Contest Rules 

• RC1 is a professional community of career driven writers. Please read each entry that you judge fully and take the time necessary to write specific feedback for each entry. Anyone found trying to game the system, Christmas tree their answers, copy and paste the same review, etc, will be disinvited from future participation. (Basically, just be good to each other.)
• At RC1, we give first. The system will tell you how many posts you need to judge before posting yours.
• One entry per person per contest. 
• Once you’ve submitted, we’re asking you not to edit so remember to polish before you post.
• Don’t post something that’s already a winner. If you’ve won a previous contest, great! Hit us with something brand new. 
• If you’re having trouble, please ask questions in the Site Feedback category. We don’t expect everything to work perfectly on the first try, so thanks for being patient.
• Contests will open at 4 p.m. EST on Fridays and close at 8 p.m. EST on Sundays. At that point, your posts will convert to read-only and may disappear while we tabulate the winners.
• Old contests will disappear forever after a week, so remember to review your scores and critique notes.

FAQs

Ak! I signed up but I can’t find the contest entry page. 
So sorry this happened. Our system uses email authentication to log you in, so when you go this login page, it will send you a verification email link. Once you’ve clicked that link, you’ll be automatically logged in and redirected to the forum. If there are any hiccups, click here to get to the forum and see all the categories. Navigate to the contest category, give your five reviews to ‘earn’ your entry, then enter the contest with the “Start a New Post” button. If you’re still having trouble, email us at team at readychapter1 dot com. 

Can anyone enter? Even if I’ve already been published?  
RC1 is designed to help writers at every level, including those who have already had books published. While we think this is a great place to test out your first pages and new ideas, please don’t enter stories that have been published. 

What if I’m one of the very first entries and there aren’t enough posts to review yet? 
If there are fewer than the required number of entries, review what you can, then post away! 

How do I give a review? 
Be honest. Be kind. (Be both, actually.) The review has two parts. The first is a quick, gut-level 1-5 assessment of the piece. Don’t overthink it, just remember that what’s most helpful is knowing a relative strength and weakness. If it’s mostly level-3 writing, is there any aspect that’s a 4? A 2? The second part will ask you for two sentences: one that mentions a highlight, and one that mentions something that needs work. 

Any rules for reviews? 
We want to create a culture that supports writers, so we’re going with tried and true kindergarten rules: respect others, don’t hit, and don’t eat the glue. Basically, don’t be a troll … and don’t copy and paste the same review. We’re only asking for two sentences. Please take thirty seconds to write something specific to that entry.

How will you pick the winners? 
First, we’ll check the posts to make sure each poster has reviewed five other posts, hasn’t been a troll, and hasn’t copied and pasted the same response. Then, of the folks that meet those requirements, we’ll choose the three entries with the highest overall scores. (If, for some reason, we have several people with the exact same score, we’ll be really surprised. And then we’ll assign them numbers, and pick three randomly.) 

You said entries should be 500 words, but I can post 514 (or some other number)? 
Right now, we can only limit the number of characters, not words. And we want our sesquipedalian writers to be able to post 500 words, too. So after trial and error, we chose 2900 characters as a good estimate of 500 words. If you can fit in 514 words, go for it. 

How many times can I enter? 
Just once, please.

What’s the story here? What are you guys REALLY up to at Ready Chapter 1?  
Like you, we’re a bunch of writers. We’ve got some out-of-the-box ideas to leverage tech-enabled tools (like this contest) to discover new talent. And guess what? Publishers are taking notice. As we become more and more comfortable giving each other measurable, constructive feedback, we’ll become a go-to writing community that publishers trust to deliver market-ready stories. Everyone wins.