What a great turnout for Super Challenge 12! The good news is, the math worked out in a way that advances 12, not 10, writers to the final round. 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. Probably.
While I’ve got your attention, though, let’s talk about your title page! More than one judge raised concerns with us about title pages this round, so we thought we’d take a minute to clarify what the title page is there for.
All our font and formatting rules apply to your title page, too. You don’t have to make it pretty. It’s not a book cover. All your title page is there to do is double-confirm that the story got sorted into the correct group, list the title of the story, and give the summary and any content warnings you think are appropriate. Again: it’s not there to be pretty! You don’t need to give it a floral border or put the font in five different sizes or colors. Heck, you don’t even need to center the text: upper left hand corner is just fine if you hate centering! Phew. Ok. Enough of that.
Before we announce who’ll be moving on, let’s take a moment to chat about the next round of the Super Challenge. Starting Friday, our final round writers will be combining tropes from two genres to make a blended-genre story. This is one of my personal favorite prompts, and every fiction Super Challenge brings new and fascinating stories. Whether we’re exploring genres that maybe you haven’t written in before (veterans, remember the epistolary round?) or landing in your comfort zone, leaning into the way that two handpicked genres play off each other is a great way to find an innovative tale. And we do handpick the genres for compatibility; drawing genres out of a hat leads to “historical fiction / science fiction” and… yyyyyeah.
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.
- We’ll give you some pointers in the prompt post about what we think the genre consists of. Don’t skip them: our judges receive a letter that explains what you’ve been told the prompt is, so that their personal definitions of the genre can be consistent with what you know.
- Don’t go offroading with your genres. Sure, there are noir stories that don’t incorporate crime, femme fatales, or hardboiled main characters… 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.
- Pay attention to what is NOT in the genre, as well as what is. What does that mean?
- There are no character, plot or setting restrictions, beyond what is necessary to demonstrate each genre.
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, who will be advancing to the next round of the Super Challenge:
Noel Alcoba
Myna Chang
Tara L. Davis
Cynthia Day
Laura Duerr
Lisa A Fox
Michelle Hanley
Sarah Anne Lloyd
Heidi Lobecker
MM Schreier
Lisa Short
Tanya Zilinskas
Wait, wait, there’s more!
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. If you post your story on your personal site or blog, we’d love it if you took a moment to link that up here for future Super Challengeers.
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.
