Dollar Challenge - Quote Me Baby (Women's Edition)

I set an unofficial dollar challenge for July. Here it is:

TL;DR...

Write something spectacular based on this quote:

"'Til death do us part" could mean by his hand, but who cared?

- Tia Levings

This could be fiction, micro fiction, or poetry. Any genre. Flip the genders if you want.

The Responses

Correction:

There were five entries! How did I miss this one?

Melissa got Top Story for this entry:

There were 4 entries.

Stephanie Hoogstad bursting in first with this entry - "I Do... I Did":

As promised, Stephanie got a tip for being the first entry. Well done Stephanie ☺

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Next - Kendall Defoe, "Vows":

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Mike Singleton:

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His Majesty, The Wordy One, the First of his Name - Paul and "Optimisation":

As the last entrant, he snags a tip, too. Well done Paul 🎉 🥂

Additional tippage landing today!

A Prompt For August/September:

Women seem wicked when you're unwanted - Jim Morrison

-Jim Morrison

Mission: Triflingly Bothersome

Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is, as usual:

Write me a piece inspired by the quote

This could be fiction, micro fiction, or poetry. Any genre.

Cheat sheet

Here's me throwing my shiny dollars around, feeling all powerful and shit. What am I looking for?

• The first and most obvious choice is to get inside the mind of an incel, or a young man up to his eyeballs in alpha male kool-aid. Does he stew in his own toxic bitterness, or does he grow and get better?

• Who are the women in your story? Is it all women? If there is an incel in the story to satisfy the brief, is he relegated to a minor footnote, like my best gal Rosaline in Romeo and Juliet? What do we know about him - are we, the reader, encouraged to feel sorry for him? His mummy didn't hug him enough (so basically, how he turned out was probably all her fault all along?)

• Does your story pass the Bechdel test? (It doesn't have to, and depending on the angle and persective, this might be difficult or impossible to pull off. Still. Does it?)

• Highlight some of the ways, big and small, where the world is intensely different for the sexes.

• Flip genders if you like - paint the absurdity of what is often expected of women in the starkest colours by putting your male characters through the same.

• This last one is for everyone, but especially for men. (We've all felt contempt for those male writers who failed spectcularly. We've all sniggered at "boobily boobed downwards".) So: How well are you writing women? Are you writing them at all? (Tolkien, I am looking right at you.) How important are their looks, their clothing? (Robert Jordan, ahem.) Are you writing from their perspective? How real are they? How flawed? Are they objects of desire only, are they two-dimensional? If you aren't sure in this territory, you are in excellent company. A lot of people suck at writing women, including some women, to be honest. I invite you to read some Pratchett. His earlier works paint women more as caricatures, but watch what happens when he hits his writing stride. Notice how he writes Granny, Nanny, Magrat, Esk, Sybil and Tiffany. Can you write women as well as that? Are you trying to?

Them's the rules

Word count: No limit, but if you write a piece that Vocal tells me is longer than a 5 minute read, I'm only promising to read that one from you and not a second one.

Prizes: Same as always - I'll tip my favourites a dollar each. I read every piece, so at minimum you get a hapenny. Can't say fairer than that.

Winners: If more than 10 people enter, I'll pick 3. More than 20, I'll pick 5. More than 50 (unlikely): $20 first prize, $5 runner up, 5x$1 Honorable Mentions.

Content: As ever: you can include the quote, in which case it should feel like it belongs. Or your story can be inspired by it, in which case the link should be clear. You can submit to any community.

Closing date: 11:59PM GMT, 3oth September 2026

Important: Do the usual - link back here so otehrs can give it a go, and remember to link your submission in the comments 👇

Thank you for reading!

If you took part in the Marital Bliss challenge, THANK YOU!

If you give this one a bash, THANK YOU!!

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

PS. You're welcome for the earworm