RE: Pop Up WeWrite Contest Winners, and some thoughts about running a contest
Congratulations to the winners!
Thank you @owasco for your time, talent, and energy,
hosting and judging this contest - and I can attest to the number of hours it takes to do justice to the entries, having hosted and judged half a dozen contests of my own at Steemit. No surprise it's been a long time since the last one. :) @agmoore, it's true, we don't follow the rules here. Nobody has to post their freewrites; nobody has to publish the first draft only, the stream-of-conscious rush that comes out in the five minutes; and nobody penalizes you if you dust off the first draft, polish and expand/revise. We're here to encourage writers to WRITE, especially those who may freeze up and not write at all because it's too hard to live with ourselves on reading our sh*tty first drafts. (We do not acknowledge those who write polished gems in a mere five minutes.)
Oh yes we do! (and I know you jest) I've written a bunch of them in my not so humble opinion! And @felt.buzz is a master at it.
One trick to knowing if stories got done in five minutes (or thereabouts) is in their lengths - my true five minute freewrites have never contained more than 200 words. And there is a lot of value in being able to write a contained story in 200 words or less. For my next wewrite contest, I might make an even lower word limit, cuz I thought quite a few of the entries could have been told in far fewer words.
Word limits have their merits!
It's surprising how much we can cut out and still have the core of the story intact.