Winning – or advancing in – a writing competition should be a matter of skill, not luck. But I’ll be very real with y’all: this time it almost came down to luck. In more than one of our groups, despite our distributed judging method, there were multiple-way ties. So I guess you could say we got lucky: we didn’t have to find extra judges to tiebreak across a third/fourth place line. But we would have, because it’s important to us that you’re judged on your writing skill and ability to craft a prompted work in 48 hours.
So what separated the top placers from the rest of the field? (Pay attention to this one, it’ll still be in play in the final round.) A strong “so-what.”
That’s a term that a YeahWrite editor came up with back in the day, and it means that a well-written essay won’t leave the reader saying “yeah, but so what?” at the end. Writing with a strong so-what is relatable, forging a connection between reader and writer for the duration. A personal essay with a so-what is more than a journal entry. When I teach nonfiction writing, I often say that the process of writing nonfic is the exact opposite of writing fiction: when you write fiction you have to make sure that you put enough story in, but when you write nonfiction you have to make sure to take out everything that’s not the story (or something the reader needs to understand you or your story). (Shameless plug: our writing help section has a ton of ideas to help you find and communicate your so-what. Search in the search bar or skim back through this archive.)
That’s what made our top twelve writers stand out from the pack, and we’re excited to see what they do next round. But while we’re still talking about this round, as usual, 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.
Starting Friday, the advancing writers will be working with a phrase. Each writer will incorporate that phrase into an essay about… well, about wherever that sentence takes them for inspiration. The essay could be personal or persuasive. The catch is that the sentence shouldn’t stick out or sound unnatural. Words should flow, nuance should be on-point, and our judges shouldn’t be able to tell where your writing ends and our prompt begins.
Sound fun? We hope so. We love designing prompts we wish we could write to. So let’s see who gets to play this weekend:
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:
Donna-Louise Bishop
Breanne M Boyle
Jess Burnquist
Tim Covell
Danielle Dayney
Cynthia Cook DeRuyter
Marcy Dilworth
Kavitha Gnanasekhar
Michelle Hanley
N. Knight
Heidi Lobecker
Sanch V
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. How often does that work out? Well, take a look back through the Coffeehouse or ask around!
You can also post your work to our Super Challenge 13 grid, if you choose to put it on your blog!
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.
