'Through The Keyhole' Story Challenge' 2012

Dang. I had two already to go without lifting a finger.


I like that the rules vary. The shorter length (on this contest) may help the reader/voters get through the entries more quickly. 2,500 words leave plenty of time for character- and plot-development, provided the author is focused.

That sounds rather patronising, njirick. Put it another way - some authors, given more than 2,500 words to develop their stories, don't know what to do with it? Beyond 2,500 words, nothing useful will be added? Unfair, of course, but I've read plenty of stories that would have been lesser if restricted to 2,500. There is a skill in writing a good 2,000 word story and slightly different skills in writing a good 5,000 word one. This contest draws on the former.

Certain authors might find some inspiration here:

http://sfrsite.topcities.com/fearless.htm

How in the world did you get THAT from what I posted? I said nothing of the sort. I merely said that you CAN develop both characters and a plot in 2,500 words. That is true. Of COURSE you can write more involved stories of 5,000 words, 10,000 words, 25,000 words, 100,0000 words, etc. - stories that hold interest throughout, with longer and more intricate plots and subplots, with more characters, and more description. I read and enjoy novels, after all, some of them quite long, even for novels.

I agree entirely that writing a 2,000-word story requires, if not different skills, then a different technique than one of 5,000 words (or one of 50,000 words). What I disagree with is the notion that you CAN'T write a story of only 2,500 words that has character development (adn I'm NOT saying that YOU made this claim, but I know people have expressed such sentiments). That's all I was saying. In fact, in my post, I said I like the idea of different sets of rules in the challenges - so that writers face different challenges, challenges that require different means of story-telling (a 500-word challenge, a letter challenge, etc). I did NOT ask that all challenges be limited to 2,500 words. I think that a challenge for stories of at least 10,000 words would requite different sorts of story-telling than is typical in most entries... with the only problem being if we get too many entries, readers would be overwhelmed with trying to read all of them in order to vote.

Please, don't twist my words around to suggest I meant something I did not. Geesh!

Basically, we're trying to keep the Challenges from becoming routine and boring so we alternate between photo challenges where there is no upper word limit and 'something different' where we change things round a bit (e.g. letter format, poem etc) and that includes varying the maximum word count. For the next challenge we'll be back to full word count and another photo challenge (of sorts).

And let that be the final word on the matter!

Excellent challenge.

I agree with others that it will be great for there to be maximum number of words. It will offer the chance to more easily read the majority stories in between work and home duties. I am getting out my thinking cap to come up with some creative entries.

The discussion about the quality of shorter stories vs. longer stories reminds me of this quote from Mark Twain: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

Sad to say, if ole Mark was around today, and came across one of my stories, he would probably resurrect that quote and send it to me. If it wasn't for the fact that I often break my stories up into separate sections - and post them that way in the LSF - hardly any of my stories come in under 2500 words (or even 5000, for that matter). Gonna be a tough story challenge for me, and an even tougher one for my editor (also me). Hopefully, I'll find some inspiration (though not TOO much, since that would = too many words).

Like some others have said, I feel 5,000-10,000 words (and I've seen them that high), are entirely too much for any type of spanking story. Let's face it. It can't really have every paragraph with a spanking in it. And I know someone out there will say or ask - Why not? just for the fun of it. Most will be descriptive data and character data. Finally the next 7 to 8 paragraphs before the end will be the punishment. To me it simply becomes boring no matter how well an author writes. I feel short and sweet of 2500 to 3000 gives an author a far better chance at one of the placings in the challenge. I've read 100-250 word snippets that had everything needed in the story.

It's just MY opinion and I'm not going to get argumentative over it. Every author here has their own view on it and that's their right. I like Februs' attitude of Give a little Take a little.