The next Dresden Files novel (Peace Talks) comes out in July.

Q3 of our competitions will be back to standard format where we have three months for a single story spanning July-Sept.

What's your interest level for writing in this? For reading? If we do this I'd like to think we'd get at least 4 entries and at least 6 reviewers (authors included).

Butcher's average word count for his short stories is around 8.5k, so I'm thinking our limit will be 10k with a minimum of 2k.

Rather than a poll to select a prompt I think I'd go with the following guidelines:

• First person
• Existing character (non-OC)
• Crossovers allowed

And just let folks run wild. Criteria subject to change before the comp goes live (discuss your thoughts here).

The Harry Potter Q3 Competition would run alongside it - this is not replacing that one - so we'd have two separate three month long competitions going at the same time. One for HP and one for Dresden. Dresden would probably have a sooner 'ending' point since it could start sooner without a poll to give people time to read/review/vote for both comps.

So, level of interest?

 

Reviews have a 200-word count requirement (which is not as long as most people think), but there's no requirement to read the entire story.

Obviously if you're into the story it's easy to read through, but if it's (in your opinion) really bad? Just ramble about the bits that didn't work for 200-words.

Yeah you're not gonna win any reviewing prizes but there's a reason why stories need to hook people and hit the ground running. Because readers won't keep reading if they don't, and I think that's fair.

 

You can write an opening to a larger story so long as it still counts as standalone.

Best example of that I can think of was one of our earlier competitions with @Joe 's entry, here. One of the lines near the end was, "Old Charlie huffed again and looked up at Harry with his Malteser eyes. Come on, that look said. Together they stepped through the door and into the Land of Faerie."

It gave a few readers the sense that it was a start to a story rather than a story in itself. But I personally felt that it stood alone just fine.

Having the potential to be continued, leaving it open for a sequel, or writing essentially a prequel, isn't the same as posting a Chapter 1.

Which it is depends upon the reviewer. Unless it's really obvious, then I'll step in.

 

This competition will run from July 15th (roughly) to September 15th (roughly)!

 

Expecting at least 4 entries based on this poll, and hopefully more!
https://forums.darklordpotter.net/threads/q3-competition-dresden-files.39514/

 

New deadline for this one is October 15th (extended from Sept 15th) - go write people