Sponsored Writing Contest with Prizes

[severenz]

I am thinking of reaching out to Barnes & Noble to start to see if they would be willing to sponsor the next writing contest by offering a gift certificate as a prize. Are there any other companies that might be good to hit up for this?

With official prizes, I think I would need to code an official voting engine. My first thought is each member gets 3 votes to vote for their favorite three stories. #1 vote gets 3 points, #2 vote gets 2 points, #3 vote gets 1 point.

Thoughts on the voting engine or prizes?

[Locke]

Even small prizes yield some legitimacy and incentive to the contest. I'd love to see enough interest for more entries than just three or four forum members. I don't know how active the site in general is atm (i.e. if a prize could get some entries from the main site), or if you'd need to promote it elsewhere for that to happen. I wish I had better ideas for prize companies than the usual large corporations (it's late, and I might at some other point), but you push the educational angle on the main site. That might work when you're asking for a donation in places where the more general "we're having a writing contest" wouldn't. I might consider throwing in at least a little something for a prize pool, if things go that direction and you think it'll help. I'm not living large by any means, but I'm not cut to the bone anymore either. Heh, an entry fee would do the job, and make sure the hall of SHAME has fewer entries (or - more likely - provoke a reality check, so that no one enters in the first place).

It would actually be cool to see you do some outreach to schools and creative writing programs (a lot of cold-calling/legwork - or a nice form letter spammed to whomever - with minimal return, but you might get someone... and especially with prizes, I can easily see some creative writing classes bringing it in). Not necessarily for this tournament, but you could offer tournaments for individual schools/classes (even solicit local prizes if you want to push your involvement that hard), or just one general school tournament, something. Sponsoring a school writing magazine would work (but I don't know where you'd get the money). It's not a perfect idea I'm outlining, but I think there's potential to this angle, depending on how hard you want to work on promoting it. There will always be a teacher here or there who will use the format for a one-off writing project (everyone go write a CYOA), especially if they have a way to give their class its own page with just those stories. Especially if we're talking elementary, it's just going to be a good idea to isolate those for a lot of reasons. That might be the wrinkle you need - a separate, class-specific area for teachers to work with, in a format that won't kill you to administer. Or I might be crazy. Dunno.
(edit: random glance at the main site shows you're somewhat ahead of me and have already made something like that. Didn't register for an account, not sure how far it goes. Teachers will never think to come find it, so some outreach is still necessary if you want to see it used...? Are you seeing use from it yet? Not sure when it went up).

If you do some genre-specific tournament (say, horror) and go offer a $25 or $50 prize on the writing subreddit for that category, you'd get entries.

Hmm, ask Stephen King to throw in an autographed picture of something horrible, can't hurt. Other non-monetary prizes...? Probably best kept to a minimum, one or two interesting things if that. Or...! How about a free bill, or maybe an unpaid parking ticket? Whoever wins can have one of mine! If they want to swing by my house, I'll stand them a round of alcohol, too (I've found that helps with the bills/tickets).

The voting engine. You'd need to make reasonably sure someone isn't voting a bunch of times, which I'd imagine you would link to site accounts. For tradition's sake, I'd love to see some elements of our usual IWT voting matrix represented. Seems like you were thinking of a very simple "check three boxes for the three best stories" thing, though, and it's true that every complication added to the voting means more time for you and also the voter. If there are more than a handful of entries, a simple system like the one you proposed is the only option. If the tournament is basically just us on the forum, I want the traditional system - that tradition fuels some great threads after it's all said and done.

Making sure the voter reads or at least rates all the stories is also an issue, and you'll get some skewed ones for sure in a larger tournament, giving one or two top marks and the rest zeroes. Your system makes some sense in that regard, too; "pick your three favorites" doesn't give much room for trying to slant the vote. Could still mean random picks or top vote for End and the rest random, something like that, but there's only so much you can do. I'd love to see alternatives explored for the voting matrix, just to see what comes up.

Especially in a small tournament, everyone who enters must also vote, and cannot vote for their own story. Comments are also expected (could be an option to leave comments in your voting engine, but even in a larger tournament, I guess standard forum feedback would be fine. I think your idea for a less forum-focused tournament is to streamline it as much as possible, but again it would be cool to see that explored).

Since you seem to want to make it more "official," an IWT-13 specific area on the main site with rules, entries, commentary and whatever else would help make that happen. I'm not ASKING for it, per se - standard forum IWT is perfectly fine if it's the standard just-us tournament - but if you try to blow it up, you'd need one of those since plenty of people can't find the forums because it never occurs to them to look.

[mizal]

Didn't see this thread before, but we've just gotten the forum back and it may be better to give the community a little time to take root and grow naturally. I'm sure you could drum up a little interest from random people with bribes, but that'd be the only thing they'd be here for.

Why not run even just one regular IWT the way we used to and see how it goes? Put an announcement and a Iink on the main page, if you want to reach outside the forum. The site gets plenty of traffic and I bet there are people who would be happy to enter a just for fun contest with no pressure.

Even now there's already a couple of members who are interested in IWT, all we need is for DEP to make a thread.

[mizal]

Case in point: Just got 18 entries for a one month contest on CYS. No prize but bragging rights and being spared the SHAME pit. About five were obviously thrown together at the last second (mine included), but we also got some pretty significantly effortful entries including one game with more than a 60k wordcount.

All you need is a community and some time given for it to grow. A forum is pretty necessary for that though so IS could be considered in the recovery phase now that it's back.

[severenz]

Maybe time is what we need, but I get a ton of sign-ups on IS regularly but not many sign-ups on forums. From what I can tell, most of the niche writing community is on CYS. I don't think prizes would hurt. I'm happy to announce one of our "traditional" styled contests but I was waiting for the few people on the forums to agree on the terms.

[Lightning_11]

Why not run even just one regular IWT the way we used to and see how it goes?

That sound fun. I, for one, would join. Prises aren't required, but they're nice to have around. Personally, I would engage in such a contest for braggin rights and a chance to boost traffic to my stories. The old IWT sounds fun, although I am up for any improvements you can make to it.
I am glad people are still thinking and working on this.

[mizal]

I guess I'll try and dig up one of the old IWT threads and see exactly how it went, and if anybody wants to alter things for this one. They were pretty informal and there wasn't much actually required to qualify iirc. 20 page minimum is all I remember.

[TheChef]

I'd be down. I don't really write for prizes, but whatever y'all decide is what you decide. I'm in it for the bragging rights.

I personally like the sound of continuing the tradition. Part of the fun is leaving your mark as an entrant on a contest with a storied history like IWT.