Hello, everyone! I hope you’re all ready to spend some time with the Wonderbolts—we’ve got a small series of speedwrites coming at you over the next three weeks, hopefully to help you all generate some ideas for our very exciting sitewide contest!

To kick everything off, join us at 3:00 PM, EST, on Saturday April 6, 2024 for the open-ended Wonderbolts Contest. Anything Wonderbolts goes: past, present, and future members, happenings at airshows and derbies, the secret lives of fans, drama amongst cadets… be creative!!

For those of you who might be new to Quills and Sofas, I’ll give a quick run-down of how it’s going to work:

Joining the Discord

First things first, we run our speedwrites through Discord. This has been the source of some confusion—any information in this group referencing Reddit is outdated. All you need is a Discord account and a Google Docs account you don’t mind using publicly. Many of our members have a horse-only gmail that matches their Discord handle and/or FimFic account name! This makes things extra easy on the contest organizers, but it isn’t a requirement.

After you join the Discord, take some time to review the rules (we have a very conveniently-labeled channel for this). If you’re apprehensive about the process, that’s okay! You can see what participating in a contest entails in the following sections.

Prompts

Quills and Sofas uses a dual-prompt system to ensure everyone plays by the rules: speedwrites have both a theme (in this case, Wonderbolts) and an additional prompt or prompts (to be revealed shortly before the contest starts). This method makes it pretty easy to verify that participants are only writing during the allotted time, keeping things fair and square across the board.

From now until 2:00 PM, EST, on Saturday April 6, 2024 (one hour before writing begins), anyone in the server may submit an additional prompt to a public thread. Prompts are typically single words or very short phrases that can be used/interpreted in a number of ways—for example, “slowpoke” or “uniform”. You can submit a prompt even if you don’t participate, and you can participate without submitting a prompt! One hour before writing begins, I will randomly select two of the submitted prompts. You must incorporate at least one of the prompts into your entry. It doesn’t have to be explicitly stated—this is just how we ensure that participants are only writing during the given contest period.

Writing

The writing period lasts 1 hour and 15 minutes, meaning entries are due in at 4:15 PM, EST, on Saturday April 6, 2024 with a small grace period. Many people choose to use the first hour for writing and the final 15 minutes for editing, but you are welcome to use the allotted time however you wish!

This series of Quills and Sofas speedwrites will only accept PG-13 content. Otherwise, you are free to write whatever you wish! Most people write traditional prose, but we have also had script entries, poetry entries, and otherwise experimental pieces that have performed quite well. As long as you stick within the rating guidelines, you can feel free to go nuts!

Commenting

After all entries are submitted, I will review the total wordcount and announce a reading period, usually about a week. During this time all contest participants are required to leave thoughtful, significant comments on their fellow participants’ entries. These comments may include constructive criticism, but should be mostly positive/supportive. Good sportsmanship is important, both here and in the Wonderbolts ^^ If you do not complete the mandatory commenting, your story will be disqualified.

Voting

If you do complete commenting, your story will go up for voting. We use an anonymous ranked-choice voting system—each person who completed commenting will rank the stories they read against each other from most favorite to least favorite. The contest runner (in this case, me) does some math behind the scenes and announces the winners! We usually announce a top-three bracket, but this may be more or less depending on the turnout.

What do I get for participating? What do I get if I win?

Great questions!

General disclaimer: the outcomes of the speedwriting contests have no effect on the outcome of the sitewide contests. You will not get special consideration for participating in a speedwriting contest. Additionally, the judges in the sitewide contest are prohibited from participating in the contests in any form. This means, even though I am managing the speedwrite, I will not be writing for it. I also will not be commenting on entries or voting on the outcome.

What do you get for participating? 

First of all, you get a chance to brainstorm and road test some ideas! Participating means you will get feedback from every other participant—this is an awesome opportunity to “beta test” concepts that you might want to eventually turn into an entry into the sitewide contest.

Second, for every person who completes all of the above steps (writes a story that meets the prompts, comments on everyone else’s story, and votes in the contest outcome), $3 (USD) will be added to the sitewide contest’s prize pool. Wahoo!

What do you get if you win?

Nothin :) just the knowledge that you wrote a great story!

FAQ

I’ll update this section with any additional information necessary.

Sound like a good time? Don’t hesitate to join our server! We’re a friendly bunch. A big reason we’re running the sitewide contest is to find some new folks interested in speedwriting, so you will certainly receive a warm and excited welcome!

Still not sure about all this? Reply to this thread with any questions you still have! I am more than happy to help out.