TL;NGR: Okay, the poll options are up! You may vote for as many as you'd like. You are allowed to change your vote if you genuinely change your mind upon further reflection, please do not abuse this. This poll will close on Thursday, October 12th, at 11:59 PM EDT.
Hey guys! So as you may know, we sporadically do writing contests here on TCS and there's always a theme to keep things challenging. I thought perhaps it would be a great idea to get suggestions from all of you for potential themes for the next contest and then put up a poll where we can vote on them. The suggestion with the highest vote count will be the theme for the next writing contest, starting...well, starting the day after the poll closes. You have a week to make suggestions and then another week to vote on them.
Please, no suggestion is too silly, and repeats are entirely okay. We're going to try and keep our 13+ standards here, so anything that would only be appropriate for 18+ audiences is off limits, but any suggestion that is within the TCS rules is welcome!
Edit: I just got an excellent question about whether this is a genre or a theme.
We have done contests with both of those things before. If you have an idea for a genre you'd like (like, fantasy), that's great, just make a note that you mean the genre. If you have an idea for a theme you'd like (like, the future!!! - could be scifi set in the future, romance set in the future, stock brokers involved in futures trading, android stock brokers involved in futures trading in the future, etc.), also great, just make a note that you mean a theme. All suggestions that are within the rules will be put up as poll options.
Ideas So Far:
Mystery (genre)
Horror (genre)
Fanfic (genre)
Fantasy (genre)
Superhero (genre)
Essay Contest
Stories That Must Rhyme (theme)
Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopic (genre)
Lovecraft - horror based entirely on the unknowable or wholly alien (genre)
Horror/Spooky (theme)
Comedy (genre)
Parody (genre)
Classics Retold - for example, the Ramayana or the Odyssey in our own words (genre)Ulysses Remembered: The James Joyce Memorial Stream-of-Consciousness Contest™ - (genre)
Science Fiction (genre)
Journal Entries (genre)
"Reasons Why Dad Never Came Back When He Left To Buy a Pack of Cigarettes." (theme)
Apocalypse Cult (theme)
If I have thumbed your post with suggestions but failed to put your suggestion on the list or put the wrong category next to it, please PM me to let me know I made a mistake!