Patterns
Don’t skip this part of the post. Seriously. I know you’re here for the list of winners, BUT.
This round’s judges were a fantastic team, including folks who read and edit for Markets You Have Definitely Heard Of, and we’re proud to have professionals like that putting their eyes on your stories. You may not know this, but in addition to collecting your individual scores and feedback, we ask our judges if they have overall comments, things they wished they could say but didn’t quite have room to, or that they thought weren’t the most important things wrong with a single story (they only have a couple sentences! they want to tell you the thing that will be the Most Helpful!) but that were noticeably a little wrong across many stories. We’re delighted that they were willing to offer some free additional feedback.
Here’s what they had to say:
- I really notice it when people don’t proofread. When I’m reading for work, I can’t pass those stories on, so they stand out to me here, too. Run spellcheck, everyone, please. Don’t lose easy points.
- The stories that actually incorporated the prompts stood out for me. It’s very easy to treat an object prompt as a checkbox thing to include, but putting the object in a stack of other objects and then ignoring it for the rest of the story doesn’t show me the writer’s skill and imagination.
- A little research goes a long way. If you’re putting in that a character is making something, you should know how to make it and what it’s made of. Watch a YouTube tutorial!
- There isn’t a lot of room for a whole cast of characters in only a thousand words. You’re going to end up not doing some of them justice. Try paring down to just a few characters that you can actually develop. And if only one character is developed, that’s going to show, too. Does anyone else have that meme saved, the one about writing the first three chapters of a novel in fifth grade and then realizing you already have 50 characters and now you have to decide who to kill?
- Sometimes I wish I could score for what I can tell a writer was trying to do, but all I have in front of me is what they did do.
- I read the summaries last (except for the CW) and some of the stories just didn’t make sense without that extra information. The summary isn’t a place to add more information or context, because we don’t include it in “the story” so whatever’s not clear without the summary, I have to score that story.
- It’s really noticeable when people write kids, if they’ve spent time around real live kids or not. A lot of people write kids much younger than the age they’re given in the story.
- I know the grammar check on Word or whatever isn’t great, but turn it on and at least consider what it’s saying. It might have one or two decent suggestions, and it will at least catch when you cut half a sentence off when you were editing.
Folks, a couple of the groups had not one or two but as many as half of their stories separated by only a point or two, so while these may seem like fiddly little things, they may have made a big difference in whether you moved on or not this week. Speaking of this week, and round one in general, as always, anything that went right this round is entirely due to our admin team’s untiring work behind the scenes, and anything you hate is probably my fault. Unless it’s your feedback—hating and loving your feedback is just kind of part of being a writer.
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.
Need a little extra help? Check out our Navigating Prompts posts on genres: element-based genre prompts and style-based genre prompts.
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, in alphabetical order, who will be advancing to the next round of the Super Challenge:
Jennie Brass
Amanda Clear
Katie Battaglia Delay
Katelyn Foster
Kate Goodheart
Corrie Haldane
Bridget Haug
Karen Mitani
C.A. Raine
Kristen Ray
MM Schreier
Gail A. Webber
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, you can share that link in the Coffeehouse as well.
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.
