HomeStation Presents: A Home Community Writing Contest
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
When HomeStation first arrived on the scene, it had two primary goals: to become Home’s literary journal nonpareil, and to serve as a platform for creative and artistic expression.
HSM tackled what at the time sounded like an impossible feat: to produce, with rare forays into the industry at large, a new story about Home or Sony gaming every single day. And not just regurgitated press releases, either: instead, HSM stories would have minimum word counts, polished editing and presentation, and would dig into the social side of Home as well as cover its gaming elements.
This vision succeeded because of one thing: an amazing group of people, from all walks of life, who saw in the HSM ethos an opportunity to reach out to the many Home users with pent-up demand for a mature publication which was written to their level.
Keeping HomeStation moving is a daunting task; this is an all-volunteer community project into which everyone contributes for free, with web articles, magazine issues, podcasts, videocasts and machinima in constant production and release. If the average length of a novel is roughly 75,000 words, then this team cumulatively produces the equivalent of a new novel roughly every two months.
Think about that for a moment. If you went back to the very beginning and started reading every single HSM article that’s been published, it would currently be the equivalent of reading somewhere between seven to eight novels’ worth of material in a row. No one has ever tried anything like this before in Home.
Which brings us to this announcement.
Because of the sheer output of material, along with HSM’s editorial policies (which, though lax by commercial standards, are perhaps more stringent than what the blogging culture at large is used to), we occasionally run into the challenge of onboarding new writers who may be daunted by what they see, or what they feel would be expected of them. And we’ve discovered that the easiest way to overcome this is to run contests.
This isn’t the first contest HomeStation has ever held, nor is it even the first writing contest. Our last writing contest gave away more than two-hundred dollars in SEN cards, and was a massive success. And now it’s time to do it again.
Welcome, then, to our latest HSM writing contest!
The process is simple:
There are two categories — team writers and guest contributors. Team writers will only compete with each other. If you are not presently a team writer with HSM, you will be in competition solely with other guest contributors. If you wish to enter into the contest and be considered for one of our prizes, you must be a registered subscriber with a valid e-mail address on the HSM website (www.hsmagazine.net).
A valid contest entry consists of an article which meets HomeStation’s editorial guidelines and is published to the website. Submissions must be e-mailed to norsegamer@hsmagazine.net — no other method of submission will be accepted.
The contest window will run from February 27th, 2012 until midnight GMT, March 27th. Any article published to the HSM website during this window of time, save for those written by HSM editorial staff, will be considered a contest entry.
Up for grabs: TWO-HUNDRED AND SIXTY DOLLARS in SEN cards!
The cards are in twenty-dollar increments: six up for grabs for the team writers to compete for, and six for the guest contributors to compete for, with one held back for an Editor’s Choice award. (Note that prizes are for SCEA Home only.) That’s thirteen cards for a contest which lasts thirty days. Pretty good odds…
How do we determine the winners?
Simple: with the aid of Google Analytics, we are able to determine exactly how many unique visitors an article receives. So, during the contest window, the six team-writer articles and the six guest-contributor articles which receive the highest numbers of unique visitors are awarded the codes for the cards, while the Editor’s Choice award is given to whomever HSM’s editorial staff feel produced a truly superlative story.
Keep in mind that since we go by visitor numbers, you can win more than one prize if you have more than one article published and it generates enough visitor traffic to win. So this creates an incentive for a writer, upon being published in HSM, to spread the word to as many friends as possible to go check it out — and to keep writing.
Now, in order to make sure that all contest entries have a fair shot at audience exposure, there will be two contest windows: one from February 27th through March 12th, with visitor numbers tabulated and six prizes awarded on March 17th (three for team writers and three for guest contributors), and a second window from March 13th through the 27th, with data tabulated and seven prizes (same as before, plus the Editor’s Choice award) given out on March 31st. Winners will be notified via the e-mail address provided with their HSM registration.
What are the editorial guidelines used to determine whether or not an article submission qualifies for publication?
1. Your article must be at least 900 words in length. Shorter articles may be published if the editors determine in their sole discretion that the material is truly superlative, but any submission below 900 words may be summarily disqualified.
2. Your article must be written in English. (Yes, the editors are decent with French, and we have a large French audience, but we just don’t have time to translate as well as edit.)
3. Your articles must be your original work, and you must not assign or license to any other party any copyrights or other rights in your articles. Articles previously published in other Home community media outlets are thus disqualified as well.
4. Articles must not contain material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, pornographic, harassing, threatening, harmful, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive, inflammatory, libelous or otherwise objectionable.
5. Articles must in some way relate to PlayStation Home, the SEN, Sony gaming, or the video game industry in general.
Some general tips we can offer which will increase the odds of being published:
1. In case you’re curious what nine-hundred words looks like, we just passed it a little while ago.
HSM editors: spoiling all the fun since 2010.
2. Articles should look like articles. If you aren’t familiar with the structure of an article, we highly recommend obtaining a copy of the Associated Press Stylebook. Keep in mind that the HSM editors are human beings as well, and exceptionally busy human beings at that; if we receive a submission that has no paragraph breaks, poor sentence structure, gaps in punctuation and a general lack of format (opening and closing paragraphs, for instance), it’ll probably get rejected.
3. Once you’ve submitted an article, don’t spam the editors with inquiries about its status. If we need to reach you, we will. If you see the article appear during the contest period, then you know it made it. Submitting an article is not a guarantee of publication, and HSM reserves the right to disqualify or refuse to publish any entries it receives.
4. HomeStation is a Sony-positive and Home-positive publication. We encourage constructive criticism, but we don’t publish hate rants. And if you wish to criticize, we highly recommend that if you write about a problem, you should also write about a solution. To get an idea of what this looks like, we recommend checking out SealWyf’s brilliant “Seal vs. the Mansion” article.
5. We do have photographers on staff, but we highly encourage you to include your own images. Again, the less work you make us do, the greater the odds you’ll get published.
6. If you would like some guidance or assistance in crafting an article, HSM maintains a writing mentorship program. Information about this can be found in the HSM forum, or you can contact HSM team writers for details.
7. If the idea of your words getting edited is abhorrent to you, then we encourage you to take your freedom of expression elsewhere.
8. We tend to publish stories about Home, with particular emphasis on the social side of Home. We also like to publish reviews of Home content (new spaces, games, etc.), as well as interviews with prominent Home community groups and individuals. We also publish video game reviews every now and then.
9. Machinima submissions will also be accepted (the video entry will obviously have to be hosted somewhere else, such as YouTube). Machinima must meet all the same guidelines, except that articles with machinima need only be two-hundred words in length rather than nine-hundred.
10. Ever look at a magazine article and there’s a snappy line from the copy in enlarged font? That’s called a pull quote. We encourage you to pepper your articles with humor, analogy and storytelling, because those devices inevitably produce the best pull quotes.
A full copy of the contest rules and guidelines can be found in the HSM website forum.
Think you’ve got what it takes to be the next hot voice in Home journalism? Then put fingers to keys and take a shot at winning a prize for being published in HomeStation Magazine!
February 27th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 14 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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Cool another contest to test the waters and bring in the writers! I can’t wait to see what comes from this one, we have gotten some really good people from the others we have done. Good luck everyone! Now start writing!
I am glad to see that the contest has a separate category for HSM team writers! You all deserve an award! The amount of articles, the quality, the talent, and the fact that it is all for free -- really speaks of your commitment to the Home community!
Thank you, HSM, for doing what you do best!
Just read the fine print: this is also a machinima contest! Look at number 9!!! (starts scribbling script ideas…)
kool
pencil- check
lol
papper- check
brain- wheres my brain, where did it go, oooo there it is . ok check
I have a good excuse! i m french^^
i will try something, but i do not promise anything!^^
Picturing Norse editing article by Sorrow…. Sacre bleu!
I can has writes published?
yessum boss, yous can indeed !
I hope this doesnt sound dumb but, I’m trying g to figure out anybody know about how many pages is 300
Anybody know about how many pages would 900 words consist of?
AAMCSYSTEMS: mine ran 2 pages, using open office to create it with 12pt tahoma font at roughly 1200 words (yes open office does a word count and its freeware
Sorry bout the double post, im typing this on a phone
AAMC: My usual article: Times New Roman 12 pt. (font) is slightly over 2 pages in length. Typically, two and a half pages. But then, my typical article is more than 900 words. Remember, if I was using a smaller font, it would be less pages; larger font, it would be more.
Thank you everyone