Hello folks.

I've recently announced a contest here. The rules for it were based off of the original Write an Episode challenge, albeit with restrictions on content lifted to make it a bit more interesting.

I'd recommend you check it out! A concise version has been posted here to let you know the rules.

This contest is therefore all about pacing. You may think it’s boring and tedious, but hey, I do what I want. This is going to be a contest with strict word limits and where you’ll have to make sure you have breaks at the right spots. Let’s get into it.

Rules

There’s no prompt for you to follow, but there are rules. 

• The story must be no less than 6500 words long and no more than 8500 words long.
• The story must contain three breaks (either by using a horizontal rule or by breaking the story into chapters) to emulate the 3 act structure and intro/commercial breaks present in the show. The first must be placed 400-600 words from the beginning of the story, the second must be placed 2000-3000 words from the beginning of the story, and the final break must be placed 4500-5500 words from the beginning of the story.
• The story can have any rating. Yes, that includes Mature rated stories. 
• Stories must be submitted to the relevant folder on the WaE challenge group (which this contest was derived from). A link to the folder is here. Alternatively, PM me a link to the story and I'll put it there myself.

Confused? Feel free to ask any questions to me and I’ll clear them up as best as I can. An example story that follows these guidelines can be found here (written by me) if needed. 

Deadlines

• The story must have been published on Fimfiction after the 12th of September. Stories published before then will not be considered.
• The story must be submitted before the 31st of October, 11:59PM, GMT-13 (Alofi). Once the world enters into the 1st of November, it is too late.

Prizes

3rd Place: £25
2nd Place: £50
1st Place: £100

7327153 Can a "section" of an "episode" be split into multiple chapters?

7328510 Yes, so long as there is a section break at the specified locations (or more) it doesn't matter whether there are more section breaks throughout the story.

7328538
Also, what are the minimum and maximum word lengths of each "act"?

7329957 I'm glad you asked! It's actually a rather complicated question. With regards to word lengths, the instructions are written here:

• The story must contain three breaks (either by using a horizontal rule or by breaking the story into chapters) to emulate the 3 act structure and intro/commercial breaks present in the show. The first must be placed 400-600 words from the beginning of the story, the second must be placed 2000-3000 words from the beginning of the story, and the final break must be placed 4500-5500 words from the beginning of the story.

These breaks, be they horizontal rules or separate chapters, are the hard limits you need to work with and the only hard word counts you need to worry about. In a sense, your first act can be 5000 words long (but it'd be a bad idea) so long as, when I read through the story and count the words (and I will be counting the words) there are breaks at these locations. This is the most important thing.

These represent the necessary breaks between scenes in an MLP episode where you'd see the show intro and two commercial breaks respectively, but they are also used to help pace the episode. In a typical MLP episode, the first act will end before the first commercial break, so in terms of this contest, before the break between 2000-3000 words from the beginning of the story. The second act will often end a bit after the second commercial break, so a little bit after the break at 4500-5500 words from the beginning of the episode. However, these can vary. I will not penalise a story for having a particularly long third act, for example, though obviously this would affect how the story reads and overly emphasising one act over the others may unbalance your story.

There are no set words limits for act lengths, however. I must stress that the only hard word limits to adhere to are the ones indicated in the rules listed above relating to the minimum and maximum length of the story and the location of the breaks throughout.

I apologise for this being a long-winded answer. Does it, at least, help you?