Weekly Wattpad Contests

August Whodunit Part 1

A shriek in the night, a lightning strike and loss of sight, a guest here wakes up in the bed, and somewhere, somebody, is dead.

The fifty tenants gradually wake to panic and disorder at the Black Estate – they gather round in the dining room, where Delilah Black has met his doom.

Hushed whispers, faces turned, a rumbling suspicion – natural death or a deadly deposition?

Whose hand enacted Black's final fate? Who forced the living to abdicate? Was it the widow – are those tears of joy? Or a disgruntled maid in Black's employ?

'The jealous friend!' one supplies.

'The reckless teen!' the voices rise.

'No, the man who sought fortune and fame! He's the one –'

'Enough! She's the one to blame for Black's demise!'

The doctor sighs, and rises with a dark display. 'The man has died from foul play. Fifty guests and one attack – we must decide who killed Delilah Black.'

The fifty guests of the Black Estate wake up to find their host, dead, in the dining room. After the shock subsided, a heated argument ensued – stinging accusations were flung like weapons, natural distrust and fear built up. The doctor said the man was murdered.

Each had something to gain from Black's death, but only one had enacted it. It is your duty to determine who the killer is.

Preliminary:

Inspired by the Murder Club thread on the witch-hunts contest (Thanks DavidLikesBigRobots for ruining my notifications), this is a massive contest that I've been planning. The contest will run in three phases over the course of three weeks – the entirety of August. There will be free-write prompts during these weeks as well.

If you want to participate in this massive community project, make sure that you can dedicate yourself to participating each week. Every participant plays a critical role in helping to solve the mystery, and you will be required to interact with other entrants.

The goal of this contest is to generate communal support. Support the other entrants and interact with them, share information privately, but suspiciously and sparingly. The Murderer will get their own set of rules and goals, and if they achieve them, they get away and everybody fails.

Each phase will detail the instruction for that week, and it's important to follow it. I will not detail them all now, for fear of ruining the game.

As a warning, administration from my side might be difficult, and you will have to be patient with me sometimes. I work two jobs, I have (some semblance) of a social life, and I do various projects in addition to these contests. I might not always respond immediately, but I try to make a point of it to be on WattPad at least once a day. To help with this, please tag me TimberWoolf when you have questions or comments, so that WattPad notifies me.

I've made fifty characters. I expect we won't have so many entrants. I would be amazed if you supported this contest and we built up over 50 participants, and I wouldn't mind generating extra characters during this first week.

As an additional note to this, we really should aim for as many entrants as possible. I have spent a lot of time building this contest, and it would be a shame if we can't solve the mystery because there wasn't enough information sharing.

I've built a program to randomly assign clues, determine the murderer and provide contextual circumstances to the story, so I don't know who the murder is either. Don't ask me.