Contests

Story Contest: Crowd-Sorcery Fantasy Story

Last summer on the Chatterbox, Cricket readers created characters and words for a Crowd-Sorcery fantasy story to be written by Fred Durbin. That story, “The Girl Who Writes the Future,” begins on page 5 of this Cricket. It stars the three characters Chatterboxers selected from all the great heroes, villains, and sidekicks on the site—and also includes imaginative words from the Fantasy Dictionary, such as cleybat, shokira, gartlish, and Ishantrian.

 

Fred loved everybuggy’s characters and wrote to us with a suggestion for this month’s contest: “The Crowd-Sorcery site at cricketmagkids.com/sorcery is like a grand treasure house of ideas! There are hundreds and hundreds of fascinating and wondrous possibilities here—people, places, objects, concepts . . . all just waiting to be used in stories! To all you writers, I say, ‘Don’t let them sit around on dark shelves in the warehouse. Put them into your own stories and give them life!’”

So for this month’s contest, we’d like you to create a Crowd-Sorcery fantasy story. You can use heroes, villains, sidekicks, and words you find on the site—or that were featured in the July/August, September, and October issues—or you can imagine your own. Just make sure that the story you write using these characters is your own work. And if you use any fantasy words, please make sure it’s clear from the story what they mean.

Will your hero or heroine be on a quest for an enchanted object? Or have a secret power? Will your Crowd-Sorcery take place in a mystical land that exists only in your imagination, or someplace familiar—such as school?

The choice is yours! Everybuggy in Cricket Country—and Fred, too—will be dancing joyously around the Mystic Mailbox at midnight, awaiting the apparition of your best fantasy story (350 words or less, please) inspired by Crowd-Sorcery.

  • (Show Rules)
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    1. Your contest entry must be your very own original work. Ideas and words should not be copied.
    2. If you're 14 years old or younger, your entry must be signed by your parent or guardian, saying it is your own original work, that no help was given, and granting Cricket permission to publish prizewinning entries in the March 2015 issue or on our Web site. If you're older than 14, you must sign your own work, verifying that it is original.
    3. Be sure to include your name, age, and full address on your entry.
    4. Only one entry per person, please.
    5. If you want your work returned, enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope for each entry.
    6. Incomplete entries cannot be considered. Your entry will be incomplete if you forget to include your age or a signature verifying that your work is original.
    7. Your entry must be received by November 25, 2014.
    8. Send entries to:
      Cricket League
      P.O. Box 300
      Peru, IL 61354