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From what I can tell, it seems to be where people are given a prompt and try to write a better story based off of it than the others. How does it work though? How do people enter it? I have seen the term get thrown around a few times, and just recently mentioned, but I don't know what it is.

Also, what is the pit of shame? Why does it exist, and what purpose does it serve?

The thunderdome is exactly what you just said.

From what I can tell, writing duels on the site got a little out of hand so to organize it all in one place and make it more structured, Mizal invented the thunderdome.

Every 2 weeks, a new pair(or 3) can duel each other. Mizal will send a prompt to the duelists on Thursday/friday, they have the weekend to work on the prompt, and then they submit by Sunday.

The prompts are pretty creative. They aren't your standard run of the mill prompts, Mizal comes up with some pretty interesting prompts. More than once, people have been thrown by the prompts, so they are a great way to really showcase your skill. For instance, my prompt was write a story relating to the song "Escape", which is the famous Pina colada song where 2 people tired of their marriage try to have an affair with an anonymous person over a newspaper column, only to find out that they were cheating on each other with each other.

The prompts are going to be like that one, they are pretty open ended and there are a ton of directions you can take with the story. You can make it as wholesome as you want or as edgy and grim dark as you want.

Mizal then posts the stories anonymously and people vote on which one they like.

Generally, you sign up after having a rivalry or fight with someone, since nothing amuses people more than seeing 2 people who hate each other jump in the thunderdome to air out their drama through writing.

But you can also do a thunderdome battle without having any beef or drama, it's just more fun when people with beef duel.

To join, just post in the thunderdome thread asking anyone if they'd like to do a thunderdome duel with you. We all have an axe to grind and are constantly sharpening our writing skills, so someone will definetly take the duel. It might be a bit harder if you're really new to the site because as you get better and better, more people want to do the fight, so keep that in mind.

Pit of shame is basically an accountability tool to keep track of people who commit to writing a contest entry and then flake. It makes sure that you only sign up for a contest if you think you have a reasonable chance of actually completing the challenge, since nothing's worse than a contest where everyone except 5 people all dip. Through communal shame, your name will live on in this pit and it just kind of sucks because it's a reminder that you failed a contest. But you can easily get out if you write a story for the next one. There are multiple levels for the pit, this is so that you don't just keep on signing up for 5 contests in a row and flake on all of them. At that point, you are banned from entering contests altogether(except under special circumstances).

That sounds fun, maybe I should try it sometime. Thanks!