User blog:DogwoodFlowers/hearts, stars, and horseshoes

, clovers and blue moons! hourglasses, rainbows, and tasty red balloons!

ok, lucky charms aside, there's gonna be two things i'm discussing in this blog. also i know this is my third blog this month, but in my defense the other two were both for the benefit of the wiki and i've already asked firey to delete one of them

WFWA (Warriors Fanfiction Wiki Awards)
I'm hosting this year's hopefully-annual WFWA during summer (June-July, probably), but I  do not plan on utilizing the official page for WFWA. Why? There's the big problem of "nominate a story, then throw votes at it" that I see when observing the talk. Not everyone gets noticed, only those who've read a story. Plus, my plans work in an entirely different way, so I'm going to explain them to you and get some responses on how they could be improved, or if the workings of the original page would be better.

My biggest problem with the Fanfiction Awards page is that stories with more readers are more likely to be voted for. After observing the talk, it alarmed me that some stories didn't have any votes at all, while stories from popular users had votes- and a lot of them.

My goal with the awards is for users to showcase what they feel is their best story and get (hopefully) an award along with that.

Plans go like this:

-Users can submit one story for up to 3 categories

-To enter, users MUST leave a constructive comment on 2 stories  (or 3, it'll be summer so I'm hoping people will have more time to commment)   from someone they do not know, or barely know, especially if the story has no comments/few comments

-Categories will be based on quality, not genre unlike the original page. Categories will be like "Best Overall Story", "Best Protagonist", "Best Antagonist", "Best Hero", "Best Villain", "Best Concept", "Best Potential (Unfinished Story)", "Best Ship", "Best Cliche-Kicker", etc. (these are coming right off the top of my head guys)

-There will be a team of judges. Judges cannot submit a story. These judges will narrow down a winner and a runner-up for each category. I'm willing to judge everything myself, though a team would make it a lot easier (I think I've already recruited Fox and Pumpkin, and maayybee Bird or Blazey?)

-minor detail: It's probably gonna be on a blog

Personally, I consider this plan a lot better than the first WFWA, because that one is more of a voting thing, popularity can affect votes, and it's focused less on quality than what I'm proposing. If you want to suggest ideas to make this year's WFWA better, please let me know! And if you want to do the other version, also let me know and present your reasons why.

Short Story Contest
(firey if you're reading this i'm so so sorry i don't have your contest prize done yet, april was a super busy month for me, and i was set back this weekend bc i draw digitally and my computer was having issues. i'll get it done this weekend!)

Before anyone reacts, I am NOT making this a monthly thing, and was actually going to save the contest for summer so as to not burden the wiki. But I decided against it because I want writers to grow. I've noticed that this wiki lacks practice in short stories, even some of our best writers. For example, I originally wanted a short story for my previous contest, yet most writers took a more novel-esque approach. Perfectly fine, and great stories came out of it, but it really showed how unpracticed this wiki is with short stories. One person even wrote what was essentially a Wikipedia plot summary of a novel. No hate; everyone's at a different point on the path of writing!

This contest will be to write a 1,000 word or less short story. I will make exceptions if you're just barely over the maximum word count, but that's as easy as I'm going on you. In my experience, this should only take you a day/a few hours to write, and the only things following that will probably be obsessive grammar edits. You can write any type of short story. Quick tip: tragedy fits really, really well into a short story like this. Take a single scene and blow it up. Also, it's easier to write when inspired, so here's your quote-prompt:

"If I could, I would spend my nine lives to save yours."

You don't have to use this prompt if you have another idea you want to write! Your deadline is June 1st; 1,000- word stories are super quick to write.

Prizes: All winners will get a cat headshot from me! (I don't want to suddenly be busy again and not be able to draw things.) Prizes subject to being upgraded!

Mkay guys, Dogwood out, please comment if you're joining the contest or if you have ideas about WFWA.