The now fully official Author’s Hangout Halloween 2025 competition support thread

Welp, there went nothing. Figured out some tags to include and sent in my erotic recreation of The Raven (with far fewer dead wives and far more magical shopkeepers)
 
I feel your pain.

And if a writer as good as you is being downvoted, what chance have us regular folk got?

Evidence suggests it might not be as good a story as I thought, but 🤷‍♂️

There's only so much one can do. It's a good contest anyway; the stories I've read have been on a par with anything from past contests.
 
4.39 for a writer of your caliber is a fucking joke! I feel like we are living through The Purge.

It definitely missed the mark, category-wise. Like posting a gleeful-slutwife story in LW.

Well. Maybe not that bad, lol. It was one of those stories that don't really seem to "fit" somehow. I'd forgotten how provincial the EH audience can be.

We'll see what the sweeps do.
 
My story is up, and apparently is an "Editor's Choice," according to my barely functional Notifications Feed.
I also got notification that mine was an Editor's Choice, but I didn't get a little green E either. I've gotten that several times before, I'm hoping it's a glitch and the E will appear in its own time.
yeah my entry was riding pretty high for awhile then all of a sudden...💣💣💣💣
Mine, too. 4.71 to 4.17 overnight. WTF.
 
I've stopped fighting with my Halloween story! It's beaten my ass, and probably will never be seen except on that other site. I'm sure not putting it for sale in its current comatose state!

always a disappointment, I know. But let me advise: don't give up on it entirely or throw it a away.

My Halloween entry started life back in August of 2023, only to grind to a halt halfway through.

Over two years later I finally figured out where to go with it and finished it. And its doing pretty well with readers.
 
I'm wondering if part of the problem isn't all the rewriting I've done to try to make it read like one of my stories. At AutoCrit, its scores are pretty spectacular.
Screenshot 2025-10-18 122834.png
So, seriously, I haven't a clue why I don't like it.
 
It’s getting crazier with each comp…

The benefits of extra views are commensurately attenuated, sadly.
It's the classic dilemma of all the internets. The probability that you "get in on something" before literally everyone else does is infinitely small.

As soon as word gets around that there is extra eyeballs to be had, there will be no more extra eyeballs.

At the end, it is always the same - there is no lifehack, no cheatcode, no silver bullet to get attention other than really, really standing out amongst everyone else. There is no alternative to being extraordinary (unless you are the heir of a billionaire or something).
 
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I know comparing and playing statistics is a surefire way to make yourself miserable, but I'm still morbidly curious - what is about the minimum number of votes and views to be competitive, in a setting like this?

Yes yes there is the 25 minimum, but how many votes do the "blockbuster" competitors have, in competitions like these?

50? 100? 10.000?
 
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