Love-O-Rama #1: Pyar ka Trope-fest : Closed

You feel it in your fingers, you feel it in your toes

Love is all around you, and so the feeling grows

Yes, the day of feeling love, giving love, receiving love, celebrating love and just being in love is here!

But love cannot (and should not) be confined to one day… it is all around, every day, all the time.

So on this Valentine’s day, we, at the FFDT, bring you a month long fest to celebrate love in all its glory and splendour!

We bring you Love-O-Rama!

5 differently themed contests that we will launch one at a time to get you all into the spirit of Valentine’s day and hold on to that glorious loving feeling for as long as you can!

Welcome to the first of Love-o-Rama’s contests!!!!

We all know a good, juicy trope makes a great romance book or movie. We all have our favorite tropes and no matter how many times we see them recurring, they do not jade us or make us roll our eyes. Because cliched as they may be, tropes, when handled well, not just make us Romance geeks giggle and kick up our feet, but are also important structural backbones in storytelling.

So for the first of our Valentine’s day events, let’s celebrate this all important ingredient of a love story!

This one's for a Writer and Graphicer pair!

Writers, you’ll have two distinct sets of tropes: Set A that delineates storylines & Set B that describes settings &/or the leads’ traits. You will pick a trope combination Set A + Set B and write a 1200 (plus or minus 10% i.e 1080 to 1320 words) word story (OS) with at LEAST ONE character chosen from the Fictional Character list given.

Romance Tropes

Set A: Storylines

1. Enemies-to-lovers

2. Fake Dating/ fake relationship

3. Childhood sweethearts

4. Friends-to-lovers

5. Second chance romance

6. Forced Proximity

7. Relationship coach

8. Opposites Attract

9. Mistaken identity

10. Best friend’s sibling

Set B: Setting

1. High school/ College

2. Medical or STEM

3. Sports

4. Road Trip

5. Neighbours

6. Disabled or neurodivergent

7. Time travel or historical

8. Music or any Art

9. Vampire/ werewolf/ alien/ superhero

10. Crime

Characters

(Pairings can be any among these, or you can pick one character and pair them with another of your choice)

1. Arnav from IPKKND

2. Vincenzo from Vincenzo

3. Sherlock Holmes from the BBC show Sherlock

4. Spiderman/ Peter Parker from Marvel

5. Imran from Zindagi na milegi dobara

6. Dean Winchester from Supernatural

7. Sujal from Kahiin toh hoga

8. Anthony Bridgerton from Bridgerton

9. Duan jia from Hidden Love

10. Major Vihan Shergill from Uri

11. Hermione Granger from Harry Potter

12. Geet from GHSP

13. Katniss from Hunger Games

14. Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones

15. Naina from YJHD

16. Monica from Friends

17. Felicity Smoak from Arrow

18. Amy from Brooklyn 99

19. Sehmat Khan from Raazi

20. Jiang Jun from Love is sweet

Graphicers, once the story is written, you will create a Book cover for it.

Rules For writers

The story should involve a Romantic pairing and the genre is fluff. You can have elements of angst in it but the end should be a happy one.

You MUST choose ONLY one theme from each set (Trope & Setting); tell us your choice at the start of the story. Eg: Forced Proximity trope (Set A) where the leads are in High school or college (Set B), they can either be students or teachers or parents whose kids are in high school. Make sure you stick to this theme all through your story, since this will be an important criterion for judging.

Give your story a befitting title.

You can choose ANY TWO of the characters from the list to make up your romantic pairing OR you can choose ONE character from the list and include one of your own - either an existing fictional character or an original character that you create. (Note: no self-insert or RPF fics will be allowed)

The story can be in first or third person; in present or past tense.

Writers and graphicers MUST pair up before you start. You can post on the thread saying you’re interested in writing or Graphicers, you can volunteer to make Graphics for any writer who wants one.

Each writer can submit a maximum of 5 stories but they must have a different trope + setting + character combination.

Each Graphicer can pair up with more than one writer.

Crossovers and AUs are allowed - you don’t have to stick to canon.

LGBTQAI+ pairings are allowed, and you’re allowed to change sexual orientation of the characters in the list as you see fit.

Please make sure your story is written in English (a few Hindi words or words in another language are acceptable. If other than Hindi, please provide a translation as addendum).

Your entry must be original and not published anywhere else.

Do not advertise your entry. Your stories must remain anonymous until the end of the contest to ensure fair judging. Any entry seen to be advertised anywhere will be disqualified immediately. You also CANNOT post your stories anywhere until the results are declared.

All stories MUST follow the FF rules at all times meaning no explicit or prohibited content will be allowed.

Rules for Graphicers

Book cover size should be 512W X 800H.

Book cover should be non-animated.

Book cover shouldn't have the copyright or any kind of watermark on it.

Book cover should ONLY have the Title of the story, DO NOT include the Author’s name! After the results, if the author wishes to publish, they can request the graphicer to add their name.

The book cover’s aesthetic is up to you & the graphicer and writer can collaborate to come up with a suitable cover design that you feel best represents the story, however refer to A/S forum rules for designs/ graphics.

Submit your completed entries (story + Book cover) by Friday, March 7th, 11:59 PM IST to FFEditors.

Stories and Book Covers will be judged separately.

Stories will be judged on appropriateness of Title, Adherence to theme/ contest guidelines, Creativity/ engagement & Flow of narrative.

Covers will be judged on how well they depict the story, creativity and aesthetic (mood).

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the thread and we will add it to the FAQs.

WildestDreams || Sevenstreaks || LizzieBennet || ExoticDisaster || Quantum-dot

FAQs

1. Can I make the Book Cover for a story I wrote?

No. We ask for this contest you participate as a team. Which means if you write a story, get someone else to make the book cover for it.

2. Can I participate as Graphicer and Writer?

Yes, you can make a Book Cover for another writer while writing a story yourself, & get a different graphicer to make a BC for you!

3. Can I team up with the same Graphicer for more than one story?

Yes, we're allowing this, since it will mean more entries and the more the merrier. Just bear in mind when you write, each of your entries will have to have a different A+B+Character combo.

4. As a graphicer, can I pair up with more than one writer?

Yes, it's mentioned in the rules.. you can. Any graphicer that's already participating - if you find that a writer is without a graphicer you can volunteer to help them out with a Book Cover.

We're capping this to a maximum of 7 Book Covers per graphicer.

5. 500 words is too less for an OS.

Ok, we're revising this to 1200

6. What if we're not familiar with any of the characters from the given list?

Since we're allowing AUs, Crossovers and pretty much any kind of pairing, there is no hard and fast rule that you need to stick to character traits from canon. It therefore follows that you don't really need to know a character's bio, however, you can always google them, they're pretty well-known characters.

7. Can I write about platonic love or friendships or does it need to be romantic love only?

This particular contest is all about ROMANCE since the tropes lend themselves very well to the Romance genre. However, we will have more contests coming up where you will be able to focus on platonic love too.

8. What if I don’t have a Graphicer to pair up with? Can I not participate in that case?

You’re welcome to go ahead and start writing your story right away and continue to look for a Graphicer to make your Book Cover in parallel with your writing. We advise you to have a Graphicer at the start just to avoid a last minute scramble since entries will be considered Complete only when they have both the story and the Book cover.

List of Graphicers participating

(Writers, if you don't have a graphicer to pair up with, you can approach any of these to make you a book cover but please bear in mind that the Graphicer has the right to refuse. Try and approach someone who isn't already doing Book Covers so as not to over burden one person)

1. PriyaArshiSarun (Doing 1 BC)

2. Mystic_Muse

3. missFiesty_69

4. xdowninflamesx (Doing 1 BC)

5. SweetButSpicy (Doing 2 BCs)

6. Quantum-dot (doing 2 BCs)

7. itsShonali (Doing 2 BCs)

8. Moonstique (Doing 1 BC)

9. dellzcreationz (Doing 2 BCs)

10. ssttuuttii (Doing 3 BCs)

11. oh_nakhrewaali (Doing 5 BCs)

Sevenstreaks (Doing 7 BCs) WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TAKE ANY MORE REQUESTS!!!

Tagging memebers

Pls do participate

Happy Valentines Day Everyone 💓

Pls do share with your writer and graphicer friends also

Wow so much activity around V day

Is it allowed for me to write the story as well as create the book cover

Arey wah, I just got done with my 3 stories for QH contest and now one more story contest. I'm realaly enjoying this!

Thanks for such a long deadline....I needed it for my blank mind to come up with new ideas

Anyone want to be my graphicer?

Also, maybe I missed this in the rules but, entry kisko bhejni hai?

Tagging more members

Pls don't hold back if you are interested in taking part

Happy Valentines Day Everyone 💓

Pls do share with your writer and graphicer friends also

Originally posted by: heavenlybliss

Arey wah, I just got done with my 3 stories for QH contest and now one more story contest. I'm realaly enjoying this!

Thanks for such a long deadline....I needed it for my blank mind to come up with new ideas

Anyone want to be my graphicer?

Also, maybe I missed this in the rules but, entry kisko bhejni hai?

Originally posted by: Sutapasima

Wow so much activity around V day

Is it allowed for me to write the story as well as create the book cover

The concept, storylines / tropes, settings and characters are all so well thought out. Good job... everyone involved

Seems very interesting... count me in. I can do either... Graphics or Writing... so if anyone is missing a pair, lemme know .

Tagging some more people.

Tagging some writers to take part in the contest. Check above for more details