I think that would be a magnificent title to award second place entries/users- you still get a little prestige despite your loss.

Just off the top of my sleep-addled head;

Timetraveler!Ron=Dumbledore theme; that ancient theory that Ron was Dumbledore all along is true, goal is to write the most dynamic/most interesting/most accurate transition, not necessarily canon-based or must somehow make is as canon as possible pre-DH/pre-HBP.

Dimension-hopper category/theme; someone, not necessarily Harry, is stuck doing galactic clean-up duty. Write their most recent journey/world, their beginning and subsequent introduction to the journey, or their grand-finale and eventual success/demise/passing of the torch.

Alternate Character Interpretation/OOC; say Tom didn't go dark. Say Lockhart was a genius all along. Say Moody really was a paranoid nut. Could go the way of BajaB's Dark Marauder, for instance.

Movie-canon; there were some interesting changes between the book-canon and what the movies interpreted. Snape at Godrics Hallow, mist-Apparition/Disapparition, Angrydore, etc etc.

 

Let the winner of the prior contest select the next topic, and act as one of the judges for it. It could be broad or specific, depending on what they want to read and what they think will generate the best response from the community.

'Write me a Ron I like.'

Heh. Would keep everyone on their toes, and be an additional sweetener for competition wins.

 

Personally, I think the more generic a prompt the better. If something is too specific then the entries could all end up very similar and boring. I think you're better off with something like "crime" as a topic. Then let the author decide where they want to go with it.

But I do also like the idea of the winner choosing the next topic. The only problem is that it them means they don't get a chance to enter if they wanted to.

 

Or we could simply do canon divergent point stories like what would happen if Harry died at the Ministry in OOtP or something like that.

 

We'd pretty fast run out of topics. As one who would be entering pretty regularly if that sort of excitement and unpredictability held, I think boredom with vastly generic topics would drive me away faster than off-the-wall randomness. I think we'd see some incredible entries born of it. And I don't think they'd be remotely similar - the more specific the prompt, the more authors will exercise their creativity and originality in transforming it into something unique.

Few writers if any enter two in a row.

 

I think if you win and want to compete again you should be well within your right to do so. If you're a good enough author, there should be no reason why you can't win twice in a row, so I don't like that particular idea.

A couple of themes that could work:

Harry mentored by a Hogwarts' professor of your choice (imagine McGonagall, Slughorn, Snape, even Sprout for a dose of lulz)

One of Voldemort's inner circle is the main character

Harry/Slytherin girl

Harry/Dumbledore vs. Voldemort

Character of your choice is murdered/Harry's on the case

 

Winner chosing the next topic would a) be highly volatile and b) delay the announcement of the next topic by the time it would take to judge. The idea should be to announce the new topic at least as soon as the submission deadline, if not sooner.

If I remember correctly, there have been a few authors who submitted for consecutive contests.

I do like the topics that are open enough for creativity, but less so than "General" - Don E.'s ideas point in the right direction.

 

I think there can be a balance between too specific like the challenge thread, or too general by simply saying 'dark arts'

An example would be timetravel to a specific period, such as founder's era (or marauders)

Another could be future travel to an future society of mass effect/ star trek / star wars/ firefly/ whatever

Or perhaps that's still too specific. I can get behind combination of previous topics, such as dark arts and politics, or time travel and azkaban.

Or maybe just using broad topics, perhaps some new ones. - Dark Arts - Rare Pairing -Indy!Harry - Alternative Upbringing - Action/Adventure - Dimensional/ AU - Auror/Unspeakable!Harry - Criminal!Harry - Dark Lord!Harry

 

I did a theme list a while back for a writing project (which didn't take off sadly), but the list might be useful. We would basically randomly pick a genre and a theme for the contest. Advantage of that was you could get some very very different stories from the author. Disadvantage, some time the link is tenuous between the two and bring very similar story or no inspiration.

As for the prize. What about special rank for the winners of every contest, but also they win a chance to the annual christmas draw or w/e. Basically we make a draw and the one picked win a prize (gift certificate, first pick in the steam giveaway, etc.) Could give an incentive for people to write for every contest (more chance to win at the end of the year) while still keeping the financial demands low for DLP.

 

I'm not to big a fan of specific prompts. We have a challenge thread. One thing I liked about the last contest was you had a generic prompt like 'Alternates', and you got a variety of stories back. You had Beyond the Veil by iLost, Voice's 'Sole Survivor', and Zenzao's Lineage of Mastery.

I think that if you make it more specific themes or challenges, you're going to take away a lot of the variety and originality we had last time.

 

I agree with not making it too specific, a loss of creative freedom sucks. If you are really set on it though, then just make one of the months be a specific prompt month where you have a few to choose from. I also think if a major problem was getting the stories judged in a timely fashion, you should make two month long intervals with a word limit (I dunno 25k words maybe). Where as the three month long stories would be larger and you will have more submitions.

As for the topics, I like basilisk's list, you could edit out the bad ones or the ones that don't fit, and add more, then randomly generate one for the competition

 

Following discussions with Raven and Mid, Dwitty and I have volunteered to organise the competition and get it going asap. You can find details here. We’ve tried to work from as many of the ideas posted here as possible, whilst keeping things as user friendly as possible.