Has the topic of a 'Sequel' contest ever come up? A year-end contest where past winners enter sequel stories to their prior winning entries from that year. It seems like it would be a fun writing experience, although of course not all short/flash stories lend themselves to a sequel...it could get interesting if one were to start writing their entries with the idea of a sequel story down the road. Writing a story with the intent of not only winning, but also providing a foundation for a winning sequel could be quite challenging, I think. Thoughts? edit: please move this thread if its not in the right place, I wasn't sure.
Interesting idea, but I would say it has to be separate from the monthly contest. By separate, I mean not taking the place of the regular contest one month.
Hmm... this is an interesting idea and I'd actually be kind of compelled to try it. There are a couple of problems though. For one, anonymity will be an issue. We'll know exactly who wrote the sequel story by the prequel. For two, if we're talking about the short story contest here, you'll only basically have twelve participants max every year. How many will actually turn up? Writing a sequel to a short story might be quite hard for some stories. If we're not talking about the short story contest (and also the flash contest) it might be a bit weird to mix the two together. But it would increase the max participants to 24 a year. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but a sequel to a short story might be slightly unorthodox. I'm sure it's been done but it probably doesn't get done often at all. So, again, interesting idea, but it might not be feasible.
@ps102 raised some good points here. One possible solution to the issue is the sequel needs to be written to one of the contest winning stories, but not the author's original story.
Aye, lack of entrants could be a problem. Combining short & flash would certainly increase the field but how often do the monthlies get entrants that move away from the forum after a couple contests. Mostly I see the same handful of veteran forum members entering and voting. For a while last year I was watching the vote counts to see how many people in total were participating and it was always less than 20 and usually around 12-16...not a lot and mostly the same people month to month. Maybe there's just not enough contest participation to pull off more involved contest.
The idea would compromise the anonymity factor since that has always been a rule and since that would compromise the voting aspect too, so (if you’ve written one) you can always showcase sequel stories in a more appropriate part of the forum such as the workshop or the writer’s showcase
"It's an intriguing idea, but I think it should stand apart from the monthly contest. By that, I mean it shouldn't replace the regular contest during any given month." Does this work for what you needed?
