The Literotica Annual Halloween Story Contest is the fifth of six special annual Lit contests taking place in 2023.

The theme for this special contest is the Halloween holiday. The Lit Halloween Story Contest is a famous contest with writers and very fun for readers!

— If you’d like to participate in this contest, please read this entire post. If you don’t read the whole thing, you may miss out on essential rules, rendering your story ineligible for the contest! —

You can start submitting on (or before): October 2
The last day to submit is: October 23 at 11:59pm EST
Winners will be announced on: October 30

The Literotica Halloween Story contest will coexist with the usual monthly contest. A story may only win one or the other, not both contests simultaneously. The prizes for the top 3 stories will be the same as those awarded in the monthly contests:

First Place: $150 Cash Prize

Second Place: $100 Cash Prize

Third Place: $75 Cash Prize

Submit your contest story in via your Control Panel New Story form, just as you would any story.

All rules for the monthly contests are in place. Like the Monthly contests, you can submit as many entries as you like. And like the Monthly contests, only one of your stories can place in the contest – that is, if you author the top two highest voted stories, only the top one will be qualified.

The only exceptions to the rules are:

• All submissions must be stand-alone stories created for this contest theme. We will not accept individual chapters of a larger work submitted separately. If you have a multi-chaptered contest-themed submission, please submit all chapters together as one story submission.

• We will allow authors who have won in our monthly contests within the last 6 months to win in this special contest. However, if you have won a prize in one of the last two special contests, you are not qualified to win in this one.

• A story has only to accrue 25 votes to be qualified, rather than the 50 required for the monthly contest.

The following guidelines also apply:

• Author must copy and paste the phrase “HALLOWEEN 2023” to the “Notes to Admin” field of the submission (quotes are not needed).

Again — PLEASE do not forget to put the EXACT phrase “HALLOWEEN 2023” IN THE “Notes to Admin” FIELD – NOT the description field or anywhere else. In fact, we recommend that you copy and paste to avoid typos. If it is not in the NOTES field – or if it’s typoed – we can’t easily discover your story and it may not be approved in a timely manner to be entered into the contest!!

• Submissions must have a Halloween theme: holiday folklore, Halloween traditions, scary things, supernatural, et cetera. Be innovative! Please don’t just submit a typical story with one dude in a Jason mask. That would not be in the spirit of the contest, and readers (aka voters) will likely punish you for your trickiness.

Any story that meets the above criteria will be automatically entered into the contest. Winners will be decided by reader input (aka votes).

Visit the Halloween Official Support Thread, hosted by Rustyoznail for more info and of course support and encouragement from your fellow authors.

Crucial Note: Once your story is submitted, it may take over 72 hours for it to be posted, or may be sent back to you for clarification/mending. We strongly suggest that you do not wait till the last day of the contest to submit your story. The sooner you submit, the better chance your story has of accruing the votes necessary to be qualified.

Good Luck to Participating Writers, and Happy Reading to All!