Surprise!

Well. It’s not a surprise that this is the final round of the final Super Challenge here at YeahWrite. If you’re one of the last writers, we’re so glad you’re here. And if you’ve ever written in a Super Challenge? Thanks for being there. Thanks for making this one of the greatest writing challenges on the net, with the consistently highest quality of writing.

So to celebrate, we do have a special gift for our final writers in our final round.

YOU HAVE 1500 WORDS THIS ROUND. USE THEM WISELY.

That’s right! An extra 500 words! You don’t have to use them all – we expect you’ll only need some of them, and you might want to start by trying to write your story at 1,000 words and then go back and see where it needs room to breathe, space in the pace, or a little more worldbuilding. But you’ve got ’em. An extra half-story’s worth of words.

While you’re editing those words, we thought we’d drop our personal writing checklist to you. Every point counts at this stage, and this checklist can help you hang onto the easy points.

• Spellcheck
• Make sure any reader comments are deleted
• Accept/reject all changes
• Font (global)
• Title page style (use page break)
• Paragraph style
• How many times did you use your favorite descriptive word [Ed’s note: ours is “grin” /rbg & ch]

This does two things: it means you’re done done, and it ensures you don’t accidentally DQ a story you’re proud of.

Okay, let’s jump into the IMPORTANT list. This round, you’ll be combining tropes from two genres to make a blended-genre story. Here are a few tips and pointers about this round. Yes, you’ve seen these before. No, you can’t skip them, someone always skips them and it makes us double plus un happy:

• Pay attention to our genre definitions. The ones we give you are the ones the judges are going to be using.
• Even if you know one of the genres well, even if your name is actually Ngaio Marsh and we assigned “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, summary, and any applicable content warnings. You also don’t need to be fancy! Just use the same font and size as the rest of the story. This is administrative data, not a layout challenge for you. That would be mean of us!
• If you’re frustrated, remember to check out our free workshops on analyzing genre prompts from May and October last year.

Ready? Here’s the prompt you’ll be swearing at us about all weekend:

Final round prompt

​GENRES: Detective Fiction / Solarpunk

We’re not joking about taking the time to read these definitions, because we’ve put some limits on them and cleared up some things that have confused writers in the past. As you read, we think you’ll see why you’re getting that extra 500 words!

Detective Fiction.  Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective investigates a crime, often (but not always) murder. The Encyclopedia Britannica lays out the elements of a perfect detective story as: (1) the seemingly perfect crime; (2) the wrongly accused suspect at whom circumstantial evidence points; (3) the bungling of dim-witted police; (4) the greater powers of observation and superior mind of the detective; and (5) the startling and unexpected denouement, in which the detective reveals how the identity of the culprit was ascertained. Your story need not specifically contain all these elements, but it should be strongly influenced by your knowledge of them. That is, the “dim-witted police” might not be actual police but other investigators; the point would be that the detective is better than they are.

The detective may be professional, amateur, or retired, but this should be their “job” at least to the extent that you could legitimately call it their side hustle, whether or not they get paid for it. That is, they might be a retired police officer who lends their expertise on difficult cases; a detective working for the national, state or local government in some capacity; a science teacher who solves crimes on the weekends; or a “consulting detective” like Sherlock Holmes, who was a well-paid freelancer (who blew most of his money on cocaine, but that’s a different story). Some examples of these “it’s not my day job, but…” detectives include Lord Peter Wimsey (an unemployed minor nobleman with an income that enables him to do what he likes), Kay Scarpetta (a medical examiner), and Jim Qwilleran (a reporter, writer, and cat dad). Professionals you might have heard of besides Holmes include Nero Wolfe, Roderick Alleyn, and Phryne Fisher (don’t fight about this, she literally has business cards).

The detective doesn’t need to be the point-of-view character (think of Watson, or of Nero Wolfe’s man-about-town Archie) but their work on solving the crime should be the focus of the story. The story also doesn’t need to tell the entire history of the crime, investigation, and solution – it’s fine to focus on one aspect of the case, whether that’s calling the detective in or the denouement, so long as the other aspects can be inferred from what’s in the story. You are also free to use either the “whodunit” or “howcatchem” formula of detective fiction – that is, it is not necessary for the reader to be kept in the dark about what happened for the whole story, as the point here is the investigation and the character doing it.

You are not required to tell the story in a “noir” or “hardboiled” style, although you may do so if you like. 

Don’t forget your content warnings, especially if you’re about to lovingly describe a brutal, violent act or its aftermath. Consider it a fair trade for those extra 500 words you’re spending on gore.

Solarpunk.  Solarpunk, like steampunk or dieselpunk, is a genre that focuses on the technology used to get the job done. Your “tech level” of capability could be minimalist, modern, or futuristic– traditional solarpunk is all futuristic, a foil to cyberpunk, but we don’t want to cut you off from the idea of post-technological societies or an alternate past, if that’s what moves you. On the other hand, solarpunk does require technology, so we’re not looking for a society that has abandoned tech entirely (although one where the “big things” are done by fairly well hidden tech while people use less tech in daily life is fair game, so long as the underlying infrastructure is visible to the reader). One critical difference between solarpunk and cyberpunk is that while in cyberpunk technology is not necessarily used to improve quality of life or preserve natural features (in fact, most cyberpunk is firmly dystopian), solarpunk worldbuilding focuses largely on countercultural (to modern Global North cultures) ideas about climate preservation and clean tech. To that end, “solarpunk” is a bit of a misnomer: any clean, renewable energy is fair game.

Clean tech does not have to be the ONLY tech in your world, but it should be the PRIMARY tech. That is, most transportation and devices should be powered with clean, renewable energy such as solar or hydro or wind, and fossil fuels or steam or electricity generated from depletable sources that increase atmospheric carbon loads should be deprecated and largely disused. This doesn’t mean you have to set up a conflict where “evil people use gasoline” and your protagonists battle them while self-righteously discussing their carbon offsets; instead, the technology should be as unremarkably part of your worldbuilding as clockwork and steam are for steampunk. Glue some panels on it, you might say. And your society doesn’t have to be utopian! (Your other genre is a detective story, after all.)

That was a lot of words for something that’s more of a vibe, honestly. Solarpunk is energy- and climate-grounded hopepunk. There, that was easier. You can do this.

Hopefully you’ve got a handle on these genres and are starting to have ideas already. If you don’t, go to bed or take a shower or a walk, or brainstorm with the other Super Challenge writers in our Discord channel (please just the locked Super Challenge channels, don’t DQ yourself). You’ve got this! And if you really, really, don’t, you can ask in the Discord or email superchallenge@yeahwrite.me (NO OTHER EMAILS, PLEASE, speaking of easy ways to earn a DQ). Remember, we can answer general questions (“Do there have to be magic spells you can cast to show that it’s low fantasy?” (no, but you must include magic in some form)) but not specific questions about your story (“If I put in…”).

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! You can also discuss your story in the judge- (and judgment-) free Super Challenge channel on Discord.

Your stories are due Sunday, April 28, 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.

For the final round, the title page should include only your title, summary, and any content warning you think is appropriate. (No group number is necessary.) Don’t skip the title page, y’all. At least one person has failed to move on or place because they missed out on those points in a close round!

Email your questions to superchallenge@yeahwrite.me or post them in the Super Challenge channel on Discord—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!)

You’ll receive your feedback on Wednesday, May 15, and we’ll announce the winners on Friday, May 17, at 3pm US Eastern Time.

We hope you have as much fun with the prompt as we had picking it 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.

rowan@yeahwrite.me