Ideas for the next contest (Page 1 of 2)

I like the Frankenstein genre idea the best. I could definitely have fun writing about an alien getting stranded in medieval times and falling in love with a  werewolf with chronic hiccups. And I like the idea of a sort of TNBW colab idea. Randomly assigned person, almost like a secret santa.

I don't think anyone wants to hear my stream of consciousness though lol.

After all these years I’ve had enough of my own stream of consciousness, so anyone else is welcome to it!

I'm open to that one. Take care. Vern

The mixed genre ideas like Frankenstein and aliens in medieval don't do much for me EXCEPT that it would be a good mental exercise. It would stretch what I'm used to thinking about. So perhaps we should consider something like that.

George FLC (Frankenstein Loves Curry)... just kidding

My Dear Miss Austen,

Considering your present state of penultimate enjoyment, I can only beg your indulgence to read my letter in hand and dare not hope that you will be moved to answer, and still less shall I imagine that your time being now devoted to eternal bliss, you would be inclined to sacrifice a moment’s felicity to benefit one whose authorial efforts are clumsy and cloddish, in the most prosaic and earth-bound senses of that word.  And yet, under the compelling pressure of overweening human ambition and at the suggestion of a fellow budding novelist, one mikejackson1127, I take pen in trembling hand to solicit an hour of your time in the interest of guiding one to whom you have forever appeared a bright and constant star in the literary firmament.

I enclose with this missive a brief account of tragic love, set among the reeds and rushes of Lake Droubble, inscribed by your petitioner and delineating within two hundred words of delicacy and refinement befitting a lady authoress of your eminent stature, both the divinest heights of human affection and the utter wretchedness of human despair.  If within the chambers of a heart now made perfect by its full association with the Divine, you should find an inclination to take pity on the insignificant scribblings of she who so boldly and without leave importunes you herein, my profound gratitude will be of such force and constancy that your diadem in Paradise will multiply diamonds and emeralds as further confirmation of your rightful place in that sublime realm.

I address this letter, whose impertinence I trust you will kindly forgive, to you at St. Peter’s Gate, in care of Sir Walter, who we know from Kipling’s pen received you first in Canaan and ‘showed you up the stair’.  A return may be addressed to me at Calle Venezuela, third floor up behind the 2nd purple door, in the coastal regions of New Espania.

With effusive gratitude for your attention thus far and having taken you too much away from the great literary company with whom you assemble in immortality,
I am,
Your most humble, mortal servant,
Elspeth M.
(2021)

Postscript: If you wrote any hitherto undiscovered novels during your all-too-brief earthly sojourn, please do advise along with directions thereto, as your many enthusiastic readers would be delighted to have a little something new.  E.M.

Ring-a-dingdingding! Oh, Mr. King...please answer your phone, throw this writer a bone, throw this writer a bone, don't let him go back home, where he'll be, be all alone...pleeease an-swer yerrrrr phoooone...Mister, Mister, Mister King! Got a story for you. It may suck, but if your kind and overlook, I might get published my first book...whatcha say, Mister Kiiiinnng!?

Hit the road, Jack! And doncha come back no more, no more...

Thanks George.

A couple more ideas for the contest(Too much coffee, lol):  have each entrant(again)pair off with another. Using plenty of tact and kindness, each pair of entrants playfully insults one another for a specified period of time. The judges decide whose insults were funnier, cooler, etc. Then the winners square off until there's a top winner and two runner-ups. It sounds time-consuming, but if we get right on it, I think we can manage it. Just my opinion. The only possible hitch might be how fast members would sign up for this. It would have to be fairly soon, but then again, if four to six jump right in, it might rouse others to do likewise. Oh, and we'd have to be fairly transparent(or pretend to be, lol). For example, I could tell someone, "Well, I'm on three-seven psychiatric drugs...I tend to forget...I'm bald, wear glasses, pot-bellied, in my sixties, and I have many addictions. My condo is a mess. My psychiatrist's 'working diagnosis' for me is ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I've had more than 35 jobs in my life." And so on.

The other idea is to write a letter to God. Scream, cuss, complain - or be grateful or whatever. Even if you don't believe, give it a go anyway.

I think that Mike has Hyper-Contestitis! It is enhanced by taking caffeine. Do you drink lots of coffee Mike? And BTW, many others need to catch Hyper-Contestitis. I'm curious as to why only about 20 people have entered contests on this website. I would have expected thousands (pity the judges in that case). I do the Write Michigan Contest and I think that they had 1300 people enter last year. Are people so focused on their books that they simply don't have the time? I need these contests! It stretches my writing muscles. Of course, the odds of me winning increase with only 20 people!

George FLC (Far Less Caffeine... well not quite)

Manager of Crazy Ideas R US - CIRUS! I like that. How about Crazy Ideas R Captivating US - CIRCUS.
You did post some interesting ideas though. If all we want to do is win then there might be issues.

George FLC

An unrelated thought: When a contest calls for a fixed, smaller number of words, perhaps add a points premium for the entry, so that a 100-word entry would count, perhaps, as 125 and a 200 word entry as 240.  Not enough to encourage spurious entries, but contest entries call for more effort, especially small ones.

LOL, George! Good one. And yes, I agree that a number of my ideas are not quite workable. Probably, the next contest will have s'thing to do with Halloween and that being the case, we might want to think along that line, but not let it narrow our scope. Heck, as a kid, I had LOTS of fun on H'ween. My friends and I played a lot of games with people and we pranked many a neighbor, lol. Tying in with this, I've got a story that I wrote a couple years ago that has a Halloween theme. It's called Dinked. You might search for it in my p'folio, and if you start at the most recent post and work downward, it shouldn't be long 'fore you find Dinked. It's not great, but I think it has interesting qualities. Namely, that like its creator, it's fairly weird, lol.
Mike