Share Your Ideas to Shape the Future of Vocal Challenges

Through a Cat's Eyes This story must be written from the perspective of a cat, featuring all the interesting things that cats do in their daily lives. You could even spice it up a little: Maybe this cat belongs to an alien or robber. Or maybe this cat is part of a secret detective group that finds out all the things that police can't, since they can just patrol the streets and go completely unnoticed. Must be 500-4,000 words. Submit to the Fiction community.

Oh! A short story about an immortal character! This has the potential to be really fun, or really sad, and either one is awesome!

I feel like this would go into poets, but I have this weird memory of you talking about creating a music community? Not sure, either way, here's my idea. A poem or a song from the villain's perspective. A little difficult without music backings to be sure, but eminently doable I say. Think of it like something of a villain song like those from classic Disney, inspired by the likes of Scar "I know that your power of retention - are as thick as a warthog's backside - but thick as you are, pay attention! - My words are a matter of pride" Could an original character or famous one, either works, so long as the poem/song is original

1. Creative nonfiction story (beginning, middle, end) about losing one or more friends and how we had to adapt. It would have to read like a short story, for the most part, not like a testimony or blog, etc. 2. Offer a piece of art (song, painting, photo, etc.), and challenge us to write the best short story based on it. Like the Painted Prose, but you pick the art for us and choose the best written story. 3. Review a Vocal Creator's book - challenge. The best review of any Vocal Creator's published book wins. 4. Film critique challenge. A proper film review like you'd read in a newspaper. A la Roger Ebert. 5. An challenge for unofficial challenges. The winner gets sponsored by Vocal and the unofficial challenge gets promoted to "official." This one would actually be fun to run on a consistent basis. 6. Unique snapshot challenge, where the form the story takes is modeled after something completely different, like a jeopardy board or hermit crab or picture frame, whatever. Even if we have to submit it as a photo essay, with screenshots of the form embedded throughout and little descriptions to accommodate Vocal's editor, this could be really fun. Winner has the most inventive form while still telling the best story. 7. Artistic photo challenge. The idea would be to make the photos take precedence over the writing (photography community challenge) but still use the words to support the images. The photos should be taken on real cameras and be artistic. 8. Playwriting challenge. Have us write a play for the stage (not a screenplay) and grade it according to real script formatting guides and conventions. Ten minute plays could be the length designation. 9. Write a story from the perspective of a historical figure or event. Not historical FICTION but actually do research to make it accurate. Find an event with a lot of first hand accounts to do it accurately. (For the History challenge) Very minimal embellishing would be allowed to justify it being a History, not Fiction, challenge. 10. Video game challenge. Write a mixed fiction/nonfiction story based around video games. There should be a narrative structure and artistic intent, but can include the culture around any video game or the industry in general as well as internet/streaming culture. This would probably be in the Gamers community. 11. 5 paragraph essay challenge. New take on the 5 paragraph essay structure. The kind of essay that no one ever writes in real life, only at school. Maybe make it a mix of nonfiction, fiction, and prose poetry, each paragraph a different form, to create a strange amalgam of narrative woven together.

Atlantis Found! The story should tell about the breaking of some very exciting news - some lost artifact or piece of ancient civilization has been found. What historical mystery has been solved? Will it change the course of life going forward?

A challenge where you write a science fiction story about humanity from an alien perspective! This story should either not include humans directly, or at least it must be told from the perspective of a non-human character/society

I hope I’m not barking up the wrong tree, but you could ask writers to write a story inspired by a popular idiom. Or writers have to compose a story has with 2-4 idioms cleverly contained within.

Write an anti-Hallmark movie In a hallmark movie: - Person A comes from the big city to a small town. Meets person B. - The goal is to save a landmark/ mom&pop shop or Bring in a big bad business from the city - Through small town community bonding/hijinks, things are saved or big bad business is repulsed and Person A and B fall in love. How do you write a story to tell the opposite of this formula? - city people fall in love - big bad business wins - landmark isn’t saved, etc. (Think of movie: You’ve Got Mail)

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