The Contest Wrap-Up

The Build a Scene Contest is over! The contest spanned a whopping 4 months! It started in April and ended in July. In this blog I’ll be announcing the winner and talking about the contest.

The Contest Winner

Before I get into the meat of the blog I want to get the announcement of the winner out of the way. I wish I could have two winners but sadly, I can not. The two leading contestants were neck and neck the whole way through the contest but in the in one won out.

The winner is Faclan!

You can read his winning entry HERE. I also have to link you to the other contestant who finished the contest, J. Stevland. You can read their final entry HERE. Additionally you can read the entries from contest, for each round HERE.

The Contest

The idea of this contest took form when I was editing and revising a random fantasy scene I was writing for an Amtgard contest. I reworked the scene over weeks and each time I worked on it I added a few sentences here, a paragraph there and over time it took shape. I really enjoyed the process and I wanted to try and replicate it for other people in the form of a contest.

My Goals

With the contest I wanted to give people a chance to develop a scene from a few paragraphs into a few pages. I wanted to show the growth of the scene through multiple rounds. I didn’t just want the contestants to experience editing and expanding upon their ideas but to also have the readers see the scenes’ growth over the contest.

Lessons Learned

For the first round we had a total of five contestants. I was very happy with the number of entries, I had no idea what to expect. Sadly, over the rounds some contestants dropped out and in the end there were only two contestants who entered all four rounds.

I was worried this might happen, but I’m glad we still ended up with a competitive contest. I knew this was a weakness of a multi-round contest and after running the contest it has made me question if I want to run a contest with multi-rounds again.

Another thing I noticed is that people did not approach the weaving of the scenes together like I had imagined. When I first thought of the contest, I thought back to the process that inspired it and I thought the contestants’ processes would be similar, but they were not.

I figured that when they added to the story they would add to various sections and not just the end of the previously written section. There is nothing wrong with that approach, but it wasn’t what I was trying to replicate with the contest. Still, the overall all goal of showing writers expanding and improving on a scene was a success!

The Wrap Up

Like I said, despite the hiccups, I consider this first contest of the Gnome Nation a success, but I guess the question remains, will I do this again? The answer is yes, although I may not do this specific style of contest again. There will be another writing contest though! The next one will probably be less complex.

What do you think of this contest? Did you enjoy reading the entries? Did you have a favorite? Are you interested in participating in the next Gnome Nation contest? Leave a comment and let me know!