So I'm Like Gandalf But With Challenges

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Hello to my fellow literary icons,

I’m excited to announce and formally introduce myself as GKS’ new Challenge Manager! ^woop woop^

For those of you I haven’t met, I am Asisasio, I go by Asis, and I have been lurking on GSS for over 10 years now - although I believe I only registered an account at a later point.

I’ve always really enjoyed what the challenges bring to the site, they’re one of the best ways to get people writing, experimenting, and sharing ideas with each other. I know I have big shoes to step into with Nu, and I hope I can make them and Corin proud and contribute positively to this incredible community we have here.

First off, I want to say that I really appreciate the work that’s already gone into past challenges. The incredible creativity of the prompts coupled with the freedom to interpret them in your own way is something I definitely want to replicate and carry on as part of the legacy of these challenges.

At the same time, I’d love to explore a few new twists on the format to keep things feeling fresh, give people different ways to participate, and put my own unique mark on the sacred institution.

So my pitch, to add that unique fresh twist, is to have an annual challenge that doesn’t necessarily focus on a theme - but instead a mechanism that changes up the criterion itself. As I am hoping to run three total challenges a year, this special challenge would be called the Triennial Trial!

An example of a Triennial Trial challenge could be:

  • A challenge based around targeting a specific emotional response from the reader (heart-wrenchers, tearjerkers, walk-makers etc.) and rating based off how well the author was able to bring forward that emotion in the reader.
  • A team-based challenge in which experienced authors are teamed with creative readers who write their idea with the mentorship of the experienced author (ideally passing on the literary skillset to incredible potential authors in our ranks).
  • Other formats that shake things up a bit while still keeping the spirit of the challenges intact (please pitch your Triennial Trial ideas!)

I’m also a big fan of having the community involved in shaping challenges where possible, so I’d really love to hear from you:

  • What kinds of challenges have you enjoyed the most in the past?
  • Are there any ideas or formats you’ve always wanted to see?
  • What would make you more likely to participate in a challenge (as an author or as a reader)?

With your incredible feedback I can ensure our challenges fulfil their purpose of keeping our community enthusiastic and engaged, so feel free to DM me if you’d like to pitch anything behind the scenes or just want to have a one-on-one :smiley: .

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I applaud you for stepping up to take on the challenges, but I do need to raise that JK Rowling references are a bit of a trigger point for me due to her anti-trans stances and the way that I’ve seen it impacte some of my friends.

Would it be possible to name these challenges in a way that doesn’t reference her work?

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Thanks for taking the proverbial helm of story challenges. I think they add to the creativity and energy of the site. I wish you well in your work.

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I’m averse to group work because I was always the one left doing it in school, alone. I do think pairing up a writer with fan(s) to come up with a story could be interesting, though. I also have enjoyed the Halloween challenge but it’s getting a bit old. What if you did a different holiday, especially not one that’s Western culture nor Judeo-Christian?

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Ah this is a very good point - I can confirm I originally wanted to call them Quarter Quells in reference to a much more talented writer and intriguing book series, but it wouldn’t have made much sense with only 3 challenges a year!

I genuinely was sitting on this post going “hmm Triad Twist? no no thats stupid! Third Trouble? gosh what am I thinking!” haha. However after doing essentially the exact same thing in writing this response, I’ve come up with a good alternative - how does Triennial Trial:trade_mark: sound?

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I agree, the halloween challenge may be getting a bit old. Personally, I’m Australian so my connection to the holiday (despite being from a western predominantly Judeo-Christian country) is far looser than those of our American colleagues. It’s not really a big thing here, but I also understand why its themes make a great literary context point for the kind of stories published on our sites.

What other holidays do you think would make a great challenge theme?

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I’m saddened to hear people think the halloween contest is getting stale, it is always the one i look forward to the most. It’s become a tradition, and as discussed above it is the holiday that aligns most with the themes of GKS, transformation and hypnosis definitely lean themselves in a horror direction.

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Unless there’s a technical reason for not having two challenges open at once, it’d be perfectly sensible to detach the Halloween challenge from the three-per-year cycle, and just have an ad hoc event.

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Technically, it’s possible to have any number of challenges running simultaneously. The only challenge (um… besides writing a good story… :wink: ) is to select the proper challenge when submitting the story. Usually, there’s only one challenge at any given time, so this is normally not an issue, but if there are two or more running at the same time, you have to make a conscious choice there.

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So my idea is instead of pairing authors to fans could be to do a challenge where the authors pick one of their favorite series or stories that never got continued or finished and they decide to continue it themselves. I think it would be really entertaining for them to put their own spin on another author’s unfinished work. Even the fans could participate by providing a list of some of their favorite unfinished stories before the challenge starts but it would be a really creative and completely different and new type of challenge where authors would have to possibly go a little outside of their normal comfort zone to continue a dead and unfinished series in the same style and original theme as the first author.

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Not a technical reason, there is always a large increase in stories being written during challenges. The small volunteer approval team try our hardest to stay on top of the stories being published.

Also, I could see running concurrent challenges may water down both (given it takes time to write stories, it’s not usually something authors produce overnight)

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Sounds good to my ears.

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I agree, I’m from across the Ditch (New Zealand) and I’ve always found the love for Halloween a strange one. I was thinking that this challenge should be moved once every two years to keep it fresh.

Not strictly speaking a holiday (and funny that it’s also an American thing), I think Summer Break or something similar would work well as a wide theme.

We just had a blood moon/lunar eclipse here in the Pacific, could try to time a challenge with a future astrological event? Horoscopes/Astrology ?

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I say just go for it, there’s nothing to lose. If it goes great, fantastic, if the feedback isn’t great then it’s a lesson. It doesnt have to be perfect, just follow your plan and see where it goes. :orange_heart:

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Part of the reason for the Halloween challenge staying the same is that it doesn’t take creativity on the part of those setting the challenge.

If you are unsure as to what approach to take then the wisdom of discarding the challenge that takes the least effort to prepare should be taken into consideration.

That being said, you are in charge of the contests so you do not need any more justification to set one going than you want to run a contest. You do not have to wait until August to run a contest themed around sex toys just because the original name for August was Sextilis; even if you want to make a pun around that.

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Other holidays to consider – Saturnalia, Fool’s Day, Beltane, any equinox or solstice.

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To be clear: My statement about the Halloween challenge getting stale is my opinion and my opinion only (though it sounds like one or two other folks agree). But that said, this website is (obviously) not just in the US, while I think Halloween is primarily a US thing. There are plenty of major holidays in other cultures that could use tropes common to this site. Día de los muertos is one. There are solstice holidays in many cultures, Diwali is celebrated by hundreds of millions (billions?) of people around the world, different cultural New Year’s (such as Chinese), lunar-calendar related things (old gods vs new gods if someone wanted to go for an American Gods angle), etc. Or, simply run a poll: List maybe 10 major holidays around the world – including Halloween – and have people vote for their favorite and that’s the holiday challenge for that year (provided it’s at least 4–6 weeks away).

Separately, with @Ragnarok’s suggestion, there now are three different proposals for pairing authors with fans to collaborate on a story, so it seems like that basic idea – if not the exact implementation – could be popular.

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What if I told you something very similar to that is in the works as a new annual challenge - watch this space as there will be more to come :eyes: .

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That’s an important consideration to keep in mind - which I will. I don’t think I will run challenges concurrently, unless it’s a set of mini challenges that form part of the larger challenge.

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Perfect! The changes have been made. I wanted to use the strikethrough format to show that the name had been changed as part of a constructive feedback process, however that doesn’t appear to be an option on forum posts/editing - but I also wanted to make it clear I didn’t make the edits to the post to cover up my error and pretend it never happened, I own my mistakes.

So let it be known that I, AsisAsio, was so focussed on a term that rolled off the tongue that I didn’t consider any other relevant factors in the selection or reference of that term, and as a result caused avoidable hurt. I apologise and hope you know I take this as a learning opportunity.

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