There are a series of important requirements for a fiction-based competition to be approved. This has to do with the requirements for awarding of Clusters of Ice. All fiction archetype competitions are sent to the Voice Staff for review before final approval by the MAA Staff. The fiction archetype is used for narrative or in-character-based competitions. Competitions such as writing a wiki page, or designing a ship, while often involving lots of text, should not be run as a fiction archetype competition.
Approval Process
Standard Approval Process:
Clan/House Leadership -> Voice Staff -> Master-at-Arms Staff
Members need to work with their Clan/House leadership when running a competition for their clan. Members are invited to run club-wide competitions outside of vendetta lockdowns.
Rogue or Councilor members will go directly to the Voice Staff, followed by the Master-at-Arms.
Required Elements
- Clear Grading Criteria - All competitions require some form of grading/scoring system. It is strongly encouraged that fiction competitions use the official Voice Fiction Grading Rubric 3.0. However, using your own system is also acceptable. Make sure the criteria are clearly stated in the public details of the competition.
- Clear Prompt - All fiction competitions need a specific prompt for members to work off of. This ensures a similar base from which all submissions can be compared. The prompt should be clear and well-defined. You are also allowed to have a selection of prompts in a competition for the participants to pick which they would most like to pursue and write. You should not have an open prompt of “just write whatever you want”.
- Club Related Prompt - For a fiction competition to award Clusters of Ice, they must have an obvious and valid connection to the Club’s universe and characters or the greater Star Wars universe. This means that if you want a competition that is set in an “alternative universe” it still should be clear that participants write as their DJB Characters (For example “Write your character on present-day earth” or “Write your character but a different club order”). Prompts that are completely unrelated to the club, Star Wars, and our characters should not be used (For example “Write about being Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon”).
- Separation Between Prompt and Instructions - When submitting a fiction competition, there needs to be a clear separation between the prompt and grading criteria and other instructions. This can be through the use of headings, bold/italic text, or other methods to create a clear delineation in the final product. It is suggested, though not required, that all prompt information should be in the Details for Participants section.
- Word Count Minimums and Maximums - All competitions that award Cluster of Ice must have a minimum word count of at least five hundred (500). This allows participants to earn at least one Cluster for their efforts. Competitions with less than five hundred (500) word minimum counts should be run as an “Other” competition type and are ineligible for Clusters of Ice. You can have minimum word counts higher than five hundred (500) words. There is no requirement for a maximum word count for competitions, but you are allowed to specify one if you desire.
- Run-ons - Run-ons are a special form of group-based writing. These now utilize our Discord’s Roleplaying system to manage. It is expected for a member to earn participation credit in a Run-on they need to hit the minimum of five hundred (500) words contributed.
- Co-op - Co-op fiction competitions should have a minimum of five hundred (500) words per participant. Should you wish a maximum word count on a co-op competition it should apply to the total length, and not per-participant.
- Author Verification - Co-ops also require a method of counting word totals per participant. The suggested method for this is having an annotated/highlighted copy of the fiction saved as a GoogleDoc alongside the normal submission of the fiction.
Prohibited Elements
- Page Minimums/Maximums - All submission minimums and maximums should be stated in a number of words as opposed to a number of pages.
- Open Prompts - Standard fiction grading does utilize an adherence to the prompt. This also ensures a foundation for members to write their fiction off of. Having no prompt, or a fully open “write anything” prompt, has been deemed something that cannot be fairly graded, and is not allowed.
Club Wide Competitions
Club-wide competitions have an increased award level and much wider exposure. As such the Voice Staff will look at such competitions with enhanced scrutiny. As such, there will be added requirements for approval of a Club-wide competition.
- Duration - All Club-wide fiction competitions must run for at least two weeks (14 days).
- Prompts - For Club-wide events, prompts must be applicable and of interest to the entire Brotherhood. Multiple prompt options are allowed but, they can not offer different options for individual clans as this might give members of one clan an advantage over another.
- Grading Criteria - It is greatly preferred that Club-wide competitions use the official Voice Fiction Grading Rubric. Any changes to this formula must be explicitly spelled out in the competition description.
Non-Cluster of Ice Fiction Competitions
Due to the usage of the ACC and RP systems within our club, there is a potential issue of "double-dipping" on word count totals to earn extra Clusters of Ice. While it is possible to manually set word counts to 0 for all comps of this nature, competitions that wish to utilize these systems, and award INQ and SA society progress should use the Regular Archtype and then select Fiction as the competition type.
Examples of these types of competitions:
- Using the ACC as a co-op venue
- Using the RP system for run-ons
- Anything that scores "fictionally" but would have CI awarded via a different system than the competition system.