It's almost time for our yearly one-shot contest! Before anyone can make with the writing, though, we need to decide what we'll be writing about! As usual, we have a slate of potential contest themes selected by the community for you to vote on. You can choose up to two!
If you aren't familiar with our yearly one-shot contest, you can peruse last year's thread for an idea of how things will work. The short version is that all participants write a short story on a common topic, and then a panel of judges provides detailed feedback and ranks the entries to determine a top-three set of winners.
This poll will be open through May 31st, with the announcement of the theme and the beginning of the contest writing period occurring at midnight on June 1st.
I think most of the themes are self-explanatory this ear, but here are descriptions for a couple that may benefit from a little extra context:
Unusual Jobs: In the trainerverse, the overwhelming majority of stories are about trainers. On the PMD side of things, most fics are about characters who end up joining a guild or otherwise forming some kind of adventuring team. For this theme, we'd want you to highlight a character or characters pursuing some other line of work: Pokémart attendant, orb manufacturer, TM designer--whatever you can think of, so long as it's different than a standard trainer or explorer!
Pokéworld TV Shows: For this theme, we'd be looking for stories spotlighting a television show(s) that might exist in the Pokémon World, from wacky game shows taking advantage of Pokémon abilities to sci-fi dramas daring to imagine a world where Pokémon don't exist. Your story might be about someone working to produce an in-world television program, about the in-universe fandom for an imaginary show, about a show that's meaningful to a particular character--anything you can think of that would highlight one or more television programs that might exist in the Pokéworld!
Many thanks to everyone who suggested themes this year! Feel free to post any questions you may have about them, or about the contest in general, in the thread below.
If you aren't familiar with our yearly one-shot contest, you can peruse last year's thread for an idea of how things will work. The short version is that all participants write a short story on a common topic, and then a panel of judges provides detailed feedback and ranks the entries to determine a top-three set of winners.
This poll will be open through May 31st, with the announcement of the theme and the beginning of the contest writing period occurring at midnight on June 1st.
I think most of the themes are self-explanatory this ear, but here are descriptions for a couple that may benefit from a little extra context:
Unusual Jobs: In the trainerverse, the overwhelming majority of stories are about trainers. On the PMD side of things, most fics are about characters who end up joining a guild or otherwise forming some kind of adventuring team. For this theme, we'd want you to highlight a character or characters pursuing some other line of work: Pokémart attendant, orb manufacturer, TM designer--whatever you can think of, so long as it's different than a standard trainer or explorer!
Pokéworld TV Shows: For this theme, we'd be looking for stories spotlighting a television show(s) that might exist in the Pokémon World, from wacky game shows taking advantage of Pokémon abilities to sci-fi dramas daring to imagine a world where Pokémon don't exist. Your story might be about someone working to produce an in-world television program, about the in-universe fandom for an imaginary show, about a show that's meaningful to a particular character--anything you can think of that would highlight one or more television programs that might exist in the Pokéworld!
Many thanks to everyone who suggested themes this year! Feel free to post any questions you may have about them, or about the contest in general, in the thread below.
