[Athelstone]

Some Basic Story Rules and Guidelines

 

 

The challenge is to produce a short story: a work of fiction. By all means stretch this definition as you like, to include, for example, an imaginative account of true events, but please avoid essays, reportage, political polemic, educational items, manuals or manifestos. In case of any doubt I shall probably lean in your direction.

The story should be a decent length. By that I mean that it will have a minimum of 2000 words and a maximum of 2800. Any less and the challenge is different. Any more and I think we are stretching the task of reading and judging close to breaking. I am aware that different text editors may produce different word counts and that some have a habit of including particular types of punctuation such as hyphens. I shan’t be unreasonable. However, I do expect all entrants to be equally reasonable and stick to the limits – more or less.

Talking of which: you get up to and including 8 words for your title without any impact on your word count. By all means have more words, as many as you want, but I’ll start counting.

The story will follow the theme as outlined in the introduction and welcome. It will also be written in conformity with the choices that you post in the CHOICES topic thread. If you haven’t yet made choices and you are reading this while the group is still open, hurry over there to the thread and do it.

Ready to submit? When you have completed your story, edited and reviewed it to your satisfaction, post it as a new topic on the group forum. Take great care with this. Imagine you are sending it to an agent or entering a competition where all the other competitors will pore over it in great detail. Once you have posted – that’s it. OK, nobody objects to a quick 5 minute once over at the time of posting to pick out anything you spot then and there, but please don’t come back later and change things. It simply isn’t fair if one reader sees a story and the next sees an edited version.

Except – things can go wrong in the world of the web and computers in general. If you hit a weird combination of buttons and post twice, or scrambled, or in a font and point size so small that teeny mice cannot see it, or something like that, then corrective action will be allowed.

We are all adults here. That doesn’t mean we all share the same standards or are accustomed to reading the same types of material. It would be a boring world if we were. If you want to include profanity, extreme violence, sexual activity and so on in your story, then feel free (within the law). However, as a matter of courtesy you MUST include a warning to that effect at the top of your post so that others are prepared for what they will find. It won’t add to your word count.

So, you read an entry and you think, “OK, that’s good but it really needs those adjectives dropped. And if the killer was the wife rather than the brother…” Control yourself. Really. No critiques, suggestions, advice or even critical comments. This is not a forum for criticism. If you want to say, ‘Hey, that was brilliant, loved it,’ or something like that, then go for it; feel free. Encouragement and appreciation is fine, but criticism isn’t. Also, when being encouraging and appreciative, please don’t give the story away or reveal that super twist in your comments that SOMEBODY MIGHT SPOT BEFORE THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO READ IT THEMSELVES. I thank you.

Join the group and make your choices. Post them in the CHOICES topic.

When the time comes to vote, follow the VOTING topic.

Stick to the timetable in the WELCOME topic. As a reminder that is:

Now 2026

Challenge Begins. You join this group and make some choices.

 

24 November 2026

Group goes Private at 22:00 UK time. If you’ve joined and chosen then you’re in. I’ll reveal a bit more so you can start writing.

 

28 February 2027

Writing stops by 22:00 UK time and (hopefully) you have posted an entry. At this point you have a limited time to finish any reading and get your votes to me.

 

27 March 2027

Done. Voting concludes by 22:00 UK time and my job is to sort the votes into places.

 

28 March 2027

I announce the results. If all votes are in before then I may announce the results early.

 

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