Yesterday at 11 PM Moscow Time I stopped accepting submissions for 55 Fiction Contest. The last 2 I received just 2 minutes before 11. During these 10 days I have received 40 entries from 33 authors. And it is way more than I expected. Initially I was worried that the contest might fail because I won’t get enough entries. I put for myself a number 20 as a number of entries which would make me satisfied if received. But as you can see the end number of entries exceeded all my expectations.

In the coming 3 days starting today I will post all the entries on The Colors Magazine, in groups of 8.  The entries will be posted with the interval of a few hours so that every entry would get some time on the main page. (And so that I get some time to do my office work too). This way all the entries will be posted by Sunday evening.

In the meantime I request all of you not to publish your stories on your blogs/sites for at least a week. If it is already on your blog, please remove it and let the readers enjoy your writing here.

Now to some points regarding the contest.

Communication

Use this wonderful opportunity to meet and coomunicate with other authors. Find new names to follow and new blogs to read, you won’t be disappointed.

Comments

Comments matter. Not because they might be a great tool of boosting your own self-esteem, but also because they provide an opportunity to see your writing through the reader’s eyes, to find advantages and shortcomings. They are feedback and feedback always leads to improvement.

They also matter because they will be one of the criteria to pick readers’ choice story. How? I will explain a bit later. For now just keep in mind that you should treat other writers as you want to be treated. Do comment and be commented on.

Readers’ Choice

Remember how I said that comments matter? That is the best way to choose the entry especially liked by the readers. The competition for readers’ choice award will run in 2 stages.

Stage 1

Commenting. The more comments a story becomes the better. 5 stories with the most number of comments will make it to the next stage. But keep in mind comments should make sense.

Comments like “I liked it/Good one/Well done” and similar  to it do not count towards the total number of comments.

So, do comment yourself, agitate your friends to comment, give feedback and get feedback.

If there is a draw in the number of comments, then star ratings count. If even then we have more than 5 entries qualifying for the next round, I might consider adding them all to the next stage.

A note: author’s comment on their own stories do not count towards the total number of comments.

Stage 2

The commenting goes till Wednesday, October 7th, 8 PM (Moscow Time). You can comment after that, of course too, but I will count comments number on the 7th, starting at 8:01 PM.

Then I conduct the poll and the voting for one of 5 (or more) best stories according to the readers will start. The voting will go till Friday Midnight. And once it is closed we have the best 55 fiction chosen by the readers.

Results

That’s what you all want, don’t you?! The results will be announced on Saturday, October 10th, any time. So stay tuned and be updated. You can do it the best by subscribing to my feed.

You can find the list of all contest participants HERE. The list will be updated as soon as I post new entries.

Get updates via e-mail