Genre Scribes: Friday Fiction Writing Challenge

Greetings fellow writers! Are you looking for a weekly writing challenge that isn’t too time consuming but can help get your creative juices flowing? Well, my new challenge might be the thing for you.

The Challenge

This is my take on James Scott Bell’s daily exercise in his book, The Mental Game of Writing.

It’s quick and simple. Each week (Fridays around 1800 UTC), I post a randomly generated noun.

How It Works (Updated 14 March 2020)

1. Don’t think too hard on the word; just let your imagination run wild and write a maximum of 500-ish words.
2. Once you complete your sprint, give it some basic editing.
3. Be courageous and post your results to your blog.

Check out the challenge history to see it in action.

Rules

1. Complete the challenge on your blog before 1800 UTC of the following Friday.
2. Link to the original prompt post and make sure to use the tag: Genre Scribes so that we can see all the posts together in WP Reader.
3. The text can be dialogue, an interior monologue, a scene (full or partial), flash fiction, anything… so long as it’s fiction.

What’s in it for You?

Fresh blog content

Authors write, but when it comes to blog posts that showcase our fiction writing chops… Yeah, we’re kinda sucky at that. We end up blogging for other writers: about the craft, the latest catastrophe to hit the industry, how-to writing posts. These posts can be amazing and insightful, but they don’t work for our target audience: the reader.

Write For Your Target Audience: Readers

This challenge isn’t about posting your WIPs. It’s a way of showing your potential readers the sort of thing they can look forward to when you next hit publish on a book. Who knows, maybe one of your little snippets snags you a life-long fan. At the very least, you’re going to have something fiction-y to post each week.

Engage with a Fresh Writing Community

One of the aims of this challenge is to build a new positive writing community. One where we encourage each other and raise each other up.

Welcome to Genre Scribes

Take a few minutes out to visit other genre scribes’ posts, give their posts a like and/or leave a comment. Get involved.