Ah, yes. Another contest. This one, however, will be different.
One thing I’ve seen with all the contests circulating around Steemit lately is a lot of entries that could be really strong contenders for The SFT and mainstream literary publications…with a little editing. So I had an idea to host a contest that requires editing, to hopefully shuffle the deck a little.
With that in mind, I’m closing the competition to anyone who has ever been curated by The SFT. This frees up many of our best writers and editors to act as mentors during the process. Participants will not post their stories on Steemit or any other public website. Instead, entries will be submitted to the fiction queue at The Writers’ Block titled “Sci-Fi Challenge: [whateveryourtitleis.]” I’ll provide a link at the bottom of this post that will take you directly to The Writers’ Block on Discord.
After submission, each entry will be evaluated by our team of editors, who will offer feedback and suggestions. Authors who survive this experience will then revise and resubmit. Based on the resubmissions, we’ll choose five candidates to move to the next round. We’ll rank those entries once that round is judged and award SBD or Steem prizes, depending on the external markets. Third place will receive 5 SBD or Steem, whichever is lower in market value at the time, and second place will receive 10 SBD or Steem, whichever is lower in market value at the time. All entrants except the top finisher are free to publish on Steemit at this point and hopefully by then, we can secure them some hefty upvotes.
The top finisher will be awarded 10 SBD or 10 Steem, whichever has the highest value at that moment. We want to make sure our winner is rewarded well. Although we are at the mercy of the market, we hope the USD conversion will be somewhere around $100. That’s because we believe your effort is worth something.
HERE IS THE UPDATE: The literary magazine we planned to introduce the winner to will be unable to participate. This is due to circumstances beyond my control. But because the "hard sci-fi" aspect of this contest was due to their submission requirements and not my personal preference, we can forego that stipulation and just ask for some seriously kick-ass science fiction stories. How does that sound?
The contest opens with publication of this post. You may indicate in the comments that you’re submitting an entry through The Writers’ Block, but links dropped here on Steemit or in the Discord chat channels will be automatically disqualified. There is a submission queue in the pinned posts in The Writers’ Block Fiction Workshop. That is how you submit, with “Sci-Fi Challenge: [whateveryourtitleis]” marked clearly as the Google Documents title. Once you’re in the Writers’ Block, our folks will be very happy to help you take the next step. This first and broadest submission window closes at midnight on Friday, December 22. The lengthy time frame will give people plenty of time to research and draft a top-quality piece of short science fiction.
Word count would ideally be between 1,000 and 3,000. A higher or lower word count will not negatively affect your chances, but do keep in mind that lengthier submissions may not upload properly to Steemit.
Good luck! I look forward to seeing your submissions in the queue.
For more info about The Writers' Block and a link to our Discord group, click the gif above.
For direct access to The Writers' Block Discord group, CLICK HERE.
