As someone who's been away for a few years and not participated in the Writing Contest for more than that, I'll try to keep my thoughts more generalized.
What we're really trying to discuss, I think, is how to drive new writers into the contest. Yes, regulars are wonderful -- being one, I'm biased -- but new kin is the lifeblood of any social media platform. It's no surprise that forums have waned in the past five years, and this one is no different. The question is: how do we overcome this obstacle?
Yes, we could have more interaction / collaboration in the writing contest process, ie. picking the theme, changing up the word count per month, offering raffles, and commit to more readers and critiques from members. However, I think that misses the overall point. How do we draw in new writers, not to have more traffic to the contest, but to the forum in general?
Many of us have noted the top-down problem with the forum for years. I won't go into too much detail, but overhauling one aspect (writing) on this forum might do it some good, as many of the Facebook group consider us solely readers. Again, thinking broad and not solely tied to the writing contest so bear with me, what if we introduced a board for serialized fiction? There, members could post their own writing -- outside of the writing contest limitations -- for a much larger crowd. This could integrate the reader / writer dichotomy on this forum and ease in newcomers more. I've participated on a serialized forum many moons ago, where that was the main draw, but writing permeated every aspect of that place. Food for thought, and perhaps not the best place to continue this discussion here. Still, something to think about. I've thought much about how we could drive traffic and cultivate more members without having to rely on the website or facebook page, for obvious reasons, and I keep coming back to serialized fiction.
