Resources
From tips and tricks to product updates and inspiration, explore our resources to learn how to grow as a Vocal creator.
Challenges
Summer Solstice Challenge Winners
‘Safety Net’, by Meredith Harmon, begins in a confiding tone. ‘What town?’ the tale asks. ‘We're an enclave. We're farmers. We till the soil like our forefathers, and our children's children's children will till it, till the end of time.’ There is a folkloric sensibility here, suited to the prompt, but also something contemporary and practical. This winning story of a community trying to protect and preserve itself has echoes of Shirley Jackson’s famous tale ‘The Lottery’, Meredith is a strong Vocal Creator with 225 stories to her name; and this is her second first place win of a challenge; huge congratulations.
By Vocal Curation Team9 days ago in Resources
Let's Talk About AI and Vocal Challenges
We might as well cut to the chase. Yes, we run every challenge entry through our AI detector; if we find an entry has been generated, it’s disqualified. As Justin Maury, Founder/CEO of Vocal has written, we use these detection systems because we know our readers enjoy authentic content; we also ask you to disclose when you’ve posted on the platform using AI assistance. But a different issue comes into play when we’re thinking about Challenges, and we believe it’s an important one.
By Vocal Curation Team11 days ago in Resources
Dialogue Poetry Challenge Winners
Hannah Moore is a first-time grand prize winner with her dialogue poem, On Receipt of Bad News. This was a poem that genuinely engaged both with the exchange of our prompt, but also focussed on the way poetic rhythms of language could support the writer's conceit. It felt very truthful, too, the way one speaker wishes to ignore the news and focus on practicalities; there was a quiet heartbreak, here. Well done.
By Vocal Curation Team15 days ago in Resources
3:00 AM Challenge Winners
B. A. Durham’s False Memories blends dream and reality in a seamless mix. As his father, afflicted by Alzheimer’s, fades away, the narrator is haunted by a dream that may be a memory, returning to him insistently. The piece is full of wonderful detail (the father touching his lip where once there was a mustache, “but now he is clean-shaven—he has been for years” — and moving in revealing the complexities of a family’s life. A worthy winner which shows the power of dreams to influence us.
By Vocal Curation Team24 days ago in Resources
Travel Snaps Challenge Winners
Travel changes us — if we let its lessons in. It’s possible to wander the world, even to take pictures, with our eyes as good as closed, never opening to the new self that a new place might make of us. So many of the entries to our Travel Snaps challenge were by creators who really wanted to look at the world, and themselves, anew. They were all inspiring to read — and to see, because photography was an important part of this competition. To us, the ‘quality’ of the photographs wasn’t the point; it was that these images were yours. It was a reminder of how much more that can mean — certainly when it comes to personal essays — than widely available or AI images. We really loved seeing these snaps.
By Vocal Curation Teamabout a month ago in Resources
Poemosaurus Rex Challenge Winners
Hard to conceive, now, how extraordinary it would have been to find the bones of those terrible lizards in the earth — in a time before humans had conceived of anything other than a Great Chain of Being, a static creation. Yet long after Darwin they still have a hold over us, these creatures which are the ancestors of sparrows and seagulls. All hail the dinosaur! They are at once real and mythic, objects of science and objects of wonder, exhibitions in museums and children’s toys. No wonder Vocal Creators responded with such a variety of work to our Poemosaurus prompt.
By Vocal Curation Teamabout a month ago in Resources
Just a Minute Challenge Winners
Thanks again to Vocal Creator, Breezy, for suggesting the Just a Minute Challenge — one which you all interpreted in a wonderful variety of ways. Sometimes a minute can feel like an eternity, sometimes it can pass in the blink of an eye… to describe the passing of sixty seconds is no simple matter.
By Vocal Curation Team2 months ago in Resources
In Eclipse Challenge Winners
Creator Dane BH is one of our Vocal stalwarts. We’re so grateful to all of your in our Vocal community, and so thrilled by your achievements. This is the third time Dane has won one of our challenges, and she appears too on our Vocal podcast, Write Here, Write Now — take a listen if you haven’t already. But she’s not our winner because we know her: the subtlety and simplicity of we watched the world go dark. together. is what made it our winner of the In Eclipse challenge, with the grace and ease of its lines and observation. As it happens it also expresses the community spirit that means so much to us.
By Vocal Curation Team2 months ago in Resources
Whispering Woods Challenge Winners
Congratulations to Morgan Christy Rickards for their winning Whispering Woods story, Guardian at the Gate. Morgan has been a Vocal creator since February 2021, and this is their first time placing in Challenge — well done, starting with a win! Guardian at the Gate draws evocatively from Welsh tales of the Cantre'r Gwaelod, a lost sunken kingdom between the forest and the sea. Heledd’s dangerous adventure pulls her towards the water but her spirit is anchored in the woods: Morgan’s writing is atmospheric and exciting.
By Vocal Curation Team3 months ago in Resources
Snacktime Sonata Challenge Winners
Well, your Snacktime Sonatas made us hungry, and that’s about the highest compliment we have. Food — taste, smell, sensation — is a powerful conduit to the past, to memories pleasurable and painful and sometimes bittersweet, a mixture of comfort and challenge. Congratulations to Penny Fuller for Sativa — it’s a first win for Penny — a hymn to the “secret, unbounded/freedoms” of fresh peas in the pod. The narrative voice of the poem doesn’t really want to be outside, but finds joy in the green things of the earth; this is a lovely work of resilience.
By Vocal Curation Team4 months ago in Resources
'The Dragon Beside Me' Challenge Winners.
"The Dragon Beside Me" has ignited the spirits of writers across the Vocal community and PViM have had the exciting opportunity to work beside our friends at Vocal on discerning the winners. No easy feat let us tell you. From initial shortlist to final deliberations, the standard was as high as our spirits.
By Proud ViM Productions4 months ago in Resources
Love Unraveled Challenge Winners
Sometimes the simplest challenges are the deepest and most revealing. For this challenge we asked you to “unravel the mysteries, joys, and challenges of love through the power of personal storytelling” — we all love, we all feel we know what it means to love. Yet this challenge offered a reminder of the infinite shapes of human connection, and what power love has over us, even in the face of struggle and pain.
By Vocal Curation Team4 months ago in Resources