Iluvatar of ImmU and PhoenixMUD wants to partake in a creative writing contest with Keolah of Rogue Winds and a few other MUD builders. However, we need more competitors and judges. Obviously a person can be both, but they can not judge in their own category.

If you are interested, please either post here or goto and submit to Ntanel your desire to participate.

If we get a substancial number of responses, then we can plan accordingly and provide details. As far as prizes go... Short of a trophy image, no/low-cost ideas would be nifty.

Rules for the contest may be losely based on what is at

Thanks and ciao!

sounds like an awesome contest, and if love to join, but i just dont think i have a chance right now... are there plans for this to happen again if all goes well?

We do things like this every few years. I am sure even after I go someone somewhere would do it once in a while.

To tell the truth I wasn't too happy with the way this competition was managed in the past.

If I put several hours of work into writing a story, I don't do that out of  sheer creative joy, or to get some graphic award to post on my website,  I do it because I want to share the story with others.

To put it plain and simple: I want the story to be read. Meaning that if my story wins any of the prizes, I expect it to be published somewhere on a website, if possible permanently, but at least for a substantial time.

The two last times this contest has been run, this didn't happen. Not even the three top stories were ever published. There was a discussion about it on these boards, and the comment I got from the admin running the contest was, that it was too much work for him to convert the stories into HTML.

To me that isn't satisfactory. I think it shows little respect for the amount of work the winners - and all the competitors for that matter - put into their stories. So we are expected to give up the right to the stories we send in, but we don't even get them published somewhere? I think that's a bum deal.

Unless there has been a change of policy this year, I think I'll pass on the contest, and put my efforts elsewhere.

Though I've never submitted to this contest and don't know its history or anything about it, from what Molly has described, I'll have to agree with her. The only reason a writer submits to contests like what's described is the hope that other people may read their story. If what Molly said is accurate, I'm rather perplexed why this hasn't happened in the past. I mean, if nothing else, a simple text file can't be all that hard to post on a website.

Well, MudWorld has only held one creative writing contest and that was in 2001, we linked to the original text files of the winners.  Immortal University would be responsible for the next contest and they will also post winners.  I have to assume Molly speaks of one of the other two networks which have held other such competitions.

The 2001 entries are still available online at this link!


MudWorld does not need to hold a contest to post submitted stories, we do have a section dedicated to submitted articles.

My apologies, I just assumed that the same group or affiliates were holding all these contests, since they were so similar in the approach. I admit I often have problems separating these webpages from one another, since the names and content of them are similar.

I apologise for the mistaken identity, obviously those other two contests were run by someone else, (who I cannot even recall now, but I assume Ntanel knows).  Anyhow, the wasted efforts in those two made me lose the taste for this type of venture more or less permanently, so I still think I'll pass.

Just curious, were the prizes ever actually awarded, ie the banners adds put up?

After looking at the link to the 2001 contest (was there a 2002 or 2003?) and browsing the winners, this does look like a neat contest. I also note one of the judges is named Molly (*peers at Molly*).

Yes, I was one of the judges in the 2001 contest, run by Ntanel of Mudworld. Nice to see that the stories from that one are still available. The winning story was totally awesome, I suggest you all go and read it.

It was when the 'show' was taken over by Orion of MudPlanet in 2002 and 2003 that things went wrong. And judging from Orion's response, he still has no plans of publishing the winning stories from these years in foreseeable time.

So, to turn this into something constructive, I suggest that Orion could e-mail those stories to Ntanel - or any other person who declares themselves willing to publish them on a website. It cannot be THAT hard to html-ize them, and I still think they deserve to be read by more people than the 3 judges.

As for Fifi's question; yes, I believe the banners were run for a month, and there were some graphic rewards that the winners could place on their own websites too. I never bothered to put them up myself. Like I said before, graphics are not the reason why people partake in contests like that.

You are? And did you do so in writing? Signed? Because if not, you've not given up the right, and there's nothing stopping you from putting your story up on your own website.

Sheesh. I never got my graphic reward!

Hey Molly, or whoever else knows the answer to this question.
Where do I go to access the stories from the 2001 contest? I would love to read these.
I might even participate in this contest if I find the time.
But please, info on the 2001 contest?

Raeven wrote
The link to the 2001 entries was posted by Ntanel higher up in this thread:

Ok, seriously...

It has been 1-2+ years since these people put in a lot of work to participate in the contest YOU asked them to participate in.

You cannot even UPLOAD some text files and then make some links? That takes like 5 minutes at MOST.

Sure, it isn't pretty, but it is better than not posting them at all.

Converting them to html to fit with your site would take less than an hour, even if you had TONS of stories.

If you have time to post on Top Mud Sites then you have time to show those people a little courtesy and spend a few minutes to post them.

This isn't a matter of "RL takes precedence over a hobby." This is a matter of common decency when dealing with other people to whom you make a commitment.

Orion,

I can convert those for you, send em my way and a template to apply them to. It will take me only a few hours. Class does not start until June 7, so I have some time.

I have all the stories from the contests I judged in which is most of them. I also helped design the contest parameters and in the first one, Molly recused herself from judging her own story. We kept Ntanel as the wild card to judge in a tie-breaker and I'm pretty sure I remember Orion acting in the same capacity.

Ntanel's contest is posted, Orion had some issues with posting but I've got to say he did a great job just holding it considering all the work it took to get judges and make sure we all got the files in a timely fashion. If anyone is willing to convert and post .doc files or .txt files, I would be more than happy to send copies. My only request would be that the judges get some credit as well as the excellent writers that took the time to submit.

There were and still are no copyright implications to any of these stories. They were freely submitted in an open contest without restrictions or conditions and as such, I've no qualms about sharing the content, critiques or final results with anyone who asks within reason.

I'm actually looking forward to this next contest and plan on submitting a story myself. That's a challenge, Molly!

Well said, Thresh.

Ilu,

Which contest do you have the submissions from? Since MudWorld put all of theirs up, I assume either MP 2002 or MP 2003? I am still willing to translate and put up submissions somewhere.

I think Threshold summed it all up very nicely, and I wholeheartedly agree with all he said.

When you start a contest like this, you also are under obligation to treat the contestants in a decent way. Publishing the winning stories is definitely expected, and by giving us lame excuses for why you won't do that you managed to tick off not only me, but obviously all the winners.

Orion, I suggest you take Ntanel up on his offer, so we can close this business, which has irritated me for around two years now.

Posting takes five minutes. Maybe less. Converting stories into HTML takes a good bit longer, to make them fit on the site properly. *shrug*

And it's only been a year and a half since I ran the first contest, by the way. Furthermore, if you read the details page, nowhere on there does it say that I will post them. It says that I reserve the right to, if I so wish. But that's as far as it goes.

So, if you want to bitch about my responsibilities... in truth, I have none. Now, I said I'll post them... and I will. When I get the time to do so.

As for Ntanel's offer, I have contacted him. So long as the stories fit the way they should, I don't really care how they get that way.

I believe I already have a bio for Noximist, Molly, and maybe a couple of the others. I am only posting the top three stories, so I'll have to look and make sure I have bios for those people. If I don't, then it would likely be a good idea if you contacted me, otherwise it will be rather bare.

They may have been lost in my hard drive crash a while back. In any case, we'll see how things go. As for the graphics, I'm still looking for those. I'm fairly sure I deleted them after the last contest, but I'll keep looking. I might get lucky and find them.

All done.

Sent to Orion, hopefully I did them right and he will have them up soon.

Some have been linked in to the stories page, but the server was having lag/connection problems during the time I set aside to work on it (and from what Samson has told me, it has been for a week or so now). So, some are in and some are not. I'll get them all linked when I can and the server will allow me to stay connected long enough.

Also, thanks go to Ntanel for his efforts. But in the end, I was forced to reformat them to use the layout I was planning for after the MUD Planet redesign. This was something I wanted to avoid, but... it would have taken longer to 'tidy up' the files Ntanel sent back than it would to just shove the documents into Word and save them into HTML. I'd put aside the time to work on them already, and didn't want to waste that time without getting anything to show for it.

Oh, and Molly, I tried to respond to your last PM, but:

Anyway, that's all for now.

---[ Added ]---
Ok, got a few minutes and managed to get into the server. The links have been added for all of the stories. If you're one of the people who wrote one of the stories, please send a bio (there is a contact form on MUD Planet) for posting. Otherwise it will remain more or less blank.

Those documents were all translated and cleaned up in Word 2k Pro by me before submitting to Ntanel. I sent them to him as .doc files. If you're using .php, I suspect there was/is little to modify considering I've used the same process to post articles to Mudworld. I'm certainly not familiar with management of web sites nor your particular application. I post this note to say whatever condition you received them in, they were in .doc first using the standard .doc formatting. If anyone wants, I can convert to html and send but I've been told microsoft word injects too much unneeded data and makes the files too big (which is why I didn't convert the first time).

I switched them to HTML myself assuming they would be placed in PHP, not everyone will or can open a doc file available over the Internet.

Molly has asked questions, now to answer them.

> What are the ´planned rules?

Well, you and Neranz did a good job with the 2001 rules, I would like to base the ImmU event on them.



> Things that come to mind are:
>- Do the stories need to be based on an actual zone?

No.

>- Any restrictions as to length? and subject?

Less than 10 pages at arial font 10 double-spaced. Just a guess, looking for opinions.

>- Will the stories be judged under different subjects or all together?

I like the different topics idea, seems to work.

>- Any restriction to the amount of stories the same person can submit?

It does bring in a question on fairness. You could stomp most anyone easily. If we limited to one, then people would have a fair chance.

>- Who will the judges be?

No volunteers as of yet, but I do not want Iluvatar or Keolah to be judges.

>- Are the judges allowed take part, if they don't judge their own stories?

We would not have a judge work on a category they submitted in.

>- Should the entries be 'anonymous', or do we post under our usual 'board signatures? (Personally I think anonymous).

I do not want real names. The only exceptions I have ever made where for Brody and Neranz. If you mean in display and judging, I could make them anonymous to prevent favoritism, but I would have to exclude myself from participating to keep track of submissions and aliases.

>- And above all: what will be the deadline for submitting?

Do not have the volunteers needed yet to set a date, have not inquired formally.

Hey, it took the four 2001 judges considerable time to hash out those rules along with you, Ntanel. It wasn’t just Molly and Neranz. I personally think they came out pretty good too and were even applied to the MudCons with few changes.

I’ve always considered the topical or theme concept to be the best as well and it worked well for all the contests I’ve seen. Regardless of the genre, how a story is written is always pretty much the same when it’s to be used as a base theme for a zone that might be written to support its concepts of a theme. With a good base, other short stories can be created to expand on the base and totally flesh out the resultant zone.

I’m not sure you’re going to find sufficient judges to exclude them from judging in categories either they or people they work with submit in. What worked is when a judge felt there was a conflict of interest, like the submitter worked with them, they recused themselves from judging that story and it defaulted to the contest manager to judge. I and I expect Keolah would like to submit stories this time and any judging would be a perceived conflict in my opinion which is why I volunteered to be used as a judge only as a last resort.

After the numerous stories Sir Vorpal Tribble submitted at once, I recommend only one submission per contest too. The actual size you accept really depends on how much space you want to dedicate to publishing on your website but what you stated sounds pretty good if you’ll specify the format. In a .doc or .txt file I think it works out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-3.5k words. There is a consideration needed for the number of submissions though and the max I’ve seen so far is 11. With the forethought in this contest, there might be considerably more. That means it might be really harsh to actually put all the stories submitted up on the site because of space but I would recommend putting judge critiques up per story. We did those critiques as constructive criticism with both praise and suggestions for improvement for the next short story.

Hmm, rather than a banner of the durations mentioned, perhaps we can weasel an icon from Synozeer on the TMS homepage with a link to a bio and the actual stories. There’s some decent space for it on the left of the page. We might even be able to put the stories submitted into a post in one of the forums here too. Any other ideas?

One last thing about names…Regardless of the name submitted as author of a story it really doesn’t matter to a competent judge who wrote the story. A large part of this is both personal satisfaction as well as advertisement of the quality of the zones you build and the Mu* you work for so I would recommend using your most commonly known nom-de-plume.

This is what I have put together so far. Once we all can agree on something and modifications are made, I will make things official and send out press releases.

If there is another resource out there who wishes to partake, let me know before these things become official.

I also need three more judges, Sywin of Itheria has already signed-up.

I reviewed the rules and applaud your efforts. Good Job!

Word length suggestions anyone?

I'd suggest about 3.5K words max. It corresponds (in my Times new Roman 12 pt) to about 5-6 pages. I think that's reasonable for a short story, and should be enough to judge the creative writing skills of the contestant.

Welcor

From my experience with Orion, setting a specific word length presents a few problems. What if the story is 3510 words or perhaps 3558 words and where do you draw the line.

I think sticking to number of pages in a specified format is much more appropriate and easier to manage in the long run. If I choose the word 'obfuscate' and others of that ilk and my page length is too long, I can always change that to 'lie' and do the same with other long words which would affect the length of the story but not the number count.

So then, stick with what I have?

In my opinion, yes.

Do the date's on the event sound good?  Open from July 1 to the 24? Judging the next two to three weeks after deadline.

Sounds ok to me. However, it _is_ the summer holiday for some, so we might not see as many entries as we would wish. I can't come up with a quick solution to this, though.

"Summer holiday." We talking summer break or forth of July? There is three weeks to prepare and three for submissions.

The hard part is getting reliable judges. I wouldn't set the dates in stone until all the judges are lined up but what you have is a more than reasonable target date. Even if the submission dates have to be postponed, starting the story about now can't hurt anything at all.

I've already started spreading the word about the contest and have one quasi-committment already for an entrant.

Well, I have two judges right now, would like two more, one of these four will be the alternate. No offense to Sywin or Welcor, but I would like a judge from the past who has past experience with this and is not Molly, Keolah or Iluvatar to act as the lead judge. Anyone know where Neranz is hanging out?

Judges signed up:
Sywin of Itheria
Welcor of Builder's Academy

Neranz faded away into the nether regions for the most part. I haven't seen her in ages. She had cited home responsibilities a few times in the past and I'm sure she's concentrating on them.

I miss her and I'm sure quite a few others do.

I emailed her, so we shall see. Else I will approach Brody (Wes Platt) next.

Immortal University is holding a creative writing contest. Submissions will be accepted between July 1st and July 24th. If you are interested, please refer to the link below for the contest rules.