The contest is now live! You can find the tag above, and I'm excited to see your entries!
For many of us BCTS is a huge part of our lives, or has helped us pull through rough times thanks to the community and stories the site has helped to foster.
Well, what better way to show our appreciation of that than a 25th anniversary contest?
Yep, that's right -- BigCloset turns 25 in June! And to celebrate, we want to give back to the community with some prizes and a contest.
There's nothing like a new beginning, and many of the best stories in TG fiction are born of the premise of someone getting a fresh start. For the site's 25th anniversary, we would like to see people give us their best takes on this classic of the genre!
The rules are as follows:
--Stories must be a single, standalone story. No serials, no chapters of longer stories, no fanfiction.
--Stories must be between 500 and 15,000 (15k) words. Long enough to get some meat on, but not so long as to be intimidating for a single-posting story.
--Entries should qualify for an "R" rating or lower (so no "on screen" sexual content, etc.)
Pretty simple, right?
We want to give people plenty of time to get entries in and get read, so stories can be entered any time between May 1st 2024 and June 15th.
Contest Run Time:
Entries that meet the rules and are submitted between May 1st and June 15th will all be considered valid, with prize announcement anticipated to be in mid-July.
Prizes:
--We are planning for at least 3 cash prizes for the contest, with voting taking place across 2 or 3 rounds.
--At the moment, we're planning to use polls on Patreon for contest voting. Stories will be divided into blocks based on when they were posted (the first 3 weeks of the contest or the last 3 weeks,) with the highest-voted stories from each of those blocks competing for the grand prize of the contest in the final voting round.
--The highest-voted story of each of the 2 rounds will receive a 50 dollar prize, and the highest-voted story in the final round will receive a 100 dollar prize. And yes, the 100 dollar winner may or may not have won a fifty dollar prize.
--The above IS subject to change, depending on how many entries we receive, and we reserve the right to grant more prizes as we see fit.
That's it, folks! Contest starts in 2 weeks, so I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with!
Comments
I will update this blog with a contest tag
closer to the date of the contest officially beginning.
Melanie E.
Happy Anniversary!
Looking forward to another great BC writing contest, and delighted to be able to participate again. :) Happy anniversary to this wonderful, quirky, beautiful space, and a heartfelt thank-you to all of you who make it possible!
— Emma
A clarification
Sounds like a fun idea! Though one question, and apologies if I'm being pedantic...up above, you mention the theme of starting over or a fresh start, but I don't see anything listed in the rules about that. I'm assuming that starting over or a fresh start should be a plot point in the story?
Very much so.
My apologies, I felt that that was implied from the theme and leading text :)
But yes. We want it to be pretty open to interpretation, but it needs to fit that to some extent. I also didn't expressly say it needed to be a TG story, since I felt that was implied by the context as well :)
Melanie E.
Thanks for clarifying!
Very good, thanks! I assumed as much, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to make sure!
Two Questions
Greetings,
May I write in my Limoxian Universe, using characters and plot never before used, for this contest?
May my contest entry premiere on my Patreon then BCTS be the first (& only) site to which I post?
Thank you,
Exploring the impossibilities,
Jo Dora Webster on YouTube
The story needs to stand on its own,
so if there's any background or anything required from other stories for it to make sense... then I'd honestly say it doesn't qualify for the contest.
Likewise, I'd like these to be stories written for the contest specifically, so I'd argue that the latter one depends... though my inclination is to say that the story appearing elsewhere first also would disqualify it, since that's not so much "writing a story for the contest" as "writing a story for something else and using it IN the contest."
I'll try and host a contest/challenge at some point in the future that is for content that's already available (rewriting older stories or something along those lines,) but I'll work on the honor system here and say please try and keep contest stories contest stories only, at least until the contest is over.
Melanie E.
I've already got my entry in!
I'm the quickest flash fiction author going! Giggles.
Only Twelve Entries?
Come on people! This is twenty-five years of Big Closet. It deserves more. We had one hundred and twenty entries for our New Year's Contest. So you're skulking about out there.
The stories submitted to date are excellent but don't let that put you off. I won't name names but some of our very best authors are slacking. Just think how BCTS has sustained you through the years. Now it's your turn to do the honours.