Story Contest: Halloween 2005

[Moonlit Naiad]

MSF Halloween 2005 Story Room Contest
(Rules written by Autumn)

Halloween is creeping up on us and it's a wonderful time for some appropriately themed TG stories. Because there's a lot of writers and otherwise creative people out there, I thought a little something to inspire some more stories was in order. ^.^

Many different things could happen to someone during the Halloween period. Many of these could even fit into MSF's style and 'universe.' Whether it be schoolboys dressing up as schoolgirls or schoolgirls dressing up as schoolboys to go trick-or-treating, someone finding that the cross-gender costume is no longer just a costume, or a passing witch deciding to play a trick and treat someone to a fair bit of confusion - like turning a boy dressed as Spiderman into a girl dressed as Supergirl - there are stories to be told and enjoyed.

Let's see some of them! ^.^

Here's the guidelines:
First and foremost, stories must be suitable for display on the MSF forums and/or the site. This mean, amongst other things, that sex and graphic violence must be kept 'off screen' (or not even used at all!), cussing is frowned upon and the "stronger" bad words (racial slurs, vulgarities/obscenities) are strictly prohibited. If someone has to use strong language, it's best to blip it out with symbols such as "&$%#".

The story must follow the theme of Halloween, and include either a transformation (into the opposite sex) or cross-gender costumes. Thus a boy dressing as a cheerleader is fine or a girl dressing as a bulky football player is fine, whether or not they get transformed, but a boy dressing as, or transformed into a vampire or frankenstein isn't. This is not to say that non-cross-gender stuff cannot be included, but the focus should be on cross-gender costuming or transformation. (ie, a boy and his girlfriend both going as schoolgirls (and maybe turning into schoolgirls) is perfectly fine.)

Because it takes time to form a story (character, character development, plot, and so on), there is a minimum word count of 1000. And because it takes time for the judges to read and 'score' the stories, there is a maximum word count of 12000. These aren't strict, but the final score may be penalized for stories that fall a little under the minimum or a little over the maximum. Stories greatly out of range will not be considered for the contest, but you are certainly welcome to write them and share with the members of this community.

Original stories only please. No fanfics or sequels. Yes, your characters can dress up as (or be transformed into) Sailor Moon or Dread Pirate Roberts, but they have to be original characters. Thus, no Sailor Moon dressing up as Tinkerbell or Ranma Saotome dressing up as Ariel.

Do your own work! Plagiarism is strictly forbidden. Any one caught copying someone else's work will have all their entries disqualified from the contest.

Submission requirements:
1) No more than three submissions per entrant will be considered. You're welcome to write more, though, and share them with the community. ^.^
2) Co-authorship is allowed. A story with more than one author counts as a submission from both, but is only eligible for one prize.
3) Stories should be submitted in rich text format (.rtf) or plain text (.txt) with the authors' name(s) as the filename (ex. Kerina_Autumn_Story.rtf) to email: (MSFtomoyo)(at)(yahoo)(dot)(com). Story title should occur in the file, authors' name(s) must not be in the file.
4) Submissions are due by Friday, 21 October. Any that come in after Tomoyo checks her email on the morning of the 22nd are too late.
5) Stories that are submitted must not be made publicly available until after the judging is complete. This is to prevent possible bias in the judges.
6) Submissions must be in English. I appologize to those for whom English is not their primary language, but the judges do not possess the ability to accurate judge a story in a different language.

Judging:
Stories will be judged in three categories and a cumulative score will be assigned. The average of the scores from the judges will be used to determine the winners. In the event of a tie, the winner will be determined at random.

Judges will not know who wrote what story (thus the requirement for no identifying marks in the story file itself). When a story comes in, it will receive a number and be documented in a list Tomoyo will keep. Then the file will be renamed to the submission number and distributed to the judges.

The three criteria are
1) Originality of the story/reader impression (80 points)
2) Form and structure (plot, character, character development, effective use of dialouge/genre, and so on (15 points)
3) Grammar and spelling. (5 points) Keep in mind that serious grammatical and spelling errors may impede the communication of your story and affect the reader impression.

Judges:
Judges for this contest will be Kimiko (site admin), Eirien (site admin), Kerina (story room moderator), Autumn (story room moderator), and Haneko (art room moderator). Haneko will be producing the prizes.

Prizes:
First place: Colour image of a character of their choice from the story. Please include at the end of the file which character you would want to see portrayed.
Second place: Pencil sketch of a charactrer of the judges' choice from the story. (Maybe our choice will be the same as yours, maybe not). Second place will not be awarded if there are less than ten valid submissions.
Artist's choice: Pencil sketch of a character of the artist's (the individual creating the prizes) choice from the story. (Again, maybe the artist will choose the character you suggest, maybe not.)

No story may win more than one prize, though it is possible that the same person or team of people win all three. Prizes will be delivered to the email address on file for the story submitted. Prizes will be initially sent as digital files (graphic formats such as .png, .jpg, .gif, whatever the artist renders the image in) only. Hardcopies of the images for first and second place will only be sent if a physical address is provided (upon notification of winning) to the artist. Hardcopy of the artist's choice prize will not be sent.

Results:
Results will be announced and stories avaiable for general reading on - or before - October 31st (Halloween). Prize images may not be completed until up to two weeks after, depending on the time the artist has to do them and the time winners are determined.

Legal Information:
1) This contest is open to everyone except the judges and their immediate families. You do not need to be a member of MSF's forums or participate in their IRC chat to be elligible. No preference will be given to member, admins, moderators, or non-members.
2) The author retains the copyright to their story.
3) By submitting a story to this contest, the author gives magicalsailorfuku.net, or its follow-on sites, a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licesnse to display, transmit, and archive the stories (and prize images) on the internet or any comprable follow-on technology, provided that authorial credit is maintained, and that they are not located in a pay-for-access location.
3a) The author grants the same rights ,under the same restrictions, but additionally constricted by timeframe, to secondgate.com to post the stories and have them accessible in a temporary (not to exceed two months) location until such time as they can be stored on MSF's site.
4) While the characters portrayed in the prizes remain their respective authors' creations, the artist retains the copyright to the artwork, and specifically retains the right to use the images on their website or portfolio as a sampling of their artwork.

[Goose]

That is one seriously well thought out contest.

Good luck to everyone who enters. :D

[Kumi-chan]

Good luck to everyone that enters. I haven't desided if I will.

[Jayme]

would my dracula story work, the one I wrote up about a year ago? or do I have to write another one o.o because ill do it!

[Daffodil Aura]

would my dracula story work, the one I wrote up about a year ago? or do I have to write another one o.o because ill do it!

If it hasn't been seen before - you can submit it. If it's something that's already a work in progress, but it's not been put up anywhere, you can submit it (well, after you finish it).

However, if it's been publically available, that means the judges may have seen it before, so no. Sorry ^^;

[Jayme]

Hmm ok so I cant use that story, but I am gonna enter hopefully..

[girlycheerboy]

This is gonna be too fun.

[SweetSophia]

Oh, it's on. It's on like Donkey Kong!

[Arkain]

Crap! Went WAY over the limit...lol

Oh well...I'll submit this one to the website and maybe do a second one!

[Starphoenix]

My regret is that I'm going to miss the deadline and be unable to participate...

Unless an extension was granted... *Makes with the sad eyes look*

[Jayme]

Hmm well parts of the story were rushed, it was unproofread, the grammar wasn't much for talk, but I sent it in.. sorry ive been sick, kind of lucky anything was sent at all!

[Tomoyo-chan]

The Sumission part of the Contest is over I have checked my email and gathered all the Stories that have been sent. Thank you for your submissions and if you happen to work on a revised version you can still send it to me and I will use that one for when I post it up on MSF. The Due date for Revisions is October 31

[Moonlit Naiad]

The results are in - and we have a winner.

Before I announce who the winners are, I'd like to thank everyone who participated, both judges and writers as well as Tomoyo for providing the collecting and forwarding service, and invite everyone back to participate in the next story contest, which will likely be announced sometime in November.

Because there were less than 10 entries, there is no second prize awarded.

Artists's choice was awarded to story number 7.

*drum roll*

And... First prize was awarded to story number 5.

*blink* What, you wanna know more...?

The writer of story number 7 and the recipient of the Artist's Choice prize is SweetSophia. The first prize winning story writer was Nikkou (Empyrean Nikkou, or whatever name she's running around with today ^.~). Congratulations both of you, and again a hearty thank you to all who participated. Prize images will be forthcoming.

I will have the stories uploaded to a temporary location on The SecondGate later today, unless Tomoyo gets them posted to MSF before then.

[Mistress Guendolen]

Congrats to both of you! I look forward to seeing the final results.

[SweetSophia]

Well, if that ain't just whisting Dixie. I'd like to thank my Moms, God and the Academy...I wonder what character o' mine the artist is going to choose. And, I definitely can't wait to read the First Prize story!