This challenge is to honor the talented writer that holds everything together for us.

Word count maximum - 2000 words

Trigger Cinders of the Great War

You are free to interpet that anyway you want, provided you do not plagerize the award winning story written by KDW herself. The story can be historical, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or any other combination of genres. It can be about WWI if you like but is in no way required.

Prize A copy of Writers of the Future Vol 9 signed by our own Kathleen-Dalton Woodbury. Sent to you with all expenses taken care of. All we need is an address to send it to.

I am going to give you a liberal amount of time to think and write your submission. All entries are to be sent to me...

snapperfjd@yahoo.com

Rules:
1. Stories must be 2000 words or less--no exceptions. I will check this on MSword. If your story is too long, I may email you to say so--it is your job to make sure--but it won't count as an entry until it is 2000 words or less.
2. Stories are to be emailed to me as .rtf files. Please don't post anywhere on Hatrack that you have sent it to me. If I feel you have endangered the anonymous nature of the competition, I may disqualify you.

3. I will keep people aware of how many entries I have recieved, once I have received a few.

4. There will be a period of approx. a month to write your story and email it to me.

5. Voting will initially be on the first 13. Each entrant will be able to select the ONE intro they think creates the greatest desire to read on. This vote will count as a single point (1) towards its final score.

Participants will have a few days (specified later) to identify the best intro. Anyone who fails to vote will simply be removed from the competition. I will consider reasons--given in advance--if people feel they can't vote during the specified period.

6. When the votes for the intros are in I will circulate all the stories as a single .rtf (email me if this is a problem). You will be required to write a brief paragraph (see usual intro competition crits) on each story. It needn't be much. Format as follows:

Crits for Entrant: (Your Competition Number)

Story Title:

Entry Number:

Crit:

Story Title:

Entry Number:

Crit:

ect, etc.

at the end, you must vote: 1st (5 points), 2nd (4 points), 3rd (3 points). I will not post votes as I don't wish people to be influenced by others voting.

I will post your crits for you at the close of the competition.

Failure to vote or crit withing the timeframes identified, will simply lead to your disqualifcation

Thanks to Kathleen for helping with this. Thanks to Skadder for writing most of these rules and to the inventor of copy and paste for the PC. The amount of time for Judging will be a two or three week window.

Now everybody have fun and write!

I would like to thank Kathleen for the prize to this challenge. I will envy the winner.

There you go. Any questions feel free to post them here. Good luck to all!

Liberal time to think and write sounds great but is there a definite deadline?

Just asking

Also:

Is there a definite format required? (format, spacing, font, font size)

Before the ball drops in Time square, how's that? Dec. 31st 11:59 PM Eastern time.

I just asked about the formatting since often when dealing with submissions people want explicitly Times New or Courier.

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Also, I will award 2 points for the first entry received and 1 for the second.

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Though I'm interested to know why this extra score if there's already a submissions date: Might this not work against stories winning on merit, or simply award stories that are already written and just so happen to fit the trigger?

Also (sorry, I know, I just can't stop asking questions, I think writing has done this to me) what do you envisage as a timeline for votes - 1 week? 2?

And I'd also like to chip in my thanks to Kathleen, not just for her generosity in this, and not just for moderating the forum this year, but for moderating it for over ten years. I moderated a forum for eighteen months and it drove me batty, so I think your hard work is really quite inspirational and very much appreciated. Thank you.

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Kathleen's story title is only the trigger.

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Oh damn! I just earsed my WotF enrty to make room! Ahhhh!

Now I'll have to type that all over agan.

Edited to add: Finished at 1840 words, give or take. When the "new" computer comes, I'll type it back in and send it on.

we have to write what we think of Cinders of the Great War a short story by KDW, where do i find it to read it?

waite my brain hurts, i dont get it.

It can be about anything but should be based on that trigger loosely. Just think of those words and see if a story pops in.

so i come up with a 2000 word story, of what pops into our heads when we think

Cinders of the Great War, the words only,

not to do with the story at all.

I got two more entries but the last one is begging for a bit of time. I am late for an engagement so I will post the 13 the next time I get online, probably tomorrow.

For those still working on their's, the deadline will be when I say 'closed'. So if you don't see that you can still send me your entry.

I got teh last entry awhile ago but been busy at work. I will send them all off tomorrow.

Got only one last person that hasn't voted on a 13 line opening.

Hopefully with all the critiques that come in we don't need a grand prize every time though. 14 critiques on a full story seems a decent return on investment, and the winner's got to know they've something they might turn around and publish in short order.

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Not going to say which one is mine but wanted to say thanks for the crits, this was a good competition

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I agree. Some really good stories to read and the critiques have been helpful, too.