Share Your Ideas to Shape the Future of Vocal Challenges
We'll turn your great idea into our next Challenge prompt
As a community-driven platform, we love getting creators involved in the process of creating awesome content. One of the ways we do that is through our Challenges. Challenges are an excellent way for creators to flex their creative muscles, develop their writing skills, and engage with their audience through different writing forms.
We want to keep Challenges fresh and exciting, and we know that the best ideas come from you. That's why we're inviting you to share your Challenge ideas in the comments section of this resource. We deeply value your ideas and suggestions. If we choose your Challenge idea, we'll send you a bonus as a thank you for your creativity and input.
We also are going to be testing a few things over the next few weeks, including free Challenges for non-Vocal+ members. Think daily writing prompts with smaller cash prizes.
So put on your thinking hats and share what you believe would make a compelling Challenge in the comments below. And don't worry, we'll keep this resource open and check it regularly for new ideas. Even if you don't have an idea right now, come back and share your thoughts later. We're always on the lookout for new and captivating Challenge ideas to keep our community engaged, and we can't wait to see what you come up with.
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Comments (447)
Fiction: Write the first chapter of a new post-apocalyptic novel. I'm thinking of this as having a word count of roughly 4,000 to give use enough room to really play with it. And the apocalypse can be just about anything, though I would prefer if people demonstrated world-building so that we don't just put stories into pre-existing worlds
Poets: An exchange or A conversation that is a poem. Perhaps each alternate line is from differing perspectives.
Fiction or Fantasy: A coming of age story where the character experiences a drastic change. E.g. coming into power, a physical transformation ECT.
A challenge for the fiction community about a new society or country in a post-apocalyptic world. I think that would be a fun challenge
What about a challenge that involves a talking animal? Maybe give us 3,000 words to tell that story.
Plant "friend": Have you ever had a plant "friend"? Have you ever talked to your flower or cacti? Write a poem about what you said or what you'd say to your plant if you could talk to them. (It could be happy or even sad)
Okay, I've got more. :) - How about a cross-genre challenge? So, writers have to pick 2 genres to create their story, such as a murder mystery in space. - A dialogue-only story (no narrative). - A story inspired by a joke (the writer starts their entry with the joke, then write a story that fits the theme/ideas of the joke).
Oh, this is great! I have several ideas. - How about a word choice challenge? So, writers get a list of ~20 unusual words and have to use at least half of them to compose their story or poem. - An ekphrastic challenge would also be great. Vocal staff could choose an image and writers could compose a poem or story to explain what's in the image. Or it could be 3 images to allow some choice, and writers have to choose one image to write about. - Another fun one might be a title challenge, where Vocal would present the title of the piece (or, say, 3 titles for writers to choose from) and writers have to create a story or poem to fit the title.
Considering how prices have been increasing, I think it would be interesting to see a challenge for the Lifehack community focused on how people are budgeting/saving money on food. Not only would it be cool to see a challenge for that community for a change, but it would be a really great way for everyone on Vocal to support each other and share advice.
So I kinda already put this forward as an unofficial challenge that I am running, and also sent a message to you guys about remixing an existing poem. Details can be found here - https://vocal.media/writers/remix-me-please
I envision a Challenge that speaks to items in a pocket. Which items, how they got there, why they are still there, what the items mean or do not mean and to whom (and when), and even which pocket. Is the holder of the items and or owner of the pocket even witting of the items being there? I'd limit entries to 2,000 words. I imagine it being a Fiction or Poets submission, but I would defer to Vocal to determine best fit.
I have another idea too: take your favourite line from a song, and make it to the first line of a poem, and continue the poem in the same style.
I'd love to see a poetry challenge, when we have to hide a message in the poem. It could be a word from letters or a moral sentence from bold words. It would be similar to the inverse challenge, because in one poem there would be two meanings hidden...
Share your favorite recipe with a touch of comedy, describing to the reader the mistakes you made along the way the first time you made it.
Disregard if this has been offered before, but since we had a challenge based on a snowy day, why not do one based on a spring day? Maybe a poem-based challenge for a spring day? I think we could all use something to warm us up right about now.
I would love to see a category for nonfiction included in the Vocal writing awards this year!
Hi VCT! My idea is to put one's self in another country and look at how their lifestyle choices, diet, and general world as it is NOW would change. It may/should take some digging, research and I believe it has the potential to be uniting as we have writer's from all over the globe, ( okay, a few from Mars, but you get my drift). How you would work it as a challenge is of course your expertise; I just would love to read how some privileged and NON-privileged humans would navigate in their new territory. Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts:) ROCK
Wow Good
Write in the POV of the second male lead who doesn’t get the girl
Some Ideas 1) It's an Olympic year. Write a story inspired by the Olympic Motto - Faster, Higher Stonger- Together 2) A challenge about favourite childhood toy 3) Something like 60% of the world goes to the elections this year. Write a fictional story inspired by an election OR what would you do if you were President or leader of your country 4) Cats - People love cats. Let's have a challenge dedicated to them 5) A challenge around recurring dreams or nightmares
Write a fiction story that takes place on a boat. It can be as small as a rowboat or as big as a cruise ship or aircraft carrier. The story must end with a crucial character somehow going overboard.
It only takes a minute: Write a 500-2500 word story that takes place in the course of 60 seconds. (Disregard if this has been done before.)
HERE BE DRAGONS! It'll the the Year of the Dragon next week. Will we be getting another Dragon-y challenge? Then it's Valentine's day (bleurghhhhh!) - can we get some kind of love/romance story, but with a twist to make it interesting? Something with a bit of horror or a tragedy or something?
An instruction manual leading to a very unexpected conclusion.
Choose Your Own Adventure Challenge: 2-3 chronological challenges where each winner shapes the prompt for the next one. The first winner sets up the story, the second/third introduces the climax and ties it all together. It all forms a complete whole.