Week Two - The Ink Well Summer Contest - Final Rules!

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Hello and thank you to all who are participating in The Ink Well two-week summer contest and workshop. We are thrilled with all of the wonderful story drafts that have been submitted, and the amazing support and feedback our community members have provided to one another. It is now time to polish your stories based on the feedback you have received from the members of The Ink Well community.

IMPORTANT
You must have participated in the first week of the contest to continue on to Week Two. (We did allow a slight grace period, but no more entries can be submitted after this point.)

Our Two-Week Summer Contest - Final Rules

This is a two week contest with a workshop component. You can read the initial contest post here.

Here is the full set of steps. (The first three steps are now complete.)

Step One: Write a short story draft during Week One (July 19, 2021 - July 25, 2021) using any of the 50 Log Lines provided.

Step Two: Post the story to The Ink Well community by July 25:

• Keep your story to a word limit of 1,000 words or less.
• Use this format for the title: The Ink Well Contest: Week One Draft - Your Story Title
• Use all of these tags: story, fiction, contest, inkwellsummercontest, theinkwell

Step Three: Look for contest entries by other writers during Week One. Read at least two stories and provide feedback on what the writer could improve in their final draft. For example:

• Does the story include a good description of the setting?
• Is the story interesting and original?
• Does the story have well-defined characters?
• Is the conflict of the story well-defined?
• Is the conflict resolved in the end?
• Is it easy to follow the story?
• Are there grammatical problems that should be fixed?

Step Four: During Week Two (July 26, 2021 - August 1, 2021), read the feedback you have received on the first draft of your story. Write a NEW draft that incorporates the helpful suggestions you have received. (You are not required to use every suggestion. It's your story! But do focus on improving your story.)

NOTE: Do not replace your Week One story with the revision. You will write and publish a new post with your revised and improved story for Week Two.

Step Five: Post the revised story to The Ink Well community by August 1 (NO GRACE PERIOD):

• Keep your story to a word limit of 1,000 words or less.
• Use this format for the title: The Ink Well Contest: Week Two Final Draft - Your Story Title
• Use all of these tags: story, fiction, contest, inkwellsummercontest, theinkwell
• Add a link to your final story to a comment on this post.

During Week Two, there are still opportunities to improve any issues in your story, once it is posted. If you receive helpful suggestions for edits from The Ink Well or community members, feel free to edit your posted story during Week Two, up until the final deadline of August 1. Then - "pencils down!"

Please consider reading other entries and providing any final comments on typos or other small issues your fellow writers might want to edit prior to the final deadline.

How to Polish Your Final Entry

In Week Two, you have the opportunity to really make your story shine. Carefully read through the feedback you have received and think about how to solve issues that may have been brought to your attention. Clarify anything confusing. Make sure you have an attention-grabbing story opening, a strong story arc, and a good resolution to the conflict. Re-read your story and make sure every sentence counts and you have fixed typos and grammatical problems.

The Ink Well moderators (@jayna, @agmoore and @gracielaacevedo) will be the final judges. Here are the things we will be looking for:

• Originality: We want to see fresh and interesting writing themes, characters and conflicts.
• Quality of writing: We are looking for some nice “turns of phrase”, settings that are so well described we can “see” them, well-defined characters and good dialog.
• Quality of editing: We know this can be challenging for those who do not know English as a first language. However, we are seeking improvements in grammar and punctuation in the final draft in Week Two. (Note that we provide many writing tips to help our writers improve their skills in our Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips, including a post titled Help for the Grammatically Challenged which provides tools to help find grammatical mistakes and fix them.
• The important elements of a short story, including character development, a good setting, dialog between characters, an interesting conflict, and a resolution of the conflict.

Prizes!

We are so excited to see this contest playing out. You are all working hard! So, here are the exciting prizes for The Ink Well Summer Contest:

• Grand Prize: 25 Hive
• Second Place Prize: 10 Hive
• Third Place Prize: 5 hive
• All other entrants who successfully complete requirements for both rounds: 2 Hive

Judging Period

The Ink Well will announce the winners within one week of the final draft deadline of August 1 (by August 8), and then return to our regular schedule of weekly writing prompts.

Have fun and enjoy the process. If you have any questions, please post them in a comment on this post. Good luck!

We look forward to reading your stories!

@jayna, @agmoore and @gracielaacevedo

We would like to invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @agmoore and @gracielaacevedo.

We also invite you to follow The Ink Well curation trail on the Hive blockchain, at https://hive.vote/. Simply navigate to the curation trail section and search for theinkwell (all one word with no @ symbol) and our trail will pop up as an option.

Similarly delegations are possible on Hive using the fantastic https://peakd.com/ Hive Blockchain front end. If you wish to delegate to @theinkwell, you can do this from the wallet section of https://peakd.com/

A big thank you to all of our delegators:
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @iamraincrystal, @generikat, @marlyncabrera, @owasco, @preparedwombat, @marcybetancourt, @zeurich, @barge, @lacrucita, @stormcharmer, @adncabrera, @vision-of-esca, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @rypo01, @evagavilan2 and @bertrayo.

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