It was a tough call narrowing down the contest. We had I think it was 16 entries that I have spent the past two days reading through and re-reading. Everyone did a great job in writing their stories! They were very entertaining! But in the end, I had to narrow the field down to some winners. I did give everyone whose post was less than 7 days old a $1.00 upvote, so that sort of expands the prize pool a bit.
In the end, I opted to create two categories. I have selected an overall winner and second place, but since both of these winners have a Reputation over 50 I decided to use the discretionary portion of the awards to create a under 50 division with three winners for that category. The prizes for the under 50 Reputation division will be 5, 3 and 2 STEEM. Payouts will be made from @thefreshfive account this evening.
In keeping with the way I have run previous contests, I removed from consideration posts which had received a vote from one of the curation guilds, earning the author more in rewards on the post than any prize I can dole out. For this contest we had one of our submissions get a Curie vote, and so I took this submission out of the prize pool, but it still deserves special mention:
https://steemit.com/writing/@diebitch/fresh-5-writing-contest-breaking-point
Without further ado. Here are our winners!
Madre del Muertas by @sultnpapper.
I really enjoyed how this story was put together. The central figure being a statue was not a reading I had taken into consideration, and the explanation of the cloth wrapped around her was pretty ingenious too. This was an extremely entertaining piece which stood out in the entries as being just a little bit more compelling than the competition. Congratulations @sultnpapper!
Legend of the Scroll by @jayna.
Under 50 Reputation Winners
Love Waits by @nikisteem
What a tragic, almost Romeo and Juliet like story Niki has spun for us. We feel our young protagonist's pain as she waits for her lost love. Some very nice imagery in this story. One simply has to wonder, what might have happened had she given him just five minutes more?
Back Home by @isa93
The Pain That Comes With Beauty by @offtherecord
I hope you all enjoyed the first Fresh Five Writing Prompt! I will have a fresh writing prompt for you to work on this weekend.
In the meantime, those of you who have a slant more to the artistic, Check out the first Art Prompt, where the contest is to design a new logo for the Fresh Five. Check out the Contest Announcement.
Thanks everyone! In the next few days watch @thefreshfive for more introduceyourself curating! Adam has been out and I have failed to pick up the slack. I will be working to remedy that as soon as I can put a couple of minutes together to find some new Steemians for you to check out!
I thank you for selecting my entry as a winner, I didn't know what to expect as I had never entered a writing competition before. Thanks for the positive critique and explanation on your decision. I look forward to entering again in the future if I am able too. I wasn't quite sure of the "Fresh Five" , I came across your competition through the list that @moneyinfant publishes daily on writing contests.
So my thanks to him as well.
That's awesome! First contest and a winner. Makes it all worth while putting together my list knowing people are benefiting from it. Congratulations and here's hoping I hear of many more contest wins @sultnpapper!
Thanks Steve. I know if it had not been for your list I would more than likely never found this contest, so you have helped me in a big way. Very much appreciated.
tip! or !tip
Thanks for entering! Glad you found us! I could really imagine the scene as I read your story, it was really brilliant!
While the goal of The Fresh Five account is to encourage engagement with new Steemians, we need some folks who have been around for awhile participating with us as well to help foster relationships with newer folks. So the contests will always be open to everyone. The more people we have participating HOPEFULLY the more rewards we will be able to pass out, and I may make the two divisions a permanent part of the contests.
Keep on writing!
No need to thank me Mike, the pleasure was all mine. I will look forward to your future contests and enter when I can do so. If the Fresh Five has a Discord channel please send me an invite, I would love to interact with your folks on there as well.
amigo @sultnpapper yo participe y no logre ningún puesto pero me contenta que usted lo haya logrado, éxitos por siempre.
Gracias por las felicitaciones. Aprecio que me consideres un amigo. Me siento muy afortunado de haber sido elegido como el ganador. Hubo muchas historias muy buenas en el concurso, el tuyo está incluido en mi lista de muy buenos. A veces, los programas de traducción no siempre usan las mejores palabras y las cosas pueden perderse en la traducción, así que espero que esto salga correctamente. Continúe escribiendo y buscaré más de usted, buena suerte y su clase para acercarse a mí. Gracias.
Thank you so much for enjoying my story! And for the prize! It was my second or third day on Steemit and I really wanted to join a writing competition because I haven’t written anything in so long! It feels really great to have my work appreciated. I am a raging newbie on Steemit and hoping to contribute and make this platform rock even more! Any comments and advise on how to be better at Steemit is welcome and greatly appreciated. How do I get alerted to future writing competitions ?? I can’t wait to share more. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Xoxo Nic
Thanks for participating Niki, that sounds very much like my first week on Steem. I found a writing contest and dove in. I was fortunate as one of my first pieces of fiction got picked up by Curie for a massive upvote, I was so happy.
If I could offer one piece of constructive criticism on your piece it would be a little work on the formatting. Take a look at the entries from @sultnpapper and @jayna and how they have everything spaced out and paragraphs clearly separated, these little details really make a difference to the reader, as without the spacing it can feel like a "wall of text".
As for getting notifications, if you go back to the original contest post, there is a comment from an account that makes daily posts about contests going on throughout the Steemiverse. I don't follow that account, so I don't know how relevant the information is, but I do know a couple of people found this contest through that account. The tool I use to find things that interest me is @ginabot. You can have her send you Dicord notifications on various tags, posts by particular people you are a fan of, and many other things. Go visit the Ginabot blog and check out the first post there as it talks about the most recent updates to that service. It is entirely free to use, you just need to have a free discord account where you can get the notifications.
The Fresh Five is all about new Steemian engagement, so please feel free to let us know if you have any questions, once you get registered on Discord, feel free to look me up @mikepm74 and message me if you need help with anything. I don't claim to be a terrific mentor, but some people have found my advice useful. ;-)
Welcome to your new addiction. ;-)
Thank you for the mention, @mikepm74. @nikisteem, one of the best ways to find new writing contests and get some mentoring in how to succeed as a writer on Steemit is to connect with the writing communities on Discord. For example, you can find a link to The Writers’ Block at the bottom of my entry in this contest: Legend of the Scroll.
If I can help you in any way, please let me know!
Thank you so much! How wonderful! Much appreciated. I must read the winning post and as many others as I can find time to read. Thank you again for this fun contest, @mikepm74!
Thanks for participating Jayna! Really appreciated your story! I am on the hunt for new art to use for the next prompt to be announced on Sunday, so keep an eye out!!
May I recommend my friend @yurche? He is a prolific artist and teacher with whom I have collaborated on two multi-media pieces. The most recent one is here.
Congratulation to all winners and participants. Good job dear, keep it up and next time I want to participate in this contest.
for sure @jareen61! Keep an eye on this blog as I will have a new art prompt for everyone on Sunday! Look forward to having you join the contest!
Thanks for the contest! It shows, the effort you put to make the prize pool bigger, and I think that matters a lot!
Congratulations to all the participants, and special ones to the winners, really great stories there :)
thank you @isa93! It was a pleasure to have everyone involved in the contest, and I enjoyed your piece quite a lot! Please look for the new prompt to be announced on Sunday and join us for the next contest!
Fantastic work, it's so difficult keeping something like this going but you guys are doing an awesome job!
thanks to those who made me a runner up! i am glad you enjoyed my writing as much as i enjoyed reading many of the other entries. such talent here.
Excellent support friend did not know of these contests I love writing although I still do not dare to write and upload it to the blog but I loved being able to participate in a contest that are very educational I like to compete excellent post great job greetings from venezuela
I'm no writer, other than descriptive articles, such as photography technique, styles etc, but I love what you're doing here @mikepm74, it has a very organic feel that is unique to steemit, similar to many of the photography, poetry contests and the @openmic etc. I just love to see good people recognising, and bringing to the attention of others, the tallents of creatives, especially those that might find it hard to otherwise get their work seen.
I was fortunate enough to be selected for your fresh five selection back in December and it sure helped and encouraged me.
Big up!!