While I’m waiting for results from the Writers’ Playground contest, I entered another contest from WritingBattle.com
WritingBattle is another interesting contest with a set of writing ‘genres,’ object and character prompts and a word count limit to smash your face against to cause pain.
The prompts I got were ‘In Plain Sight’ which they call a genre, though it’s not a genre, it’s a trope maybe? Maybe a concept? A scenario?
Hard to say.
But I got that.
My other prompts were statue and denier.
All interesting enough that I stuck with my first set of prompts. They allow you to re-roll prompts if you choose, up to twice for ‘genre’ and I think seven or eight times for the object and character type.
For this contest, it’s a Swiss style tournament, which is interesting. In the first round, you’re randomly paired against another story in your ‘genre’ two different times.
Subsequent rounds attempt to match you against peer level writing. So, if you win both of the first round pairings, you’ll end up against other successful stories.
All interesting enough.
Now, I’ve judged five different story matches and I’m not going to get into specifics, but for people who may blunder onto this website asking for answers, here’s what I valued.
Complete stories. Emotional draw. Prompt integration. Eighteen other things. Prose.
Prose is overrated.
The best stories I read were simple, accessible. I hope my story ticks those boxes, but I’m already dreading having submitted what I did.
Wit of the staircase and all that.
Anyway, I’ll update this when results come in.
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