LITERATURE CHALLENGE YOURSELF: #2 - FearCY #3
here.
Challenge Yourself is an official Snafu Literature forum contest. It operates on a three-week cycle, as explained below. As the title suggests, the idea is not to best each other, but to best
yourself!THEME
Fear:
There is nothing to fear except not entering!
RULES
Only prose or poetry allowed. Works must conform with the Snafu Literature forum rules.
(Poetry is anything written in verse or with poetic construction rules. Prose is normal writing, i.e. fiction or nonfiction stories or essays.)
Entries must be created WITHIN the cycle time. You MAY NOT use anything you wrote last week, last month, last year, or ever before this cycle. These works may be posted as demonstration of the theme, but MUST be marked as previous work.
If your submission is over 2000 words, please
print your work as a PDF and upload it to GoogleDocs or another site which allows sharing of files, then post the link to it here as your entry.
Multiple submissions are totally allowed. However, only the best will be judged. Please post each submission as a separate post.
Include a link to your literature thread, literature site, or other repository for works in your post or signature for easy reference for the judge.
Submissions must be related to the theme in some way. This is fairly open to interpretation, but it should be obvious to the reader how it relates.
The judge cannot submit contest entries.
Judging
Submissions will be judged by me (Hana). The criteria for judging are:
CREATIVITY, STYLE, VOICE, READABILITY (spelling, grammar, and coherence), THEME, and EFFORT. Please note that you are judged against YOURSELF (your previous demonstrated works) and not so much against each other! In this contest, a new writer who puts in a tremendous amount of creativity and effort can defeat an experienced one who has more skill and experience, but didn't push themselves. Further, breaking out of your usual style, or using different thematic elements than you are used to, and trying something new in general are also viewed favorably.
In other words, if you write a paragraph that took five minutes and/or you put no effort into it whatsoever, you won't make it in the top three, no matter how good you are.
Challenge Yourself currently has one judge: Hana. If you would like to be considered as a judge, please PM Hana.
Only one judge is in charge and judges a single contest, and any others may post submissions as all other contestants. The main judge may only post exhibition works, which do not count as entries into the contest. If the main judge is not able to end the contest, another may step in and end the contest and start the next. Their entries will then be considered exhibition works.
At the end of judging, first, second and third place will be posted with short critique, plus any honorable mentions at the option of the judge.
The Process
Challenges operate on a three-week cycle. The contest officially begins on
MONDAY: Contest begins, submissions accepted. Submissions will be accepted until the MONDAY after next, 2 weeks later. (Start: Monday, May 9)
MONDAY TWO WEEKS LATER: No more submissions accepted. Entries will be judged. An announcement will be made roughly 10-12 hours before the contest closes. Theme suggestions for the next challenge begin. (Submission period ends Monday, May 23, 9 AM, GMT -6, so try to finish Sunday)
Judges reserve the right to reject challenge suggestions based on vagueness, being too similar
to a recent challenge, or infeasibility.
FRIDAY: Winners will be announced. Voting for the theme for the next contest begins.
MONDAY: Next contest starts.
Good luck and have fun!
Results!*Disclaimer - These critiques were cobbled together during the times I wasn't completely doped up on various medicinal things. If they don't make sense, please take them with a grain (or a few) of salt.
3rd place - IrisIn reading the poem, the actual subject could be about a literal nightmare, the fear of death, or something much more macabre. All of the above fit the theme quite well, so applause for that. I do like how you worked to keep a visual structure; it gives the poem more cohesiveness. That said, the meter doesn't flow naturally to me. I know how exceedingly difficult it can be to wrangle syllables into the correct places, but having the number of syllables on each line be closer than farther will usually help with the flow. That, or have the syllables per line mirror in each successive stanza.
2nd place - RyuteReading your entry made me sad. This is a good thing, as it shows that your poetry is evocative! Using nigh-universal concepts such as the fear of loss and the loss of control is a very smart move. I will counsel you to be careful of your punctuation, though. The comma can be a tricky litte devil, but you must master him! Don't be afraid to throw some other puctuation in, either. Dashes are especially fun in poetry!
1st place - Sam4booksI have a friend who is a published Literary Fiction writer. This reads in a way that is very similar to her work. I don't usually like Literary Fiction as a genre, because it tends to raise more questions than it answers, although I do recognize the thought-provoking nature of said genre.
This is thought provoking. However, on the flip side, it makes me want to tear my hair out because of the lack of concrete answers. Personal preference aside, be careful of your use of commas. There is a stylistic choice to use them to indicate where a verbal pause would be if the piece was read aloud, but you should be aware that this tends to cause a lot of grammatical errors in places where other punctuation would serve the same pause effect but be grammatically correct. Explore the use of dashes, colons, and semicolons.
