Chennai, Aug 12 : The global community blogging platform LiveJournal has made its India entry with the launch of a flash-fiction writing contest, which is being called the Twenty20 of story-telling.
Organised along with Caferati, an Indian online literary community, Quick Tales - the LiveJournal flash-fiction contest - is open for participation from Aug 11 to Sep 7, to anyone with a mailing address in India.
"Flash-fiction is an ancient form, but has grown hugely in popularity in these attention-deficit times, with the growth of the Internet. If standard short fiction is like a one-day international, think of the Quick Tales Contest as the Twenty20 of contemporary story-telling," said Peter Griffin, co-founder and joint-editor of Caferati.
The word 'journal' is the theme of the contest and the top entry will get Rs.20,000. There are prizes for positions two to five as well. Each of the 100 short-listed entries will also be highlighted on the India writing community (http://community.livejournal.com/india_writing/) on LiveJournal, where the contest is hosted.
Short-listed stories may also be featured in a book that LiveJournal plans to publish at a later date, its statement released here said. This contest has been conceived to support web users in India with a passion for creative writing.
This writing contest will be the first opportunity for Indian web users to engage with a LiveJournal project specifically designed for India.
"India was our first port of call after we acquired LiveJournal last December," Andrew Paulson, chairman of the board of SUP, the owners of LiveJournal, said Monday.
"We already have a great reach in many online markets and have a small but loyal following in India. This project sees us for the first time actually trying to support the growth of new local communities in India. LiveJournal already has over 16 million accounts today and I am hoping that it won't be long before there are many more of these coming from India," he added.
LiveJournal in India currently has 900,000 page impressions a month, with 5,000 unique monthly users and 13,000 registered accounts, all of which promise to see exponential growth post the roll-out.
"Flash-fiction, also called micro-fiction, short-shorts, and many other names, demands that the writer tell a story with all the classical elements - a beginning, middle and end, a conflict and resolution, a credible protagonist - but within a very limited number of words, which may mean that these elements are implied rather than made explicit," said Griffin.
--- IANS
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