The Contest

Write the winning story about the cover page image of Renderosity Magazine issue #6 and see your story printed in issue #7!

Contest rules:

1. All entries: by entering this contest, entrants agee to grant first publication rights to Renderosity. All other rights are reserved by the writer. Entrants agree to grant Renderosity the right to print the story and publish it in the magazine interact forum at a later date.

2. Each story must be approximately 1,500 words in length, written in English, and must be relevant to the magazine cover for Renderoity issue #6. (The image can be seen here.)

3. One submission per Renderosity member, not per screen name. If there are multiple submissions by the same person, only the last submission will be entered into the contest.

4. Explicit descriptions of anatomy, violence, or sexual acts are not allowed.

5 ) The story must be original and not be published previously anywhere, including on the Internet. Exclusive rights to Renderosity for 90 days from the Renderosity issue #6 ship date apply.

1. The winner will agree to work with and abide by the Renderosity magazine staff editing needs with regard to their contest entry's inclusion to the magazine.

2. The contest is open to all members of Renderosity, excluding Renderosity moderators, administrators, and magazine staff.

3. Submissions will be accepted until 26 May, 2003 at 23:59, Renderosity Server Time.

Submission format:

Submissions may be e-mailed to contest@fallencity.net as a .txt attachment. (The off-site address is to ensure the anonymity of the entrants.)

At the top of the entry, please include the following:

Screen name
Real name
Title

• Please single space lines, with a double space between paragraphs.
• Use one ONE Carriage Return/Line feed to start a new paragraph. (That means let the sentences wrap without truncating to screen width.)
• Do not indent.
• Please indicate bold with *'s and italics with _'s at the beginning and end of the phrase.

Prizes:

First place: Publication in the Renderosity magazine. If the winner does not have a subscription to the Renderosity magazine, a complementary issue will be mailed to the winner.

The top 5 entries will also be placed in the Writers' Forum Backroom.

Judging:

The judges will be picked from the Renderosity staff, including magazine staff. (Crescent, who will be coordinating the contest and submissions, will not be a judge in the contest.)

The judges will pick the winning story based on originality, appropriateness to the image, and quality of writing. No authors will be identified to the judges until after the contest is over and the winner announced.

Any questions about the contest can be addressed in the Renderosity Writers' Forum, or IM'ed or e-mailed to Crescent. A sample of an acceptable submission format can be found below.

Crescent Jane Poe It Was a Dark and Stormy Day Thunder clouds rolled in ominously as the contest deadline neared. Oh, how am I ever going to get my story done in time? she worried. Lightning streaked across the sky as thunder boomed in the distance. Jane pecked at the keyboard furiously, hoping that the muse would suddenly bless her with a good entry. With the horrible power service in her area, she knew it was only a matter of time before the electricity went out and her story would nothing more than lost bits, never to see the light of print in the Rendie magazine. She looked at the contest image one last time, and it all came together. She frantically cleared her page and began her masterpiece. She knew she had tough competition, but this would be worthy competitor to all their stories. Her fingers raced against the keyboard until she finally put the last touch: The End. Her hand flew to the mouse to click the all-important File: Save. Crack She decided to light a candle and curse the darkness.

If anything isn't clear, if I goobered something up, please let me know. (Yes, I cheated and used the same story example as last time. I'm a bit behind, and I got notice of the contest just today.) Cheers!

oooh this is cool....going to give it a shot...Sharen

I'll definitely pitch in. Count me in!

I'm going to sharpen all my pencils for this one. Shanna :-) now staring hopelessly at a blank page.

Okay, I am done and now sending it to you...this is a short story right? Sharen

hmmm....gelflings..;) Hafta think about this..

I already wrote my story LOL I'm so pleased to make my debut to this forum with a contest entry.

Dear Crescent, (or dear anyone else who cares to answer) I was looking at your dark and stormy day example (bother, I wish I'd thought of that :-) ) and I wanted to know, are you supposed to do thoughts in italics? I've never used them before, so I was wondering where you would appropriately use italics and bold print Some hints on rows of dots would be good too. Last, but definitely not least, how do I do a txt attachment? Explanation extremely welcome.....pretty please? Shanna

text attachments - just save your document as text (.txt) (and get ready for a lot of formatting to disappear..sigh). As for italics, there's conventions in the rules for the contest that tell you how to specify them. When you have the text ready, go down to 'attach file' (you'll see it on the submission area, where you type responses), and use the 'browse' key to locate the file you're trying to upload. I think there's a limit of 200k on text files, but that's dozens of pages (time was, each page of text was worth about 3-4k each, but that was before Microsoft..;) hope this helps.

Thank you pakled. That's one less puzzle. It was where in a piece of writing you might use italics etc... I was asking about. I know how to indicate I want them used, just not when I might or might not use them, without looking like a complete plank. Shanna :-) Looking nothing like any form of milled timber, well, not very much.

The underscore is to be used for italics.

Oh, how am I ever going to get my story done in time?

Oh, how am I ever going to get my story done in time?

Ack! I already have 2 submissions! I hadn't even gotten my contest mail account set up again! (Don't worry, the submissions forwarded to my default account.) As an FYI - each submission gets a unique number so the judges can't tell which story is which, even if they know about when people sent in their entries. I also send the stories in batches. For the two who sent in their entries, you'll be getting an e-mail soon with your number. Cheers!

E-mails sent and now my email box is properly set up. Silly me, I thought I'd have at least 24 hours before I'd have to worry about it! ;-)

a Writer Writes!
-Throw Mama from the Train..;)

Oh good. I've been wanting one of these since the last time. Best contest prize you can have for a writer, in my opinion, short of boat loads of money. ;-) Nice cover pic, by the way. jon

The night was humid...nah!
It was the best of times, it was.. nah, been done..
As the smoke curled from her full red lips I reached for my gat. Normally I carry heat but in pyjamas I just carry the scars from Normandy beach...
...and no-one ever saw the giraffe again. The End. Huzzzah! Now all I need to do is spellcheck and the prize is mine..wuahaha!

the night was...sultry..;) Sent mine in..

Hope folks are not confusing this contest with the last challenge. ;-) jon

Sent mine in too waiting email confirmation :O)

Just submitted mine, too. Waiting for confirmation. Ian

When I turned my story into a txt attachment, all the speech marks turned into little squares. Should I turn them back into speech marks? Shanna :-) "It was a bright and sunny day"

Sorry for the delay in answering. It would be easier if you could fix them before sending them in. Thanks!

I didn't see an answer to Shanna's question, I hope somone didn't answer it elsewhere. Actually there are three different ways of formatting thoughts. The first is to not format them at all: Tom thought about the available choices. Green was ugly, and pink was definately not his color. Maybe the blue? He reached out and... Secondly is to put them in quote marks, just like speech: Tom looked over his available choices. "Man, that green is ugly!" he thought. "And pink is definately not my color. I guess I'll go for the blue." Third is italics: Tom looked over his available choices. Man, that green is ugly! And pink is definately not my color. I guess I'll go for the blue Hope this helps you!

Well, if nothing else, I should win the procrastinator's award. I just got mine submitted. I went back and reread the rules and see that there is a limit of approximately 1500 words. Hope mine falls within the definition of approximate. :-) Good luck, all. jon

I got it and I'll be sending you an entry confirmation shortly. You're not the only procrastinator, that's for sure!

The last of the entries have been sent off. Now the judges get the difficult task of picking the winners. Good luck to everyone!

Sorry, I don't have an exact time, but I'm sure it will be before 11:59pm RST. ;-)