Round 1 blog

Hello, everyone! Fruipit here, on behalf of the fanonbenders, and boy, do we have some news for you. But first, let me just introduce the group.

The fanonbenders are a usergroup dedicated to the fanon portal. We help users who ask for it in regards to their stories, and generally just hang around, watching... *ahem* Well, no, what our actual purpose is to maintain the portal. 'Protect its cultural heritage', as it were. But, with the end of the Hundred Year War (and the decline in fanon portal activity), we've decided, being one of the only fanon usergroups to not help the community spirit, that we have to change that.

That is why we've decided to add something else to our list of jobs. While we'll still help the portal in specific ways such as the templates, coding, and the like, we want to do more. The attempts to really push the portal along have, in the past, been met only with short-term positive results—a one-off, really. So,, , , and have gotten together to discuss what we could do. We think we have a solution.

Writing contests.

Simple really, and looking back at a few of the bigger contests contests (*ahemTy*ahem*), it's a wonder it hasn't been thought of before. Unfortunately, this doesn't answer the question of 'how do we keep this as an ongoing thing?'. Sure, we could just have constant one-shot competitions, but that doesn't encourage writers to stick with one story. To stick with the portal. So... why does it have to be one-shots?

The aim of this is to get people writing consistently. Once a month, beginning this April, we'll release a prompt. It won't be something hard like, 'use your name and date of first edit to pick a character and an action, and then write a story about it'; no, the point of this is to just give people a little push to write. It will be more simple prompts, such as 'set this chapter out-doors', or something of the like. Notice, I said 'chapter'.

It will not be a requirement that you release these as chapters to stories, however we want you to. The prompts will be open enough that they could apply to any story, with any characters, from any genre, and we want you to be creative like that. We want you to keep writing. You don't have to do every prompt, and you don't have to wait for a prompt to be released to write. Simply put, we just want more people creating on the wiki ^^"

You will have three weeks to work on the chapter and publish it. In the final week of the month, we will get together to talk about the chapters we likes, discuss why, and decide who won. A little bit of feedback will also be provided for each author. It's a little after the first, however we hope to be on time in the coming months. There are still a few little kinks to work out, but that won't stop us!

So, this round will run from April 2 to April 24. All you have to do to submit is write and publish a fanon chapter or story, and then comment on this post to let us know that you have entered. You need a prompt though, don't you? Well, how about something really easy?

Introduce an original character.

That's it. We don't care if it's a he or a she, or a firebender or old. We don't care if you name him after a hamburger or kill him in the first hundred words. All we want to see is a strong OC (strong referring more to personality than physical strength, although you can have both if you want). The winner for this round will be announced in next month's introductory post to let you know about that prompt.

Good writing, and good luck!