Blizzard Global Writing Contest now open for submissions

@Falcon6

You should probably work on using proper grammar if you're gonna write for them...

@liquidsoap89

Thankfully, just mentioning Saurfang in a sentence makes any normal grammatical error not not very good and any speling mistakes the newd way you spels thems.

It's like subtracting "u" from words; it just catches on.

@JPeak Those were my exact thoughts when I was reading that article. I believe the tipping point was "And Sonic the Hedgehog".

@Otimus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spec_script

@Otimus Fan-fiction and franchise tie-ins can be a great learning tool for aspiring writers and even a worthy challenge for accomplished ones. Writing in speculative fiction, one needs to learn to operate within the rules and barriers of a created universe. Bad speculative fiction is that in which the writer does whatever they want. They create Mary Sue characters that can do anything they wish and craft settings that have little consistency or interweaving depth. Good speculative fiction contains characters that although fantastical and strange, still exist within worlds that make sense and have rules. You can’t go to hyperspace without setting the right coordinates, Gandalf can’t insta-kill Sauron, Harry Potter can’t teleport until he passes a semester’s worth of exams, and Vampires can’t enter your home without permission.

Eventually, most speculative fiction writers must learn to create their own settings with their own characters, but in the meantime, fan fiction can be one exercise in following a fantastical world’s rules. The writer is basically given a setting, with its own details and worlds, and told to operate within it, while at the same time creating their own story. A lot of the time, people get carried away and you’re left with fiction that so violates the core consistency of the setting that they might as well have created their own world. I’m talking about Han Solo becoming a Jedi, Spock and Kirk visiting a planet with mermaids and unicorns, and the half-brother half-demon cousin of Arthas Menethil saving the world from psychic alien elves. However, there is a lot of material out there that is insightful, entertaining, and helps expand its respective franchise’s mythos rather than tampering with it. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just look at last year’s winners of the Blizzard Writing Contest. It’s really good stuff; all of it better than anything Richard Knaak’s come out with.

Finally, writing fiction in a pre-existing franchise is not just an activity relegated to the fanboys and internet forums, but a challenge many celebrated novelists take on. I’ll just leave a link to an io9 article explaining this last point, as it does a much better job and I’ve already put way too much time into this comment :D

http://io9.com/5559637/why-do-scifi-authors-write-franchise-tie+ins-its-not-the-reason-you-think?skyline=true&s=i

@Snow Leopard
You know good and well that isn't what I mean.

@(Unverified) He married his mother??! O.O

@DrScientist Nah man, he just lives with his mom...

@(Unverified)

Psh, WoW nerds don't have wives... DUH!

@Gamebarker

Most writers should know this. Anytime you post work on the internet it's considered givng away your first electronic publishing rights and no one else will touch it. Posting it in something like this is even worse in regards to maintaining rights to the work. But this is fan-fiction anyway, it's not like the writers could do anything meaningful with it. Hell the best thing next to winning is seeing what you wrote come to life in the games. So it's not even a bad thing.

It's fan fiction. You couldn't publish it anywhere anyway.

That's all pretty standard stuff for a writing competition. Doubt they plan to use fan written stuff for their games, when they have a bunch of professional writers in their company.