FaceFic

It’s competition time!

If you’re a facefic contributor, or you think you could be, now’s the time to submit new facefics. The inaugural BBE FaceFic Awards begin now and will run for two weeks, ending at 00:00 UTC on the 23rd of June 2009. All facefics submitted before then will be judged, and the best will be announced here and awarded an interesting and valuable¹ prize!

Your judges are the three most prolific FaceFic posters: Eric TF Bat, Andrew Blake and Emma Evans. That’s the “BBE” in the name. They are, of course, open to bribes, but due to the financial downturn combined with their incredibly high standards, bidding for a place in the final shortlist starts at “pay off my mortgage” and goes up from there, so you’re better off using innate talent instead.

Remember: the competition is open right now, and finishes in a fortnight. Better get writing. And remember: 420 characters, no more, no less, always!

¹ Your idea of valuable may not necessarily match ours, but it’ll be better than nothing, so give it a go.

Facebook recently changed the limit on their news posts to 420 characters per post, up from the very Twitter-like previous limit of 160.  Being a fan of microfiction, I figured 420 characters should be enough to write a very short science fiction story.  So I tried it, and got a good enough reaction that I tried it again.  Then some other people tried it.  Before you knew it, we had a movement!

So: facefic.com is the place to store them.  If you write a FaceFic, let me know here (a comment will do, pointing to the text) and I’ll stick it up here with a topic and a title and cross-references to your name.  Build up a body of work out of very tiny parts!