Weekly Writing Prompt Group - Week 0 - Open Voting for the Weekly Prompt
This is week 0 of the Weekly Writing Prompt Group (WWPG). After asking about interest, I've decided to try running this. This is week 0, so I'm trying to see what works and what doesn't. Feel free to make suggestions!
Vote for the prompt you like most by adding a 'vote' to the prompt in the comments. Writers and non-writers, are encouraged to vote:
The Necronaut:
Who is the traveler in the after life? What do they see? Why are they there? Are they alone or part of a team? Was this an accident? or an organized, international endeavor?
An Audience of None:
Who is the performer? What are they performing? Are they truly alone? Is there a watcher after all?
The Road Trip:
Are they going towards or away from something? How are they getting there? What happens if they arrive? What happens if they return?
Vote closes tomorrow, Tuesday, Aug 21, 10AM EST.
Submissions will be accepted on Wednesday, Aug 29, EST (~9 days).
The questions are only meant to help you get started. Make it happy or sad, adventure or horror, romance or tragedy. Go where you want. Don't feel constrained by what may seem to be the obvious response to the prompt.
This will be different from other writing prompts in three ways:
You are encouraged to take your time with the prompt. After a prompt has been chosen, I will post another thread after a week for submissions to that week's prompt.
I will personally read and provide feedback to every submission in the submission thread. It will be more than just a "good job" or acknowledgement. I will highlight things I liked, didn't like, how I think things could be improved etc.
Selection of the prompt is open to everyone, even non-participants. I hope this will encourage the greater tildes community to follow the WWPG and to participate by reading and commenting on the creative works of the writers.
What I feel separates this style of prompt from others is that it encourages writers to let their ideas breathe and it provides a creative outlet for writers who may be intimidated by the faster nature of other writing prompts.
Another aspect that I feel makes this unique is the promise of feedback. I believe that if you take the time to really work on something, you should get something back. To make this possible, there are some things that I need from you:
The submission must be completely original. In the future I may post more fan-fictiony prompts, but I want to encourage brand new ideas from the writers.
Keep the length of your submissions between 1000 and 2000 words. This is to make it easier for me to read (as we continue I may extend the length). This should also keep you well within the 50,000 character limit.
Avoid shopping large tracts of your writing as the goal is provide new works on the submission date. However, feel free to brainstorm ideas.
Make sure to properly format to tildes. Feel free to also post your stories to your personal blogs etc., but I will only provide feedback for work posted in tildes.
Woohoo, excited to see this is going forward! Even if not participating as a writer, I'm looking forward to seeing where people go with these prompts.
This might be a dumb question, but:
Can it be < 1000 words?
I know length isn't necessarily a reflection of time or intellectual investment, but I feel like significantly shorter submissions are more likely to get reads because of their length. I'm just trying to think of ways to make it more likely that everyone's stories get eyes.
The 2000 upper limit is for my sake (lol), the 1000 lower limit is so flash fiction doesn't get more attention just because more people chose to read it over longer stories. As long as it's close-ish 1000 I feel that would be in keeping with the spirit of that rule.
That's an excellent point -- I really should have thought of that.
Maybe there can be an occasional "short short stories" theme or "flash fiction" week at some point if people feel intimidated by a 1000 word minimum.
Or the opposite; a 'longer submissions' theme if everyone's chafing at the word limit. I hope this takes off!
I def love flash fiction. It’s an art form unto itself. I have some ideas about how to marry quick stories with time intensive development, if the writing group community gets large enough and helps enough people get the confidence to try faster writing, I’ll try that!