{"id":5782,"date":"2009-09-30T11:09:02","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T15:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=5782"},"modified":"2009-09-30T12:01:39","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T16:01:39","slug":"ultra-short-story-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/ultra-short-story-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Ultra-Short Story Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Stuart Neville\/The Ghosts of Belfast\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/neville_ghostsofbelfast_sm.jpg?resize=200%2C299&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"299\" \/>Can you write a ghost story in no more than 124 characters?<\/p>\n<p>Stuart Neville, author of <em>The Twelve<\/em> (which <a title=\"The Book Book: Stuart Neville's 'The Twelve'\" href=\"http:\/\/thebookbook.blogspot.com\/2009\/09\/stuart-nevillethe-twelve.html\" target=\"_blank\">I reviewed<\/a> on The Book Book the other day), is running a little contest. The occasion? That book&#8217;s publication tomorrow in the US, called here <em>The Ghosts of Belfast<\/em>. Following is a brief description of the rules\/guidelines (for more information see <a title=\"Stuart Neville's ghost-story-in-a-tweet contest\" href=\"http:\/\/conduitnovel.blogspot.com\/2009\/09\/ghosts-of-belfast-twitfic-contest-scare.html\" target=\"_blank\">Neville&#8217;s Web site<\/a>):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Compose a ghost story no more than 124 characters in length.<\/li>\n<li>By midnight, October 31, Post it in a Twitter tweet, with the hashtag <strong>#GhostsOfBelfast<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Sit back and wait for the adulation and\/or prizes to roll in.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All right, it&#8217;s not <em>that<\/em> simple.<\/p>\n<p>For starters, obviously, if you have no Twitter account you are (as the rude abbreviation says) S.O.L. If you&#8217;re in that position, you have one, maybe two options:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Enter it as a comment to this post here on <em>RAMH<\/em>. I&#8217;ll tweet it for you. Since I&#8217;ve reviewed his book, I hereby disqualify myself from winning. Should your entry be a winner, I&#8217;ll put you and Neville in touch with each other. The drawback to this option: anyone on Twitter who&#8217;s following the hashtag will think <em>I<\/em> wrote your ultra-short, although they&#8217;ll know better by the time the contest is over.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">Neville says in his guidelines (emphasis added): &#8220;Each of those [winning] tweets will be re-tweeted by me and the good folks at Soho Press (or linked to a special page on my website <em>if they&#8217;re too long<\/em>).&#8221; This implies to me that he&#8217;s willing to consider stories which exceed Twitter&#8217;s maximum tweet length. The drawback to this option: you&#8217;ll have to figure it out on your own and\/or wait for Neville to clarify. Or not. :)<\/span><br \/>\n<em><strong>Update:<\/strong> On reflection&#8230; no, he&#8217;s <strong>not <\/strong>saying the entries can be longer than a tweet&#8217;s allowed to be. He&#8217;s saying that when he and Soho Press re-tweet the winning entries, they&#8217;ll probably be longer than a tweet may be because of extra text which Twitter adds to a re-tweet. <\/em>(And no, I can&#8217;t believe adults actually talk like this.)<em> So you&#8217;re stuck: either use Twitter to get credit for the story, or use me to front for you. It&#8217;s gotta be Twitter.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>As I said above, I myself am not actually entering the contest. But here&#8217;s an example of what an entry might look like:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Old guy at the bar glares at you, at anyone who dares to sit nearby. Don&#8217;t take it personally; he&#8217;s been there since 1843. #GhostsOfBelfast<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>[Hat tip to <a title=\"Moonrat's Twitter stream\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/moonrat\" target=\"_blank\">Moonrat<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can you write a ghost story in no more than 124 characters? Stuart Neville, author of The Twelve (which I reviewed on The Book Book the other day), is running a little contest. The occasion? That book&#8217;s publication tomorrow in the US, called here The Ghosts of Belfast. Following is a brief description of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37,19,5,105],"tags":[162,1417,1418,1419],"class_list":{"0":"post-5782","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-onlineworld","7":"category-internet","8":"category-06_writing","9":"category-short-fiction","10":"tag-stuart-neville","11":"tag-writing-contests","12":"tag-the-ghosts-of-belfast","13":"tag-ghost-stories","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1vg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5782"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5790,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5782\/revisions\/5790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}