February Seventh! · 11:00pm Jan 10th, 2018
There's been at least four people who have been having trouble completing their contest entry for the Lunbra contest, and maybe even more. Today would have been the deadline, but since I've been thinking about it, and about how extremely excited everyone has seemed about the whole thing, you have been given one last increase in writing time even though this contest has been going since September.
There are now four entries, and three other contests currently going on.
This, as I've said, is your last chance to write anything at all for the first Lunbra contest. There are four entries so far. If the judging and rsults go smoothly too, I'll be considering another contest. And yes, it has a high chance of dealing with Sombra too.
So, if you don't have a completed entry by Wed. Feb. 7th, 2018 at 5:30 EST you shall be fed to the Balrogs for your tardiness. End of story.
Djjdjdjs
I WAS HAVING A PANIC ATTACK BECAUSE I THOUGHT I WAS LATE IXU I S2G
4771000
I was a-ponderin' the choice. That, of course, takes time.
And here I was, already accepting my fate. It's only halfway done, but now I have a lot more time.
Thanks.
Hell yes! Glad I can participate \o/
4771001
I
Tru
As a beneficiary of the last extension, I have no grounds to complain. Still, me and the all-nighter I pulled to make the deadline will be over in the 4771000 corner plotting a hilarious yet ineffectual revenge.
4771629
There's always room for another friggin' Lunbra contest if you had an idea you didn't get to try! :)
You know, coming back to this, I do want to note something just as feedback for next time: I feel like the slow pace of the contest was a disincentive to enter.
The longer the time in between the announcement and the deadline, the less urgency there is to get anything written, especially when that time could be used to enter another contest with a tighter deadline instead. Also, the longer the time in between the entry and the judging, the less rewarding it feels to have done the work. It's basic psychology — why people line up for releases of new movies but often have better things to do than rent a DVD of a movie they haven't seen before.
Yes, there are always going to be individual circumstances where a four-month window gives someone the chance that three months wouldn't, but in the meantime you're losing the people who halfheartedly come up with an idea and then have no incentive to chase it down and refine it while the idea is still simmering in their brain. And months later when the deadline is starting to press in, they'll have forgotten it or it'll seem old and boring.
That said, to be fair, my story might not have been as strong without the extensions (but you still would have gotten one!) — it was written in the original period but I didn't make the time to edit it until I was out of procrastination leeway, and I was juggling other things back during the first round that would have kept me from trying. But largely I've been playing video games instead of writing for the past two months, and knowing in November that I had until January meant that I put it off until January. If I'd known about the final extension I'd just have put the editing off yet again.
It's having a deadline that most motivates people, and most work gets done either right out of the gate or else in the days as it's closing in. As long as you leave enough time for authors to arrange their schedules and the stories to get written (2-4 weeks tops), the people who a looser deadline draws in are to a great extent the people who were going to do it anyway. Meanwhile everyone has to twiddle their thumbs and interest levels in general plummet.
Again, this isn't an effort to argue the current extension; that is what it is, though I certainly hope there are some specific people who asked for more time who have made you concrete promises in exchange for that time. But please consider this for next contest. Two to four weeks is going to get you the same result that four months did, and offers you more control over targeting when to make it happen, and keeps it on authors' front burners instead of "oh hey there's also this other thing I should maybe do someday".
One thing that does seem to help, to make a concrete positive suggestion, is what I've seen a couple of other contests do (including Aragon's): have people put some skin in the game by signing up for a limited number of slots, or pre-committing to a specific variant on a theme that then gets "locked down" to them. (Also, SPark ran a contest where everyone got an individual prompt using TSSSF card draws.) That forces them to refine their idea right away, and to speak up for it before someone else swipes their claim. I think participation rates in those circumstances are a lot higher than if you just announce it as open-ended.
4776278
I adore open ended prompts and have seen them succeed immensely, especially for romance writing on the site so I don't think I'll be getting rid of that concept.
I chose a deadline for this one partly to see how it works out, partially the pairing itself, and to maximize participation.
I am actually playing with the idea of another contest, and a shorter deadline for that one.
Thanks for the feedback (on something that isn't story)!