'The Butler Did It!' Prose Contest - New

Ever wanted to commit a murder? Well, now you can! You might even get a prize for it.

Ever wanted to catch a murderer? Well, we can help you with that, too.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: EDIT BELOW

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The Butler Did It! contest is now open for submissions. Get your murderous thoughts going and kill someone, then try to cover it up. Hopefully you won’t be drawing from personal experiences for this writing task, but if you are who are we to stand in your way? (Please don’t kill us.)

Your task is to write what’s called a Ten-Minute Mystery. You must set a murder scene, have multiple suspects, and guide us through the investigation of said murder through the eyes of the detective solving it. Think of an episode of CSI, or a mini-detective story boiled down to the essential mystery.

Whether or not you have an interesting detective with a bit of a back story is up to you. He could be quirky, calculating, or just a plain character that we see through the eyes of for the mystery. Present a cast of suspects, potential motives, and an array of possible murder weapons. Go through the motions of discovering each, and excluding them one by one. Red herrings are welcome, but remember: everything must be plausible and explained. You can’t have a wrench covered in the victims blood, but it turns out the lead pipe was the murder weapon and the wrench is quietly forgotten by the detective.

Your mystery should be no more than 3,000 words. It has a loose format you must follow, and the great conclusion must be confined, logically enough, to the last few hundred words of the story. But when the contest deadline is met, two weeks from now, you won’t be submitting the whole thing. You’re going to leave the ending out. And now for the twist, dear Watson. The readers get to play Sherlock this time around, because we’re catching criminals as well as creating them.

Enter the detectives. Your job is to read the entries and guess who did it. There might be a lot of butlers going to the big house, but some might be more devious than others. Read entries and leave a guess in the comments section below the deviation. You have a week to sniff out the killers and submit your guesses.

Readers can check out the entries, where the writers should submit to, here:

Community Projects > Contests > "The Butler Did It" Contest

The completed copies will kindly be emailed to the judges at prose@deviantart.com. We will verify the guesses and award a point for those who guess correctly. The top three detectives—the three with the most points allocated—will receive prizes along with the top three best entries, chosen by our judges.

Speaking of judges, our heads of the courtroom are: alienhead, coshdaddy GunShyMartyr and adrift. We only accept ridiculously huge bribes, so keep that in mind when you send your emails out.

The prizes for the entries are as follows:

For the Murderers:

First Place: £15 Amazon Gift Certificate
       1 year dA subscription
                   dA Prose Mug

Other prizes: Subscriptions and mugs.


For the Detectives:

First Place: 3 month dA subscription
                   dA Prose Mug

Other prizes: Subscriptions and mugs.



And a brief summary in closing:

You must write a Murder Mystery.
No more than 3,000 words.
It must be submitted to the contest category “The Butler Did It” and emailed to prose@deviantart.com by October 18th.
The deadline has been extended to next Wednesday (October 25th) at midnight!
The ending must be left out of the deviantART submission so readers can guess who the killer is.
A week will be given for guesses to be submitted. After that, points will be tallied for correct guesses and prizes will be awarded.
No people will actually be harmed during this contest.


A few hints: try to plan the mystery beforehand. The trick to many of the ‘Find the Exit’ mazes in magazines is to work it out backwards. Do the same. Know who the killer is, know exactly how they did, and be in their mind when you cover it up. Make everything believable and natural. Was this a crime of passion? That would mean a gruesome kill with some sloppy mistakes that were quickly cleaned up. Or was it planned for weeks, maybe even months in advance? Maybe even a serial killer? That’s up to you.


Now go kill someone.