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Announcing our "Masked" Story Competition

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Matriarch
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It's story competition time again, and this one has a very playful nature to it.

Masked Competition

The word "mask" appeared in English in the 1530s, from Middle French masque "covering to hide or guard the face", derived in turn from Italian maschera, from Medieval Latin masca "mask, specter, nightmare".

Masks. We all wear them. The work face. The face you put on when visiting family. The out in public face. But what about putting on a different mask to accentuate who you really are or want to be?

Competition Theme

Join the masquerade ball and put on a different mask. Be a super hero or a mysterious stranger. A kitten or a clown. Maybe you're already wearing one - everyone thinks you're a good girl, but at night, when the mask comes off, the real you comes out?

With the likes of ritual masks, medical fetish masks, gas masks, theatrical masks, steampunk gear, bdsm masks, carnival masks, animal fetish role play masks or any other masked disguise at your disposal, the possibilities are far reaching.

A mask, either physical or metaphorical, must feature in competition stories. Put them on or take them off!

As an added challenge, stories should be no longer than 6,000 words.

Prizes:

Winner: $150
Second Place: $100
Third Place: $50



Full details here >>

Raised on Blackroot
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I could do some weird ass shit with this if only I had the time. Sadly I do
Not. My writing ability is also burned out and hasn’t recovered.
Gravelly-Voiced Fucker
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Cool theme.

I asked this before the Changes competition, but forgot the answer. Is there a minimum for these? Can I submit a flash?
Matriarch
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Quote by Verbal
Cool theme.

I asked this before the Changes competition, but forgot the answer. Is there a minimum for these? Can I submit a flash?


If there are minimum or maximum word limits, I mention them on the competition page.

For this one:

"As an added challenge, stories should be no longer than 6,000 words."

So a flash piece would be fine It would probably have to be an incredible piece of writing (quite within your abilities!), if it were to beat a well written story which was towards the upper word count limits. Just a thought to bear in mind.

Perhaps I should make it clearer, or specify the upper and lower word limits in the competition copy in future?
The Right Rev of Lush
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She Who Must Be Obeyed, mused: Perhaps I should make it clearer, or specify the upper and lower word limits in the competition copy in future?

Me, I concurred: Couldn't hurt. If Jeff is confused, what chance is there for we mere mortals to avoid veering from the narrow path of contestual correctness? ;)

RUMPLATIONS: AwesomeHonky Tonk and Cyber Bar
Home of the Lush "IN" crowd: indecent, intoxicated, and insolvent
a place to gossip, share news, talk sports, pimp a story, piss & moan, or just grab a drink. Check it out.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwords. -- ROBERT HEINLEIN
Marx Sister
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Quote by nicola

Perhaps I should make it clearer, or specify the upper and lower word limits in the competition copy in future?


It certainly couldn't hurt. I've actually often thought it could be fun to have a really narrow window for the acceptable word count.

Maybe even an exact word count, since so many of us tend to hit the ceiling anyway.
My Featured Stories
The Snowglobe Conspiracy – Solving a great mystery | There Is No Butterfly – Time Travel competition entry | Incurable Arousal – Most viewed | Toxic, But Not Sinister – Mutual loathing at its finest | You Were – An experience in the second person | Desiderium – A scattering of lovers
Gravelly-Voiced Fucker
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Quote by RumpleForeskin
She Who Must Be Obeyed, mused: Perhaps I should make it clearer, or specify the upper and lower word limits in the competition copy in future?

Me, I concurred: Couldn't hurt. If Jeff is confused, what chance is there for we mere mortals to avoid veering from the narrow path of contestual correctness? ;)



My waking state is confusion. Every so often I get it together long enough to string a few words together to form a sentence.

A suggestion: A FLASH ONLY COMPETITION!!!
Matriarch
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Quote by Verbal


My waking state is confusion. Every so often I get it together long enough to string a few words together to form a sentence.

A suggestion: A FLASH ONLY COMPETITION!!!


We've run one (maybe more) of these in the past. https://www.lushstories.com/competitions/quickie-sex.aspx for example. We had some super hot entries.

I really like the shorter format competitions, as a) They give authors a real challenge, b) Less words for my ageing eyes to read

We're due one fairly soon I'd say.
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Would a story involving someone being tied up with masking tape be eligible? (Asking for a friend.)
Advanced Wordsmith
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Sounds intriguing... count me in...says he with a pen name that hides his true identity...
A man in the house is worth two in the street- Mae West
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Good luck to all those who enter. My writing is at a standstill but if inspiration strikes in time ... we shall see. However, I think I shall likely sit this one out.
Raised on Blackroot
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Quote by browncoffee
Would a story involving someone being tied up with masking tape be eligible? (Asking for a friend.)






Quote by nicola


We've run one (maybe more) of these in the past. https://www.lushstories.com/competitions/quickie-sex.aspx for example. We had some super hot entries.

I really like the shorter format competitions, as a) They give authors a real challenge, b) Less words for my ageing eyes to read

We're due one fairly soon I'd say.


Stop it. You are fueling my fantasies of you as Ms. Norbury from Mean Girls.
Matriarch
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Quote by MadMartigan


Stop it. You are fueling my fantasies of you as Ms. Norbury from Mean Girls.


Not far off ... I'm a pusher!

Talking of which, get cracking with this competition. Make time! It has you written all over it.
The Bruiser
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i am thinking of having a go an entering this competion. i am thinking of wriking a love story

For the past few months I’ve been using Instagram and been using the site to post my photography . Here’s the link to my profile 

https://www.instagram.com/farmerroger1/

My recommended read

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/love-poems/amongst-the-arabian-sands

here’s a link to my photography album in my media

https://www.lushstories.com/profile/farmerroger/media?album=2399646

Testing The Waters.
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May as well pop this back into the recent topics to give people a reminder that the deadline is fast approaching.

Finally cleared my plate and winnowed through my ideas until I found one that I could fit into <6k words and tickled me. Bonus is that it fills one of my slots for categories I haven't written in yet. Could technically have moved an existing story there ( I could wipe out a lot of the new categories that way, actually ) but I'd rather hit them with new work.

Plus, so many of my old stories have the double-space bug that happened when the text processing changed. The thought of going through there and taking those spaces out is... ugh...

"Heroes Wear Masks" is in progress. The kicker is whether I can have it mostly done before this weekend is over. If it's not in the final stretch by then, it's going to be difficult to finish it, edit it, and get it in on time.
Matriarch
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Good luck on getting it done RR!

Re the double space issue, couldn't you simply copy the story, put it into a flat file format, then do a find / replace on the spaces?

I'll ask Gav about this, as there may be a way to go through the entire story database, and do the same with the find / replace trick. May be super complicated to program, I have no idea.

Thanks for the bump also!
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Quote by nicola

Re the double space issue, couldn't you simply copy the story, put it into a flat file format, then do a find / replace on the spaces?


That's what I did with a couple of mine that hit the bug. It's not perfect and may need some additional cleanup, but it sure beats doing it line by line.
Testing The Waters.
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Unfortunately, it's not that simple. No matter what program I paste from, or what button I use, it loses my italics. Even if a find/replace worked to eliminate the extra carriage return, I'd then have to go through and put back in my italics one by one.

I've changed category on a couple where I felt it better fit the story, but as soon as I see that extra carriage return in one I'm considering, it's nope! Too much work for something already published, even if the category is no longer the best possible fit, thanks to new ones.

Quote by nicola
Good luck on getting it done RR!

Re the double space issue, couldn't you simply copy the story, put it into a flat file format, then do a find / replace on the spaces?

I'll ask Gav about this, as there may be a way to go through the entire story database, and do the same with the find / replace trick. May be super complicated to program, I have no idea.

Thanks for the bump also!
Scarlet Seductress
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Quote by RejectReality
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. No matter what program I paste from, or what button I use, it loses my italics. Even if a find/replace worked to eliminate the extra carriage return, I'd then have to go through and put back in my italics one by one.


If you single space paragraph your Word document, copy it all, and then use the 'Paste from Word' function on the story submission screen it works fine. No double spacing and the text formatting is retained.

Testing The Waters.
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No such luck. I've even gone so far as to paste something into Wordpad, strip all the formatting from Wordperfect out of it by saving it as a plain .txt file, then opening that in Word, putting my italics in, and pasting with the Paste From Word button.

No italics.

Probably because I still use an ancient version of Word.

I've had to manually insert my italics at the point of submission since day 1. I spent a couple of hours one night with one short story, trying every possible combination of program and paste button, to no avail.

Quote by Liz


If you single space paragraph your Word document, copy it all, and then use the 'Paste from Word' function on the story submission screen it works fine. No double spacing and the text formatting is retained.
Scarlet Seductress
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Quote by RejectReality
No such luck. I've even gone so far as to paste something into Wordpad, strip all the formatting from Wordperfect out of it by saving it as a plain .txt file, then opening that in Word, putting my italics in, and pasting with the Paste From Word button.

No italics.

Probably because I still use an ancient version of Word.

I've had to manually insert my italics at the point of submission since day 1. I spent a couple of hours one night with one short story, trying every possible combination of program and paste button, to no avail.


What version of Word are you using?
Gravelly-Voiced Fucker
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Quote by Liz


If you single space paragraph your Word document, copy it all, and then use the 'Paste from Word' function on the story submission screen it works fine. No double spacing and the text formatting is retained.



Cool demo! The prose is breathless. Frikkin bees.

I write in LibreOffice, but if I save in .rtf (rich text format) and paste I have no problem.
Testing The Waters.
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2002 SP3.

And I take it back, upon testing it again, I remembered that the issue pasting from word with the word button was completely different. Yes, it will retain the italics. The problem is, it inserts those extra wide carriage returns. I thought it was double, but it's actually just double wide.



Fixing that is more of a pain in the ass than adding the italics, and creates the very problem that was the issue in the first place.
"insensitive prick!" – Danielle Algo
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Quote by RejectReality
2002 SP3.


2002? That's halfway between the Reagan administration (the Commodore 64 era) and now. 5 years before the first smart phone!


===  Not ALL LIVES MATTER until BLACK LIVES MATTER  ===

Testing The Waters.
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It's paid for, and it gets the job done. LOL All I really use it for is my second grammar check. It's different enough that I catch things running a story through there that I miss in the Wordperfect grammar check.

I'm accustomed to having to manually insert the italics. I have to use a different format on every site. The only difference with Lush is I can't have a saved, pre-formatted version that I can copy and paste. I have to do the formatting in the submission window.

No problem for an initial submission. If anything needs tweaked afterward, it crosses my line of "too much trouble" to do it a second time.

There are a couple I still may change, where I wasn't particularly happy with the original category choice. I'm not going to go change most of my Group Sex stories to the Threesome category, though.

Quote by noll


2002? That's halfway between the Reagan administration (the Commodore 64 era) and now. 5 years before the first smart phone!
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Quote by Verbal


My waking state is confusion. Every so often I get it together long enough to string a few words together to form a sentence.

A suggestion: A FLASH ONLY COMPETITION!!!


My first story, and first RR, was written for the Flash Erotica competition. I didn't place because I didn't know about the votes thing, but whatever, it was still fun. Flash is great for those of us who either have a) short attention spans or b) fleeting chances to actually write (in my case, both apply).

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Want to spend some time wallowing in a Recommended Read? Pick one! Or two! Or seven!

Raised on Blackroot
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Okay. Seriously. Who fucked up the submission text editor since I last posted 7 odd months ago? Used to be able to copy and paste easy.

Now I can't do anything but use the Source button which means manual manipulation of paragraphs and font style. That's an ungodly pain in the ass that's already taken about 5 minutes to do just one page.
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Just put the story in Google Docs, then copy and paste to lush, then fix the italics. Simple.