Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

Stories Board Member Stories
1

Meant to get this up a bit quicker than I did but I had to finish prepping the submissions forum first. :slight_smile:

Also, I won’t name names, but thank you to the person who purchased the ad banners to advertise the contest, you literally have no idea how much I needed that :slight_smile:

So with that out of the way answers to a few common questions:

Do we have to submit stories to each contest?

NOPE! I thought the fact I specifically said that the voting threads would be separate would imply this, but apparently not. :slight_smile:

For the Valentine’s Day Contest did you mean <insert different March date here> for the second story conditions?

No, I did not. I chose March 14th for a specific reason. Anime/Manga fans are more likely to get why. In fact a few asked specifically if they had guessed why correctly, and indeed they did. I’m not going to hand you the answer on a silver platter though. :wink:

Does it have to take place entirely on March 14th?

Nope! As long as the bulk of the story takes place on March 14th, you’re good.

Same but for the Winter contest New Year’s requirement

Another one where I thought the wording and the holiday in general implied the answer, but ideally the story should take place on the evening of December 31st and conclude at some point on January 1st. I also thought the drunk vampire being one of your possible choices for required elements would also imply that :stuck_out_tongue:

Can I write just one story and still use one of the elements from the required elements list(s) for the contests?

Of course. I know of at least one story that will be using an element in the Fall contest list that isn’t a second story submission or even for the Fall contest :wink:

Are you entering any of the contests?

See previous question :wink: I of course have an unfair advantage in that I’ve known the requirements for the Valentine’s contest for over a year :stuck_out_tongue:

It was supposed to happen this past Valentine’s day but with the migration to vBulletin I wasn’t comfortable trying to do so. And to answer a related question that has been asked a few times: Yes, all 3 contests were planned in advance although I didn’t give any hints to anyone what they were. :stuck_out_tongue:

If you have any other questions please post them here. You can also PM me if you don’t want to ask here. Regarding the special exception to the board rules for the Valentine’s contest: I will only discuss what exceptions will be made (and under what circumstances) privately as I don’t want a bunch of people using it as an excuse to type out a story with only one hand on the keyboard :wink:

2

Re: Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

Forgot this although no one asked yet for obvious reasons at the time of posting :stuck_out_tongue:

What’s the difference between the (SPREQ) prefixes and the ones without them?

The SPREQ prefixes are for your second submissions that have to meet the special requirements to be included in the contest :slight_smile:

3

Re: Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

HAH! Just got a good question via PM.

Can I use a short story I wrote as part of my NaNoWriMo project?

(note: modified the question slightly as it had specific years mentioned)

As long as you haven’t published it and/or posted it somewhere else and it meets the requirements, sure. :slight_smile:

4

Re: Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

Hi,

Is the contest stories forum late arriving or am I just missing it somewhere?

Kerry

5

Re: Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

[QUOTE=kerry;71018]Hi,

Is the contest stories forum late arriving or am I just missing it somewhere?

Kerry[/QUOTE]

You’re not missing it. I just haven’t had a chance to do the posting yet due to some unexpected family issues. Should be tomorrow. With only a few entries it won’t take me long to do it once I’m back home with my good Internet.

6

Re: Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

Someone asked what happened to the entry I wrote for the fall contest: TL;DR version: I didn’t finish it in time so I was rewrote it for the Winter Contest. Those who are regulars on IRC know why my winter story is missing. I will post it though when I’m done with the editing on it, but it might be after the Valentine’s contest because the stories are very related so it might be a bit too obvious which is mine in the Valentine’s contest. I mean, it will be anyway, but no reason to make it 100% obvious, right? :stuck_out_tongue:

7

Contest in limbo

Does anyone know anything about what is happening with this contest? It is a bit frustrating not to know what is going on nearly two weeks after the revised deadline…

Kerry

8

Re: Contest in limbo

Short answer: shit happened.

What I know from the IRC is there’s a mix of medical and technical problems that have really thrown a few wrenches in the works. Clawdia’s been busy dealing with them, and the contest unfortunately took a back seat.

That’s as much as I know anyway.

9

[QUOTE=kerry;72112]Does anyone know anything about what is happening with this contest? It is a bit frustrating not to know what is going on nearly two weeks after the revised deadline…

Kerry[/QUOTE]

Here’s a crazy idea: READ THE STICKY IN THE FORUM. I mean it’s almost as if it was posted to explain why the poll hasn’t been posted yet… When there is an update, it will posted. Until then asking about isn’t going to make it happen faster. Quite the opposite actually. Hell being constantly asked about it and being told how contests should be run is why I disabled the contact form and my PMs.

[QUOTE=Vearynope;72113]Short answer: shit happened.

What I know from the IRC is there’s a mix of medical and technical problems that have really thrown a few wrenches in the works. Clawdia’s been busy dealing with them, and the contest unfortunately took a back seat.

That’s as much as I know anyway.[/QUOTE]

Actually, none of that has anything to do with the contest beyond why the extension happened to begin with. I didn’t have access to my laptop at the time the contest should have closed so I had no way to actually properly close the submissions forum or post the stories. And it also has nothing to do with why I’m no longer visiting the chat to put that rumor to rest.

In fact just for the record, I don’t care what anyone, including another staff member tells you, unless you hear it from me personally or Penny, then anything you’ve told about what’s going on should be treated with extreme skepticism.

10

Re: Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

Agreed that reading the sticky is a good idea. It has, however, been long enough since it went up that I feel a single polite public enquiry is reasonable for those who haven’t been on IRC.

Thank you for all the work you are putting in to keep the forum secure, fast, and smooth past the next short while.

11

Re: Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

I apologize to ClawdiaWolf for the offense. Of course I’ve read the sticky, but as Ally noted it was two weeks ago and I just wondered about an update. And I’m not on IRC so I don’t get intermediate updates. It’s just that I enjoy the contests and enjoy reading the stories that come out of them, so I wondered when we could expect to see the rest.

12

Re: Fall/Winter/Valentines Q&A Thread

Right now the only update we can give is. There isn’t one update to be given out. Other then what is already out there.

https://abdlstoryforum.info/threads/6676-Missing-Stories

13

[QUOTE=Sharlin;72130]Right now the only update we can give is. There isn’t one update to be given out. Other then what is already out there.

https://abdlstoryforum.info/threads/6676-Missing-Stories[/QUOTE]

You know I linked that above, right? :slight_smile:

Ack! Actually I owe you an apology. I didn’t actually look at the sticky so I never noticed the reply I posted on the 27th was deleted.

And being on IRC wouldn’t get you updates because that sticky was posted after I stopped going except to finalize the commands to the bots to have them remove as many traces of me as physically possible.

And apparently based on somethings I’ve been told privately by the few people who know how to contact me via email that I check more than once a week there has been a misunderstanding about what I said previously. I would have thought the context would have made it obvious, but let me state it explicitly to clear up any confusion:

What I said above about not trusting any information not from Penny or myself about what’s going on was about why I’m no longer using the chat. The simple truth is that only Penny has been told anything about that situation and for the time being it will remain that way. What I can assure you is that if/when I do give explanations about what happened staff members will not know about it before anyone else unless they happen to read it first.