You need to be of primary or intermediate school age, but you don't have to be at school. You can write by yourself at home and submit your entry, or you can write at school.
Do the adult writers on the FaBo team know where the story is going?
We don't know any more than you do at this stage. Each week one of the adult writers on the FaBo team will take the challenge at the same time as you. Their chapter will be published at the same time as the winning child's chapter. And then the task to write another chapter will be passed on to the next person in the team. But we haven't mapped out the story. We like leaving it up to the next person to decide where it might go.
Do we write a follow-on chapter to our own story, or the one that's written by the FaBo team?
You write a follow-on chapter to the one written by one of the FaBo authors each week. This is the story that appears on the front page of the blog (the part called Letters and Chapters).
Are we allowed to get someone to read and edit our writing?
We don't mind if someone reads it and makes suggestions about your spelling or even if they read it and say that they think you need to do some more work on it. Perhaps they say 'I don't think the ending is quite right. It doesn't fit with the rest of the story. Have another think about that.' All writers ask people for feedback. We just don't want adults rewriting your story for you. We like reading kids' stories. That's why we're children's authors.
What are the rules?
We're light on rules. The only real rules are that you need to send your entry by the deadline (5pm on a Friday), keep the word count to under 1000 words (which is quite a lot) and send your story in the body of the email rather than as an attachment. Email entries to fabostory@gmail.com. You also need to include your name and age on your entry.
Do we have to write every week?
No. You write and enter the competition whenever you want. If you find out about FaBo part-way into the competition, that's fine too. You may just need to do a bit of reading to find out what's happened in other chapters. Having said that, the more times you write, the better your chances are of winning. Your writing will improve when you're practising every week.
Aren't younger kids disadvantaged?
We give prizes for a range of things. Sometimes someone invents a great character or uses language beautifully. Other times, someone has a great cliffhanger ending, or says something really funny. We may even give prizes for good sleuthing. That means there will be opportunities for everyone to win prizes.
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