Writing is fun! What’s even more fun is doing it as a community. So I figure we can come together and write stories based around common prompts! I don’t want this to be very serious or high stakes, mostly just something to do for fun and to help develop our writing skills in a casual environment. I thought about making it a competition but to be honest I’m not a huge fan of those. Of course, if you want serious feedback and crits and stuff, go right ahead and ask for them! And if enough people desire a competetive aspect, I don’t see a problem with starting that up.
So how will this work?
Every 2 weeks a new prompt will be selected, and anyone who desires can submit a short story based on it. No strict word limit, but it’s better to try and not make it too long. Trimming the fat from a story can do wonders to improve it! I’m not going to impose any real “rules” here though, more just gudelines to give people direction if they want it. You can just write any story you want to, i won’t stop you!
What if I suck?
Write anyway. There’s only one way to improve, and that is to keep writing. It’s ok to suck. Most people don’t get good at something without sucking at it first. I am far from a great writer but I’m not gonna let that stop me!
Submission
Don’t put the actual text in this thread, that would just make the whole thing unreadable. Instead, please use a service like Google Docs to host your stories. Just post a link in the thread, along with the title, wordcount, prompt and any other relevent details (such as whether or not you want crits, etc). There’s no hard deadline so if you want to submit something for an older prompt, that’s fine so long as you specify that you’re doing so!
I’m planning on keeping an archive of submitted stories in the second post of this thread, so you can browse at your leisure. Please message me if you want yours to be removed!
Feedback
Please be mindful when giving and receiving crits. Makes sure that the criticisms you give are actually constructive, and do your best to accept criticism from others, even if you don’t agree with them. Basically don’t be a prick. For the sake of ease, specify whether or not you want people to give you feedback and don’t give people crits unsolicited.
Also, remember to proofread your stuff! It will make everyone’s lives easier.
Prompts
You can write your story based on the current prompt(s) primarily, but if you see an old one that you absolutely love and want to use, i ain’t gonna stop you. I’m not planning on being very strict here, it’s all for fun. Or you can use a totally different prompt from somewhere else, or no prompt at all! The world is your oyster!
If you have a cool idea for a prompt, feel free to suggest it! I have no intention of coming up with them all myself. I assume people reading this will already be familliar with the term “prompt”, but if you’re not- a prompt can be anything from a genre theme, a piece of media or art, a concept… whatever it would be fun to base a story on.