Weekly Contests to Reward Fiction Writers

Fiction: An Untapped Source of Creativity

There has been a lot of great content published on Steemit since its inception talking about bitcoin, steem, anarchy, and so many other fascinating topics. We even have an incredible community of people taking beautiful photographs. We love that little communities are beginning to coalesce around topics of interest to Steemians.

However, as of now, the fiction community appears as but a small archipelago, with barely a boat to row between the islands. Sure, there are some stories that get to the top, but truthfully, it’s like a drizzle, and we want to see a flood of amazing fiction. We believe that there are a lot of fiction writers who are not being discovered.

We want to change that by building bridges.

@steemwriters is an account created by @complexring, @pseudonymwriter, and @jedau. The goals of this account are twofold. The first—and minor goal—is to upvote fiction content that we find throughout the site that is enjoyable.

The second—and more important one—is to start a weekly contest built around a concept that @complexring presented a few weeks ago called Descriptions on the Spot. Initially, a Description on the Spot was a short-story, poem, or page based on a single word.

Over the past few days, @pseudonymwriter and many other writers have picked up the pen and made a few dents in the bounties, but plenty of other words remain felonious!

A Grand Voyage

We’re building a boat and sailing to #photography from our small #fiction island nation. We know this land is populated with fun and creative people, and we propose a mutually beneficial relationship.

You give permission for aspiring writers to use one of your great photographs as a bounty by tagging the post with #descriptionsonthespot. Your art serves as a muse so that our island can hone our own skills and write stories inspired by your work.

@steemwriters will then create a new weekly (or bi-monthly) thread of all the new and old bounties for both words and photographs (with links back to the original post for any photos that have a price on their head).

That thread will state the rules of the contest (create a new post, write a story inspired by the word or photograph, etc.). We will do what we can, with the @steemwriters account, to upvote the stories and the photographs with approved bounties to show them a little upvote oompf.

Over time, we believe that this will create a long-term synergistic relationship between the two growing communities.

Land-Ho!

At the end of the contest, writers will be paid whatever their posts made. However, we will also distribute half of the SBD that was earned from weekly (or bi-monthly) Descriptions on the Spot post to one random writer who participated.

To keep the reward truly random, we will implement a lottery with ‘tickets’ based on the number of rshares each person in the weekly contest receives.

We will pick one ticket and reward the post associated to the Golden Ticket with 50% of the SBD received from the weekly @steemwriters post.

The other half of the SBD will be used to POWER UP the @steemwriters account, so that we are able to increase our support of the great fiction that we find. Our ultimate goal is to surface some of the best fiction published on the Steem blockchain.

Note: The reason we are picking one random post (weighted by rshares) is because we want to provide a mechanism for all to potentially win a contest.

We believe that this scheme severely limits the ability to do an effective Sybil attack (if at all, @complexring hasn’t completely vetted if a Sybil attack is possible).

These weekly contests are evolving and the rules may change. If they do, we will make the change clear in the next week’s Descriptions on the Spot post.

Follow Us

If you want to be made aware of when the next Descriptions on the Spot is going to start, follow us. We hope you’ll join us in trying to make fiction a great part of Steemit like so many other categories are.

We believe that we can truly incentivize users to post their fiction, by promoting such works from an account that will never ‘cash-out’ of Steem! We want to support writers with these contests and this account.

In addition, @complexring has seeded this account with 500 SBD (the amounts that he obtained from his original Free Association and Descriptions on the Spots posts), which will be used to buy Steem and Power UP.

Don’t be surprised if from time to time, @complexring (using some witness rewards) sends some additional POWER to @steemwriters!

Full STEEM Ahead!

#descriptionsonthespot #steemwriters #fiction #contests #photography