23 writing challenges down.
Only 7 to go!
Yes, we are entering the final week of the November Playwriting Challenge :)
Yesterday’s submissions for challenge 21 turned out as follows:
73 playwrights with material totaling 248 pages
(The equivalent of two full-length plays with a couple of extra pages to spare)
Week three’s numbers
Average playwrights per day: 77
Total play bits submitted: 536
Total pages for the week: 1,813
The equivalent of 15 full-length plays, plus a 10 minute play
Overall numbers for the first three weeks
Average playwrights per day: 82
Total play bits submitted: 1,729
Total pages for the first three weeks: 5,856
The equivalent of 48 full-length plays, plus another long one-act of 96 pages
Heads up - starting tomorrow (Monday) through Wednesday, you’ll be getting two prompts each day in order to give you enough material so if you want to submit material early and bank it for the long holiday weekend this week, you can - so you’re not writing on Thanksgiving Day, for instance, if you don’t want to :) Each challenge will be marked with what day it’s for, when you should write, if not earlier, and when you should turn it in, if not earlier.
This year the holiday is odd again because it’s falling in the last week of the month, and the month actually ends on Sunday of the holiday weekend, so you’ll be turning in that very last challenge, that you’re writing on Sunday, November 30th, by 12noon Central Time on Monday, December 1st. (Normally we get at least a partial post holiday week inside of the month of November, but the calendar’s just a weird one this year.)
But for now, let’s get to today’s writing prompt…
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Challenge #24 - Gas Station/Dystopia
Write Monday, November 24th - or earlier if you like
Due: Tuesday, November 25th, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)
We have reached the penultimate set of suggestions from Threshold Theater Literary Associate Maren Findlay.
Here’s a couple of items from her list of suggestions that I grouped together for consideration:
“Write a dystopian play set in a world after the AI takeover.”
(I think that’s just the Terminator movies or Battlestar Galactica but, hey, dystopia is a whole cottage industry of possibilities these days, right?
As sci fi author N.K. Jemisin says in The Fifth Season,
“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t why? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.”
Or as Douglas Adams wrote in the prologue for the fourth book in the five book trilogy(?) of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “So Long and Thanks for All The Fish” - when a young woman has a flash of inspiration about how humanity can fix what’s wrong with the world and live in harmony at last:
“Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly forever.
This is her story.”
How about a title song?
“The earth’s about to be destroyed,
No point in getting all annoyed...”
The other prompt in this pair is as follows:
“Write a scene/play set at a gas station at 3am”
Now, this could also be part of the dystopia, or it’s own evocative time and place in a less grim reality.
You could go the dramatic route, like any number of William Inge plays about Bus Stops and Picnics
Or a more modern character study like the play by Sam Walsh, The Visible, which we presented as part of Threshold Theater’s New Play Reading Series back in September 2022
But just to remind you that you can always go in a comedic direction, there’s a particular gas station and convenience store on one of my routes whose name always makes me giggle. It’s called
Pump ’N Munch
Take that however you will.
Also, some interesting recent license plates I’ve seen out in traffic
DIE 992
HUG 265
O BLA D
(A deep cut for the Beatles fans)
Then there were a couple of plates that had an interesting combo going with their license plate frames.
One plate read:
MRSPNUT
And the frame explained this was because they were associated with:
AmericanPistachios.org
One unintentional juxtaposition was a guy who had a Minnesota WILD sports team license plate frame, with the team’s name in all caps like that.
But the license plate was
LUVWIFE
However the frame with the WILD below it made it look like it was saying
LUVWIFE WILD
Sounds like a very happy marriage :)
As always, if these prompts don’t do it for you, you can always feel free to just write whatever you want and turn it in by the deadline instead.
Just write something today :)
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If you’re not interested in this prompt, you can
try 2021’s challenge #24: Alternate Timelines
Or try 2022’s challenge #24: Band Name
Or try 2023’s Challenge #24: Snapshots 4 (from Threshold Theater co-founder and Managing Director David Schlosser)
Or try 2024’s challenge #24 - Leftovers from David (from Threshold Theater co-founder and Managing Director David Schlosser)
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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How to submit your work for Challenge #24
We’re streamlining the process this year with a Google form,
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdy-wyjz-IITaNsOkXM1zVQu_yrt_o7E4Vp2eQnr-8VNnu49w/viewform?usp=header
but you still have multiple options for how you submit your playwriting output for the day.
After you enter the required fields of
email,
name,
challenge number (for today, that’d be 24 :)
and page count,
you can submit your writing in one of four ways:
Save your script as a PDF or Word Doc and upload that document to the Google form.
OR
Post
your script online (on your personal website, as a blog post, or as a
Google doc) and put a link to that online script in the Google form.
OR
Copy/paste your work from another source directly into the Google form
OR
Type directly into the Google form.
(Whichever option you choose, you can leave the other ones blank.)
Write Monday, November 24th - or earlier if you like
Again, this is: Due: Tuesday, November 25th, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)
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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 :)
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 27th (however you recognize the holiday weekend) - 2025 edition
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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.
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 12 noon Central Time on Tuesday 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 6 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 makes sense to you.
It just needs to be something.
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And that something can be:
Lights up.
A car pulls up to a gas station in the middle of the night.
The license plate reads O BLA D
While pumping gas, the driver looks at the blighted city skyline in the distance.
Suddenly, the city in the distance erupts in a big ball of fire.
DRIVER: Hmmm. I guess maybe life doesn’t go on after all.
They keep pumping gas, trying to figure out where else to go instead now.
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.
Just write.
And take good care of yourselves, and each other.
Matthew A. Everett
Literary Director
Threshold Theater
(he/him/his)
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