Calling all simmie storytellers …
seasoned veterans …
recent rookies …
BRAND new beginners …
and even you WANNABE tale spinners.
I have an exciting opportunity for you.
(Now don’t get scared you novices, I got you covered … just keep reading.)
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First a little history:
The Simlit Short Story Challenge was launched by Carewren123 in August 2015.
As of December 2018 the lastest champions of this cause, Pegasus143 and SilentWolf101, stepped out of leadership leaving a gaping hole and a wonderful project with no worker bee.
Well since …
I believe in mentoring new wordsmiths.
I believe in supporting experienced scribblers.
Most of all I believe in SimLit (reading is GOOD).
I raised my hand to take the lead.
I am aware that my plate is pretty full but this is a hidden GEM that needs to be uncovered.
(If I fall flat then I fall flat .. it is worth it)
It is my desire to help bring Simlit down from the attic (where we store all our antiques) and out into the mainstream sims community (we have been cloistered away in the Forum for too long).
I have already got a wobbly shiny new Forum thread started.
Stop by and say HI.
Monthly SimLit Short Story Challenge – Forum Link
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The challenge will resume on 1 April … HMM I wonder what my theme should be 🙂
Every month I will post a theme that your short story must reflect.
Also, 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
Voting (by participants AND outside readers) 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 it is my plan to have a two-fold challenge every month.
Writers with one year or less of blog experience will be grouped together and voted upon separately from those who have over a year of blogging experience.
Participants ARE ALLOWED – even encouraged to let their readers know that they are participating in the challenge …
(growing our skills AND our audience IS the POINT of all of this)
BUT here is the caveat, their readers MUST 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).
Any vote received that does not contain 3 votes for each category will be thrown out.
I assure you that I will diligently watch this.
NO ONE will be unfairly targeted, bullied or shunned.
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What can you expect from me?
LOTS of promo for the challenge (where ever I can .. I will .. LOL).
I have already started Facebook Page for this project where our readers can connect with the challenge.
(A like and a follow would be nice)
Monthly SimLit Short Story Challenge FB Page
If this grows and there becomes a need, a Discord is not out of the question.
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.
- WordPress – most popular free site (I love the statistics because I can tell who is reading and where they clicked in from .. plus the reader is FAB)
- Blogger – been around the longest
- Weebly
- wix – Wix brands and ad on blog
- Do your homework ( How to choose the best blog host for you )
- 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
- 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.
- Do a few practice runs. Try it out on family and friends.
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For you LONG TIMERS…
click that star …
warm up those fingers …
tell a few others …
and let’s make this happen cause it is a win win win for all!
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Table of contents:
Monthly SimLit Short Story Challenge
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…
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Oh I am for sure you will rock… You don’t have to be all those other ones you just have to be yourself. And I think that’s pretty awesome.
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Thanks! I am looking forward to trying something new.
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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 🙂
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A very Minus short adventure! I’m looking forward to it already!
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Ah, don’t get your hopes up too high… I’m not good at anything that involves competetion of any kind 😀
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I just look at it as an excuse to write 12 stories I wouldn’t write otherwise! 🙂
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Maybe one day… 😀
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I ready you ALL the time .. I know you can do it! AND you have lots of folks that love your work.
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Aaw – thank you ❤
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I cannot wait
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I think that you are definitely talented enough with this kind of thing!
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Thank You ❤
We'll see – maybe one day! (when I gather eough courage)
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BRAVO! Oh, what’s the FB page info? Or is that going to be a separate contest?
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No it would just be a promotional support … If you want to use my personal FB page. It would be too much of a conflict
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Oh ok. Makes sense.
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So exciting ! Love the ground rules you’ve laid out and your expansive reach! Cool mission statement: let’s bring SimLit out of the closet!
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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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That is so awesome AND just to let you know all Sims game platforms will be embraced … there will be no disparity between the games!
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That’s good. Maybe if I do this, I’ll use TS4 for the first time in a story. 🙂 Gotta get the feet wet sometime. LOL
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What? Who are you and what have you done with our Kymber?? Just kidding of course I am certain that no matter what medium you use it will be wonderful
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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.
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I am excited to see what tales everyone has to spin
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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.
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I can’t wait to see what comes from that pen
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I think I will give it a try. I wonder how I will work out for me since it is not my mother tongue.
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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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What do you think that I could do to help facilitate the short stories for English as a second language simmers?
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So I am definitely inexperienced rookie. 🙂 I am nowhere near 1 year of experience. I may give this a shot. 🙂 Cool idea, Lisa.
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sounds good ❤
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Another feather for your hat! Congrats! This sounds great. I love it. Count me in. I look forward to the first topic 🙂
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I am scared to death! AND I so look forward to seeing what you bring with your pen!
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Thanks lisabeesims! I look forward to it 🙂
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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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Well to me that sounds like you are very good at telling a short story .. to leave your reader thinking (and you took second place)
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That’s not how they made it sound xD I think everyone else was just bad at writing. Or my writing was good enough it made up for it? I don’t know.
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Please don’t put yourself down .. just do your thing and grow into it. IF you trust me I will take a look and see what I see …
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🙂 can’t help it xD I’ll be trying anyways. I don’t give up at least. 🙂
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How long is this going to be going on?, I am not quite sure if I wanna pertispate or not.
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It will be on going .. every month
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Ok Thank you 😊, I might do this but I am not sure yet I am still thinking about it.
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Yay!!! So glad this is starting up again. Looking forward to participating. 😊
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I am pretty excited too ❤
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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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You are so welcome .. I am very excited .. ESPECIALLY over you newer writers ❤
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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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OHH I loved your stories .. I hope you do ❤
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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.
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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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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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I literally clicked out of the search box and found the FB page.
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You know I do like your idea of a writing group …I will def think on it
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