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Fictioneers and Friends!
Welcome to Round One of the eighth Super Challenge at YeahWrite (that means we’ve been holding this challenge for two years, if you’re counting). I hope you’re ready to write, because we’ve got a two-prompt combo that’ll knock your figurative socks off.
In this round, you’ll be working with an action and an object. A few tips and pointers about this round:
- Any character may perform the action, not just the main character.
- The object does not need to belong to or be handled by the main character.
- Both prompts should be important enough to your story that the plot could not happen in their absence. That is, if your action is “find a coin” you could write about someone literally stumbling over a pile of gold coins, looking for pirate treasure, or holding onto the lucky coin they found in order to do well on a test. On the other hand, “a character digging through their purse and finding two pens, a quarter, and a movie ticket” is probably going to be considered tangential to your plot unless they then use the quarter to break out of jail or something.
- If you’re nervous about your prompts, check out this post from our writing help section. Even if you’re an experienced competition writer, it might be a helpful window into how our judges and competition designers think about prompts, and what we look for as we read your work.
There are no genre or setting restrictions, but we do expect you to respect the dignity and diversity of our writing and judging community. If you feel your work merits a content warning, please feel free to add one to your title page; we won’t include it in your word count. A meaningful content warning gives clear information about what sensitive topics may be addressed in your work.
Now that that’s cleared up, let’s get to the prompt assignments:
Group 1
ACTION: visiting a parent
OBJECT: a terracotta pot
The parent does not need to be the main character’s parent (the main character might even be the parent), and the visit does not need to be the main plot of the story.
The terracotta pot may or may not contain something, but it can’t be an urn, a vase, or a jar, and it’s not a “pots and pans” pot. Just a plain old pot, glazed or unglazed.
Group 2
ACTION: breaking into a planetarium
OBJECT: a throat lozenge
Remember that “breaking into” is more than just entering; it’s an illicit entry, with some level of difficulty. That might be “stealing the key” or “using a lockpick” or even “crawling through laser security fields” but the character(s) can’t just walk in, and they’re not supposed to be there. A planetarium is not the same thing as an observatory, although some complexes have both. Wikipedia notes that “[t]he term planetarium is sometimes used generically to describe other devices which illustrate the solar system,” but for this challenge you must use the theatre or building definition.
A throat lozenge isn’t just a hard sucking candy, it’s a medicinal lozenge. It’s okay to call it a cough drop, troche, cachou, or cough sweet if that’s the idiom you grew up with. It’s also okay to use a brand name like “Sucrets” so long as it’s clear in the story that the item is a throat lozenge. If you’re not sure whether a reader will know the brand, but your story works much better with the brand name than the generic term, it’s fine (and probably advisable) to link the brand name to a product website.
Group 3
ACTION: launching a rocket
OBJECT: a death mask
Your rocket need not be large enough to contain people. It just needs to be an object (missile, spacecraft, etc.) propelled by a rocket engine. You are of course welcome to make it a pilotable craft, but it could also just be fireworks launched by the appropriate application of Newton’s Third Law. The rocket does not need to be launched by the main character, nor does the main character need to be on the rocket if it’s a vessel with personnel aboard.
A death mask is not the same thing as a life mask displayed after death. Please keep in mind that we’re looking for a physical object this time around, not a television series or a character with that name (which would be fanfiction anyway, so please don’t, we don’t want to have to disqualify your story for copyright issues).
Wait, wait, there’s more!
Don’t post your story anywhere on the Internet until after our judges are done and you get your feedback! But if you want to talk up the competition or live-tweet your writing process, use the hashtag #YWsuper. Just remember not to include identifying details about which story is yours!
Your essays are due Sunday at 10pm US Eastern Time. Remember to check the rules for formatting, including all those fiddly details like title page, font, and filename. Don’t get disqualified on a technicality! We know it seems really useless at times, but all those rules have a purpose, from helping get your file where it needs to be to making sure you’re read anonymously and fairly.
Email your questions to superchallenge@yeahwrite.me—we will not be reviewing other email addresses or social media for your questions over the weekend and we want to make sure you get the answers you need, and that a judge doesn’t accidentally see your question! You might also drop by the FAQ and see if we’ve already answered the question! *coughtitlepagecough*
You’ll receive your feedback on April 25, and we’ll announce who’s moving on to the next round that day at noon US Eastern Time, after you’ve had a chance to read your feedback.
We hope you have as much fun with the prompts as we had picking them out. Good luck, and good writing!
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.
