heavy BDSM content will be allowed, and no exceptions will be made. Scatology, coprophagy, or faeces play will not be accepted. Diaper fetish is, likewise, deprecated.
Stories do not need to contain or avoid sexual encounters, nor need they be gay male stories, though authors' attention is drawn to the fact that this is primarily a gay site, with a gay male majority in the audience.
All stories that are accepted for the challenge will remain the copyright of the authors, and the authors and submitters give an absolute assurance that the stories may be published here. Authors' attention is drawn to the copyright statement at the foot of every page on this site. Stories accepted into the challenge and published on the site may not subsequently be withdrawn.
By submitting a story into the challenge the submitter gives an absolute assurance that he or she has the right to submit the story, that it is their own original work (or that they have the author's permisison to submit it), and that it does not break any other person's copyright. Should the submitter be in breach of any undertaking in law, the submitter agrees that the webmaster be held harmless and that any such breach is the total personal responsibility of the submitter. Anyone recognising a work as their own and submitted without their consent, or having any issues with it should register this by clicking here and emailing the webmaster, explaining their reasons in detail.
Results
An overall results page shows all the results gathered in one place. Obviously polls have to be open for the results to show! Until polls are open it is pretty obviously a work in progress.
