Why we’re all here
I’m going to keep this short and sweet – we all know you’re really here for the results! As YeahWrite’s Editor-in-Chief, I don’t usually get the chance to comment on the Super Challenge stories. But I do make a point to read as many as I can, during and after the competition, and I am always amazed and gratified by the broad range of styles and voices that our writers bring to the table. At the end of the day, we’re all about lifting up those voices – your voices – and helping you push through the doubt and frustration that plagues us all to produce your absolute best work. We are all here to improve our writing and to get our stories out of our heads and onto the page. I hope you enjoy the process as much as we do.
I’d like to take a moment to thank our incredible judging team, whose diligence and thoughtfulness shines through every word of their feedback, and the rest of the Super Challenge admin team, whose behind-the-scenes work usually goes quietly unnoticed. Thanks, team!
Writers, remember: hating and loving your feedback is just kind of part of being a writer, so take a moment to sit with it before you dive into revisions.
–Christine
A note from our prompt-creator extraordinaire, Rowan:
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 this weekend:
Congratulations to Our Advancing Writers
Let’s have a hand for the following writers, in alphabetical order, who will be advancing to the final round of the Super Challenge this weekend:
Katie Battaglia Delay
Jess Filippi
Kate Goodheart
Melinda Hagenson
Melissa Mendelson
KPF
C.A. Raine
MM Schreier
Aeiris Sweven
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, 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.
