Writing Challenge #1 - Still More Assorted Dialogue

Hi folks

Thanks again for signing up for the November Playwriting Challenge with Threshold Theater!

People still have until midnight tonight to sign on but as of right now (6:30am Central Time in Minneapolis) we have 88 playwrights from 26 states across America, plus the District of Columbia, three from Canada, and one from Scotland (!) (a first!)

Welcome to one and all, both far and near!

At the moment, we’ve got the usual cluster from Minnesota (12 playwrights)
(Threshold Theater is based in Minneapolis so that’s not a huge surprise :)

There’s 10 from New York state thus far,
7 from California, 7 from Georgia,
5 from Massachusetts, 5 from Ohio,
4 from Colorado,
3 from Arizona, 3 from Florida, 3 from Maryland, 3 from Texas,
2 each from Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington state and Washington, D.C.
There’s also a single representative hailing from each of the following:
Alaska, Connecticut, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

All this alongside the aforementioned trio in Canada (all concentrated in Toronto this year), and our new friend in Glasgow, Scotland.

We actually decided to give everyone a head-start on the first challenge just to get things rolling, so read on, and you can begin writing as soon as you like...

You have today and tomorrow to play around - this is November 1st’s challenge, showing up a little early, but still not due until noon Central Time on November 2nd.

So, let’s  dive in, shall we?


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Challenge #1 - Still More Assorted Dialogue

Due: Saturday, November 2nd, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)


Something random with multiple options always seems to be a good jumping off point for each year’s challenge, so here are nine completely unconnected lines of dialogue for you to consider:

“It’s the perfect ending.”

“Will you watch the sunrise with me?”

“I hurt people because it’s the only thing I’m good at.”

“She lives in a small town where it always rains.”

“Do angels need to breathe?”

“It’s a giant field and you don’t know where to stand.”

“All he wanted was freedom from this place; and he finally got it.  Just not the way he hoped.”

“I waited here, every day.  Just for them.”

“Tears smell like rain if you wait long enough.”



Take one of those and run with it to get an idea started.

Or if you like two or more of them, feel free to use as many as you like.

If I was being a show-off, I’d try to include all nine of them, but I only have a day to write so… I can always come back and use more later for another day.

(Don’t set yourself up with a hurdle to clear that keeps you from writing, that’s the opposite of what all these writing challenges are supposed to do :)

And if you hate all these options, you can check out the source, Clay Belvedere’s writing Instagram account, www.instagram.com/scrolls_of_cryptids/, for other handy writing prompt material for the day.  They currently have 32 numbered sets of writing prompts posted, plus a bunch more that are unnumbered further back in time in their account. Lots of raw material to sift though there while Clay’s on temporary hiatus due to college this fall.

Doesn’t matter what you write, just as long as you write.  

Just get something going and have fun with it.


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If you’re not interested in this prompt, you can try

2021’s challenge #1: I Love You, I Hate You, I Love You

Or try 2022’s challenge #1: Assorted Dialogue

Or try 2023’s challenge #1: More Assorted Dialogue

Or, you know, just ignore the prompts altogether and write whatever you want - as long as you’re writing and turning it in by the deadline, that’s all that matters for the challenge :)


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And because we call can get in our own way so easily, here’s some words of reassurance on the basics of this month:

Friendly Reminders - Answers To Common Questions:
(Follow the links to read me expounding on these items :)

Deadline Amnesty for Voting (and other handy challenge tips)

Don’t Stress About Writing A Full Play

Don’t Stress About Format

Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt

No.  Really.  I Mean It.  Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt

Don’t Stress About Finishing An Idea (You Can Add Later)

Don’t Stress About “Succeeding” or “Failing”

Don’t Stress About What You’re Turning In Each Day

Don’t Stress About November 28th (however you recognize the holiday weekend)


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How to submit your work for Challenge #1

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 paste 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 #1
(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 the challenge here on our writing challenge blog



Again, this is: Due: Saturday, November 2nd, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)


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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 12pm noon Central Time on Saturday to write if you need it.  When you’re done, you’re done.

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 29 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.


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And that something can be:



Lights up.

[Stage direction - Two people walk onstage sharing an umbrella.]

“She lives in a small town where it always rains.”

“Tears smell like rain if you wait long enough.”

[Stage direction - The clouds part.  The lights brighten.]

“Will you watch the sunrise with me?”

“It’s the perfect ending.”

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 (almost two days this time).

Just write.

(After you vote, of course :)

Deadline Amnesty for Voting (and other handy challenge tips)

Even more important than writing - VOTING in the election this year.

I took care of this myself back on September 20th, the first day of early voting here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which Threshold Theater calls home.

A great many of you live in states where early voting is already available.  Please take advantage of it.

However, if you haven’t voted by the time November 1st rolls around, the November Playwriting Challenge is not going to be standing in your way.

Any day from November 1st through November 5th, if time spent voting prevents you from having the time you need to write, just let me know that and the noon Central Time deadline doesn’t apply to you for the day’s writing which is impacted by your going to the polls.

This will also apply the day after the election (November 6th), since I know the lines are liable to be longest on Election Day on November 5th and that could snowball through that day’s writing, due by noon Central Time on November 6th.

So, please make your voices heard and VOTE.

Not just the top of the ticket but all the way down - the President will need a House and Senate willing to work with them, and school board and city and state government have an even greater impact on your day to day lives often than the federal government does.  Choose the people exercising power over you.  That’s your power.  Choose people who are going to address issues that matter to you.  I did.

Your Secretary of State’s website will have voting information for you.  For instance, here’s Minnesota’s where you can find out how to register to vote, where you can early vote or where your polling place is on Election Day, and what’s on your ballot.

Good national resources include:

I Will Vote

Vote Save America
VSA can help you figure out how to vote
Where you can volunteer to help campaigns
How you can donate to make the biggest impact

In addition to getting out there and voting, because we all can get in our own way so easily, here’s some words of reassurance on the basics of this month, handy tips gleaned from the three previous years of the challenge:

Friendly Reminders - Answers To Common Questions:
(Follow the links to read me expounding on these items :)

Don’t Stress About Writing A Full Play

Don’t Stress About Format

Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt

No.  Really.  I Mean It.  Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt

Don’t Stress About Finishing An Idea (You Can Add Later)

Don’t Stress About “Succeeding” or “Failing”

Don’t Stress About What You’re Turning In Each Day

Don’t Stress about November 28th (however you recognize the holiday weekend)

Don’t Stress about November 28th (however you recognize the holiday weekend)

This question always comes up eventually, so… about Thanksgiving (2024 edition):

Yes, there will still be a writing prompt.

However, the plan that week is to send you writing prompts in advance for the holiday weekend, so you can write ahead and bank them if you want.

The last few years, what I’ve done is sent out
Tuesday and Wednesday’s prompts on Monday,
Thursday and Friday’s prompts on Tuesday,
and Saturday’s prompt on Wednesday.

(This year the holiday weekend is stranger than usual because it’s at the very end of the month, so we don’t have the usual challenge scenario of the holiday weekend followed by a couple of “normal” weekdays again before the end of the month.  In fact, the month turns over in the middle of the holiday weekend in 2024.  Saturday is November 30th, our final day of writing.  Sunday is December 1st, when the results of that final day of writing get turned in.)

And, as always, there will be an escape hatch prompt that you can copy, paste and embellish as your submission for the day, such as…

“Lights up

A turkey runs for its life across the stage.

Lights down”

So don’t stress the holiday.  There are ways around it.

 

 

The Return of Threshold Theater's November Playwriting Challenge (Year 4)

And after our standard nine month hibernation, we're back for round four!

November is traditionally a month when all sorts of writers sign up for challenges to finish the Great American Novel or that unfinished screenplay - why shouldn’t playwrights get in on the fun?



The goal is simple: to get you to prioritize your own playwriting, even if it’s just for a little while each day, every day, for a whole month.



Even if you only manage it every other day, or a couple of days a week, that’s still progress.



If you’re like me, you can sometimes be so good at putting off your writing until another day that you can look up and find weeks have gone by without you writing a single line of dialogue.  

We want to get out of that habit and replace it with a more creative habit.



And if you manage to write every single day of the month of November, then there’s an extra little prize for you at the end (read on for more details on that…)



Our challenge was created as a bit of an homage to a similar writing challenge that my friends at Red Theater in Chicago ran for several years in which I took part (so far I’ve mined the material I developed there for two full-length plays and a ten minute play).  Since they’ve sadly discontinued the event, and Threshold Theater is devoted to the development of new work and creating a community of writers for the theater, we thought, “why not revive that November playwriting challenge idea and do it here?”



How it works:

Everyone who wants to participate in the challenge can sign up on this fancy new page on the Threshold Theater website, where you “purchase” the November Playwriting Challenge for $15 (https://www.thresholdtheatermpls.com/store/p14/Threshold_Theater%27s_4th_Annual_November_Playwriting_Challenge.html#/)

(That $15 is sort of like putting money in a pool for March Madness or an Oscar party, but this time, you're betting on yourself as a writer.)



(If the payment is a problem for you, contact us at ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com - we don’t want money to be a barrier to people participating in the challenge - we’ll make something work to get you in.)


Threshold Theater will take 20% off the top, which will go towards supporting the artists in our New Play Reading Series and future productions.  The remaining 80% of the money collected from the $15 entry fees will go into the pot to create that prize at the end I mentioned before.


After purchasing the challenge with your entry fee, drop us an email at ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com to let us know you’re in.

PLEASE NOTE: Since Gmail is being aggressive about curating people’s email inboxes the last year or so, if you don’t see emails from the Challenge in your inbox, and you have a gmail account, be sure to check on the “All Mail” option, which will reveal all the emails you receive, not just the ones Gmail thinks are important.  Since we have links in the challenge emails and since you either have never received emails from us before, or haven’t since last November, Gmail may not be as interested in the playwriting challenge as you are :)


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Formal Rules:

Contest (aka, November Playwriting Challenge) entry period ends October 31, 2024 at 11:59pm Central Time.

The contest will run from 12:00 a.m. (midnight) Central Time on November 1, 2024 to 12:00pm (noon) Central Time on December 1, 2024

Participants must submit work by 12:00 p.m. (noon) Central Time each day to be considered eligible for winnings on December 1, 2024.

Winner(s) will be announced no later than December 8, 2024

Winnings will be sent out (check via US mail) no later than two weeks after winners are announced (December 22, 2024).

Winnings of $600 and over will require a form W-2 to be issued by Threshold Theater.

By paying the entrance fee and submitting the email you agree to the rules set forth from Threshold Theater and all disputes will be settled directly between Threshold Theater and participants.


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The writers who manage to write something every single day for the 30 days of November will split the money at the end.

That, of course, is an extra reward on top of the main reward, which is that you prioritized your playwriting and wrote a whole bunch of new material in November.

(And everyone, whether they write all 30 days or not, will get that “new play material” prize.)

(Every year I did this challenge through Red Theater, I wrote all 30 days and ended up getting my $15 back at the end as part of my share of the kitty, so it was basically free writing encouragement :)



First rule of the challenge - it doesn’t have to be good writing, it just has to be writing.



Part of the point of the challenge is to get you to just make decisions and run with them, blast past your internal censor and just put something on the page. One participating writer has likened it to doing improv with your keyboard.



Everything you write will, by the circumstances of its creation, be a first draft.  You can always go back and “fix it” later :)



Each day you will have a writing prompt.



I will post the writing challenge on our challenge blog at https://thresholdwritingchallenge.blogspot.com/



I will also email everyone participating with the text of that day’s challenge and a link to that blog post (which will come in handy later…)



(The plan is to give you two or three days’ worth of prompts in advance, so if you want to keep writing or get a head start on the next day’s work, you can.  The more writing the better.)



You can write to the prompt, or ignore it and write something completely different.  Up to you.  As long as you’re writing.



The point is just to give yourself the space and time to write something new.  



Doesn’t even need to be a complete scene, you could just have the beginning and the middle and not have any idea how to end it, the rest of the idea may come to you another day down the road.



As long as you have something written, that’s a good day.



If you’re just not able to get anything going one day in November, and all you can come up with is:

“Lights up



CAROL dances across the stage and disappears



Lights down



The End”



That’s fine



(Obviously we want to avoid 30 days of that but that’s enough of a placeholder to count for the day’s writing: Lights up, Something happens on stage, Lights down, The End - that’s the baseline we all start with as our escape hatch for the day, challenge yourself to do more)



The daily check-in to keep us all honest and for me to be able to track who’s writing each day will go like this:



You’ll get the prompt for November 1st in advance of that date.  You’ll have all day on November 1st to write.

By 12 noon, Central Time, on November 2nd, you’ll share your work with us in one of the following ways:



You can email us the script at ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com



You can post the script as a comment on the blog entry for the day’s challenge at https://thresholdwritingchallenge.blogspot.com/



You can post your script online on your own blog or website (or post it as a Google doc) and post a link to it in a comment on the blog entry for the day’s challenge at https://thresholdwritingchallenge.blogspot.com/



You can email that link to your posted work for the day at ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com



You can always turn your writing in early, but 12 noon Central Time will be the cutoff each day, and that way no one has an unnaturally early morning to make the deadline, regardless of what time zone they might be in.

So, submit your writing of the day for November 1st no later than 12 noon Central Time on November 2nd.



Then get working on the writing for November 2nd, to be turned in by12 noon Central Time on November 3rd.

And so on...



And we’ll all go through that process daily until 12 noon, Central Time, on December 1st, for the November 30th challenge.



(And don’t panic the first couple of days when we’re all getting up and running.  We’re not going to be sticklers while we’re all fighting technology and working out the kinks on November 1, 2 and 3… Just post as you’re able and keep us in the loop by email on what’s going on if you’re having trouble, need tech support, etc. :)



Then December 1st, I’ll sit down and make a list of all the people who logged in with writing work every day of the month, and I’ll double check it with you all, to make sure I didn’t miss anybody.



And then we’ll split the collective 80 percent of the entry fees for the challenge between those prolific writers who all remain standing at the end of the month.  We'll confirm contact details at that time for the best way to get you your money.

I have always had a tremendous amount of fun doing challenges like this as a writer myself, and my aim is to make this one fun and inspiring for all of you as well.

An overview of how things turned out the past three years:
Honestly, I was expecting maybe half a dozen writers from the Twin Cities metro our first time out in 2021. Instead, we got 10 writers in Minnesota, plus 33 other writers from 20 other states, 2 from Canada, and 2 whose location was unknown. 27 of the 47 writers wrote every single day.
In 2022, due to a technical glitch, we got a late start getting the word out, but we still ended up with 12 writers in Minnesota, plus 23 other writers from 15 other states, 1 from Canada, and 4 whose location was unknown.  22 of the 40 writers wrote every single day.
Last year, we had 57 writers, 33 of whom wrote all 30 days. 19 of the writers were from Minnesota, the rest came from 16 other states around the U.S. and the District of Columbia, plus we had another Canadian representative for the third year running.



If you’re interested in participating, go purchase the November Playwriting Challenge on the Threshold Theater website (which will put your $15 in the prize pot) and send us an email at ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com to let us know you want to take part in the challenge.

Deadline to sign up is October 31, 2024 - 11:59pm, Central Time

(Donation needs to be entered no later than 11:59pm 10/31/24; but if you don't get around to the email part of it to notify us until later, that's fine - I just need your email address so I know where to send you the prompts every day :)

The fun (and writing) begin November 1, 2024.



Happy writing to you all!



Matthew A. Everett
Literary Director
Threshold Theater
(He/him/his)