To celebrate the launch of my new WCCL guide,
The 10-Day E-book, we're holding another prize competition here on MWC!
The winner will receive a copy of
The 10-Day E-book, my comprehensive guide to devising, writing, editing, publishing and selling your very own money-making e-book in 10 days or fewer. Please
see my homepage for more info about
The 10-Day E-book and my own special offer for buyers.
The contest requires you to create a piece of very short (flash) fiction. We would like you to write a story in exactly 100 words (no more, no less), including all three of the following words:
portico, starfish, approbation (these exact words, no derivatives from them). In addition, you should give your story a title of up to 15 words. The words in the title will not count towards the 100 words in the story. Note that words with apostrophes count as one word, as do hyphenated words, e.g. vice-versa and couldn't. Numbers which are written as digits, including decimals, count as one word, e.g. 9.8 or 147.
This contest will be judged anonymously by MWC's moderator team, with the exception of Ma100 (Mairi), who is forwarding entries for this contest and therefore excluded from voting.
We will be looking for a complete story with a beginning, middle and an end, which follows all of these rules. It should incorporate the three words above in as natural a way as possible. The three words should not stand out from the rest of the story. Please do not capitalize them or do anything else to draw attention to them, therefore.
Submit your entry by PM (Personal Message) to moderator Ma100, who will forward all entries anonymously to the other mods for judging. You can send Ma a PM by
clicking here to go to her profile page and clicking on the link 'Send this member a personal message' near the bottom. Use the subject line
Prize Flash Fiction Contest and please avoid including your name or any other identifying information in your entry. You will, of course, need to be a registered member of the forum and logged in to be able to enter. Just one story per member, please, so make it a good one!
The closing date and time for entries to be submitted is
9 am GMT on Friday 5 March. In fairness to all members we CANNOT extend this deadline for anyone, so please don't ask.
Please do NOT post your story as a reply here. If you do this, it will have to be disqualified as we will not be able to judge it anonymously. On the other hand, if you have any queries, please post them as replies below, and either I or another moderator will do our best to answer them. It is best not to send queries by PM, as there may then be a delay in getting them answered.
We will post the results of the contest here as soon as possible once it has been judged. In addition, after judging we will post all entries submitted, so that members can see whether they agree with the judges or not!
Good luck!
Nick
