Exciting News—I'm Guest Judging Reedsy's Writing Contest!
Here are the details, plus some hints and tips!
Hi!
I’ve got exciting news—I’m the guest judge for Reedsy’s next creative writing competition! Even better, I’ll be sharing some hints and tips to help you craft a winning entry.
If you’re not familiar with Reedsy, it’s an incredible platform that connects authors with top editors, designers, and publicists. I’ve worked with them before, including live events on generating strong story ideas and silencing your inner editor to draft with confidence.
I also did an event with them around silencing your inner editor and writing a draft zero.
Well, I’m delighted to let you know that today we’re going one step further! Reedsy have asked me to take over their weekly creative writing contest, and of course I said yes!
Here’s how it works: Each week, Reedsy sets a theme with five prompts to spark your creativity. You’ll have one week to write and submit a story. Then, I’ll pick a winner!
Prizes:
Winner: $250 cash + potential publication in Prompted, Reedsy’s magazine.
Runners-up: $25 Reedsy Marketplace credit.
You can read the full FAQs with instructions on how to join in here.
The theme for my takeover is Between the Lies. I can’t wait to read your stories!
Although very different, the themes of my books have tended to coalesce around memory, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world and our place in it. In my debut novel, Before I Go to Sleep, the protagonist loses her ability to make new memories and wakes up every day believing herself to be someone quite different from who she really is. In Second Life, a grieving woman negotiates an online relationship fraught with danger, and in Final Cut, a character discovers her own past is only half the story.
The prompts are:
Start your story with the lines: “The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.”
Write your story as text messages or an online conversation between two characters — and at least one of them isn’t who they say they are.
Write an open-ended story in which your character’s fate is uncertain.
Write a story in which a character discovers that a truth they've believed their whole life is either false or not the whole story.
Your character is getting changed in the bathroom of a nightclub or restaurant, then emerges looking completely different. Why?
Hopefully that’ll give you something to get your teeth into! Here’s the link to get more information and join in with a story of your own. Good luck!
To give you even more inspiration and set you on your way below I’ve linked to some of my articles about writing, featuring plenty of hints and tips! PLUS, for the duration of the competition, I’m running a special offer on the price of an upgrade so you can read all my articles and essays!
What, wordage wise, are the parameters in which those potentially provoke to pen a fiction in response to any of your prompts should be writing-up a story?
On the evidence of this good news shared I, in the interests of transparency, need to say that my fond notion that you were Lex Luther hiding in plain sight between a well framed and niftily designed pair of 👓 has been rubbished... by the revelation that you - S J, or Steve, or whatever sense of a names you're aka going by - are, going forward, going to be best known as "Reedsy".
Thanks for sharing news and pitching prompts Steve. Bon chance in your venturing into The Judgement Zone 😂. No doubt, in my mind that you'll deliver your verdicts with aplomb!