Good morning my fellow monster mare enthusiasts, first I must apologize for forgetting to post this yesterday. However, fear not for today we shall disclose the winners of the 1st Monster Mare Story Contest.

We shall start with the ranking and their prizes. The winners were determined by both the judges, Lunar Flarion and Kydois.

Winners:

1. TBeneath the Surface

   • MLP: FiM
   • Romance
   • Sad
   • Tragedy

   Something is living in Sasamare Lake...and Rough Sketch is about to discover what it is

   • Death
   • Suicide / Self Harm
   • OC

   MisterEdd · 8k words  ·  12  2 · 474 views

   by MisterEdd - 1st Place: An Art Commission from Lunar Flarion along with a digital art piece of your monster mare OC by Grim_Grin.

2. TThe Shroomlock Holmes of Monster Mares

   • MLP: FiM
   • Comedy
   • Mystery

   A monster mare mystery story. Featuring a pony that's a mushroom.

   • Sex
   • Alt. Universe
   • Twilight
   • OC

   Amereep · 8k words  ·  20  1 · 555 views

   by Amereep - 2nd Place: A water color and color pencil drawing of your monster mare OC by Grim_Grin.

3. ESchneller Geist: The Demon of Hollow Shades

   • MLP: FiM
   • Drama

   A long-forgotten creature slouches towards Hollow Shade, hunger driving it closer to civilization once more. May Luna help its inhabitants, for Celestia cannot.

   • Alt. Universe
   • OC
   • Bat Pony

   Shrouded Lunes · 3.6k words · 421 views

   by Shrouded Lunes - 3rd Place: A Pencil drawing of your monster mare OC by Grim_Grin.

Now for all of you who are interested, Kydois did tell me that they are willing to discuss and give their personal thoughts on the stories submitted either in the comments or PM.

I would like to thank all of you who participated. I am hoping to do another contest for this group in the future, however it might be a while. Of course, if anyone has a suggestion for the theme of the next contest, feel free to offer it here as well.

Thank you all for coming and I hope you all have a good weekend.

Wow... I am honored. Deeply so. Thank you, judges. Schneller Geist was a blast to write, and knowing it was enjoyed enough to warrant third place just makes my day. Not sure how I'm gonna get myself to fall asleep now.

Also, a big congrats to MisterEdd and Amereep on your 1st and 2nd place wins. Definitely well deserved.

Just speaking for myself, I would love to have the judges feedback on my story, in the hopes of continuing to improve my own writing. Public in a comment or via PM, doesn't bother me either way. Whichever they are more comfortable with.

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Well I can't say I'm suprised because they are awesome stories but I can't help but feel like I came in last

6899062 Don't worry, I can understand that feeling (especially when Equestria Daily refuses to post any of my stories). Please don't let it prevent you from writing stories and working hard. Use it as a stepping stone instead.

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The only thing stopping me from writing is the fact that I need a new keyboard

Woot!

Congratulations, Mister. Reep Lunes!

I'd love thoughts on mine as well, I agree that this was a super fun contest!

One thought I did have for a theme for the next contest was that perhaps the judges and myself would find images of monster mares that would like to see stories written about and then give a random image to the contestants to build a story around (or rather to serve as inspiration for the story).

I won? I won! Oh my goodness, thank you all! Thank you so much!

Figured I might as well post this. These are just my quick thoughts and justifications for the winners we chose!

Beneath the Surface by MisterEdd

Beneath the Surface does extremely well in multiple regards. There’s a sense of time and development across the multiple little scenes, which made the story much more real and believable. Strong writing fundamentals with a good sense of when to show and when to tell made for very smooth reading, and strong characterization in how they acted and how they spoke allowed me to get invested with the characters and made the ending feel much more poignant, and I have to applaud the tightness of the story in focusing just on Rough and Sassie and really bringing their personalities out.

My biggest gripe was that the accent may have been a little too strong. It did add to Sassie’s personality to include a little flair, but I had to go back a couple times to try and parse through what was said. There were also a few moments where it felt a little too tell-y, but most of the story’s flaws were very minor and did little to impact my overall enjoyment of the plot itself. It’s a fantastic story, and it very much deserves recognition for being a well-written and compelling tale despite the limitations of the contest.

The Shroomlock Holmes of Monster Mares by Amereep

The Shroomlock Holmes of Monster Mares does very well in both building the world and characterizing the myriad of characters presented. Each felt unique and distinct and had their own desires and personality quirks. The plot itself was well thought-out and the trail of logic made plenty of sense towards the end of the story. I still got the feeling that being a mushroom pony didn’t really contribute much to the plot besides a sort of justification for his personality and a running gag, but it still played into the story well.

Unfortunately, the story has a number of grammatical errors with a few run-on sentences here and there, minor spelling errors, and a few words that aren’t used correctly or words that don’t exist, such as “sincereful.” In addition, the alternate font is a little hard to read, being about half the height of the words that I usually skim through, and I would personally try to avoid semicolons in fiction writing. Still, despite the issues, there’s a great, well-planned story under here and an interesting world beyond, placing it into a solid second place.

Also, I thought “tweetheart” was incredibly cute. Don’t sue me.

Schneller Geist: The Demon of Hollow Shades by Shrouded Lunes

Schneller Geist was very well written, and the pacing was done fantastically. Proper grammar made reading smooth, and I appreciated all the little tidbits, like actions during dialogue, that made the world feel alive. There was a good distribution of show versus tell with plenty of showing in the right places. There’s excellent characterization of all characters, and I do have to note the wonderful characterization of the monster mare through the eyes of Veiled. Even the character introduced at the end was characterized indirectly by drawing parallels to Cloaked.

The introduction felt a little off, but beyond that, the only thing I wasn’t too sure if I liked was the children being somewhat characterized before never being very relevant through the rest of the story. Being a sort of side-quel to another story may have contributed a little to the unusual emphasis on certain ultimately unimportant characters, but it didn’t detract heavily from my reading enjoyment. It was a strong showing with few problems, only being beaten out due to a slightly less compelling story than the other two stories.

Of course, like Robi mentioned, I'm open to conversing and explaining my thoughts further about any of the submissions if requested!

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Congratulations to all the winners. This was fun! I hope there are more of these in the future.

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Robipony: One thought I did have for a theme for the next contest was that perhaps the judges and myself would find images of monster mares that would like to see stories written about and then give a random image to the contestants to build a story around (or rather to serve as inspiration for the story).

I like that idea... a lot. I did something similar when I was in high school. My school was small, so we had grades 1-12 all in one building. in our English class, we highschoolers were given little images of different characters like dogs, robots, a tug boat and more and we had to write a story for the grade schoolers (2-5 grade if I remember right).

I chose a gangly wizard in a red robe who's large, pointy hat hung in front of his eyes as he cast magic. It was supposed to be a short story and we had a week to work on it... By day 4 I had over eighty pages worth and I wasn't even halfway done. On the fifth day I proudly showed my teacher what I had done so far, she gawked at the page and word count, then went and told me I had to cut it down to two pages. In my depression, I ended up deleting the whole. FRICKEN! THING! I have never never been so filled with rage and depression at my own stupidity since. Ended up putting a dent in my fridge with my forehead from banging my head so hard that is still there to this day to remind me how stupid I was.

You live and you learn I guess.

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Sounds like a fun idea!

Congrats to all the winners!

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Thank you so much for that review. I know the accent was strong and I actually had to rewrite it to make it more understandable.

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6899799 Well, then maybe in the future we will run it for a contest. However, I think I will give our current judges a break, assuming they would like to judge the next contest as well. Would also need to find some prizes for it too.

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Unfortunately, the story has a number of grammatical errors with a few run-on sentences here and there, minor spelling errors, and a few words that aren’t used correctly or words that don’t exist, such as “sincereful.”

I'll admit, my greatest weakness is proper grammar. Spelling, semicolons, commas, all of them I suffer from. I was never really a literature kind of person. I'm the kind of guy that gets more out of watching rather than reading, so I tend to rely on gut feelings, google dictionary, educated guesses, and examples I can compare when it comes to grammar.

But thank you for the review. I wrote it mainly for the publicity, but a watercolor image of Truffles might be more appealing than the cover image I made.

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I'm not the best Artist, so couldn't offer art.

But I could offer an array of various incentives as a prizes.

A.k.a ~ Gift Cards.

Google Play, ITunes, Amazon, Steam etc.

I could get a $20, $15 and $10 , for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.

Or if preferable I could just send monies via PayPal.

If ever interested just let me know, I could help out that way.

Not as nice as art but something.

I just thought I would ask and see how everyone is doing. I assume that our winners either have received or are in the process of receiving their prizes. Right?