I don't see that it gives anyone an advantage to know. And I'd never heard of them or seen those papers so one need not be familiar with them to figure it out.
If it doesn't matter, what's the point of even having the photo? I can write anything about anything, contrary to the claim that knowing would narrow down my writing options...
Incorrect. Unless you consider 43F and raining with a 20 mph wind, "Summer", in which case I don't want you designing weather any more.
Exactly. The photo establishes an interesting framework, and if you're not telling the story of the picture in 1000 words, this comp makes no sense. But because it does make sense, and you should write about what's in the picture, I really like it as a great creative challenge. If you want to be free to write whatever, go and write whatever.
It's 17C in Seattle, apparently, and your top will be 20. Your min 13 was 2C above our max today, and I just trained for an hour outside at 4.9C. Trust me, it ain't your summer.
I live in Puerto Rico where it actually is summer all year long. Anyone who wants to know what exactly the little tickets are about is welcome to PM me. We don't have these in this form in my slice of Anglophonia (we have'um, they just look different), but I do know what they are. The genuine answer is a bit less exact than one may expect. ETA: I will refrain from posting the answer here. If someone wants the info, fine, I don't see an issue with that. If someone would rather not and go just off of their imagination, equally fine. There's no right or wrong.
How do we know when we've hit 1000 words? Do we have to count them individually? Sheesh! That would be more work than writing the piece!
The title is never included in the word count. Just saying. Also, a couple of members have already entered, so they may not have considered what Komposten said.
They have. I've checked entries as they come in for adherence to the 1000 word rule and both current entries are on the money.
What will you do if someone is off by a word or two? I'm thinking inadvertent or some glitch of a different word count protocol, say for hyphenated words.
So far only one entry was off and the entrant, upon second check, realized the variance and did an adjustment. The other two were spot on. If there's nothing like a hyphenated word (I don't foresee too much trouble from that venue) then I will (and have) informed the entrant. My suggestion for oddities like hyphenated words is to avoid them if possible.
I like the idea of an option to correct the entry. Mistakes are so often inadvertent. For the record I just tested Word and it counted a hyphenated word as one word.
And for anyone using Scrivener (which we all know is my personal platform of choice), the word count has held the same, Scrivener vs. MS Word, so far. They appear to count words in the same way. I'm using MS Word as my official word-counter simply because it is more universally used. I can just imagine the hushed roar that would ensue had I said Scrivener was to be my go-to.
Ah, yes, yes. Understood. My mindset is to afford any reasonable chance to participate, not to exclude. Our hopes, if this contest has a good turnout, is to afford more prized contests like this one - perhaps seasonally - that afford a wide range of genre and styles of writing to the membership.
I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but I really dislike it when stories are "liked" before the deadline. It seems like an advantage to that story and a disadvantage to the others, and, even though that person hasn't officially cast their vote for that story, it seems that the person would feel some obligation to vote for it even before they've read all of the entries. I'm sure Steerpike wouldn't do that, but I dislike the idea in general. If others feel the same way, could that be added to the top of future contest descriptions?
