Duleigh
Just an old dog
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2004
- Posts
- 5,909
Is it a complete story with exposition, story line, and conclusion?
This rule is to keep chapters of stories out. Chapters don't have exposition so the reader doesn't know the characters and they have no idea what the world around the capter entails. A chapter has no defined story line because it's a portion of a story line, and a chapter has no conclusion because that happens in a different chapter.
If you can take characters from a series and write a story that is unique, has exposition that introduces the characters and starts the story line rolling, and the story line concludes in the narrative of your entry, I would say that's a stand alone story. You can say that these characters are from the PORTMANTEAU series but don't let the reader think that they have to read the series to understand what is going on in your contest entry.
I write series several series but each entry in my Enchantress and my Stormwatch series is a complete story, there's no overlying storyline. My WaWW series and my Andi's Dream series are both made up of chapters, but also side stories, some of which have been entered into contests. That's the nice thing about the series function here, you can write a series divided up into chapters, but you can add side stories and place them in the series timeline.
er, but that would mean that you were in a time zone several hours later than EST and so have no benefit at all! 
I meant it as a joke about a failed time travel (temporal shifts), i.e. the apparent later deadline in the UK (even later for points west until the IDL) and using a VPN to appear to be posting from the UK, which would totally fail! The discussion almost makes me think of when British towns had local time and when the railways came some clocks had two minute hands, local and London.
(I'm fully qualified having sent in my application at the last possible minute and my CPD folder will be ready when it is requested - honest). 
