Round 3 Closes in:
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Well, folks, how does it feel to be one of the last eight standing at the end of Super Challenge #9? It should feel pretty good, frankly. Almost as good as the camping vacation I’ll be on when you read this post. You’ve worked hard to get here, and we’ve got one last test for you.
Honestly I think this round is genuinely the hardest, so if you’re struggling with it you’re probably not alone. People get intimidated by persuasive essays, but at least for the last round someone else narrowed down the universe of possible things to write about. This round you just get a phrase, and have to come up with almost a thousand other words to go with it. That’s really … sandboxy, and I was never good at sandboxes. Just ask my third grade teacher.
ANYWAY. You want to know about the prompt. This round you’ve got some words, and some punctuation, and you can’t change any of them unless the rules specifically address that (like a pronoun change or a comma to a period, or quotes). As you dive in, remember – the admin team isn’t your enemy, so don’t burn a bunch of black candles and sacrifice some small animals (unless that’s a good thing where you are, in which case, have at it and best of luck to you). We try to choose prompts that we can see at least a couple paths to write from; we discard suggested prompts that our team thinks are going to require expertise or vocabulary that are outside anyone’s ordinary reach.
As usual for round 3, you are free to write a personal or persuasive essay, wherever the words take you. Your content warnings don’t count towards your word count, and your title page doesn’t need a group number, just your title, “Round 3” and the prompt, (not a summary) as usual.
Now that that’s cleared up, let’s get to the prompt:
Final Round Prompt
This [is/was] not a welcome development.
You’ll note the verb tense options in this prompt. You may conjugate the verb ONLY within those options, and may not use contractions; no “this will not be” or “this wasn’t” etc. etc. You may put the phrase in quotes if you need it for dialogue, but you may NOT make it part of another sentence.
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!
You’ll receive your feedback on August 22, and we’ll announce the winners on August 24 at 3pm US Eastern Time.
We hope you have as much fun with the prompt as we had picking it 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.
