Inspired by a Picture - A Writing Challenge
On 18 January 2016 a challenge was announced to create a tale inspired by quite an unusual picture. I call it "Of Which Nightmares Are Made." You will have other ideas, probably.
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.
The stories have been uploaded, and are here for you to read and enjoy. When you have enjoyed them please come back here if before the closing date for voting and mark up to three stories that you rate as the most successful at interpreting the picture for you, and, separately, up to three stories that you feel are the best three overall. Obviously you may vote for different stories in each voting category.
Please note that the authors may have chosen to alter the (assumed) age of any of the people in the picture. You should consider the spirit of the picture when casting your votes, not precision of literal interpretation.
Runners and riders
Full challenge entrants
The stories are as follows:
Late entries
The following stories arrived too late for the full challenge. They have been granted a partial entry, such that the authors will receive the same 'voting feedback' as the full entrants, but they do not compete in the overall poll. They cannot do that because votes have been cast already, and cannot be uncast, so it would be unfair to everyone to add them into the overall pair of polls.
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.
The polls, both those for the overall rating and for individual stories, opened on 20 February 2016. They close at midnight UTC on 14 March 2016. There is a technical limitation which prevents voting outside that period.
Submissions and closing date
The closing date for submissions was midnight UTC on 19 February 2016.
Rules
The basic rules are simple:
- No Minimum word count, though aim for a broad minimum of 10,000 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
- 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.
- 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 story may be a new story, an existing story, or current work in progress. It is unlikely that any stories with adult/youth themes or heavy BDSM content will be allowed, but exceptions are made.
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 permission 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.
