On the scoring of challenge entries

I enter Challenges often, and win rarely. That's just the way it is, and I'm okay with that. As I've said before, it's like striking a damp match. With each try you have little expectation of success, but you can't dismiss the possibility that your match will finally ignite.

Well, I read and voted on all three of your stories (and everyone else's too), and in this case I believe that the two Challenge entries of yours which got 200+ views were the better ones--I gave both "Taking Over for His Mother" and "Caught Spying on the Slumber Party" a maximum "10" rating in my voting, and I'd personally consider the latter one to be in the Top Three overall in this Challenge.

However, I believe that you do have a point about the "catchy" title, since both of those stories have titles which clearly can be interpreted to involve spanking, while your third one, "The Acting Bug," doesn't. If you look at the Challenge-winning entries, all three top vote-getters, and five of the top six, have titles which suggest the possibility of spanking in their plotlines--thus there does seem to be a general tendency involved.

So if the "competition" aspect of these Challenges has meaning to you, I suppose that in the next one you'll want to consider the potential importance of an entered story's title.

As I've stated earlier, I hope that holding an F/M-based Challenge will become an annual tradition in this Library, it's gratifying to have primarily non-F/M authors realizing that they can write a good F/M spanking story or two while F/M-oriented authors are encouraged to write entries for it. I don't mind if there's a bit of controversy involved either, unless it gets unfriendly with personal insults being exchanged, because to me that's an indication of interest in the Challenge.

How about "Caught Spying on the Girls' Locker Room" for (hopefully) the next F/M Writing Challenge...??

--C.K.

Isn't it interesting that, on a site with ONLY spanking stories, a reader requires story have a "spanky" title to be prodded to read it?

I suspect it's a subconscious feeling that "that looks like an interesting story."

Two three weeks ago, there was a thread where we were trying to come up with the perfect title to maximize number of reads. I don't remember it exactly, but we came up with this elegant gem:

"Spanked with a leather strap in front of the entire school and my whole extended family on my bare, sexy, feminine bottom by the masculine dominant principal and it hurt and I cried!"

Thousands of hits, here we come!!

Well, I'd venture that's the general tendency with Challenge entries, since the reader doesn't know whom the author is, there's neither a story synopsis nor descriptive icons available and other readers' comments can't be seen during the voting process.

Thus the *only* thing to go by, if a person is going to 'pick and choose' which accounts to read and vote upon, is the entry's title.

Ideally, all of the Challenge voters would read and rate *every* story entered, but the variance in "views" clearly indicates that doesn't occur--so if 'winning' is an objective to an entrant, then creating a titillating "spanky" title seemingly could be important...

--C.K.

This is the second consecutive year that we've held an F/M challenge and the intention is to make it an annual event, assuming the interest remains.


The problem with very specific challenge themes is that we end up with 30+ stories all featuring a very similar storyline and then we get people complaining, with some justification I guess, that they they're fed up with it. This happened in the early days when we had a couple of picture challenges even though the picture lent itself, in theory, to a variety of interpretations. So, 'caught spying' might be a possible theme although we have previously had a similar theme for the "Through the keyhole" challenge.

Ahhhh, I obviously didn't express my meaning clearly, since I was just suggesting "Caught Spying on the Girls' Locker Room" as a story title for that author (mj2001) to use in the next F/M Writing Challenge, not proposing that it should be the subject of that Challenge itself.

Thank you for planning to make the F/M Challenge an annual event--I do think that it could be 'narrowed' a touch beyond merely the F/M spanking orientation though. I was pondering on "Spanked by a Woman in Uniform," with the term "uniform" being interpreted quite broadly to mean any occupational or educational outfit--like a nurse, chambermaid, perhaps even a schoolgirl (so "woman" could be interpreted to include 'young woman' of 16-17).

Well, just a thought...

--C.K.

I for one want the F/M challenge to remain. Perhaps we could also have a F/F and a M/F challenge, thus making everyone happy. LOL .... like we could ever make every one happy.

What ever the definition will not stop me from entry into all of the 3. I do agree titles are vital in the Challenges, the unfortunate part of that is I am terrible at coming up with good ones.

However the Challenges stay the same or change I am very strong in stating they should continue. I have only been in the top 6 once in the past 6 years , but that has never stopped my entry.

CS

I have never ranking in the Top 6 - but I still enter those contests.

Because it's challenging to work within a limited scope. To work around what is requested, which is almost not what I would usually write.