Ideas for our next contest

[Vela Nanashi]

Specifically I want to uncap one end, the upper one since I don't like limits to how many words I can use, that is not interesting to me, but I know some prefer a upper cap, I am specifically not one of those people, but every contest so far has been capped on both ends, and that is annoying for me due to the upper limit We could also make it uncapped entirely, and allow any of the lengths we tolerate on the forum meaning at least flash length, but you are allowed to write war and peace if you want to You risk people who dislike short stories voting less on those and those who dislike long stories voting less on those, and that is up to the author to decide if they want to risk or not.

[chloevee]

Also a request for future stories, how about we don't set a specific limit like min x words max y words. Just set a min x words or a max y words.

I was confused by this, so I'm just clarifying -- you mean, either a minimum or a maximum?

[Vela Nanashi]

My primary preference is:

No word limit. Authors choose flash to long story length themselves.

Secondary preference:

We set a lower bound word limit, allowing authors to write longer than that.

My slight anti preference is:

We set an upper bound word limit.

My most disliked anti preference is:

We set a lower and upper bound word limit.

Hopefully that is more clear for my own preferences

Yes I understand that sometimes it is a challenge to use fewer words, but it is equally a challenge to use many words, though the challenge is different for different authors. Also yes I guess most people don't need one week worth of reading to fap to so probably prefer shorter end of things, but I like longer stories when they are good, and if a story is good and short I feel robbed, and if it is bad I don't read the whole thing, and most flash and many short stories are either bad due to lack of what I enjoy in stories, or too short if they do have enough good stuff for me to enjoy

[Blue]

@Vela Nanashi
I find the idea of removing both, the upper and lower limits, and letting the authors decide for themselves, how much they want to write , interesting.
I agree with you that if stories are too short, it's difficult to structure the content in a way that makes it interesting. And there are also many readers who get tired of reading stories that are too long. That's why, outside of competitions, I like to use the format of serialized stories. If you write the individual episodes skillfully, the reader has several opportunities to choose their favorite scenes and masturbate to them if they want. And the author has significantly more freedom. Whether and how they use this freedom is up to them. In previous competitions, there have been several stories, where readers have asked whether there will be sequels. This could be avoided by at least removing the upper limit.

[Vela Nanashi]

I create lots of masturbation session options per super long story I write it is not intended to be consumed in one sitting

[skuttrusk]

I guess the idea of word count limits for competition entries is to ensure that we're comparing like with like when we award points. It's quite hard to judge the merits of a novel against those of a short story - but I guess we can just assess whether each story, long or short, works for us.

[Shocker]

I guess the idea of word count limits for competition entries is to ensure that we're comparing like with like when we award points. It's quite hard to judge the merits of a novel against those of a short story - but I guess we can just assess whether each story, long or short, works for us.

Sometimes the word count adds to the challenge. I tend to be rather verbose in my storytelling, and having to restrict my story to a word limit, and still telling a story that meets my standards is rewarding.

Mark Twain is credited with the following quote “I write you a long letter, because I don’t have the time to write a short one. “
As writers we fall in love with all our ideas, and cutting any part out of pur narrative, hurts and is unthinkable. Among professional writers this is called killing your darlings.

I’m not opposed to contests without a limit, as long as the story is published finished and won’t be edited until the vote is over.

[LtBroccoli]

Couple ideas for some future contests.

First, some longer word counts. NGL, I don't like writing short stories. It takes 3-5x as long to write a small story as a long one. Hear me out. Writing a medium or long story is more a stream of consciousness, or just describing what happens. It has space to build the 5 W's and set up the action. Squeezing into a tiny story means either dropping everything that is not absolutely needed or cut the scope to the bone. So to make a scene work in 5k words, I spend a lot of time reworking the idea that could've been spent writing a solid 5-10k story in a couple hours or a day.

Next, Rule 34, parody and/or celebrity stories. We don't have many here yet, so these are some categories that we could fill out. I remember the old TSSA and CSSA sites. For anyone not familiar, Rule 34 is "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Those could be split up into a couple things, or just tossed around. For example, maybe the prompt is a specific actor or actress, writer gets to chose either the actor or some of their work. Say Jenna Ortegas is the prompt, the story could be one of her in real life, her as Wednesday, or any of her other characters. Or you get a show or movie prompt like the MCU or Bluey. Hell, have fun with a story about HGTV's House Hunters and show the woman comparing condos getting dicked down in house #3 after complaining about how it was too far of a commute from her job.

A creative non-fiction story contest. Think "Based on a true story" cranked up to 11. @HistBuff is a master of this genre, taking historical events and exploring them as sex stories. There has to be one sliver of truth to the events like a place, event, or time, but the rest is made up. Like maybe during the storming of the Bastille, some maids were taken against their will by the mob. Or maybe a story of an attack or assault that almost happened and turn it into a what if.

Different formats. Poems, screenplays, stuff we normally don't see here.

Speaking of screenplays, RATV. A screenplay/script focused contest where we can pitch show ideas and/or write scripts for them. Hell, maybe we go nuts and "produce" the chosen script, going through casting, writing, and as far as we can given the site.

Non-noncon stories. Could be a nice change of pace.

Also, I had some more ideas for NaNoWriMo. If we go that route, people could do whatever planning and prep work ahead of time, but the actual novel writing can't start until November 1st. It has to be a novel written in a month, not a season. 50k words or more, narrative format, and has a beginning, middle, and end all written in that time.

[HistBuff]

I guess the idea of word count limits for competition entries is to ensure that we're comparing like with like when we award points. It's quite hard to judge the merits of a novel against those of a short story - but I guess we can just assess whether each story, long or short, works for us.

I concur with @Shocker to say word limits add to the challenge. My rape scenes tend to be rushed and less detailed when I have to respect a word limit, and I generally do better when the limit is 7k-10k rather than 3k. And there's also the time factor and the readers' and writers' commitment. Entering a contest is very challenging for me as my default writing format is the long, multiple-chapter story where I can truly let my characters become alive. You just don't write a rape odyssey involving many different characters within 1,000 words!

And I suck in contests! I've never won a single one since my first entry in RapeCage back in 2022, and I was pleasantly surprised upon taking the silver here in the German contest! But I write to have fun and get aroused by my characters

[Shocker]

@LtBroccoli those are some interesting ideas. The most ambitious one concerning NaNoWriMo, has a couple of drawbacks. Writing a novel of 50000 words takes a huge commitment, if we’d challenge our writers too something like that, the forum will be largely dead. There is already an impact caused by the two contests, in which people are working on those and don’t post anything else. The format also doesn’t really work as a contest, as reading multiple novel length entries in a given time to rate them would be a strain on the readers as well. I do love to read, but reading a whole novel on a screen is not for me, my eyes refuse to cooperate there. It’s the main reason I own a dedicated ebook reader.
It might be working as an open challenge, just for the fun of showing off ones finished novel, but not as a contests. Also this might be a me thing, I can’t write 50,000 words of smut, so any novel I would write would thematically not fit this site.