It’s that time of the year again and Secret Santa is back for some hot Christmas writing action.
Except Santa is sick this year. Oh no. But luckily for us Satan was so kind to jump in as a replacement.
Oh no!
And Satan being who he is decided to add a bit of chaos to the Secret Satan, more than usual. Specifically, this means every participant will provide three tags and all tags from all participants will be shuffled together and then redistributed at random. So you are very likely to get tags from three different authors to write your story around.
Sound like fun? If it does, please sign-up using the following form:
Now, sign-ups will run until (including) the weekend, November 27th. In the three days after that I will distribute the tags and send everyone their tags, so everyone can start writing starting December 1st.
Deadline for the stories would be 24th.
I signed up so I’m in it either way, but how does this work exactly? We write the story with out (randomly) assigned tags, and then they get sent to someone at random? Last year, my understanding is you’d request a story with a synopsis or tags, and then you’d get that story sent to you. Will I be getting a story with arbitrary tags sent to me? Or are they just going into a pool of stories for the website? Just interested on how this plays out.
Last year you picked two tags and someone wrote a story based on them, they all went into a pool of stories, we didn’t know who requested them until the writing challenge was over.
This year works the same way, but instead of an author getting two tags from one person, they get 1 tag each from three people and have to fit them all together.
Alright, sign-ups have ended. We have 28 participants. That’s 3 more than last year.
In the next three days, I will shuffle the tags, and then send everyone their tags, either via forum or via PM.
I mean Satan will shuffle the tags. Haha, whoops.
Anyway, for those for whomst’ve it is the first rodeo, once you got your tags, you can start writing. The deadline is December 24th. You post your stories to GSS normally, but give it the Secret Santa tag.
Remember, you can add more to the story tag-wise than just the ones you received. In the spirit of the challenge try to keep the received tags central, but feel free to add whatever you think makes the story more enjoyable.
I was not able to reach two people:
TandySensation, I was not able to find either your GSS forum handle nor your discord handle (I assume you’re not on the GSS discord server? In that case I can’t directly message you on discord. Please try to reach me through either means to receive your tags.
Curt_T, I was able to find you, don’t worry, but unfortunately I reached the daily limit for PMs on the forum. Unless one of the mods finds a way around that, you will receive your tags tomorrow.
Everyone else should have gotten their tags either on the GSS forum or on discord. I had to message some people on discord despite them having provided a GSS forum handle, because as I mentioned above, I reached the daily PM limit on the forum. If you haven’t received your tags yet, please contact me.
I suggest that, if it’s not too much work, we reveal who suggested the tags, so people who put their stories out there can let the people who requested them know. That way there’s a bit of “gift” happening among all the chaos. Otherwise, it’d be easy to miss what happened to our tags when they became stories.
The idea was to reveal everything once all the stories are in. One person has voiced their opinion on the discord (in the Secret Santa 2022 channel) to reveal it earlier. If you’d like, you can chime in there and get a discussion going. It’s difficult to tell how many people want that and I don’t want to change the process because one person has an opinion and no one else cares enough to reply. (Not a critique, but you know, it’s always how it goes, haha.)
Oh, eventually is fine. It’s kind of nice to call out the individuals when you publish a story, but it’s also fine to wait. Glad there’s a process for it!
So a shout-out once the deadline has come? Like we stand around chatting about all the entries; the tags; we have pretend wine and cheese and do an RP book signing. Sounds like fun.
My story is already up and done, but with practically zero reads.
It’s kinda just chillin’ on Cupid (with it’s genderqueer and lesbian tags).
The things left for me to do is;
See if we’re perhaps all reading/rating/commenting on each other’s stories (Yes/no/some etc). Also, seeing who ended up with my tags. If I remember correctly I submitted fair, broad tags that more or less some up ‘my vibe’. I don’t think I especially submitted curveballs but then I guess anything can be a curve ball if it’s not in your wheelhouse; ‘feminization’ was the worst possible curve ball I could have got probably.
Happily, my memory is so terrible that I can’t remember the precise tags I submitted anyways, so I get to look forward to being reminded.
At some point, perhaps a few weeks after the deadline and general hoo-haa about the challenge and since my story is an additional chapter of a series I already had going, I will delete the “catch-up character sheet” at the beginning of my challenge entry. Perhaps I’ll leave the tag/challenge section as it is and just cut the character summaries.
It’s already integrated, thanks to Martin’s awesome interactive work. But integrated without a Part I/Part II spoiler catch-up sheet at the beginning of it!
I like the idea of a cheeky little #tag1“from[author]” for each tag.
I think it won’t make much difference to the story/work, but it will be amusing to talk about in a kind of
“ha ha you bastard!! I hated that tag!” or " I should have guessed!"
Like, part of the fun will be seeing who your Santa was. Straight up.
Okay, we’re still missing 9 stories, but I talked to most of them, and pretty much everyone says they only need a couple more days. Let’s extend the deadline to the 27th and see how far everyone is then.
Alright, all missing stories are accounted for. The authors who have vanished off the face of the earth have their tags given to emergency writers. Let’s try to get everything in by the end of the week. Thanks everyone.
you bastard!! I hated that tag!” or " 
I should have guessed!"