Round One Closes in:
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Let’s do this!
Are you ready for 48 hours of frantically writing and then just as frantically second-guessing your idea? Before you go grab your prompt and start doing that, we’d like a word. Specifically, we need to talk to you about AI. Against the backdrop of the WGA strike here in the US, we’d like to highlight that we’re looking for your personal, individual, creative contributions to the world. Using AI to write your stories isn’t that, and doesn’t create a level playing field where your contributions have value and your feedback is useful. Like many competitions and anthologies, ours is a labor of love; we’d rather not waste our time making suggestions for improvement to ChatGPT – those are for you! To that end we’re reminding you that by submitting your work to the Super Challenge, you are making a promise that it is the creative work of humans (including you, although per our rules you are welcome to collaborate, brainstorm, beta read (please beta read), and assist each other, although the entrant will be considered the author of that work.
Let’s also dispense with the obvious questions: yes, you can use spellcheck. Yes, you can use grammar check, although it rarely helps your writing and often edits out your personal voice and contributions, so you might want to think about whether you’d rather have a person help you with that. No, you cannot use LLMs like ChatGPT to “revise” your story after you’ve written it. No, you cannot write your story “in dialogue with” an AI. Look, however you feel about AI art and writing, at the end of the day there’s a very real question about whether you can hold the copyright to that work, and we’d rather pay you sweet cash for something you can revise with your feedback and feel good about your ownership of. Especially because for the very first time, our winners will be included in YeahWrite’s own anthology!
Speaking of sweet cash, here’s a reminder:
First place: $200
Second place: $150
Third place: $100
PLUS! Publication in YeahWrite’s 2023 anthology of flash fiction and creative nonfiction! We’ll have more details soon.
Now that the best part is over, let’s talk about the 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, and get a refresher on the rules.
This round you’ll be writing a story in 1,000 words or fewer 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.
Now, for an object prompt, it’s easy to tell if something’s integral. Use the banana test. Could you replace the object prompt with a banana without changing the story?
For the prompts you’ll be working with this weekend, it’s a little harder, but not much. If you replaced the prompt with the prompt for a different group, could you tell the same story in the same way? If you could, your prompt isn’t well integrated. For a setting, that’s going to mean working within the parameters of the setting. If it’s a bustling city, the resources and ambiance of the city should play into your story. If it’s a tropical island with no people, the same rule applies: your characters should operate within the weather and resources of the island. If you put a resort on the island and place your whole story within a hotel room that could just as easily be in Antarctica, just casually mentioning the name of the island? Not integral. Similarly, for a character, that character’s, er, characteristics should matter. If your very religious doctor could be replaced with an atheist mechanic, they weren’t well integrated into the story. Who they were didn’t matter to the story.
Now, the whole story doesn’t have to revolve around the prompt. And as we’ve mentioned, it doesn’t have to be super innovative. 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 action and an object
PROMPT STYLE 1: action
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.
Tips and tricks: Action prompts
PROMPT STYLE 2: object
The object should be integral to the story. Again, for those folks who didn’t follow our advice to read the whole post… An easy test for “is this object integral” is “if I said chewing gum instead, would the story be fundamentally different?” Objects should also fit comfortably within the defined parameters for the object type, if the type is a category instead of a specific object. So if the prompt is “needle” the object might (depending on definition) be a pine needle or a sewing needle or knitting needle, but it shouldn’t be a dog named Needle. Don’t worry: we’ll give you those parameters with your prompt.
Tips and tricks: Object prompts
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? That’s right: you can scroll back, follow the links, and get a sneak peek into the brains of the judges and promptwriters. 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!
Questions?
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 channels on our Discord server. Please don’t use any of the other channels, as many of 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.
Remember: while you’re welcome to get clarification on the prompt on general principles, “Can I….?” type questions are about your work, and we can’t answer those. Ask yourself if the answer to the question would benefit everyone in your group, or just you–the judges will have the final say on your individual story. (Example: a prompt with the setting “woods” – a valid question about the prompt might be “is woods necessarily a wild space or would any large cluster of trees count even if it’s groomed like an orchard or park?” On the other hand, the answer to “Can I set my story in Central Park” would benefit only you.)
Ready for your prompts? Let’s get to it!
Groups and Prompts
Group One
Your action prompt is: helping someone get dressed
The action does not have to be performed by the main character, but the story should show someone actively assisting another person to dress. For purposes of this prompt both the helper and helpee should be “people” within the context of your story (sentient actors with free will and agency) but need not be human. The assistance can be physical, verbal, or emotional, but it must be active and necessary to the process.
Your object prompt is: a birdhouse
We’re defining a birdhouse as a dwelling built or created for birds by a non-bird – that is, not a dwelling a bird created for itself (such as a nest, burrow, or bower) and not a dwelling of another animal that a bird inhabits after it is abandoned (e.g. burrowing owls). The form of the birdhouse is up to you, but it must be a literal object, not (for example) the name of a club or a metaphor for something else. Your birdhouse doesn’t need to have a bird in it, but if it does, the bird should be (yeah, we know, but you wouldn’t believe the questions we get) an actual bird, Merriam Webster Definition 2.
Group Two
Your action prompt is: sorting through a stranger’s possessions
The stranger must not have a personal relationship to the person doing the sorting, although they could be, for example, a blood relative that the sorter has never met, or only meets once during the handoff of possessions. The stranger need not be dead – there are many other reasons why someone might be called on to go through a collection of possessions.
Your object prompt is: a stone painted white
“Paint” can be interpreted loosely, but it should imply pigment applied to a surface with the intention of permanent (or at least more than brief, like sidewalk chalk) coloration. We’re looking for an individual, unmodified stone here, not an entire stone wall or a stone statue. The stone can be of any size, but it must be entirely covered in white paint – the stone itself is not white; the paint is. An incidental or accidental splash of paint does not satisfy this prompt.
Group Three
Your action prompt is: buying a train ticket
We’re defining “train” as a vehicle composed of separate but attached cars that runs along a track. A caravan or merchant train would not satisfy this prompt, nor would a one-car tram. The story need not take place on the train.
Your object prompt is: a potted plant
The plant may be real or artificial, but we’re talking about a tree, vine, shrub, herb, etc. – not a power plant or a spy. The pot may be one intended for plants, or another vessel in which a plant has been situated such as a mug. However, the plant must be a plant, growing in dirt (or made to look like it is), not cut flowers in a vase. The plant may be of any size or maturity, but it cannot be just a seed.
Group Four
Your action prompt is: preparing a hot beverage (coffee, tea, masala chai, espresso, cocoa, etc)
The beverage may be real (as in the examples above) or imaginary, as long as it is something that needs to be prepared in a particular way by combining ingredients, and it is hot. Pouring an already hot beverage from a dispenser would not satisfy this prompt. The beverage should be prepared by a character, not an automated process (that is, you can have a person measure out and put beans and water in one of those roaster-grinder-brewer espresso machines and wait while the magic happens, but you can’t just include waking up to coffee in a coffeemaker that was set last night on a timer unless the story includes preparing the coffeemaker with its filter and measured grounds).
Your object prompt is: a horse figurine
By figurine, we mean a small carved or molded figure, not a full-sized statue. It should generally be of a size to be easily picked up and moved by one person. The horse should be an Earth-standard equine, i.e., not a unicorn, not a pegasus, not an alicorn. (You may also include these, but you cannot exclude the horse itself.) A toy counts as a figurine for this purpose so long as it is carved or molded, not soft or stuffed. This is a figurine; so is this. This is not.
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. If you’re going to need a beta reader for your SC material, remember to arrange it ahead of time and trade contact info so that you don’t end up posting in the main channels!
Your stories 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 be a separate page and 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!)
Note: If you experience trouble uploading your your submission, contact us via the methods above and the admin team will give you instructions for emailing your submission instead.
You’ll receive your feedback on Wednesday, November 30, 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.
