Round One Closes in:
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
Writer’s Block
Who hasn’t tasted the bitter fruit of … THE BLOCK? You’re staring at your prompts, the timer is counting down, and you’ve got nothing. Not a single idea or word. It happens to the editors at YeahWrite, too, in case you didn’t know. For example, I have no idea what I’m writing right now. I’m writing about writing, which next to “I had an uneventful childhood and then I was an adult” is one of the themes that I hate reading the most. Actually, there are some great ways to get through writer’s block. Talk to a friend. Ask a small child—the directions they take a prompt or a story are often unexpected and perfect. Or just go for a walk or run until your brain is so bored that it has to tell you a story. That and a long shower are my tricks. But I don’t have to write anything else this weekend (just edit) so I’m just going to go ahead and be excited to read what you write. No pressure.
I also hope you’re as excited as we are about our FINAL PRIZE AMOUNTS:
First place: $275
Second place: $225
Third place: $175
Now that the best part is over, let’s talk about the remaining good stuff: prompts. You should already have received your email with your group assignment, but before you check your number again and dive in, let’s take a quick look at how to handle prompts in general, since after a whole year (and a half? Something? what is time) of pandemic everyone’s a little scattered.
This round you’ll be writing a story with two prompts. In order to get the highest scores from our judges, both prompts should 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 image and an action.
Image prompt: The image prompt will be an object which must appear in at least one scene in your story exactly as pictured (for purposes of interpreting this prompt, the background need not be as pictured, only the object itself—go ahead and move it into your setting). The object does not need to start or remain in the state it is pictured in, but it must be like that at some point within the confines of the story. For example, if your object is a lone button it may be sewn to an article of clothing at some point before or after the scene where it is isolated, but it must be unattached at some point. You don’t need to describe every detail of the object, but you should give enough detail that someone who has never seen the image could produce a reasonable sketch resembling the object based only on your description. Feel free to make reasonable additions to the image – placing your object in a house, having somebody hold the object, putting something inside a box object or behind a door object – but do not make it an entirely different object by changing the details of the object’s appearance.
Action prompt: 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. Any character in your story may perform the action.
Good news: This year we’ve been running a free workshop called Navigating Prompts, and both of these prompt styles are addressed in the series. If you’re at sea with either of the prompts you’ve been given, why not check out the post written by the people who wrote your prompt? The two prompt styles you’ll be working with this weekend are covered in Object Prompts and Action Prompts. You might also want to check out our post specifically about Combination Prompts—that is, what to do when you have to incorporate two or more prompts into your story!
As always, if you need clarification on a prompt, don’t contact our general email! That means don’t use the contact form, don’t email or DM the editor you’ve talked to personally, just use superchallenge@yeahwrite.me. You can also get in touch with us using the Super Challenge channel on our Discord server. Please don’t use any of the other channels, as our judges are on the server and may accidentally see your post. We don’t let the judges into the Super Challenge channels, though, so you should feel free to discuss the prompts, ask for beta readers and editors, and chat about your story ideas in there.
Ready for your prompts? Let’s get to it.
Group One
Your image prompt is:
[Image description: A smallish ball of 4-ply unbleached cotton twine such as might be used by a butcher. One loose end rests on a wooden surface]
Your action prompt is: playing a musical instrument badly
Remember, the wooden surface isn’t necessary to the object prompt, but the ball of twine itself must appear in the same form it does here.
The musical instrument can be any formal instrument, but it can’t be an ad hoc one. That is, it could be a violin, a guitar, a flute, or a less complexly crafted instrument such as a vaksin or washtub bass, but it can’t be just slapping the car’s dashboard along with a song and calling it “drumming” no matter how good your character is at keeping a beat. And while we acknowledge that there are some amazing street drummers using garbage pails and kitty litter buckets, if you want to use that type of instrument in your story you’ll need to organize it into an instrument like a drumset the way they do, not simply pick up a bucket by the side of the road and go to town.
Group Two
Your image prompt is:
[Image description: A somewhat dirty and rusted yellow bicycle leaning against a wall. The bicycle has a step-through frame and fixed gears as well as a chain guard; a front basket holds a bucket or pot filled with dried purple flowers or herbs.]
Your action prompt is: throwing something (not the object in the image prompt) into a body of water
Because there is no information in this image about whether the bicycle is in rideable condition as-is, that’s up to you.
The body of water must be large enough that one cannot reasonably expect to recover the thrown thing. The thrown thing may not be buoyant: it’s being thrown into not onto the water.
Group Three
Your image prompt is:
[Image description: A white-shelled egg cracked into two pieces resting on a wooden surface. The larger piece of the shell holds the bright yellow intact yolk; the other piece is empty.]
Your action prompt is: climbing onto a habitable structure
A habitable structure is a purpose-built structure meant to be inhabited by whatever “people” means in your story, which will shelter them from the elements and provide at least basic sanitary necessities. An office building meets this definition, as does a house, but so does a colony ship meant to house people during interstellar travel. A cave, however, does not—unless it is an artificial cave constructed (not carved out; materials would need to have been brought to the site) for the purpose of habitation.
Group Four
Your image prompt is:
[Image description: Three simple red boats made of folded paper of different sizes. The smallest boat floats in a round, tapered glass vessel; the water level is higher on one side of the glass than the other, as if the glass were tilted (but it is not). The medium boat sits on a surface to the right of the glass. The largest boat sits to the right of the medium boat.]
Your action prompt is: mistaking a stranger for an acquaintance
Because we promised that the background wouldn’t be important, the smallest boat does not need to float in a glass vessel (although if you find a way to use that in your story feel free). However, it does need to float in something and the water it’s on needs to make waves, not simply flow downstream. The other boats can be floated or not, depending on what story you want to tell.
The stranger must, at that point in the story, be a complete stranger. They cannot be someone the other character knows or has seen. However, it’s all right for them to be connected to the character who mistakes them for an acquaintance: “I’m Jeremy’s cousin Thanh” is fine. “I’m Thanh, I’m in your Literature of the African Diaspora class” is not. “Acquaintance” can mean any moderate degree of familiarity, from a baseline of “we’re friends on social media and interact fairly frequently but have never met” to a familial closeness of “actual twin sibling.”
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! If you’re dying to chat about your WIP, our Discord Super Challenge channel is open! Just remember to STAY IN THERE so our judges don’t have even the slightest chance to see what you’re working on.
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.
Your title page should include: title, group number, 1-2 sentence summary, and any applicable content warning. Your title page info does not apply to your word count total.
Email your questions to superchallenge@yeahwrite.me or post your question in the private (judge-free) Super Challenge Discord channel—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! (Also, we don’t want you to accidentally email your questions to a judge; it’s happened! Don’t be that guy! We felt so bad for that guy!)
You’ll receive your feedback on Wednesday, December 1, and we’ll announce who’s moving on to the next round that day at noon US Eastern Time.
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.
