Storywars is (was) intended for short stories under a thousand words.  

Stories longer than a thousand words can be posted HERE in the forum.

Thus, each serialization would have its own thread in one of the subforums while people wanting to vye for the top spot in storywars would have to get everything said in a thousand words, just like everyone else has had to.

Increasing the word limit to 3000 is a mistake, in my opinion.  That's a huge change in the basic format and still does not address the worst examples of chapter-spam.

Please set the limit back to a thousand.  Any stories above that limit, including serializations, can be moved to the forum.  May I also suggest a subforum where people can post in a "critique" thread of the stories.

Lastly, there could be a "crucible" forum where people could post a story for feedback before they submit for judging in storywars.  That might slow down the rate at which stories get entered in the war but should up the quality of the stories appearing there.

Since moving multi-chapter stories from the war to the forum and continuing to police the war for future entries requires a commitment of time, my advice would be to appoint a forum moderator or two to handle that sort of thing.  

One more note:  the above changes may attract and hold the attention of some very good writers.  To prevent disasters, back up the forum regularly (if that is possible with free web hosting).  Writers should be writing on their computers and pasting it here with a saved copy elsewhere.

I think that would be the end of storywar.. it would move all the attention away from the main site and bring it to this freebie forum that I found which is at best unreliable, covered in ads and a pig to design. Not to mention turning it into something that already exists all over the net, thus losing its main advantage of being different!

I do like some of your ideas though, and I am aware that the increase to 3000 words seems only to have encouraged people to write longer chapters! LOL!

I need some time to think this through and would ask that everyone put their thinking caps on.. here's a list of things that we'd have to keep in mind while thinking of a solution..

1)The site has to be simple (more google than yahoo). One clear purpose.. i.e a league table of stories, and not cluttered with subcategories and sub lists. One league, one main page. Otherwise it becomes like all other writing sites. Please take a look at Googe.com and Yahoo.com to see what I mean. You'll understand when you see the difference, how google quickly overtook yahoo to become the most popular search engine on the web.

2)It must cater for everyone. I don't want to drive anyone away. Chapter writers may not be following the 'exact' rules, but they are submitting some good content and it doesn't say in the rules "Chapters not allowed" after all. Do people dislike them simply because they write so much, and 'drown out' other people's stories? Wouldn't this be true if a hundred new short stories were released per day? I am currently working on a new feature called 'Random stories of the day' which will contain a handful of stories from different positions in the league and will be featured on the homepage, giving stories that may otherwise be harder to find a little more exposure. Having said that.. the main purpose of the top 50 is so that when stories are pushed out, they will be encouraged to write even better next time and stay in the top 50!!

3)I think the forum should remain a place to discuss things , and the main STORYWAR pages should be the only place to submit work. Remember that authors can edit stories at any time after receiving critiques, and we don't really need a place to polish stories before entering storywar!

I dislike the chapters so much as they are not short stories.  They do drown out the other stories, simply by there being so many! I find them muddling to read and disjointed. I think the only way to sort this is to have two storywar tables., One for the true short story, under 1000 words (a beginning a middle and an end not part of a longer piece!) and a chapters board where people can showcase their 'novels' if they so wish.  There are two completely different genres of writing in here and they obviously don't mix well!  Neither is wrong but this essentially is a shortstory website, or so I thought! The skill of a short story writer is different to that of a novelist.  I for one do not want to wade through endless chapters of a novel on a computer screen., I want short snappy and clever writing, which lends itself totally to this format.  I think you will loose a lot of what you set out to achieve if this is not addressed! There are some good works buried now under a heap of novel chapters, the incentive and motivation will be lost for authors not even getting their work read.  It is a bit of a shame really!

Hello All! As you may have noticed from the homepage... I've made some big changes to storywar.. yikes!

There will now be 3 main sections to storywar:

1) Short stories (up to 3000 words)
2) Serialisations/longer pieces (chapters and complete pieces welcome up to 10,000 words)
3) Poems

Hopefully this will allow everyone to submit their desired content and no one will be treading on anyone's toes.

The poem section will be up and running later tonight..

Good call.  Thank you.  

An excellent solution, if I may say so without being accused of sucking up.

I just have one suggestion. At the top where it says 'A battleground for writers', I tried to click on the '// SERIALS' text to get to that page, so perhaps you could make those into links so that I don't feel so stupid.

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DuraKaN wrote : An excellent solution, if I may say so without being accused of sucking up. I just have one suggestion. At the top where it says 'A battleground for writers', I tried to click on the '// SERIALS' text to get to that page, so perhaps you could make those into links so that I don't feel so stupid.

I agree with the buttons thing... only thing is.. the image is just a background image that's called from a CSS file via php and I'm not too sure how to get that to work as buttons right now.. will work on it though!!

Dyljos I think it is time to do something about THE VILLIKON CHRONICLES: If he doesn't want to follow the rules, I think his stories should be erased along with some of the other chapter stories. Give them to a certain time to take them out, and if they don't do it. Erase them.

It is a real skill to write a story in a few words, and that is what I really like about StoryWar. I think the short story is starting to be a dying market, but yet has so much to offer. There are so many good novels that started out has a short story. I know Stephen King has many.

Dylan...about the background image...

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I agree with the buttons thing... only thing is.. the image is just a background image that's called from a CSS file via php and I'm not too sure how to get that to work as buttons right now.. will work on it though!!

if you have photoshop look at 'slicing' or just look here

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/10.0/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7532.html

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Robert wrote : Dyljos I think it is time to do something about THE VILLIKON CHRONICLES: If he doesn't want to follow the rules, I think his stories should be erased along with some of the other chapter stories. Give them to a certain time to take them out, and if they don't do it. Erase them. It is a real skill to write a story in a few words, and that is what I really like about StoryWar. I think the short story is starting to be a dying market, but yet has so much to offer. There are so many good novels that started out has a short story. I know Stephen King has many.

Hi Robert, I contacted the writer of Villikon this morning, and he has promised to begin the task of moving them today. I'll also continue contacting all the other 'Chapterists' over the course of the next few days.

I don't really want to just erase any stories, because they are a part of StoryWar, (imagine how empty this forum would be without the Chapter submissions, and we would still only have the one section!! lol!) and I don't want to turn into a fascist moderator and just stomp about as I please (there are enough of them at absolutewrite.com's forum - yep, they banned me for using my freedom of speech!!)

So, the chapters should all be in their correct section within the week. If not, then I'll dig out my admin password and start moving them gently over!

Dylan, that sounds great. Soon we can get back to what is important, and that is the writing. I think that is why everyone comes to StoryWar for the excellent writing displayed there.