Fucked Up Fairytale - ***UPDATE***

Many, many moons ago (okay, maybe only two), I set you lovely lot a challenge:

Unfortunately, my workload continued to increase, and I couldn't carve out enough time to sit down and judge this properly. Now, I could have half-arsed it, but I really did not want to do that. I have read a lot of these entries now (although I stopped letting on I'd done that, preferring to wait until the judging was finished) and they are, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking brilliant.

They deserve a proper judging, and so I've left it until now when I can commit the time to do that.

How did it go?

Fifty-two entries is how it went! I was expecting less than ten, maybe as many as twenty if it really got some traction. Holy shit!

This number blew my tiny little mind.

The quality of entries I've read so far has been excellent. They are imaginative and well-crafted.

Thank you

THANK YOU to every single person who took time to craft an entry. I am humbled in the extreme.

Thank you also to those who have volunteered to help me out with judging. It is much appreciated, and honestly I feel it's fairer than being left up to one person's opinion.

Community Voting

When I first posted about this challenge, I floated the idea that if there was enough of a response, I'd open it up to community voting. Like I said, fairer than being left up to one person's opinion, right?

Here is what I said initially:

I'm envisioning this will be dead simple, everyone just comments with their favourite three. #1 gets 3 points, #2 gets 2 points, #3 gets 1 point. This will only kick in if there are enough entries to make it worth it, ie. more than five.

Bless my sweet summer heart, I thought there might be "more than five" entries!

Let me say it again: there are more than fifty!

I feel it would be completely un-feasible to expect everyone who fancies participating in the voting to read fifty-odd entries (and remain unbiased for each one).

Had I known it would get so many responses, I might have broken it down into quarter and semi finals. This might have made it easier.

So here's the plan:

I, with the help of my A-Team, will winnow this down to a handful of entries, and then open this up to you lovely lot to vote. They are very short (the word count was only 366) so it shouldn't be too taxing to read a few. Even with an author's note bringing the count up to ~600, Vocal's (generous) estimate is that this is still only a 3 minute read.

If you want in on the A-Team...

I would be happy to accept one or two more people in the group to help with judging. I will only be considering this for the next 24hrs or so. Please speak up in the comments if you are interested! We can connect on Facebook and take it from there.

Keep in mind that if you have submitted an entry/ies, assisting in judging will disqualify you (no matter how good it is).

Also note that it is a voluntary post. I'm not paying, except in gratitude and Facebook friendship.

Watch your word count

So far, there have been several stories which don't meet the word count here in Vocal, but they do in Google docs.

I didn't specify at the time, so I've decided it is only fair to accept the ones that are within the word count in Google docs.

It does give a slight advantage, so in the interest of fairness, if ever I do another challenge, I will make a note of this from the get go. Especially with microfiction, twenty words or so can make a huge difference!

Keep this in mind, though, if you use Google docs to craft Vocal challenge entries. It is worth checking that are still within the count here on Vocal. There are some I've been very surprised to see not placing in challenges, and this has made me wonder if they have been dismissed at the outset because of a word count issue. That really would be a terrible shame! So please please do check!

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Thank you for reading!