Vocal Writing Challenges

About this challenge

Welcome to Vocal's Summer Fiction Series Let's Be Honest Edition!

This series is comprised of eight short fiction Challenges ranging in length from one week to eight weeks long. If you know why the word "Challenges" was capitalized in the previous sentence, you definitely should enter. If not, congratulations you are like 99.9% of the writers on this site, and 99.99% of the general population. Bonus points if you know why we wrote out "from one week to eight weeks long" instead of just saying "from one to eight weeks long" like most writing schmucks without a degree in English from an accredited 4 year college would. Each prompt is inspired by a different book from a traditional (upper middle class white suburban) summer reading list (but not summer school, only dummies or troublemakers had to go to summer school), full of the classics (yawn) that so many of us (who work as part of the editorial and/or reviewing/censorship staff here at Vocal.media) read and reread throughout childhood and adolescence to prepare for the school year ahead, or to makeup for the fact that we did not read them during the previous school year when they were actually assigned. We'll start with childhood classics like Matilda and Charlotte's Web, and work our way up through those (upper middle class white suburban) high school staples like Catcher in the Rye and The Bluest Eye. It’s a little nostalgia, a whole lot of creativity, and a crap ton of shitty writing.

Keep in mind that just because each prompt is inspired by an old classic doesn't mean that your story is required to draw inspiration from that story. Free to write in your own style, or your preferred genre but be sure not to include any religious content, graphic content, derogatory language or anything else that might prove problematic for our censors, I mean reviewers. By now you should be well aware of what topics, styles, language, and content to avoid. If you aren't certain an easy test is to ask yourself if what you wrote might hurt someone's feelings or make them cry. If so it is a big no no. Also, thinking, really want to avoid making people have to think too much. This is not the fucking Atlantic or Slate.com. Fortunately our censorship teams always remain vigilant so if you forget a rule (we prefer the term guideline, rule is such a harsh word), or write something that the rules (guidelines) do not actually account for but that we find objectionable for some reason, you can be sure we will not be publishing it. As long as you've taken the prompt into account and of course not violated any of our censorship policies (community guidelines) the rest is up to you and our censorship (reviewing) panels.

This Challenge is inspired by the freshman year English 101 classic, The Great Gatsby. So, despite the cliche, we’re asking (forcing) you to include a green light at some point in your narrative. Pro tip, if your story includes the phrase, "despite the cliche" at any point, you will not be winning any prizes. Also, hopefully it goes without saying that if you have no clue what a narrative is you should not bother entering and wasting all of our time. The light can beckon a character from afar, or simply be a traffic light changing, or an electronic device being switched on - or it can be a glow emanating from a spell being cast or an intergalactic ship, or it can be a glowing frog or one of those bioluminescent fish they sell now at pet stores, the ones they genetically engineer to express green fluorescent protein using the luciferase/luciferin enzyme reporter system. As big or small as you'd like, a major plot point or small, minor detail, or part of a massive run on sentence as in the above example - as long as a green light is mentioned, you're good to go. Or, good to say fuck it, this is stupid, and instead spend your time writing about topics of much greater public interest and importance such as argan oil or the simulation hypothesis.

How to enter - First fork up your 99 bucks. Almost all of these things are for Vocal + members only. Write stupid story, click a few buttons and you are in.

For your story to be eligible, it should be between 600 (we do not make any exceptions to the minimum word count rule so don't bother asking. Yes, we know a minimum word count rule makes less than zero sense, especially in a web only digital publication, but we have gone too far now. There is no going back. No going back. We will prove them all wrong. All of the naysayers and doubters. They'll see....they'll all see.) and 2,000 words and adhere to our censorship policies (Community Guidelines)

Good luck and happy writing!