In case you didn't see it, I was musing about holding a Skyrim Fanfiction Contest in a previous journal entry: [link]

Well, I decided we're doing this shit, so here we are to make it official.

Skyrim Fanfiction Contest: Let's Make it Real!

The Prompt:
You are to pick one of your existing Skyrim characters. With this character, choose a quest or decide on a personal journey to take. This quest can start in whatever city you are currently in, but it must make you travel at least to a cave or to another city or something. As you carry out this quest, keep a notebook and write down EVERYTHING that happens to your character. Find a fox and hunt it? Write it down. Got attacked by a bear? Write it down. Got mostly fucked by a Spriggan but still survived by the skin of your teeth? Write it down motherfucker. Found a tower full of bandits and decided to ruin their day? You guessed it! Log it, bitch! When you finish your quest, take your notes and write a story using the notes to make all the events while traveling, and use those events to breathe a little character into your character. Do they relish the hunt? Did they wet themselves when that bear attacked? Did they try to tell the Spriggan they meant no harm to the forest, or did they just kill it before it killed them? Fuck, bandits! Did they go through that tower like it was Christmas on Elm Street, or did they do it because it was the 'right' thing to do to protect other travelers?

What You're Being Judged On?

Character Building. Every event, every encounter, heck even the character's reason for doing the quest they've taken on are things that reveal character that we rarely think about when playing a video game. Look at your Skyrim character, I implore you. In game you're probably a fucking bad-ass, but when translated to a more literal world they are a fucking kleptomaniac psycho who murders everyone who looks at them funny who also happens to breathe several flavors of lighting. This is why you need to use an EXISTING character for this contest; play them as you always do, and see what kind of story you get out of it. Who IS the person you're planing? What kind of warrior are they, really? You might learn a little more than you cared to. In writing I want you to reveal to me a coherent narrative about your character; they might not be a good person, but they should feel like a PERSON.

Travel-Writing. This is difficult for a lot of authors, including me. Travel can be a lot of 'we went here and did this, then we went here and did that' because we think of it as events changed together without challenge. Every encounter needs to be a conflict with a solution to make it a fun read, and done correctly will give your story flow. Remember the best stories alternate between periods of engagement (exciting stuff) and periods of rest (where we take time to breathe). Timing these just right will be important to making the character's journey interesting.

World Building. Skyrim is a huge world, and your character should be doing more than running on a blank backdrop. Don't forget to tell us what the setting is, what the world looks like, and interact with it. In both Fanfiction and Original Fiction, world building can be the biggest rub for a lot of authors because it's tough to describe EVERYTHING... and that shouldn't be your goal. No, your goal should be to describe just enough of everything that the reader can put the rest together. In Fanfiction specifically it's tempting to assume your readers know what you're looking at and not even bother writing about the world, but I implore you to resist that temptation with this exercise; Skyrim is just too big to remember every tree.

!!THE RULES OF THIS CONTEST!!

1. The character you are using must be at LEAST level 10; the perks you use and skills you've developed thus far help define them as a person and give them some history.
2. You do not have to particularly undertake a quest; you may simply travel to a cave you haven't explored yet or something of that sort, but if you choose to do a Quest you MUST do that quest from start to finish AND notate which quest it is on your entry.
3. Your character is a human being (Or cat-being, or lizard-being); unless you are a Werewolf remember that you should stop once a day on your journey to sleep a few hours and eat every now and then. Food eaten during battles can be notated as meals for that day, eaten at other times that make more sense.
4. Your entry can have any title you like, and can be multiple chapters.
5. Your character is welcome to have a partner along with them on their journey.
6. And yeah you can totally ship them together if you want. Go nuts. Because who DOESN'T wanna have sex in the Skyrim wilderness with dragons hiding over every mountain peak? *cough*totallynotwhatinspiredthisiideaiswear*cough*farkasisalreadyawerewolfhedtotallygoforakahjitright*cough*
7. When you have FINISHED your entry, comment on this masterpost with a link and I will add it to the directory.
8. FINISHED MEANS ALL CHAPTERS OF IT, DONE.
9. Alterations to game dialog are okay if it is in reaction to your character saying something that is not in the regular dialog options given to you. I've no doubt we've got some seriously sassy dragonborns out there.
10. You must transcribe your event-notes and put them in the Artist Comments of your entry. I will be trusting your honesty on this one. If you have several chapters, put your list on the last chapter.
11. If you die while playing you can either end your story there and make the story about your character's death (Gasp! Tragic) or you may continue form whence you last saved and REMOVE ALL THINGS THAT WERE DONE DURING THAT TIME FROM YOUR EVENT-NOTES.

The Deadline: All entries must be finished and in by March 15th. (Hehe, beware the Ides of March indeed.) One entry per author. Artwork will be added to the entry directory but will not be taken into account while judging.

!THE PRIZES!

Oh, right, the important part, right?

First place will receive:
A full-color piece of artwork with full background done to request from
with timelapse of the work being created and a signed physical print of the
finished work.

Second place will receive:
A full-color piece of artwork with simple background (color wash) done to request from
with timelapse of the work being created.

Third place will receive:
A gray-scale piece of artwork with sketched background done to request from
with timelapse of the work being created.

If you want to help provide prizes, please mention in the comments.

Entry Directory  


Chapter One: [link]
Chapter Two: [link]
Chapter Three: [link]


[link]


Part One: [link]
Part Two: [link]
Part Three: [link]
Part Four: [link]


Feel free to ask questions in the comments of this journal, or note me directly. Here's hoping we see some fun entries!

-Loor