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Monthly SimLit Short Story Challenge – Announcement & Info

Calling all simmie storytellers …

seasoned veterans …

recent rookies …

BRAND new beginners  …

and even you WANNABE tale spinners.

short story banner

Every month I will post a theme blog that your short story must reflect.

Also in that blog, there will be specifications indicated as to word count and a number of required screenshots (I would say the norm would be around 500 to 800 words and 5 to 8 screenies).

The deadline will be the last day of every month at midnight Pacific Standard Time.

This is a EA forum based challenge and your story is to be posted in your personal blog and linked to the forum site (if you are too new to the forum to post let me know).

Monthly SimLit Short Story Challenge – Forum Link 

I will then publish a blog with all the entries listed for voting (by participants AND outside readers) that will take place the 1st thru the 7th of each month.

I do not expect the more inexperienced writers to go up against the veterans so we have a two-fold challenge every month.

In each blog there will be 2 banners for you to choose from (these are examples):

Vet Participant aprilNovice Participant april

You will pick where you feel you belong and enter accordingly (placing the banner at the top of your story).

Participants ARE ALLOWED – even encouraged to let their readers know that they are participating in the challenge.

BUT here is the caveat, their readers MUST be strongly encouraged to read all entries and vote in accordance with instructions.  This instruction must be CLEARLY stated by the participant when the readers are informed.

Readers will be asked to vote for their top 3 choices in both categories (6 votes total).  We ask our participants to please be fair!

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Social media:

Monthly SimLit Short Story Challenge FB Page

If this link does not work, please ask for an invite to our Discord.

https://discord.gg/uQKydQX

Contemplating an instagram or Tumbr presence – need volunteers!

I will help in any way I can.  Feel free to connect!

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For those who are BRAND new to this and want to try here are a few things to do to get ready:

  • Find a host site for your story.

    • While Tumblr and the EA Forum are alright for hosting a short story blog, they can be difficult to navigate and locating your current could be a problem for some.   I would recommend using any one of the free blog hosts that are out there.
  • If you have not established a User profile in The Sims Forum, go ahead and do so now.  It will take you a bit to get some posting privileges (Screenshots, links & profile pic).
    • The Sims Forum
    • Be sure to bookmark the forum Monthly Short Stories thread by clicking on the star gallery star
  • Get some other good bookmarks in order

Thesaurus  Avoid word redundancy!  Find different ways to say it.

Bulk Resize Photos  Resizing your pics not only saves free space in your blog it will make it easier for your phone readers to load them.  Best is 600 to 1000 pixels wide.  This is a FAB resizer!

Game Shot Tutorial  Your shots should be more than eye candy.  They need to convey parts of the story as much as the words do.   In simlit both are important.

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Table of contents:

Monthly SimLit Short Story Challenge

Posted in challenge76 Comments

76 thoughts on “Monthly SimLit Short Story Challenge – Announcement & Info”

  1. Wow! So I guess I fall under experienced although I’ve never done the shorty story challenge before….I’ll have to give it a try….. I have read some of the wonderful and creative stories that the others come up with and they are amazing. Yay for not making the newbies feel like they have to compete with the old timers. Hopefully that will encourage participation! ❤️ You are brave for sure! Hosting something like this can be consuming…

    Liked by 1 person

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  2. Oi – You sure do like to keep your plate full 😀
    I’m very happy to see you take up the reins and do all you can to promote SimLit – I’ll be helping as much as I can with retweets on Twitter and support on the forum.

    I might even give the challenge a try one day 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

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  6. This sounds like a good idea and a lot of fun, too! 🙂 I’ve never taken part before but might give it a go if I can think of anything when the topics are announced. 😀

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  7. I’ll give this a try and hope that it refuels The Underwood Decision. I have other tales ready to be told, and I think I’m just going to have to tell them and let the Underwood’s sit for a little while.

    Liked by 1 person

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  8. Ooh, this correspondes with my planned timing for dipping my toes back into writting again. Or trying to after a year hiatus from almost all simlit. 🙂 I shall give it a whirl and see.

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. I do think that you bring up an excellent point. I would hope that this would be an international group of participants. Maybe what we need to do is indicate if English is the second language and therefore people would understand if there is something Said in a different order than perhaps would be said by a native speaker ..

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  12. This will be quite a challenge for me, I’m not good at short stories. I entered a short story contest once and took second place and the comments were. “This doesn’t seem like it’s a short story, it seems like there is more to tell.”

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  15. What an excellent idea! I’m still new to writing SimLit and finding my way so this will help develop my writing skills and also get to know more writers in this part of the community. I never knew this competition existed before so thank you Lisa for doing this. 😀😎

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  16. Pingback: Heads Up - Stories by Jes2G

  17. Wow, Lisa! You don’t stop to amaze me. I think it’s wonderful you are taking this up. Myself, I have been so inactive both on the forums as on my blog. Hmm, this might warm my fingers enough to kickstart my gaming and writing once more 🙂 I’ll drop by the forum asap!

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  18. Hi!

    Ok, so, I love writing SimLit. I’ve never shared any of my stories yet though. This seems like a great place to start meeting people.

    I am rather a novice on how forums and links work.

    This blurb you’ve written here is not on the Sims Forum, correct?

    Will there be a thread there, or only here?

    You probably answered this already, but I’m not retaining everything you’ve said, lol. If we want to comment on other people’s stories as we read them, where would we do that?

    Do the short stories have to be on an external site? I have a blog set up and don’t mind posting them there, but I’m just wondering if posting directly in the forum, in our own thread would be easier.

    As I said, I think you answered most of this already, so I’m sorry to ask again. But I’d feel better having all the answers in one place.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. This is published on Word Press and is not a part of the forum (but I have linked it on the forum). I am using my blog to get the word out 😊

      There will be a thread there because it is a forum based challenge. This is a link to the current thread

      https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/956705/monthly-simlit-short-story-challenge/p1?new=1

      Lots of folks will be new to the forum so that is not going to be a huge issue .. I will be patient and do all I can to help 😊
      This is a great link to get some more info … https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/879663/helpful-guides-to-the-forums-and-to-wordpress#latest

      While the forum site is always open for posting it would prob be best to give feed back on the blog where you read it .. that goes directly to the author.

      The stories will have to be on either their own external site or on their own forum thread (it is way less confusing to have a website and there are many wonderful free ones .. I put the links on the blog you just read. You can post a link to the stories in the Monthly Short Story forum thread … Here is how it looked (this is the old forum thread .. it is not an active thread now)

      https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/903798/monthly-simlits-a-short-story-challenge-with-new-themes-every-month-and-voting-for-winners/p1

      Please do not apologize for questions .. I do not mind at all ❤

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  20. Will the April challenge be posted Monday? Also, I’m not sure what the name of the FB group is and couldn’t find it searching “monthly simlit challenge.” I’m really looking forward to this!

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