Voting has closed for this week's topic.

The prompt is...

The Road Trip

Some questions to help you get started:

Who is the traveler?
Why are they traveling?
Where are they going? Are they going anywhere?

The questions are only meant to help you get started. Make it happy or sad, adventure or horror, romance or tragedy. Go where your imagination takes you. Don't feel constrained by what may seem to be the obvious response to the prompt.

Please keep your submissions between 1000-2000 words (for reference, this topic section is about 200 words), make sure to properly format to Tildes when submitting to the submission thread.

Submission thread will be created on Wednesday, Aug 29, EST.

Please feel free to use this thread to brainstorm or share ideas or post any other comments you have about the writing prompt group.

Have fun everyone! I can't want to see what you create!

Things I may change:

I may do away with topic voting if/until the group gets big enough, and I'll just post a weekly prompt.

Depending on the number of submissions, I may increase the max length.

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Avoid shopping large tracts of your writing as the goal is provide new works on the submission date. However, feel free to brainstorm ideas.

4. 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.

One aspect of the Writing Prompts subreddit that frustrated me the most was that the submission that got the most responses was often the one that was submitted first. I found that in order to ensure that I got feedback and criticism, I often found myself rushing or submitting sloppy work so that I could submit first. Often times I would ignore prompts I liked because other posts had already taken off.

I’d like to try something here that addresses some of those issues. I imagine it working like this:

1. The first post would be a number of prompts that participants would choose from to be that week’s prompt.

2. After a prompt is chosen, I wouldn’t accept submissions for one/two weeks to give people time to develop their ideas and submissions.

3. A new post would be created for submissions for the past week’s prompt and providing a new list of potential prompts for the following week.

4. Go to 2...

So long as it is practical, I will read and provide feedback and constructive criticisms for every submission.

I hope this encourages people to develop fledgling ideas as they have the time to let their ideas breathe and they have the promise of feedback at the end of it.

Of course this isn’t meant to replace other casual writing prompts.

Edit:

For those interested a few questions:

1. Is one week enough time to write?

2. Would it be better for the writing time to include the weekend?

3. Would you be okay with certain restrictions like 1,500 words? Is that too many words? Too few?

Edit2:

Okay, I'll try to set this up!

Over the weekend I'll think up some prompts. Here's how I see it rolling out right now. Feel free to suggest other things as it's all fluid right now. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

1. Monday, Aug 20, I'll post three or four prompts. I'll leave voting up to participants? Or maybe allow the whole Tildes community to vote on the kind of story or theme they would like to read (hopefully to bring writers more feedback)?

2. Tuesday, Aug 21, I'll announce the weekly prompt. Remaining prompts with good support will be carried over to the following week? Remaining prompts with little support will be removed from the pool?

3. The following Wednesday, Aug 29, I'll open a thread for the past week's submissions and post a pool of three or four prompts to choose from.

Not sure how voting for prompts will work, I'm thinking of posting the possible prompts in the comments and using Tilde's voting system.