And now, without further ado…
KIDDING. I love ado. Even if there’s a lot of it and it’s about nothing. Writers, you should have your feedback. It was a full Super Challenge, even with, you know, these uncertain times and all that, so I’m going to give you a couple reminders about feedback:
ONE: the judges are asked to give you both positive and negative feedback. So the fact that you got negative feedback only means that, you know, the judges are following instructions. And let’s face it, nobody writes a perfect story in 48 hours.
TWO: we’re not unfamiliar, as writers and editors ourselves, with the feeling of getting feedback. In fact, we’re so familiar with it that we wrote guides to giving and receiving constructive criticism. If you’re having a hard time hearing what the judges had to say about your work (ugh, it’s the worst), maybe put it aside for a couple days and come back to it with those guides in mind.
THREE: your feedback isn’t your score, and your score isn’t an absolute measure of the value of your work. Challenges like this are “graded on a curve” and we could only move three writers from each group forward. That doesn’t mean everyone else’s stories were terrible, it just means there are only 12 slots in the final round. If you didn’t make it to the final round, there’s still a very good chance that you can polish up that story and submit it to an anthology somewhere! And hey, it’s already had pro editors look at it.
Now, on to the technical side of this challenge:
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.
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, the advancing writers will be working on combining tropes from two genres to make a blended-genre story. This is one of my favorite prompts, and the one that makes me REALLY wish I could write for this challenge. It’s also incredibly fun to judge! 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 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.
Sound fun? Let’s see who’ll be taking on that, er, super challenge:
Congratulations to Our Advancing Writers
Let’s have a hand for the following writers, who will be advancing to the next round of the Super Challenge:
Renee Boyer
Amber Cohen
Katie Entner Delay
Stephanie Lennon
J. Lynn Moore
Alex Otto
Charlie Rogers
Chrissie Rohrman
Mela Rourke
MM Schreier
Margaret Shafer
Jessica Wilcox
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 and anthologies. If it finds a home, we’d love to hear about it in the coffeehouse! And if you choose to post it to your personal site or blog, we’d love it if you’d link that up right here. You can also link up works your story is published in later – it’s nice for future super challengeers to see what you’ve done!
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.
