Challenge #4 - Science Fiction and Fantasy

Hi folks

I’m finally starting to wrap my arms around the many submissions from the last three days.  I continue to be impressed by the volumes of pages you’re all collectively generating.  It’s good to see.  Keep it up!

And if you miss a day, no worries.  Just write again the next day.

Something I just learned while I’m typing this?  I’m not getting notifications about comments to the blog when people are posting links to their material there, so I have to circle back and pick up some more content.  Everyone’s learning as they go the first week.

Would you believe we added three more people?  Two signed up on the 1st, and another appeared and started submitting pages on the 2nd.  Two other people demurred (one was just an old friend from my writing group who I assumed wanted to write but he was just making a donation to the theater :) The other was someone who had two scripts he had to finish by the end of the month, so he was going to focus there rather than plug in his process here, totally understandable.). So we still end up one ahead of where we were, strangely enough.

And there are some friends who tell me they’re doing the prompts on their own outside of this loop, so that’s cool.  Hi there, blog visitor writer friends! :)

To conclude today’s intro, someone else pointed out to me that I forgot to mention we had writers from North Dakota - apologies for the oversight.

Let’s get you that writing prompt…


Challenge #4 - Science Fiction/Fantasy

Due: Friday, November 5th, 8am
(whenever 8am arrives in your time zone; we’ll do the math here in the Central Time zone, no worries :)

This one’s a genre prompt.  There may be more coming over the next three weeks, but for this week's random genre suggestion, we’re looking at science fiction and fantasy.

I’ve always been curious how to translate science fiction and fantasy to the stage.  The writer of our current online play reading, Bethany Dickens Assaf, had an online production video in the Minnesota Fringe Festival that I quite enjoyed that was in the genre called “The Consciousness.” Like a lot of science fiction, it explored what it means to be human and alive - also the nature of inspiration, memory, creativity and love. All this was cleverly tucked inside a story about a college music composition student interacting with the preserved consciousness of a dead composer of modern day orchestral music, who in both life and death had a bit of a mischievous streak.

Another writer friend of mine did a steampunk play in which a self-important inventor created two robots which he intended to be male and female.  But when they gained sentience, they had other ideas about gender, and patriarchy.  And they end up shaking up the inventor’s marriage while they’re at it.  Just delightfully clever.

Good writers, with the willing assistance of the audience’s imagination, can do pretty much anything onstage.

Though I’ve been a theater nerd pretty much all my life, I have also had a big soft spot for science fiction and fantasy.  So I like the idea of trying to bring them together.

Styles run the gamut from N.K. Jemisin, to Douglas Adams, to J.R.R. Tolkien to Ray Bradbury.  (The list of names is endless)

Star Wars, Star Trek, Farscape, Dr. Who.  (The list of series is endless.)

High brow, low brow, any brow you like.

Heck, Denis Villneneuve directed three very different films: Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune - all the in genre, and I loved all of them.

Even though it’s an ad, I keep going back to the preview of N.K. Jemisin’s Master Class because I find listening to confident writers talk about how much they love reading and writing to be inspiring.  And at one point she says, about being a writer:

“There are people out there who need your example.”

So, if you weren’t tied down to just the way things are today, whether it’s the near future, the distant future, an alternate past, underwater, underground, outer space, or an entirely different planet - what kind of story might you tell?

If your mind, as mine was, draws a blank when confronted with “write in this genre you haven’t tackled before” - the Master Class site also has a handy basic overview of sci fi.

(However, while I appreciate their suggested reading list that’s part of the overall discussion of the genre - it’s all white with only one woman so I’ll offer up this additional list of seven black female science fiction writers to balance things out a little.  Feel free to throw in your own suggestions, too.)



How to submit your work for Challenge #4

You have options.  They are:

Save your script as a PDF or Word Doc and send as an attachment to an email sent to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com

OR

Copy and past your script in the body of an email and send it to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com

OR

Post your script online (as a Google doc, or in a blog post, on your own personal website, etc.) - email a link to this script to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com
(If you’re going to Google doc route, just make sure to have the document public, or give permissions to our email address to open it)

When emailing us, make the subject line of your email - Challenge #4
(That just helps us sort through the email more quickly)
(Or, you know, just reply to this email if you want :)

OR

Post the link for the online document option above in the comments section on this very blog post for this challenge on our writing challenge blog



Again, this is: Due: Friday, November 5th, 8am
(whenever 8am arrives in your time zone; we’ll do the math here in the Central Time zone, no worries :)

And, just to reassure you, no, we are not going to be sticklers about you following these directions down to the minutest detail - the important thing is that you write, and then that you share it with us, so we can keep track of who’s writing every day.

We will be VERY understanding about technical difficulties and how they can screw up making the deadline on the first few days.  No need to fret about anything except the writing (and hopefully that’s not something causing you to fret too much either :)

Also, no, there is no penalty for finishing and submitting early - but it also isn’t a race, so give yourself all the time up til 8am on Friday to write if you need it.  When you’re done, you’re done.

A friendly reminder - you don’t have to write to the prompts if they don’t inspire you.  You can ignore them and just write whatever you want, just as long as you’re writing (that’s the main thing, not what you write)

Someone had a good question about the overall goal of the month, are we supposed to write a full-length play, or two one-act plays, etc.?  The short answer is no (unless you want to).  The longer answer is here if you’re curious.

For those concerned about format, we’re pretty liberal about that, too - just as long as it’s legible and in English.  More on that here.

Again, remember, it doesn’t need to be great, it doesn’t even need to be responding to this prompt (the prompt is just there so you’re not staring at a blank screen to start with no idea what to write about :)

Doesn't even need to be complete - you could have the beginning or the middle or the end of an idea, maybe two out of three but not all, that's still fine. This is all about getting things started, you can write more later. You have 27 more days to build on whatever you come up with today, if you want. Just get anything on the page, even if won't make sense to anyone else, as long as it make sense to you.

It just needs to be something.

And that something can be:

Lights up.

An elf boards a space ship alongside a robot and they take off for another galaxy.

Lights down.

The End

That’s always your escape hatch, every day.

That’s your base line.

Build on it.

Have fun.

Don’t stress.

Make an impulsive decision and run with it.

Breathe.

You’ve got the day (and a half).

Just write.