abstract
| - TV Tropes has periodically held writing contests organized and judged by tropers. These are typically contests for original short stories with a theme. The first and second were posted on Literature; the third through sixth were posted on Writer's Block (where all future contests should go as well). So far they've been held about once a quarter, but their popularity and positive reception suggests that they could be held much more frequently. Recurring minor difficulties include the lack of people willing to host, the disproportionate ratio of entrants to judges, the preponderance of dropouts, frequent failure of entrants (and, to a lesser extent, judges) to meet the deadline, and the tendency of some judges to award a broader range of scores than others and thus have a larger weight on the result. The general rules, used for contests 2-6, are as follows:
* Entries must be 2000-5000 words, original work written for the contest.
* Judging is out of 25 points:
* 5 points for conventions (spelling, grammar, capitalization)
* 5 points for theme (and staying within the word limit)
* 15 points for general critique (plot, characters, world building, writing style, etc)
* Entrants usually have about 4-6 weeks to submit an entry; after the deadline, judges have 1 week to post their scores.
* Judging is anonymous. Each contestant posts his or her story on Free Text Host, then PMs the URL to the anonymizer, who may be one of the contestants. The anonymizer then PMs each judge all the entries. The identities of the contestants are revealed after the judges have all posted their scores.
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