I love prompt combos, don’t you?
(Kidding, but the results from our last survey say you do, so I’m going to go ahead and assume.) You know what I love even more, though? Sneak peeks into the judges’ group. Overall, our crew had two general comments to make about the stories they read. These comments may or may not apply to you, but even if you didn’t see this feedback on your own story it’s worth taking a glance back through your work to see if they do; judges only get a couple sentences to give feedback, so they can’t tell you everything that’s right or wrong in your story.
First comment: There’s a little too much story here for the space. A thousand words is a tight constraint, but if you catch yourself summarizing too many plot points consider dropping some plot in favor of storytelling. Or take the short story you wrote, expand those summaries, and find a home for it in an anthology!
Second comment: Past perfect tense: learn it; use it. Past perfect is one of the fancy names for the verb tense that you use to describe an action completed in the past, as opposed to something that’s being described as ongoing or habitual. (English doesn’t have a past habitual tense, and it trips up our Russian speaking editor all the time.)
Example: (past tense, ongoing) Anna and Bella reached the oasis. They walked through the desert for five days.
Example 2: (past perfect) Anna and Bella reached the oasis. They had walked through the desert for five days.
See how the word “had” tells you that the desert trek had already happened when Anna and Bella reached the oasis? Past perfect can really help if you’re having blocking problems in your work, or if your readers can’t tell who did what to whom when. So look it up, ask your betas, and don’t worry – even the editors drop by the Purdue OWL for a refresher now and then.
But enough about the stories you’ve already written; the only thing you want to know about those is which ones advanced to the next round, right?
What About Round Two?
Before we announce who’ll be moving on, let’s take a moment to chat about the next round of the Super Challenge. This Friday, the advancing writers will receive two more prompts.
The first prompt will be the opening sentence or two of their story. This sentence DOES count toward the story’s overall word count, and the writing style should flow seamlessly into the rest of the story. That is, if the sentence is “Love will not be constrain’d by mastery. When mast’ry comes, the god of love anon beateth his wings.” the next phrase shouldn’t be “Geoff swore mightily at the priest. That jerkface couldn’t find his own cassock with two hands and a chasuble.” (Don’t worry. That first sentence was Chaucer. We wouldn’t do that to you; most of us didn’t want to read a thousand words of Old English for class and we don’t want to read it now.)
The second prompt will be a scene, which might be a description or image of an action, event, or setting. The description does not need to be included in the story verbatim, but the scene should be recognizable.
There are no genre or setting restrictions.
Sound fun? Let’s see who’ll be taking on that, er, super challenge:
Congratulations to Our Advancing Writers
Last round saw some thrills, chills and spills, but it also saw some great writing. Let’s have a hand for the following writers, in alphabetical order, who will be advancing to the next round of the Super Challenge:
Ana Astri-O’Reilly
Colette Bennett
Myna Chang
Cynthia Cook DeRuyter
Laura Duerr
Josh Flores
Jessica Gilmartin
Christina Grant
June Low
Stephen Matlock
Oonagh McBride
Cayce Osborne
Bronwyn Petry
MM Schreier
Ethan Showler
Jaimie Smith-Windsor
Trish Tuthill
Gail A. Webber
Wait, wait, there’s more!
Once again, anything that went right is entirely due to our admin team’s untiring work behind the scenes, and anything you hate is probably my fault.
Writers, if you don’t have your feedback, please send us an email at superchallenge@yeahwrite.me, ’cause that email should have reached you about twelve hours ago.
Now that this round of the competition is over, you’re free to post your work anywhere on the Internet you like, or take our judges’ suggestions and rework your submission to send on to other venues. Or grab the Super Challenge badge out of the Announcements section, stick it on your blog, and link your work up right here for future Super Challengeers!
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
