The Simon & Schuster challenge was one of our greatest accomplishments, and one of our most difficult undertakings to date. It was our first time working with a big publisher and taking challenges to a larger scale. Given the number and quality of entries, determining the top 50 was extraordinarily difficult. Having never done something like this before, we had to really bootstrap our selection criteria. 

We spent weeks reading through every single one of the entries as a team. The first criterion we used was grammar. Repetitive grammatical mistakes, and a lack of respect for English syntax in general, were grounds for disqualification. The second criterion was creativity. We looked for storytelling excellence, moving characters, inventive plots. We looked for content that captivated us, that we thought would enthrall others as well. After narrowing the list of entries by these two criteria, 166 remained. 

For each of these 166 entries, each team member assigned a subjective "quality rating" from one to five. We considered likes to break ties when the average quality score was too close to call. We wanted to include some democratic element in determining the winners, rather than solely rely upon our own subjective judgment. When all was said and done, we had found our 50 entries.

In reflection, our process was imperfect and we intend to do a better job in the near future. Here are some of the ideas we are considering:

1) Limited Voting. When the challenge ends, everyone gets a limited number of votes, and cannot use these votes on their own entry. We would use these votes to distill the pool of potential winners more democratically.

2) Electoral College. A panel of judges is either elected deliberately or selected randomly to read through the entries and determine the winners.

3) Gauntlet Tournaments. We select a few factors, a combination of judging panel, spell check, democratic votes, and other creative criteria, to advance the best content round-by-round, tournament-style.

We would love to hear your suggestions and ideas for improving our challenges.

Once again, congratulations to the winners and entrants alike. 

We are working hard to bring you more publishing opportunities.

I was nervous. Blushed cheeks, sweaty palms and warm ears, all of them became apparent when I saw him. I have been talking to him on the internet for 5 years now and it was the first time in all those years that we were meeting. After a nice dinner, and not much talking we went to my apartment. I took shower and put on my favourite body mist and was all very excited to feel the touch of the man I have been talking for so long and was almost in love with. I slipped into my shorts and joined him under the blanket in my bed. With laptop on his laps, he asked me that if I would like to listen to romantic slow songs. I said that yes, sure! He dimmed the lights of the room. The vibes and the ambience indicated the love all around. Bodies were warm, breaths were fast, hearts were pounding really hard and the kiss happened. Feeling the soft flesh of his lips and tongue over mine was surreal. He slid his hand down there and I realized that what a pool of juices I had made. The hot love-making followed and continued for the whole night. I expected a proposal to be his girl friend next morning after that perfect night and those personal and detailed chats of our lives for 5 years. Dawn arrived and we were both up but still in the bed and he pulled out his wallet and showed me the photo of his daughter. I was shocked to know that he has a daughter, but it did not lessened my love for him, until he said, "I love my daughter and MY WIFE very much. Would you like to be my sex buddy? I loved making love to you the last night, it was........" I walked away to the washroom before he could say anything more. Why did he never mentioned that he is married and has a family. I took shower washing away my mixed set of emotions.

Fucked up night it was! May be I had expected too much of an internet stranger. Such a naive I was!

Never fall in love over the internet.

I was generous enough to offer him a breakfast though! :p

Afternoon, Prosers,

It’s week sixty-seven of the Prose Challenge of the Week, and given the changes we have made to the challenge stream, this week will be the last post we make to announce them in post form. We have the functionality to choose the winners digitally, notify them immediately, and transfer the coins into their Prose Wallets automatically.

As mentioned in our post, “Let’s talk about Prose,” these challenges will now be pay-to-enter for the time being. It’s because of this that we are renaming them simply, “Prose Challenge.” They will run until the maximum number of entries have been reached so we can use the entry fees to pay each winner.

Let’s have a look at this week’s prompt:

ProseChallenge #67: Write a poem about grief. The most eloquent, elegant, entertaining entry, ascertained by Prose, earns $100 and stays atop the Spotlight shelf for 24 consecutive hours. Feel free to invite friends, distant family, even strange acquaintances to play this challenge with you anonymously. Please use #ProseChallenge #itslit for sharing online.

Back to week sixty-six. The winner of the “life lessons” challenge is, @starryEYES with their piece, Learning to the song of the beeps.

Congratulations! You have just won $100, and your post will remain at the top of our Spotlight feed for the next day. We will be in touch with you shortly to execute payment.

From this point forward, the winners of the Prose Challenge will get a notification and the coins will automatically transfer to your Prose Wallet within 24 hours of winning the challenge. If you don’t get the coins within that period, give us a shout.

To keep tabs on the challenge winners of all challenges, check out the challenge archives. https://theprose.com/challenges/archive-month

As you may recall, last week, we announced a sponsored challenge in collaboration with publishing giant, Simon & Schuster. Here is the link, just in case you haven’t stumbled across it yet! https://theprose.com/challenge/5367

If you haven’t entered any of our awesome challenges yet, why not? Check out some of them here: https://theprose.com/challenges

And as always, remember to spread the word(s).

Until next time, Prosers,

Prose.