The Ides of March Challenge! (Discussion)

Well, it's not really just March. It's beginning in February. But it's going to end on the 15th March, so...

Welcome to the Ides of March Challenge!

The best thing about the Challenge: it has an incentive for both quality -and- quantity. The more you write -and- the better you write both factor in. At the same time, it's drop-out proof. You only have to write in the rounds you wish to write it. Don't have the time one week? Don't have to. The competition can move on without everyone writing every time.

For those of you who don't recall how the Challenge works: tonight at midnight, I'm going to post a topic/genre/prompt. You'll have till 11:59pm of the 23rd to write something, five full days. I'll be a sole judge, scoring each entry with the same template, and then your scores will be posted to the leaderboard. Quality affects how high the score is, but quantity affects how many scores you'll have in total (e.g. five scores of 40 = four scores of 50).

At 11:59pm on the 23rd, a new topic will go up. Again, there will be five days to write until the next topic comes up.

The judging format is:

Spelling & Grammar - /5
Ease of Read - /5
Use of Topic - /10
Entertainment - /15
Quality - /15
Total - /50

The schedule is:

Note: Times are EST.
11:59pm 18th Feb – 11:59pm 23rd Feb
11:59pm 23rd Feb – 11:59pm 28th Feb
11:59pm 1st Mar – 11:59pm 5th Mar
11:59pm 5th Mar – 11:59pm 10th Mar
11:59pm 10th Mar – 11:59pm 15th Mar

So, in total, /250.

At the end of five rounds, there will effectively be two winners: the proper highest score on the leaderboard, and secondarily, the person who wins the most individual matches.

In regards to the topics and restrictions, I probably won't be as creative and unique as Pete is. I always aim for accessibility over challenging. However, they'll be more creative and harder than you usually get from me, so you've been forewarned.

So then, the only real rule is to keep your story between five-hundred and five-thousand words. Flash fiction, poetry, and sprawling sagas simply cannot be judged properly in comparison to ordinary short-story prose. It wouldn't be fair. Also, Tam can stop complaining about my 1,500 word limit I used to have.

Any questions? Suggestions? Anyone noticed I stole a lot of this from Pete? Who plans to write?!