This week: Be Prepared Edited by: Legerdemain  
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The purpose of this newsletter is to highlight some of the current contests and activities on the site, help educate members on how to host contests and activities, and provide clues to submit quality entries to contests. Write to me if you'd like something in particular covered.
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Be Prepared!
It's spring in the US, with summer creeping right around the corner. Soon, we'll all be floating in the pool with our refreshing umbrella drinks and not even remotely thinking about fall, WDC's birthday, and the winter holidays. Sorry to those who are in the brisk season. 
Anyway, I find lots of ideas sneak their way in and tickle my muse when I'm "busy" relaxing. Traveling always fills the inspiration-bucket with new sights to see and lots of people-watching. I'm headed to Las Vegas soon, so I have a feeling my bucket will overflow. And I'll take lots of pictures and notes along the way. Yep, my phone will overfloweth. lol When I get back, I'll drop all the random shots in an inspiration folder.
Then when I'm looking for a character idea or a background scene, there it is. It's also good for a chuckle, reading back and trying to decipher my notes or "what the heck is that?" kind of photos. Surfing the internet while waiting to board a plane can be enlightening too. Lately, I've been looking at articles on foraging. (Not the scrounging in the pantry for chips kind.) Bookmarks can be helpful!
So while your toes are in the sand with a cold drink in your hand, think about WDC. What kind of prep can you do for future contests and activities? What old pages do you need to revisit and revamp? Make a TODO list! Mine is endless, I have no idea what I would do without one.
Either way, carry on!
This month's question: What kind of ideas do you store up for future use? Send in your answer below!  Editors love feedback!
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MAY SITE CONTEST
Character Prompt for May 2023:
An opsimath is someone who begins to learn or study only late in life.
Write a story about an opsimath of an unusual field or subject matter.
Your challenge: following the picture prompt, write the most engaging opening line(s). You have full artistic license to take the picture prompt in any direction your muse takes you. Any genre, any style, anywhere your creativity takes you. Just make it the best!
Fill out the application and submit 5,000 gift points.
The Challenge: Write a poem or story and incorporate the prompted lyric somewhere in your work, word for word.
Gift friends in your community and make them smile!
May will see a new contest!
A set number of words challenge!
For this writing contest write a NEW SHORT STORY of exactly 500 words.
{bitem:}
No prompt. Enter either a Short Story (2,000 word maximum) Or Poetry (44 lines maximum)
The story must have a plot with some sort of science fiction element integrated into it and have a beginning, middle and end. Vignette entries will not qualify. The story must be newly written for the contest and be between 2000 and 5000 words.
Excerpt: I know, I know. I don't know how to make things simple or easy.
What would be the fun in that?!
Excerpt: Give us a tale or song of the spaceways and your drink's on the house! The best of the bunch will even take home a trinket, a nice little Awardicon worth at least 10K credits and twice that in GPs. Just be sure to keep us awake, nothing longer than 2K words or so.
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https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
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This month's question: What kind of ideas do you store up for future use? Send in your answer below! Editors love feedback!
Last month's "Contests & Activities Newsletter (April 12, 2023)" question: How do you twist a prompt to inspire/suit your writing?
dragonwoman  : I usually only twist the plot of the story the prompt has encouraged me to write, rather than the prompt itself.
buddhangela's Psychotic Break  : I love twisting prompts! I generally try to look at any prompt from an unexpected angle, or an angle the person who write the prompt isn't expecting. Not to be different, but to make it fun to write. Prompts can sometimes be so leading (say, "write a holiday romance"), it's fun to turn them on their head and take them in another direction (so, I'd write a story about a couple who meet at a Native People's disparity awareness event that takes place on Columbus Day). Prompts can be a fun challenge, even if they sound like trope!
TheBusmanPoet  : Not sure how many other writers don't like prompts but I found prompts inhibits myself from writing. I go blank. It's too rigid for me and honestly, I know it's not. It's just what it does to me for some odd reason. Why I avoid 100% any contest with a prompt. Then that's just me. As I said, not sure how many others feel the same.
N.A Miller : Agrees 100% TheBusmanPoet that's why prompts need to be loosened up... It doesn't make me want to post anything with such limitations either.
s : I am not a user of prompts for writing in general.
Now, having said that, I gave sold short stories to well over 50 anthologies. Anthologies tend to run on a theme. So, if O like the sound of an anthology and don't have a story that fits, then writing to the theme counts as using a prompt. Oh, and there is always a word count min/max component.
So, even away from WdC contests and activities, using prompts properly is what sells.
dogpack:saving 4 premium: DWG  : I grab it in both hands and wring the heck out of it...Oh...well...my dishcloth is dryer now.
I let my imagination work on the particles which will fit within the prompt even if it seems at first to be a poor fit. The key word is (twist) As long as I can follow the prompt and twist a new or prewritten something into the requirements I can usually create something useful.
Schnujo is Late to Lannister  : I don't like writing romance and especially don't like writing XGC. Thus, my romance will often be funny or very early romance, before anything real happens, often not even a kiss.
In one story, I wrote about a new zookeeper having a crush on their trainer who was telling them about all the (gross) mating rituals of the animals they were caring for. So, it was sort of about the animals' romance, but only the icky ones like male hippos who fling poo to attract the ladies by helicoptering their tails.  But I considered it a romance since the human had a crush on the other human. *Laugh*
If I'm supposed to write something graphic, it usually ends up being just teasing and beginning stuff, again not usually even kissing.  
Elle - on hiatus  : Schnujo is Late to Lannister sounds like your romances would be perfect for an asexual or demisexual character. *Wink* We could use more representation of those characters in romances.
oldgreywolf scribbles : Most prompts are so loaded with topography of variable genus, available transitions, and potential translations, that twisting it is an extraneous function. Just bury it back in the compost heap and hope it doesn't keep resurfacing.
D. Reed Whittaker : If I twist, it's not intentional. I try to write outside of my comfort zone just to see if I can. Fantasy and Sci-Fi are not preferred genres, but I will take a stab at those contests and hope for the best. I miss the old Weird Tales contests.
Bilal Latif : I wrote a story for two prompts at once. I was surprised the resulting story worked pretty well and readers seemed to enjoy the unexpected blend. I've since blended different gestating concepts into a coherent final story. Remixing is fun.
Khola Mousethyme : I don't like prompts that ask about me or my past so I usually do it from my character as a conversation between them and an interviewer.
𝔹𝕝𝕦𝕖𝕪𝕖𝕫  : I try to take the prompt outside of the box ... try to slant it in a way that looks different than normal. At times, doing that can really stretch my brain.
elephantsealer : I consider a prompt as a guideline to inspire my writing.
The Sun SmilesOn Small Valley : In order to twist a prompt to inspire our writing, we should be open minded, we should explore different possibilities and angles of the prompt, and use our creativity and critical thinking skills to write a unique and adorable piece of writing.
Elisa the Bunny Stik  : It really depends on the prompt. When I play along with my journaling contest, I often try to determine what the typical response will be to a prompt and then write something completely orthogonal to that.
Moonstone : All the time! I am very indecisive, but I have realized I'm not indecisive, my brain won't tell me what it wants until someone else tells me! And so sometimes I'll go on prompt generators just to read one and completely change it except for one detail.
Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful responses, it's much appreciated! Leger~ |
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Contests & Activities: May 10, 2023 Issue [#11961]
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