The Final Round closes in:
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Welcome, shortlisted writers! There are twelve of you left, and we expect to see some amazing* stories come out of this weekend! This round, you’ll be combining tropes from two genres to make a blended-genre story. 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.
- You don’t need to include a group number on your title page; just the title and summary.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: This is normally the spot where we’d say “there are no character, plot, or setting restrictions beyond what is necessary to demonstrate your genre.” But we’ve got a restriction this time: no plagues or pandemics. We had a long discussion with our final round judges before picking out the genres we’ll be working with and they uniformly agreed that they’re just kind of tired of plagues for some reason. So this weekend let’s take a break, and give everyone something to read that doesn’t just look like a newspaper. This is a fiction competition, and 2020 has kind of lost the plot anyway, so we’re asking you to do our judges a favor this round. This is not an invitation to see how close you can get to a plague without it being actually a plague, either. Often when we introduce a new restriction someone out there takes it as a challenge. But the real challenge in prompted fiction isn’t to see whether you can avoid the prompts; it’s to see how well you can center them. Think about it like this: if there’s one red ball in a room, what demonstrates your skill at archery better? Hitting the ball, or hitting the room?
Now that that’s cleared up, let’s get to the genre assignments:
GENRES: Tall Tale; Science Fiction
There are a lot of definitions for both of these genres available online, so we thought we’d narrow it down a bit. Pay attention: this is what our judges will be seeing, so keep that in mind as you’re trying to decide how to combine your genres and keep them recognizable. Oh, and we’ll say this twice: No plagues, no pandemics, and your science fiction must be set at least 50 years in the future.
Tall Tale: “Tall tales” are stories that are told as if they were true but contain unbelievable elements. They combine fact and fiction, with an emphasis on individual accomplishments against a tough background like a frontier. Some tall tales are exaggerations of real events, while others are completely make-believe events and only the real setting is “proof” that they happened. Tall tales are a key and recognizable part of literature, from the travels of America’s Paul Bunyan to the exploits of Robin Hood or the eponymous protagonist in the Tale of Genji.
At least one character in a tall tale is “larger than life” – that is, they accomplish things that they rationally cannot do, have traits that are genetically impossible (50 foot tall blue ox, anyone?), or are used to explain natural phenomena in a humanistic way. For example, many key figures in tall tales have been said to cause a hurricane with a sneeze, or an earthquake when they walk. Not quite fables, tall tales are more like bragging competitions, and should have some element of reality, however implausible, to them. Did you catch a fish last weekend? Was it bigger than your boat? Did you spend two days trying to haul it in, and when it thrashed, it made a tidal wave? You’ve just told a tall tale, now sit down and contemplate your 8-inch trout.
Science Fiction: Science fiction is a genre based on writing rationally about possible worlds or futures. It is related to, but different from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imagined elements are plausible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated physical laws (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation). The imagined future might be as near as next week or as far as millions of years from now. For the purposes of this competition, your story should be set at least 50 years in the future.
It is important to note that science fiction has a relationship with the principles of science. These stories involve partially true and partially fictitious laws or theories of science. It should not be completely unbelievable, because it then ventures into the genre fantasy. Science fiction stories may be set in the near or far future, on Earth or elsewhere. They are not alternate history stories: changes in the world should be explained by changes in technology, not “someone killed Hitler” unless the change in technology is a time machine. Some attempt should be made to rationalize and explain the hand-wavy elements of the story with real or made-up science. New and different sociopolitical systems like utopias, dystopias, etc. are fair game, although keep an eye out for technological focus.
Science fiction is often divided into “hard” and “soft” categories, with hard science fiction depending heavily on realistic or at least thoroughly detailed and plausible principles of physics and technology. Soft science fiction doesn’t care how the spaceships work, although you know they’re not traveling faster than light because of magic; there’s some kind of “positronium drive” at work. Either will do for purposes of this prompt.
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 Wednesday, June 17, and we’ll announce the winners on Friday, June 19 around 3pm US Eastern Time.
We hope you have as much fun with the prompts as we had picking them out. Good luck, and good writing!
*Look, y’all. You have 48 hours. Nobody’s expecting this to be publishable as-is, although quite a few if not all of you wrote submittable as-is stories last round, which would have been publishable with a couple gentle nudges from the editor of whatever publication you were trying to place them with. (So did many of the other writers, so congratulations again on making it to the top of the grading curve.) Expect to get feedback about stuff you missed. After all, the judges are required to make suggestions. It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person or that the judges are. It means you had 48 hours and nobody gets it 100% in 48 hours. Not even gifted kids.
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.
