This week, we welcome Jesse Byrd, co-founder of Moonbeam Literary as our guest judge of the contest finalists. Please remember that you must review five other entries IN THE CONTEST CATEGORY before you post your own.
Here’s how we keep this fair and fun for everyone:
Please review five other entries IN THE CHALLENGE CATEGORY before you post your own. (The forum software will remind you how many more entries you need to review before you post.)
Only one entry per challenge. We have challenges scheduled throughout the year! You’ll have lots of opportunities to post additional content.
No revision. We’re totally fine with tweaking the formatting, but please don’t revise. This is a flash challenge with only one entry.
Be honest and kind when you review. We want to create a culture that supports writers, so qualifying reviews include:
- The Story Score rubric, a quick, gut-level 1-5 assessment of the piece.
- A 75-word reply that includes both positive feedback and highlights a few places that need work
FAQ
What if I’m one of the very first entries and there aren’t 5 posts to review yet?
If there are fewer than five entries, just review what you can. You’ll be free to post as soon as you’ve done that. We’d appreciate it if you’d swing back towards the end of the challenge and review other posts, to pay it forward if you can.
How will you pick the three winners?
First, we’ll check the posts to make sure each poster hasn’t been a troll, and hasn’t copied and pasted the same response. Then, of the folks that meet those requirements, we’ll randomly choose three people.
You said entries should be 500 words, but I can post 513 (or some other number.)
Right now, we can only limit the number of characters, not words. And we want our sesquipedalian writers to be able to post 500 words, too. So after trial and error, we chose 3100 characters as a good estimate of 500 words. If you can fit in a few more words, go for it.
How many times can I enter?
Only once per challenge. But we host challenges or live events monthly! So you’ll be able to revise based on the feedback you received and post again. (Unless those pages placed you in the top three of a previous challenge. If that’s the case, we ask that you submit new materials. If you really want to post the pages, go for it, but we’ll need to recuse you from being in the top three.)
Formatting Tip! Check out this video if you’d like a shortcut on how to automatically add breaks between paragraphs.