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Will it blend?
That’s the question a popular line of high-powered blenders likes to ask. In this case, the answer is yes! You can blend two genres in 1,000 words, and you can do it in 48 hours!
Welcome to the final round of YeahWrite’s eighth Super Challenge. We hope you’ve had as much fun as we have working with the prompts, and we promise they’ve given us as many ulcers as they’ve given you. So with no further ado, let’s talk about what we’re doing here.
For this round, you do NOT need to put your group number on your title page, nor do you need to make something up because the title page looks sad and empty without it. Just your title, summary, and a content warning if appropriate will be fine!
This round, our writers will be combining tropes from two genres to make a blended-genre story. A few tips and pointers about this round:
- Look. Up. Your. Genres.
- Even if you know one of the genres well, even if your name is actually Ngaio Marsh and we assigned you “mystery,” it’s good to think about not only what you believe is in the genre but what your judges might be expecting to see. Both genres need to be easily identifiable, so think about which elements of the two will work together and which will not.
- Don’t go offroading with your genres. Sure, there are fairy tales that don’t incorporate magic… but this isn’t the time to be trying to write one. Stick to the main tropes for your assigned genres and let the interplay between the two provide the sense of freshness and innovation you’re looking for to show off your creativity.
- There are no character, plot or setting restrictions, beyond what is necessary to demonstrate each genre.
- Content warnings don’t count toward your word limit, so depending on your crime of choice (FORESHADOWED!) consider adding one.
Now that that’s cleared up, let’s reveal the genres!
Genre 1: Science Fiction
Science fiction is a genre based on writing rationally about possible worlds or futures. It is related to, but different from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imagined elements are plausible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated physical laws, depending on technology rather than magic for its novelty (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation). The imagined future might be as near as next week or as far as millions of years from now. New and different technologies and sociopolitical systems are fair game: neither utopia nor dystopia is off-limits here.
Science fiction is often divided into “hard” and “soft” categories, with hard science fiction depending heavily on realistic or at least thoroughly detailed and plausible principles of physics and technology. Soft science fiction doesn’t care how the spaceships work, although you know they’re not traveling faster than light because of magic; there’s some kind of “positronium drive” at work. Either will do for purposes of this prompt.
Science fiction is not alternative history; it is a possible future based on starting from the present day. For the purposes of this competition, time travel stories are not permitted. In the same vein, your story may not envision a future based on a fundamental change to established history like Pol Pot failing to come to power.
Genre 2: Detective Story
Detective stories are a subgenre of crime and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective investigates a crime, often (but not always) murder. The Encyclopedia Britannica lays out the elements of a perfect detective story as:
- the seemingly perfect crime;
- the wrongly accused suspect at whom circumstantial evidence points;
- the bungling of dim-witted police;
- the greater powers of observation and superior mind of the detective; and
- the startling and unexpected denouement, in which the detective reveals how the identity of the culprit was ascertained.
Your story need not specifically contain all these elements, but it should be strongly influenced by your knowledge of them. That is, the “dim-witted police” might not be actual police but other investigators; the point would be that the detective is shown to be smarter or more effective than they are.
The detective may be professional, amateur, or retired, but this should be their “job” at least to the extent that you could legitimately call it their side hustle, whether or not they get paid for it. That is, they might be a retired police officer who lends their expertise on difficult cases; a detective working for the national, state or local government in some capacity; a science teacher who solves crimes on the weekends; or a “consulting detective” like Sherlock Holmes, who was a well-paid freelancer (who blew most of his money on cocaine, but that’s a different story). We’re not talking about you looking for your lunch or a couple nine-year-olds trying to figure out who broke into Mrs. Estramado’s desk.
The detective doesn’t need to be the point-of-view character (think of Watson, or of Nero Wolfe’s man-about-town Archie). The story doesn’t need to tell the entire history of the crime, investigation, and solution – it’s fine to focus on one aspect of the case, whether that’s calling the detective in or the denouement, so long as the other aspects can be inferred from what’s in the story.
You are not required to tell the story in a “noir” or “hardboiled” style (“I knew the dame was trouble from the minute she walked through the torn screen door of my office”), although you may do so if you like.
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. I don’t think we’ve ever had a round where someone didn’t manage to disqualify themselves on a technicality like submitting their work in Calibri – don’t let that be you! We know it seems really frustrating and pointless at times, but we promise 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!
You’ll receive your feedback on May 23, and we’ll announce the winners at 3pm Eastern time on May 25!
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.
