Contest Information

For the Adamantium Awards, all stories must have been completed in the year of the contest. We will not accept incomplete stories at this time. We'll accept stories beginning November 1st and end submission December 1st. Voting will go from December 15th to January 31st. All stories received after midnight December 1st will not be accepted. Depending on the number of stories we receive, the final tally should be out in February.

Stories may have heterosexual relations in them but there must also be significant same sex relations - with equal or greater emphasis than the heterosexual relationships. We are not taking 'het-slash' stories for this contest.

There are two Categories:
Romantic - Non-explicit (this does not have to be a 'romance!')
Sizzling - Sexually explicit materiel

There are three lengths:
Short Story - 501 to 5000 words
Novella - 5001 to 12,500 words
Novel - over 12,500 words

-We accept any story written during the year - new stories written for the contest are certainly welcome but not required.
-Stories must be sent to the Adamantium Awards group by December 1st.
- Only two stories from the same author in each length and category (the first two received). Any further stories will be rejected without review.
-They must be as either an RTF or .doc attachment to the email. DO NOT EMBED YOUR STORY IN THE EMAIL!
-The email must have a current email address for the author of the story, the title of the story and the category and length the story is being submitted under. If we cannot contact the author, the story will not be accepted. If you email address changes during the contest, please inform the Award group.
-The attached story must have the title of the story and the category and word count for the story in the attachment. Please do not put the author's name in the document itself, put that in the email.

Grounds for Rejection
We will reject stories without reading for these reasons;
-No email contact for the author.
-Story embedded in the email.
-Unreadable format (not .doc or RTF)
-Story is not laid out in a readable fashion in the document; no paragraphing of any kind, no quotes to indicate dialogue, the story is squished to the left side of the document because it was pulled directly from an email and the person submitting the story couldn't be bothered to correct the formatting. Absolutely horrible spelling with no attempt to edit/beta. (IE - if it looks like a mess and the submitter was too careless to fix it - we're certainly not going to waste our time trying to read it!)

Entries will be judged from December 15th through January 31st. Results will be posted in February. Stories will be juded in two categories; Romantic and Sizzling and several lengths; Short Story, Novella and Novel.

The People's Choice awards is determined by the voting public through an anonymous Yahoo Poll (or series of polls). The Yahoo poll has been structured to prevent ballot stuffing and to preserve the voter's anonmynity. The Judge's Pick is a private form.

If you win one of the entries you'll be notified by email and sent your 'prize' - an authentic 'Adamantium Award' logo to add to your winning story! We will also have a site where the winning stories will be hosted. We'll also announce the winners on the various slash lists and the Adamintium Award group. You'll be famous! But not any richer.

Winners of the Judges' Pick may, if you wish, have the Judges' comments added to your story on the Adamantium site as a form of review.

Adamantium Awards is an X-men slash writing contest. There are no cash prizes and no cost for entering stories, voting or reading. All administration and judging was done by volunteers.

The Adamantium Awards administration is committed to making the award process as even handed and objective as possible. Stories are posted without author name or contact information by a non-judging administrator, the judges are anonymous and also do not read stories with author name or information. The People's Choice poll is anonymous - no one, administration or author, will have information who voted for what.

Since stories may or may not have been posted elsewhere first, we cannot guarantee complete anonymity.

The People's Choice
This is an anonymous poll for the two general categories: Romantic(non-explicit) and Sizzling (explicit). The poll is generated through the Adamantium Awards yahoo group and is anonymous. Vote for what you like, not who you like!

The Judge's Pick
There are three judges this year, and one substitute judge. The judges will vote using a private form and they will vote for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in both categories and different lengths. The forms include space for freeform comments on each story as well as points (1-5) for different criteria.

The judges' criteria are:
Technical - basic mechanics of the story, do the sentence make sense? Are there paragraphs? Quotes around dialogue?
Characterization - are the characters consistent throughout the story? Does it seem that the characters in the story are motivated by realistic emotions and thoughts? Do their responses develop naturally out of the situation?
Storyline - does the story/scene hold together? Is there plot and does it work? Is it unique, interesting or intelligent?
Sexy/Romantic - is the author getting across the erotic or emotional punch of the story?
Overall - did you like it?

Point totals and freeform comments will be send (privately) back to each author as feedback. Please be aware that we do not censor the judges' comments and they may or may not be positive though we have requested no insulting comments be added.

Because some judges have also submitted stories to the Adamantium Awards contest, we have a substitute judge whose function is to read and judge just those stories written by a regular judge to prevent any judge from voting on their own work.