Competition rules

Entries open on October 5, 2026 and close on April 30, 2027. Entries are judged on what has been published by the closing date, so anything you post after it does not count toward your entry.

1st place

$500

2nd place

$250

3rd place

$100

All three winners also get a two-month banner on the SkyDemonOrder homepage, and a winner badge on both their profile and the winning story. Winners are announced in May 2027, once the shortlisted entries have been read.

An entry must reach at least 50,000 published words by April 30, 2027. Only published chapters count: words sitting in a Draft chapter in your author dashboard (Loom) are not part of the total.

That is a little under thirty weeks from the day entries open, so from a standing start on October 5 the floor works out at roughly 1,700 words a week. Words you publish before entries open still count toward it, so anyone already writing starts ahead rather than starting over.

We expect entries to update regularly, but there is no fixed release schedule to hit and no cadence rule to break. Long silences hurt you where it matters instead: readers stop coming back, and reader interest is what puts an entry on the shortlist.

Anyone with a verified SkyDemonOrder account can enter, from October 5, 2026, using the competition card on your author dashboard (Loom). Each of these applies to your entry:

• Any original novel you own. There is no creation-date requirement. A novel you started in July is as eligible as one you start the day entries open, and everything you have already published counts toward the word floor.
• One entry per author. Pick the story you want judged. You can switch it to a different novel, or withdraw it entirely, any time before entries close on April 30, 2027. Your other stories are unaffected by every rule on this page.
• Written in English. Entries in other languages cannot be judged in this competition.
• Human-written prose. The writing has to be yours. AI is fine for editing, proofreading and brainstorming; it is not fine for generating the prose readers read.
• Mature entries are fully eligible. Mature work competes on the same terms as everything else, under the same content guidelines that apply to every SDO Original.
• Exclusive to SkyDemonOrder until entries close. Your entry stays here alone until April 30, 2027, after which you are free to keep it on SkyDemonOrder or take it elsewhere. You confirm this when you enter, and we check it by hand rather than by software. That is the only story of yours the exclusivity applies to: everything else you write can be crossposted anywhere, whenever you like, with no strings.

Judging happens in two stages, so that reader interest decides who gets read closely and writing decides who wins.

1. Reader metrics build the shortlist. Views and reads, plus follows and bookmarks, decide which entries make the finalist shortlist at the close of the competition.
2. The SDO editorial team picks the winners. Shortlisted entries are read and ranked on writing quality: prose, characters, pacing and how well the story holds together over its length.

The final decision belongs to the SDO editorial team as a group; no individual judges are named. A big audience gets an entry onto the shortlist, but it does not win the competition on its own.

Every change to this ruleset since the competition opened, newest first.

August 2026 — competition rescheduled and eligibility widened

The competition was announced on June 17, 2026 as running from July 6, 2026 to January 30, 2027. It now runs from October 5, 2026 to April 30, 2027, with winners announced in May 2027. This is a correction, not a new competition: the prizes, the 50,000 published-word floor and the judging process are unchanged, and the longer window lowers the pace the floor asks for rather than raising it.

Eligibility changed with it. The earlier rule asked for work written for the competition; any original novel you own is now eligible whatever date you started it, and words you published before entries open count toward the floor. Nobody who began writing under the July framing loses that work, and nobody entering later starts at a disadvantage. Exclusivity still covers the entry alone, now ending April 30, 2027, and is confirmed by you at entry and reviewed by staff by hand.

August 2026 — full ruleset published

The announcement summary was written out in full on this page. Details that the launch announcement summary did not spell out are stated here for the first time: the 50,000 published-word entry floor, the two-stage judging process, the English-language requirement, the eligibility of Mature entries, and the expectation of regular updates. The floor applies to every entry and is reachable from a standing start, so no entry is grandfathered in or ruled out by this publication.

June 17, 2026 — competition announced

Timeline, prizes, the one-entry limit, the exclusivity rule and the human-written prose rule were announced in the launch announcement. The dates given there have since been superseded by the reschedule above.