500 Word Challenge (for EVERYONE!)

THE INAUGURAL PROSE THAT BLOWS 500

I propose a challenge to all writers and would-be-writers.

Write an inflation story of 500 words or less and submit it to this site.

I hope that this will encourage many who have never written a story before to take part as surely anyone can bash out 500 words, if you hit a rhythm you can do it in a few minutes and I suggest the deadline as the end of June, which gives you a good 3 months to work on it.

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CONTENT
So, to rules... why are there always rules? Well there are only 3.

1) The story must involve some form of expansion. The hows, whys and wherefores are entirely up to you it just has to go along with the whole reason why we're on this site in the first place.

2) The story must have a start, a middle and an end... in other words, it must be a story... no 'exerpts'

3) 500 words limit. You don't have to use them all, but go over at your peril. Your story won't be disqualified, it'll just have a big sign on it saying you are a tool and went over the limit even though you had a wordcount and 3 months to make it right.

There is no rule on explicit material. You are free to be as explicit as you like (unless Luther objects to me posting links to explicit material in which case there will be a rule.)

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SUBMISSION

There is a limit of one story per author. If I allow people to submit as many as they like then I can easily see a few indivuduals making the vast majority of submissions... and we don't want that. Also does anyone really want to judge over a hundred stories?

Please do not post stories in this thread, quite apart from how confusing it would be if people had to sift through pages and pages of discussion looking for stories and how long the thread would get; Luther has a story archive which he moderates for a reason and I wouldn't want to encourage people to circumvent his authority by posting stories elsewhere.

If you submit your story to the story archive on this site it would be useful if you could prefix the title with '500 WORDS - '.

Luther has to moderate every story submitted to this site himself in his spare time, so there is usually a considerable delay between an author submitting a story and it appearing in the archive. Any story which is not available somewhere on the internet by deadline day will not be put forward for voting, so don't expect a story submitted to this site to be available in time for voting. In order to ensure your story can be read and voted for, and protect Luther's sanity, you should submit it to a third party site as well. Deviant Art, Rapidshare, Writing.com... anywhere's OK as long as it can be linked to.

Submission will take place during the last week of June... the 24th to the 30th.

Stories made available on the internet before the Wednesday the 24th of June will not be eligible

Stories not available on the internet after Tuesday the 30th of June will not be eligible

The reason why there is an earliest date for submission is that we want all stories so be submitted in a short space of time, so that they can all be considered equally and early birds don't get an advantage.

In order to submit a story, you must make me aware of it's existence and location. The best way to do this is to PM me on this site. I can't take responsibility for hunting down messages sent to me via obscure means (e.g. I have an account on FIR but rarely check so might not notice that someone has posted a submission in a forum on that site).

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JUDGING

As soon as I can after the deadline I will post a thread on this site containing links to all the submitted stories. I haven't decided how long judging will take

Judging will take place democratically on this site (if this is logistically possible), and there will not be an award for overall winner... instead there will be a number of awards giving everyone a fighting chance of winning something.

Some awards will be automatic (shortest story is an obvious one) and there will be no voting for that award.

Some awards will be via nomination only, e.g. best metaphor. So I don't have to trawl through all the stories and pick out every single metaphor. After an as yet undecided nomination period, voting will begin.

For the majority of categories all stories will be automatically nominated.

Here are some awards I have thought up, feel free to add other ideas if you like.

- Shortest story (that still meets rule 2)
- Most original method of expansion
- Best metaphor or similie for expansion
- Worst use of deus ex machina
- Character you'd like to f**k
- Best introduction
- Best conclusion
- Sexiest story
- Most deviant setting
- The 'were you on drugs?' award
- Story that most makes you think 'that could actually happen'
- Largest expansion in volume per word
- Most expandees
- Most epic plot crammed into the limited space
- Story that most reads like a cheap porno
- Stephen King award for most disturbing story
- Most blissful expansion
- Best use of tension
- Best sound effects
- Most believable expandee reaction
- Story that best makes you feel as though you are there
- Most gratuitous 'crowbarring-in' of Al Gore
- Mills and Boon award for most cringeworthy erotic writing
- PJ and Duncan award for 'moral of the story'
- Most florid writing style

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WINNING
I will make little jpeg 'badges' and upload them to my photobucket account in much the same way as my Writer/Artist icons work. The winners will then be able to link to the image on this site, in their signatures, on other sites, wherever really.