  Contests & Activities
This week: Edited by: terryjroo
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| The abundance of contests and activities offered at Writing.com, help to create the most exciting and fun website for writers. The Contest and Activities Newsletter is provided each month to, not only assist you in keeping up with the latest and greatest items, but to help assure that, if interested, you have the tools necessary to run a successful contest or activity. Enjoy this issue and please feel free to comment at the bottom! terryjroo |
| ASIN: B085272J6B |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 9.99
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Mad Libs
Leonard Stern and Roger Price invented Mad Libs in the 1950s. Since then, they’ve become quite popular. When I was growing up, I can remember playing Mad Libs for hours with one of my friends. They came in book form and were a great, inexpensive source of entertainment, especially on rainy afternoons or on road trips.
So what is a Mad Lib? Well, it’s basically a short story with missing words called blanks. The blanks represent parts of speech like nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs or they can be more specific words like a body part, a location, a color, etc. To fill in the blanks, you ask another person, or group of people, to give you a word to go into the blank spot. You would say something like, “Give me a verb” or “name a body part,” but you don’t tell them what the story is about. Once you have filled all of the blanks you read the story. Usually it comes out to be quite humorous or nonsensical, depending on the answers you received.
Mad Libs are still being printed, but now you can find them on the Internet, including here at WDC. They are a nice diversion from writing and reviewing and can even get your creative juices flowing again. If you don’t want to play one, why not make one?
Follow these easy instructions to create your very own WDC Madlib. First, go to the top of the page and click on the writing link. Next, go to the writing-interactive section and click on madlib. From there the setup is like most of the other items on WDC until you get to the item body and item type specific preferences, which are explained below.
 Basic Item Information
 Title: give it an appropriate title
Folder: pick where you want the item to be located in your portfolio
Brief Description: you have 90 characters to entice someone to open your madlib
Intro Rating: rate your brief description
Content and Access Control Settings
Content Rating: rate the content of your madlib
Access Restrictions: decide who you want to see the madlib
Passkey: fill this in if you want a passkey on the item (explanatory link provided)
Group Edit Access and Edit Level: decide if you want a group to have editing access
Genres and Keywords
Genres: pick the appropriate genres
Keywords: list any relevant keywords for the search engine
Item Body
Item Body: This is where your story is placed. Follow these directions (taken directly from the madlib instructions): Enter the body of your madlib in the text area below. To indicate where a blank should be placed, type [blank n], where n is replaced with the correct word blank number. Remember to use the squared BRACKETS to enclose the blank and number. Do not use the squiggly BRACES that WritingML uses!
Item Type Specific Preferences
Word Blank 1-25: Type in the word requests that correspond with the blanks you put in the text area. i.e. If your first blank ([blank 1]) takes the place of the word “ball,” you would type in “singular noun” next to Word Blank 1. You must have five Word Blanks to be included in the public listings, and you can have a maximum of twenty-five Word Blanks for the entire madlib.
Item Preferences
Rating/Reviewing Preference: decide whether you want the item ratable or not
Auto Reward Gift Points: fill this in if you want to reward reviewers automatically
Copyright Information and Store Item
Save options: you can choose save, save and edit or save and view.
That’s it for setting up madlibs. Now, go out there and make up one yourself, or have fun completing one of the madlibs listed below.
I hope you’ve found this issue helpful!
** Image ID #1172426 Unavailable ** |
 Below are some madlibs I found around the site! 
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 Contests to enter! 
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Activities for your enjoyment!
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#1129841 by Not Available. |
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#1167089 by Not Available. |
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
Don't forget to support our sponsor!
| ASIN: B01MQP5740 |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 4.99
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In my last newsletter, I posed the question: What activity do you find the most interesting and why? Here are the answers to that question.
Lynn McKenzie   says, “I enjoy quizzes, because they help exercise my brain. Or sometimes they just make me laugh, and I can always use that!  ”
schipperke says, “I enjoy the quizzes the best because I like to guess what the most popular answer is before I submit it! I am usually wrong.  ”
⭐Princette♥PengthuluWrites  says, “I find quizzes most interesting because it gives you a glimpse into the author's personality on what subject they decided to create a quiz on.”
AXiLeA says, “Hi!
I particularly enjoy polls on writing. I found polls on many different aspects of this vast topic:
one's favorite place / room for the activity of writing, favorite genre, creative mind and depression, what inspires an author to write, favorite time of day or night...
There are so many polls about writing and I learn a lot from them, about other members as well as about myself.
I'm looking forward to your next newsletter.
Axilea
inbuninbu-- in Japan!! says, “I find watching other people very interesting and absorbing; observing other people in the street and jotting down chance encounters or strange events you witness can be a great way of generating new story ideas and increasing your creativity! Sometimes normail, ordinary everyday life can unexpectedly throw up some "gems", fascinating oddments that can intrigue and spark creative thought or productive periods of reflection. Try it for yourself next time you're on the bus, train, or waiting in a queue for a table at a restaurant, and keep a notebook handy to jot down ideas and phrases for later.”
Thank you all for your answers! I think the addition of the quiz feature has been a huge success! Thank you The StoryMaster  and The StoryMistress  for giving us such an entertaining and useful item!
I know that at this time of the year, things start to get hectic. The holidays are fast approaching, the days are shorter and the nights longer, and everyone is trying to cram in as much fun as they can before the start of the New Year. While you still have a moment, and I have your attention, let me ask you to drop us a line and tell us what types of items would you like to see covered in the newsletters for 2007? We really appreciate your comments and questions, so don’t be shy. |
| ASIN: 1945043032 |
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Amazon's Price: Price N/A
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Contests & Activities: November 01, 2006 Issue [#1351]
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