Cemetery Dance Writing Contest

[euphoria]

10,000 characters?

That really IS a short, short SHORT story! We're going to have to be especially creative. Love the idea! When is the deadline to submit?

[Dan Hocker]

That really IS a short, short SHORT story! We're going to have to be especially creative. Love the idea! When is the deadline to submit?

Contestants will have 2 weeks to prep / write their story. On June 1st I will open the submission section of the forums and contestants will then have 1 week to submit their stories. We recommend submitting your story early in that 1 week submission window. So the very maximum is a little less than 3 weeks (as we announced this yesterday). But the earlier in the week you get your story in the more time forum members will have to read your story.

[Ben Staad]

What a fantastic idea! Thanks CD for given folks this awesome opportunity.

[RJK1981]

That really IS a short, short SHORT story! We're going to have to be especially creative. Love the idea! When is the deadline to submit?

Tell me about it, lol. I think I will have to start with something completely new instead of working on finishing the story I already have as it is over 7,000 characters (even after changing the spacing between sentences from 2 spaces to 1) and I don't feel it is close to being finished. Good thing I have other ideas jotted down

[Dan Hocker]

I don't remember how we came up with the 10,000 character count tbh. I think Brian told me a word count he was looking for then I approximated 4 characters per word average, then added a couple thousand character buffer zone.

[RichardThomas]

Sounds like a great idea. So we're talking about roughly a 2500 word story?

[Kenwood]

Will the stories be posted anonymously?

[Dan Hocker]

Will the stories be posted anonymously?

No, there's really no real good way to do that either.

[C.W. LaSart]

Additional rules.

This is a wonderful idea and I am very excited to participate! Just a few quick questions! What do you mean by amateur? Is this open to only unpublished writers? I have some magazine publishing under my belt and my first book, an anthology of short stories, is being released by Dark Moon Books this Fall. Am I allowed to participate? Also, is there a restriction on how extreme the horror can be? Thank you for your time and also for this opportunity!

[samstephens]

Exciting stuff - fantastic idea Dan!

Are previously published stories okay to enter?

Thanks,
Sam

[Brian James Freeman]

Sounds like a great idea. So we're talking about roughly a 2500 word story?

1500 to 2000 is probably more likely once you factor in spaces.

(I've never had to figure out a character count for submissions before, so we just went with 10,000 because it would keep the stories nice and short -- no bloat!)

Brian

[Brian James Freeman]

This is a wonderful idea and I am very excited to participate! Just a few quick questions! What do you mean by amateur? Is this open to only unpublished writers? I have some magazine publishing under my belt and my first book, an anthology of short stories, is being released by Dark Moon Books this Fall. Am I allowed to participate? Also, is there a restriction on how extreme the horror can be? Thank you for your time and also for this opportunity!

Dan will post a better definition of "amateur" soon, but what we really meant was authors we weren't already publishing on a regular basis -- to give some new voices a chance to show off their work in front of our readers/collectors. So even someone who is really prolific in other markets can enter if we've missed the boat on his/her writing so far...

Brian

[Menace]

Been working on a short story. Now i know what I'm going to do with it.

[CurtSeattle]

Always wanted to be a writer, but never actually finished more than a few pages, so maybe I will use this as my springboard to writing domination. I can see it now.

I will follow my motto religiously, "Focus and get started tomorrow."

p.s. Posts: 1

[Casey Criswell]

This sounds great, I hope to give it a go!