Round One Closes in:
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Who’s ready to think about something else for 48 hours?
Oh my gosh, I am. Even spending time thinking up prompts to spark your imagination and send you into made-up worlds for the weekend has been a nice break. We hope you’re safe, sound, and in a location where there aren’t 500 new demands for your attention so that you can get some good writing time in.
We also hope you’re as excited as we are about our FINAL PRIZE AMOUNTS:
First place: $300
Second place: $200
Third place: $100
Now that the best part is over, let’s talk about the good stuff: prompts. You should already have received your email with your group assignment, but before you dive in, let’s take a quick look at handling prompts in general, since everyone’s a little scattered right now.
This round you’ll be writing a story with two prompts. In order to score well with our judges, those prompts will need to be integral to the story, so let’s take a minute to talk about what “integral” means. (Some of you will have read this or something like it already. You know what? You still shouldn’t skip it. It’s a good reminder.)
First of all, here’s a long, unpacked version of what I’m about to say, and it’s worth a read if you’ve never seen it. Second: integral means that if the prompt were changed, the story would necessarily change.
One friend calls it “the banana test.” Could you replace the prompt with a banana without changing the story? Then it wasn’t integral. So if your prompt was “picking up a coin” you might write a story where the main character finds bus fare to a magical place. If they picked up a banana, that would change the whole story, right? But if you were writing a story about a character riding a bus and they found a coin under their seat and put it in their purse and it never showed up in the story again, what would change if they found a banana instead? Nothing. One word. Meh. That’s the difference between an integrated and not-integrated prompt.
Now, the whole story doesn’t have to revolve around the prompt: in the magic bus fare story, the plot is about going to a new place and maybe what the character finds out about themself there, right? And it doesn’t have to be super innovative. Using a coin to buy a bus fare isn’t unusual at all. But you’re going to tell your story in the way only you can tell stories. That’s what makes it unique, not necessarily the plot or the characters. Don’t worry too much about coming up with a unique take on the prompts or pushing the limits of what the prompt might mean. Worry about telling a good story, the way you tell it, edited well and with the prompts integrated.
Now that that’s cleared up, let’s talk a little more about these prompts, specifically.
For this round, you’ll have two prompts: an opening phrase and an action.
The opening phrase must be the first words in your story (after the title page, of course). It isn’t a complete sentence, so you should complete it and then go on with your story. For example, if your opener is “The sky turned the color of…” then your first sentence might be “The sky turned the color of an old apple found in the bottom of a school bag at the end of August as I ran for the fence between the pasture and home.” It’s all right to change the verb tense to fit the rest of your story, but try to make your change as minimal as possible and just to the verb. That is, in the example, you could change the sentence to “The sky turns the color of old cheese as I make my way back to the car” or “The sky had turned the color of wet concrete before I could put my camera away” but not “The sky is the same color as it was when I woke up.”
The action is flexible and the story doesn’t need to have the action as a goal. That is, if your action is “climbing something” the something could be large or small and the story doesn’t have to be about getting to the top of a mountain. The story could, for example, be about taking food to a neighbor who lives upstairs, and what they tell you about the fairies that live in the walls that lets you finally get revenge on Tony from third grade. But the action does need to be integral to the story: maybe you’ve never taken food to that neighbor because the stairs are terrifying, and that’s why you don’t know that your house has fairies and not mice in it.
As always, if you need clarification on a prompt, don’t contact our general email! Use superchallenge@yeahwrite.me
Ready? Let’s get to it.
Group 1
OPENER: The second thing I noticed was…
ACTION: building something
Prompt notes: You may change the tense in the opener. You should make the opener into a complete sentence by finishing the phrase.
Building something means the act of construction or assembly, not installation or decoration. That is, you could build a model, or IKEA furniture, or a skyscraper. But putting a bookshelf into a room or hanging a painting is not building. Nor is putting in kitchen cabinets- that’s remodeling.
Group 2
OPENER: I couldn’t hear the…
ACTION: opening a box
Prompt notes: You may change the tense in the opener. You should make the opener into a complete sentence by finishing the phrase.
“A box” can be any shape of lidded container, but it should be a general purpose one, not something like a chest freezer or stockpot. It needs to be able to be completely closed off. The lid does not need to be attached, but it should belong to the box (that is, don’t “uncover” a box with fabric draped over it or a plate balanced on it). The box should be able to be moved and stored, although it’s not necessary that one person be able to do so easily (a crate is a box, a shipping container might be a box, a house is not a box even if it’s Brutalist).
Group 3
OPENER: I still hadn’t found my _______ when ….
ACTION: throwing something away
Prompt notes: You should fill in the blank in the opener and then use “when” before finishing the phrase. You may change the tense in the opener. You should make the opener into a complete sentence.
Throwing something away means getting rid of it with the intention of no-one ever having it again. Putting something in the trash is throwing it away. Tossing it off a building, into a river, or into a field is. Playing baseball is not throwing the ball away. Throwing something to someone, likewise, is not throwing it away, even if they don’t plan to give it back to you.
Group 4
OPENER: It was exactly the same as…
ACTION: locking a door
Prompt notes: You may change the tense in the opener. You should make the opener into a complete sentence by finishing the phrase.
Locking a door means the act of sealing an aperture made for people/beings/story characters to pass through in such a way that it can be unsealed again by a similar process. Does that sound like an unnecessarily complex definition? Then you probably weren’t meaning to write a story about eldritch horrors from the great beyond. Locking a door is not locking a box. The door can be in a building, vehicle, tree, etc. but it can not be a metaphorical door, like “I gave you the keys to my heart.”
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! Using any other contact method or email address could be grounds for disqualification.
You’ll receive your feedback on May 27, and we’ll announce who’s moving on to the next round that day at noon US Eastern Time. We’ll be moving the top three writers from each group, for a final round of 12 writers.
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.
