Valentine's day, better known to singles as "singles awareness day." Couples know it as "listen to singles complain on social media, and risk sleeping on the couch tonight because your gift wasn't good enough" day. It's on Valentine's day most people forget about their platonic relationships with friends and family.

What I'm proposing for a contest is to have the entries be about the relationships of two individuals, be it romantic love or platonic friendship. The stories would be written by two authors. They could treat it like a collab and then edit it together, or maybe one acts as a story writer and the second acts as an editor. There are too many different types of arrangements to list.

How does that sound?

I'd have to see more as to how it would be executed, but it's a somewhat intriguing concept.

I'm definitely going to be keeping this idea in mind. Very interesting, and multiple authors working on an entry together sounds like it could make for some fantastic storytelling.

Oh cool, @Frizan likes the idea!

Yea, we're a collaborative writing site, it just makes sense to have a contest like that at some point. I'm also kind of curious what a "competitive collab" might look like. There is an art to writing something with someone else.

@ArenaSnow I imagine the contest will be run like the last one. Though I would personally insist on a higher word limit, and to be less flexible with it. 1K stories tend to be more artistic/experimental in nature while higher word counts let writers get to the point. That's not to say that shorter entries shouldn't be allowed, just that everyone should know what the true word limit is, and not pass it.

Another feature I would insist on, but not expect to get implemented, would be a judging panel. I know people don't like to trust judges, but the other contest had a pretty small turnout as far as votes go. But I leave those types of choices in Frizan's capable hands. From what I've seen, they seem to have a good handle on what the community wants. If the older discussions are anything to go by.

One other option, is creating two collab stories together that mesh together cohesively in some way. Maybe a two part story, or two different perspectives of a relationship. That could lead to many possibilities. Pairs of two, create a story of their own and then the take turns to edit and offer advice for improvement. In that way, no one feels like they not pulling their weight or contributing enough to the story itself. And gives well needed skills to give and receive critique. Also it would allow another smaller word count and still give a little more substance.

And yes, the rules need to be more precise. On the premise, wordcount and whatever else may be applied. So 2/3rd's of people don't completely disregard them and ironically those that followed the guidelines probably 'suffered' for it.