Friday, September 11, 2009

Calling All Virgin Pens!




The Indies First-Time Writer Challenge



Okay, so the ladies at the Indies, notably gusta and the 4-hmmed-monster (yes, I must fuck with everyone's names), are reaching out to you yet again! With a contest! And another chance to stare at AG's pretty graphics! Oh, and yours truly gets to be a judge! Yay! Yay! and Yay! So, you twitchy virgin pensters, it's time to put out with a shout!

Sponsored by: The Indie TwiFic Awards


Judges: Ahelm, CarenL, Gustariana, Hmonster4, LaViePastiche, PastichePen, PurdueLiz, SleepyValentina, SorceressCirce, and Spotzle

Rules and Guidelines

Submissions will be accepted from September 19 12:00 AM EDT to October 27 11:59 PM EDT (based on time stamp of submission via http://www.theindietwificawards.com).

The theme of the challenge is "First Experiences". Entries may be Canon, AU, AH and of any genre (e.g., angst, humor, family, suspense).

Entry's ratings must correspond to the appropriate equivalent for the entry’s website (e.g. MA, PG-13, R).

Shipping: All ships are acceptable so long as they are tastefully done and well written. Pedophilic pairings and incest pairings are NOT acceptable. Any story found to violate this criteria will be ruled ineligible.

Collaborations are acceptable so long as it is a first time effort for both writers.

Limit of two entries per author or collaboration group.

Entries will be accepted from FanFiction.net (FFn), LiveJournal (LJ), Twilighted (T’ed), and Simply Twilight. Please note that we will not be able to add entries submitted via sites other than FFn to the C2.

Entries must be between 2,500 and 15,000 words. The official word count will be assessed during the validation process via copy/paste of the entry (excluding header and AN) into Word 2007. Additionally, searches will be done across the four sites mentioned above to certify that no work by the author pre-exists. If at any time an author is identified to have pre-existing work, the one shot will be disqualified.

Twilight 25 Exception: If you are currently writing for the Twilight 25, and it is your first time writing, you will be able to participate in the First Time Writers Contest.

One-shots may not be expanded until the contest is over.

Submitting an Entry

Submitting an Entry Submissions will be accepted via our website.

All entries must use a “The Indies First Time Writer Challenge” Contest header, which is below:

“The Indies First Time Writer Challenge” One-Shot Contest

Title:
Pen name:
Primary Players:
Rating:
Word Count:
Disclaimer:

To see other entries in the “The Indies First Time Writer Challenge” contest, please visit the C2: http://www.fanfiction.net/community/The_Indies_First_Time_Writer_Challenge/74097/
Special thanks to the For The Love Of Jasper contest for sharing their contest framework with us.

Entries will be validated for quality grammar/punctuation and rules compliance when the entry is submitted. After an entry has been validated, if submitted via FFn, it will be added to the "The Indies First Time Writer Challenge" C2. Authors will be PMed or emailed when their entries have been validated. If an entry is disqualified, the author will be PMed and may modify and resubmit the entry by the submission deadline, if she so chooses.

We encourage any author with need for a beta to check out Project Team Beta.

Categorization of Entries

All Entries will be broken into two master groupings: Rated M and Rated T or Below.
If at the time of voting, we have more than 30 entries under the master category, secondary categories will be created to group the entries. For example, if 40 entries are received, 15 being AU, 20 being AH, and 5 canon, they will distribute that way. If we see more than 75 entries, additional groupings may be announced, based on types of entries received.

Voting

After the submission deadline has passed, there will be an open/public voting round featuring all validated entries.

Open Voting will run from November 1 12:00 AM EDT to November 15 11:59 PM EDT.

In addition to Open Voting, there will be a Judges’ Selection round. The judges will assess all submitted entries, and will do so anonymously – all header information (author, title, etc) will be removed from an entry before the judges read it.

All winners will be announced 9pm EST on November 10.



**And in case you didn't get this, Pastiche Pen wrote up that awful little introduction.

8 comments:

  1. When you say first time writers do you just mean in the Twifandom or are you dq'd if you have work in other fandoms?

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  2. Boo - it's for true first time writers

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  3. I am going to give it a try. I have never written anything but have alot of great ideas. I hope I can do it.

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  4. If I post another story, right after (like couple of days later) I post my entry for this one, will it still qualify?

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  5. If my story was nominated for the previous Indie TwiFic awards this summer, can also I be nominated for this contest? I'm still working on the same fanfic, and it's my first one.

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  6. Virgin pens or virgins in general? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Every time I see this, I see

    "Calling all virgin peens!"

    And I have to do a double take.

    Giggle.

    Just cuz.

    ReplyDelete

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