Beginnings (writing competition)
"Beginnings" is the title of the first MinecraftOnline writing competition.
The deadline has been extended to midnight on Thursday, 4 August 2011, BST. All entries will be published on the 5th, and judged by the MinecraftOnline admins and moderators.
Theme
The theme of this competition is "Beginnings".
The 4th of August is the anniversary of the creation of MinecraftOnline, so the day on which these entries are judged will be the day Freedonia is a year old. To celebrate this, we are inviting submissions on the theme of "beginnings". Perhaps your entry could encompass an event which would be celebrated with an anniversary in future years; or perhaps it can be on the subject of the start of something.
Some possible ideas that have been suggested include Freedonia creation myths; foundations of cities; memories of your first days in Freedonia; admin accidents; famous battles; the rise of organisations, or the formation of fellowships.
Entry criteria
These are criteria that must be met; any entries not adhering to these requirements will be disqualified from entry and will not be brought before the judges.
Word count
- Maximum word count: 2000 words.
- Minimum word count: 500 words.
English language
MinecraftOnline is a primarily English-speaking server, so all qualifying entries must be in English.
American, Australian or British English are equally acceptable, and no prejudice will be allowed in judging. However, consistency is mandatory - for instance, you may not mix "color" and "colour" in the same story, unless this is plot element.
Grammar and spelling
All qualifying entries are expected to have correct spelling and acceptable grammar.
Correctness of spelling will be verified by both British and American English dictionaries. Technical terms, memes, Minecraft-specific terms, slang and abbreviations will be permitted if appropriate in context.
Grammar will be judged subjectively, and assumed acceptable unless any judge raises a specific objection. Appropriate use of slang, dialect, memes etc will not constitute legitimate grounds for objection.
Minimum standard of relevance
All qualifying entries must be about MinecraftOnline and Freedonia specifically; they may not be generic Minecraft stories, or unrelated fiction or non-fiction. No entries will be accepted that feature exclusively fiction or non-fiction accounts of real-life events surrounding MinecraftOnline members without reference to the in-game world; entries are expected to be set in or connected to Freedonia.
Judging
Entries are accepted anonymously, and judged by the MinecraftOnline staff; all active admins and moderators are invited to vote online, and their votes will be formally recorded. Individual votes will not be published to protect the judges' privacy; only the final breakdown score in each of the four categories will be published. However, admins will check over the submitted scores to ensure there is no favouritism, and votes considered extreme (10 out of 10, or 1 out of 10 for all categories, for example) will be questioned; the relevant judge will need to justify their decision in this case, in order for their vote to be counted.
Only the title and content of the submission will be announced to the judges - it is permitted to identify yourself in your entry, but not required, and judges will not be given any additional information about the author of an entry in order to avoid prejudice.
Judging will take place via the control panel, with a special application written for the purpose, so anonymised votes can be collected.
Judging categories
Entries are judged on a scale of 1 to 10 in four distinct categories:
Overall
This is the overall impression the story left, or a direct measure of how much the judge liked it. It encompasses general quality, originality, as well as any considerations under each of the other three categories that each judge deems relevant, with the exception of humour.
Style
This is a measure of the entry's quality of writing style, and literary talent exhibited. It encompasses diction, intelligent use of similes and metaphors, poetic intent, page layout and presentation, and anything else each judge deems relevant to the category.
While layout, spacing etc are encompassed in this category, it explicitly does not encompass font selection and illustrations (if a document was submitted in anything other than plain text).
Relevance
There is a minimum relevance criterion for entry, so this category's judging takes that into account; a 1 for relevance is equivalent to meeting the bare minimum relevance criteria (submission set in Freedonia). Aspects considered in this category include references to existing places and players in Freedonia, past events and likely future events, accurate portrayals of player personalities and the believability of any fictional elements in the context of MinecraftOnline.
Humour
Humour is not mandatory for submissions, and serious submissions will be just as likely to be judged highly overall; however, skilful comedy is worthy of reward in this specific category. Judges should consider how witty and genuinely funny they find a given entry, and discount desperate attempts at slapstick or juvenile humour. As such, a witty humorous entry may score more highly in this category than an equivalent entirely serious entry, but it is better to write a serious entry than a poor attempt at comedy with regard to the overall category.
Prizes
One winner will be chosen overall, and will receive a donation kit level upgrade - i.e. wood -> stone, gold -> diamond etc, all the way up to the elusive rumoured god kit.
Three runners up will also be selected, each winning a stack of diamonds, gold and iron respectively.
An honorary mention will also be made for a winner in each auxiliary judging category - Style, Relevance and Humour, for which there will be some small additional prizes.
Wiki upload
Once the deadline for entry submission has passed, all qualifying entries will be posted on this wiki, in Category:Writing_competitions.
We ask that authors do not submit their entries or any portion thereof to the wiki before this date, as it gives your competitors an advantage, and has a possibility of unbalancing the judging process.
Illustration
Writers are invited to submit illustration alongside their story - either stock images, or in-game screenshots, or original art. Entries will not be judged on the merit of these accompanying illustrations; however, they will be uploaded to the wiki and included in the wiki page created for the entry to illustrate the story.
There is no requirement to submit illustrations, and so no minimum number. We ask that you do not include more than ten images with your entry, due to space considerations.
Craftbook upload
All qualifying entries will also be formatted as Craftbook books, and will be readable in-game from any bookshelves with the appropriate sign placed on the back of it.
Submission
Submissions are accepted by email, to admin at minecraftonline dot com. Please put "Writing contest submission" in the subject.
Submissions can be accepted in plain text in the email body, or as an attachment in plain text, rtf, doc, docx or odf format, or plain text with standard mediawiki markup. Other formats may be accepted if it is possible to extract raw text from them; PDF submissions are not recommended but will also be accepted if plain text (not vector forms or bitmap letters) is used.
All entries should have a title; if one is not provided, an entry will be referred to as Untitled #<number>.