Archived Summer 2024 Writing Challenges
Module 1: Worldbuilding
Challenge 1: Planet Creation / Creation Story
(Question created by Burton Poon)
Many stories have a creation story or a creation myth. One example of a creation story is the scientific creation story of our planet. Having survived the bombardment of planetary debris in the early solar system, Earth is one of the planets to have survived after the creation of many planets, which met their doom. Earth is among the eight planets in our solar system that remain today and we know that Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. We also know that Earth did not have life for half a billion years after its creation. Imagine it is the year 20775. The Earth has perished by the ever growing size of the red-giant sized Sun.
Challenge: In under 1500 words, describe in detail the process of how a new planet, where your story takes place, was created and altered over time through natural processes/phenomena for its first billion years. For the purposes of this challenge, you may only cover the planet’s periods when there were no living beings, so just pay deep, diverse, and careful attention to its naturally evolving geographical and astronomical features. You may consult sources from the geography and astronomy disciplines to make your creation story realistic and descriptive, but you don’t need to cite these sources properly. Try to be creative with how exactly the planet formed, and try not to just replicate the same process of how our planet Earth was created via the Nebular Theory. For example, you can describe how a type 1a supernovae served as a precursor to your planet’s creation, or how the planet’s debris were formed via the grammar ray bursts and gravitational forces of a black hole from a galaxy long ago. There are many other possibilities, but try to balance scientific accuracy with creativity. Your submission should be written and structured like a report, as if you were documenting the geographical evolution of the new planet’s first billion years.
Challenge 2: Lore / History / Three Pre-Industrial Civilisations
(Question created by Burton Poon)
Lore in a story is also an important part of worldbuilding. This is especially applicable to our real world as well, where lore serves as a way of passing down tradition, myths, historical events, or knowledge. Imagine that a few billion years have passed after the creation of your planet. There were once three long-lasting pre-industrial civilizations thriving in your world’s ancient past, but only one of them has evolved into a civilization reminiscent of todays’ modern world.
Challenge: There are three pre-industrial civilizations that lived in your world’s ancient past, two of which have perished in the last few hundreds of million years and one of which have been able to survive for the last few million years. In a total under 1500 words, write a summary of the lore for each of the civilizations, including their origins, their contributions to humanity, their most notable historical events, and their significance. More importantly, explain why the story’s current remaining civilization was able to outlast the other civilizations. You may consult historical sources to make your overview of each civilization realistic, but try to also express a little bit of creative freedom! For example, you might talk about how some civilizations’ geographical features might have caused more or less drought at some point in time, or how there was a plague spreading from one to the next, but not the last, etc. etc. Try not to just merely present a close-depiction of how our humanity handled living in the past such as during the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Feel free to combine or even create new circumstances for your events that led to the current world you are writing about. Finally, you may consider introducing what languages exist in your universe and how they may or may not have benefited the survival of a single or multiple civilizations. There are many kinds of possibilities you can consider in your submission, but try to balance historical realism with creativity. Your submission should be written and structured like an encyclopedic chapter in a history textbook with creative subheadings.
Challenge 3: Three Landmarks / Locations / Cultures / Systems
(Question created by Burton Poon)
Aside from your world’s creation and history, another important part of your story involves relevant locations that serve as landmarks for telling and keeping track of characters' positions and circumstances. Think of establishing these locations in the form of a map. Visualize yourself mapping out not only the natural geographical landscape of your world, but also the places in which your story events occur in. Assume that your known modern world is limited to one or two continents and imagine what the map of your world would roughly look like.
Challenge: Write about three of the locations in a total under 1500 words, describing in detail what purposes do these places serve for your story. Avoid merely summarizing and telling what these places are and try to tell us more about these locations in terms of what they look like, what kinds of people live there, and also try adding a little bit of novelty - don’t just google search or replicate different types of buildings or locations with different geographical regions that already exist on Earth for inspiration - try to be introduce unique locations, that differ from the typical castle, tower, or city. In addition to telling us the purposes behind these locations in your story, make sure to introduce what kinds of cultural, economic, political, and social factors shape the overall narrative for your story when it comes to each of these locations. Optimally, try to have each of your locations have their own special cultures, economic systems, political narratives, and social systems. You don’t have to cover all these factors, but these are the kinds of things you should be thinking about when adding man-made locations onto the geographical landscape of the world you created from the first challenge. Your submission should be written and structured similar to the way the text appears on a storyworld guidebook for each of these locations, and not a report nor a fictional piece yet. Format your submission in a similar style that a storyworld guidebook would. You may use a template but you don’t have to fill in the gaps for images, unless you choose to do so. If you include images, they must either be entirely created by you, or you must mention where you got the image(s) from.
Module 2: Characters
Challenge 1: Protagonist(s) and Antagonist(s)
(Question created by Chris Langan)
Without characters, there is no story. Characters provide the lens through which we experience countless adventures across any possible world, yet they have their own wants, needs, and desires. They are heroic, evil, morally gray, and everything in between. Many of our favorites are flawed in some way, yet through admirable perseverance, they are able to overcome the impossible.
Challenge: Keeping with the theme of the season, introduce us to the main protagonists and main antagonists of your own creation by writing the transcript from a news broadcast of their return from some other place to the world you created in the first module. Be as creative as possible, but also be mindful of the rules for the world you’ve already established. It would not make sense to create a sentient field mouse that returns to a moon of Jupiter if your original world was a fictional suburb of 1970’s Boston. Keep it within your universe. Your introduction should be no longer than 1,500 words.
Challenge 2: Character Backstories
(Question created by Chris Langan)
Many writers struggle with making characters three dimensional without using tired tropes. Yet, a character needs to have a history that extends to the period before the reader meets them. As storytellers, we know personal histories can often be messy and complicated, yet they also need to have a certain level of streamlining for our readers to digest.
Challenge: Write about the backstories of three main characters in your fictional-universe. Your submission should be formatted and designed like a magazine article. Make your reader feel something for this being you have created. We encourage you to flex your creative muscles. While we understand that some of the best characters experience horrific trauma, we are not looking for explicit violence, gore, or sexual content. If you include any intense scenes, we ask that you include a content warning at the beginning of your submission. If you aren’t sure whether or not you should include a content warning, feel free to ask any of the hosts or judges. Keep it under 1,500 words.
Challenge 3: Character Growth
(Question created by Chris Langan)
Gandalf. Luke Skywalker. Walter White. Paul Atreides. Vito Corleone. Different characters from different mediums and wildly different stories who all share what is arguably the most important aspect of any character: Growth. Each of them start their respective tales with aspirations of becoming more than what they are. Few aspects of storytelling are more rewarding than watching a character evolve into a superior version of themselves.
Challenge: Your main character will be receiving an award in a special ceremony to commemorate their world-altering adventures. For this challenge, you will be tasked with writing the speech given in honor of your character. The objective of the speech is to show the growth of your main character. You may choose any character in your world to give the speech, but they must speak to the main character’s growth. This challenge needs to be about the main character and must occur in the world you created in previous challenges. No more than 1,500 words.
Module 3: Final Challenge
Final Challenge: For your final writing challenge, write any one 2000-3000-word chapter that is part of your entire story. For the purposes of this challenge including its time constraints, you should not, and are encouraged not to write the entire story. Narrow your focus to one chapter and even though you may find that you cannot use all of your information you have developed throughout the course of the competition, it is important to realize that part of the writing process is being selective. Your submission should be written and formatted like a story and use formal conventions that a work of fiction usually would.