So, the battles have been raged, the wars fought, the heroes are on their way to victory. You have breached the second milestone and you have seen your name in the shortlist, and now the hunger is even stronger than before. Once again you ask the question:

We have the answer once again. Where does the Open Novella Contest go from here? All the entries that have been shortlisted from Round 2 will now move on to the third phase of writing. This is where it gets serious; the final round of this three month-long contest is finally upon you. You have a great responsibility on your shoulders, to rise above all the entrants and WIN the Open Novella Contest! But first, read ahead and discover the procedure for the next round.

If you are amongst those who have been shortlisted, congratulations! You are that much closer to our grand prizes. All you have to do is reach the final word count milestone -- 20,000 words by the next deadline, which is the

All shortlisted entries that reach the 20,000 word milestone and re-submit their entries before the deadline will be considered for judging!

We know you'll have many more questions and we have the answers to them below. We ask you go through the FAQs and if you have a question that we haven't answered, go ahead and ask it in the comments.

If all seems well, we hope you know what to do next: pick up your pens, your pencils, your keyboards, your phones, and everything that you write your stories on, and get writing! The finals of the Open Novella Contest await you. One final challenge stands between you and the grand prize...

Yes, this is vital. We'll need to know you're still carrying on with your Open Novella and are active within the contest. Submissions that were entered in Rounds 1 and/or 2 but entered in Round 3 can't be counted. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Yes, it's a continuous story that will total 20,000 words when finished. The word goals are cumulative, meaning if you have already reached your 8,000 word milestone, you'll need to write another 12,000 to reach the final 20,000 word milestone for Round 3.

Unfortunately, no. Only those who successfully qualified from Round 2 will be considered for Round 3. We ask you not to try and 'sneak' in, because we already have methods in place to check who qualifies!

You can! You won't be able to win any prizes, but you can still claim your NEW and share your story in the Share Your Open Novella chapters. We want you to keep writing, creating, sharing and discovering.

We have a whole chapter on help and rules surrounding our book stickers. Head there if you're unsure how to claim and use your Open Novella book sticker. We have information for both web and mobile device.

While judging Round 2, we judged stories based on written quality, grammar, characterisation, originality, adherence to the prompt, and all the previous Round 1 criteria. But we couldn't pass them all, unfortunately, so there might be any number of reasons why your name might not be on the list. We thank you for your interest in the Open Novella Contest and for writing a wonderful piece of fiction. Keep going! You never know how it will turn out.

Yes, everyone who reached the milestone is free to use the provided stickers on their cover. It doesn't matter if you didn't make it into the next round, all that matters is reaching the word count.

Yes, the stickers are your reward for the hard work and dedication you put into your story to reach the milestone. Try to be honest with yourself and with what you achieved. Keep writing your story, there's no shame in not making the milestone, but the only person you're cheating by putting the sticker on your cover is yourself.

No, the stickers are for participants of the contest only.

No, the sticker is for stories participating in the Open Novella Contest only.

Yes, you may use the milestone stickers if your story uses one of our 24 prompts.

1) The most popular prompt was still 'A portal in the bedroom'

2) The second most popular prompt was 'A love letter in the attic'.

3) Other popular prompts were 'You are the last bearer of a legendary weapon', 'In a land where creatures of myth and legend roam', and 'The man who had everything'

4)The rarest prompts used were 'The mystery of Penny's disappearance' and 'A mystery in the Antarctic'

5)The most popular tag was

6)The second most popular tag was .

7)Other popular tags were

8)We picked an incredible entries to pass Round 2!