**********************EDIT***************************
Theme: Discovery
To be entered into the competition by : Jan 31st (i reckon a month is enough but may be persuaded to change end date if enough entrants ask me to.)
Word Limit: 5000. This seems to be a fairly standard limit. But remember folks there is nothing wrong with small and perfectly formed. Honest.
Email stories too: f.public.current_at_googlemail.com
I will sort out uploading them somewhere you can all download them after the end date.
Have fun guys and please keep using this thread for encouragement, challenges and boasting. Lets see how many stories we can get entered.
P.S. If other people wishing to contribute to prizes like Lou, well its your money so i can't stop you ; )
*****************EDIT******************
So I decided on a whim to try and start a short story competition. Prize is a shiny shiny GOG executable downloadable from this very site! Right now its a $5.99 one only but will up it to an impressive $9.99 depending on my financial situation after christmas.
Now I have your no doubt undivided attention I'd like a little help sorting out the rules for the competition. First as masterly as I am when it comes to literary matters I'm wondering how everyone would like this judged. Here are the options:
1(easy mode): I choose the winner and you all have to live with it.
2(normal mode): Me and a select few other people (no idea who but its an option) choose the winner and you all have to live with it.
3(hard mode): The community votes via a forum with no option for voting and rampant attempts at cheating.
4.Noone can be bothered and this thread disapears into the deep dark depths of the GOG forums.
Also thinking about genre/subject I'm happy to keep it open. Something like having the story set in the worlds of one of the games on GOG would link it to the site better but run the risk of being lame. Unless you think otherwise i suppose.
Length wise I'm thinking fairly short. Does one to two pages of A4 worth sound reasonable??
tl;dr
story comp. win game. need help settling on a competition structure everyone is happy with and feels they have a fair chance with. anyone at all interested?
P.s. I did not enjoy having to write this out twice after the GOG forum ate it. Shame on you GOG forum shame on you. NO treats! your already full of thread!

How about listing the stories in a forum as separate posts - titles listed in the wish list - the one with the most votes wins?

That would pretty much amount to horrible forum killing spam depending on the number of entries

Ok - Normal mode chooses the top 5 and they are posted in a read only topic. Titles still listed in wish list - highest votes gets first place. I will put up the second place prize of a $5.99 game if you can handle the first place prize of $9.99. Maybe we can get GOG to drop one in for third.

Hard mode sounds fairly good if its modified slightly. How about this as an organisational suggestion:
Give everyone until a set date to come up with a story and email it to you, I'd suggest not requiring it to be set it in a game world but not forbidding it either, also maybe 5 pages instead of 2, gives people enough room to be wordy if they want. Then after the due date, you post them all as a zip somewhere like rapidshare so we can download them. Then have a votes thread where people post who they think should win (single vote per person should minimise vote stacking) and the most votes at the end of a week is "teh winnar!!!"
Also, I intend to pwn this contest
No, shame on YOU for not copying your whole reply into the clipboard before posting, given how dodgy the internet is, its only sensible. No treat for you until you clean up your room and do chores for old ladies!

I'm not sure if this counts....
I wrote this story for an english assignment. It illustrates the complexity of society through an allegory. It's only two pages. I've tried to attach my submission, but it's apparently the wrong fromat. Can I send it to you?
I've also done a "cartoon" for a short story, called Tree. It's on my facebook profile...
If you can't see it, send me a friend request:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9592&id=100000132900396#/photo.php?pid=121901&id=100000132900396

That would be awesome but I wont know if I can till after christmas. I am already being uncharacteristically charitable with this whole thing.
Also would be awesome. Well they read the forums so if they want to I'm not going to stop them.
This sounds pretty good. I have never used rapidshare before but im guessing its not overly complicated. yep I say go with this one.
Right while I'm going to keep genre open I still reckon we have a theme to build the stories around. Liberal interpretation would of course be entirely acceptable. Unless I receive replies from people saying otherwise I will go ahead and think of one and post it up here along with my email.
As far as a time frame is concerned I personally write rather slowly so im going to lean more towards a month from now or so (just to clarify I will not be entering the contest (fainess etc.) I'm just using my own speed as an indicator). Once again, anyone think otherwise? floors open etc.
Quite quite possibly hang on till everything is properly finalised and I have thought of a theme (if people dont object) and I'll stick an email up here for people to send their entries to
I'm going to keep this as a prose only contest. But its an idea for a possible contest in the future.

Now that I think of it, I think rapidshare might have a limit to the number of downloads, I know one of those free hosting sites does. Storage shouldn't be a problem, plenty of options out there.

I support this idea! (But I suck at organization skills, so I'll leave that to you. :P )

This is like a hellish torment from hell caused by satan himself torn from all 1000000 circles of hell and thrown in my general direction! I love writing competitions, but I suck at writing in english
Edit: Also, I think hard mode would work pretty well, also writing from the GoG games universe would pretty much force everyone to write something especially for this game (hello, prakaa!) - unless they have written something worth it from a certain universe already.
EditEdit: Oh and Id restrict it to a number of words written if you want it that way (or signs or hows it called in english), also 2 pages are too few, my usual "short" story lasts for at least 5

+1 for word count limit instead of page limit.
Also, careful with your email address. Though I probably didn't need to say that. Is there a PM option on the GOG forums? Can't find one.

You seem to do okay in the forums. I can always proofread it for you if you want, I won't sabotage your entry TOO badly, you'll probably still come second

RIGHT FOLKS!!!!
Here we go. Was struggling to think of a theme but was hit by a bolt of GOD LIKE INSPIRATION!! or rather. I was listening to Daft Punks album discovery. Which is awesome. So there you go. I think its suitably open a theme to allow some diverse and interesting stories. So:
Theme: Discovery
To be entered into the competition by : Jan 31st (i reckon a month is enough but may be persuaded to change end date if enough entrants ask me to.)
Word Limit: 5000. This seems to be a fairly standard limit. But remember folks there is nothing wrong with small and perfectly formed. Honest.
Email stories too: f.public.current_at_googlemail.com
I will sort out uploading them somewhere you can all download them after the end date.
Have fun guys and please keep using this thread for encouragement, challenges and boasting. Lets see how many stories we can get entered.
Everyone happy with this?
P.S. If other people wishing to contribute to prizes like Lou, well its your money so i can't stop you ; )

I really want to send you this short story I did. I guess it sort of circles around the theme of discovery. They discover new echidnae, discover a new social system, and discover simplicity, does that count?? Ig uess it floats around the topic of enlightenment, the discovery of knowledge, so i'll shoot it through to you and you can decide
Ok sent