It’s time.
You’ve been training your writing skills for months, and now it’s time to put them to use in the fiercest, most physically-and-mentally-taxing way possible.
The Writing Triathlon.
During the last stream, we had our first Writing Triathlon Challenge.
Similar to the Haiku Challenges that we’ve done before, we had three rounds where chat could participate. Each round tested a different writing skill, and the judges were myself, Abbey, and a strawpoll too. At the end of all three challenges, the winner with the most points got a fabulous prize!
For the three challenges, we used three photos of our special guest: Abbey.
Watch the full challenge here and see everyone’s entries,
or scroll down to see some highlights.
Here’s the three challenges:
Photo #1: Abbey screaming at a flower
Challenge: Come up with a payoff/ending for this story setup:
“A girl who only eats flowers freaks out when a flower talks back to her.”
Here’s some of the highlights for this challenge:
The flower tells her how she’s stealing all the nectar for the bees and how the world will die without bees, and she resolves to never eat another flower again. Once she leaves, a bee flies out of the flower—the voice of the flower itself.
—Capricy (Scott’s pick)After finding out she can’t keep eating flowers without hearing constant screaming, she has a mental breakdown and is sent to a crazy house surrounded by flowers who insult her.
—joe_g89 (Abbey’s pick)A girl is forced to eat flowers; it is one of the only things that her body won’t reject. One day, one of the flowers talks to her. She learns of the flower’s life, and she decides not to eat any more flowers. As the girl starves, she devotes her life to growing more flowers so that she can make up for the ones she ate.
—buttermilks (one of chat’s picks)
Photo #2: Abbey vacuuming the floor in a Charizard onesie
Challenge: Write the opening for a story inspired by this picture.
Here’s some of the highlights for this challenge:
This was the strangest assignment yet. The rich elderly gentleman always had me running odd jobs for him, but when he told me my latest assignment, I couldn’t believe my ears. He wanted me to hoover his floor, but not just in any normal fashion. He showed me the magnificent onesie I’d be donning for this latest act of madness – Charizard, the dragon. He even offered more payment if I made the dragon noises.
—RealSayakaMaizono (Scott and Abbey’s pick)Charizard had a problem. Here he was in Unified City, a Pokemon town where no one was allowed to battle, and the unthinkable happened: he had emitted an unprovoked, unwarranted flame attack on an unsuspecting bystander. Who would care that it was an accidental gastric reflux, a burp of epic proportions? Who would care that the bystander was an annoying Jigglypuff at a party, singing her way into making them all fall asleep? No one, that’s who. He had committed a crime, and he would have would have to pay for it. Unless they didn’t catch him. Charizard took out his trusty vacuum and began getting rid of the sooty evidence. Jigglypuff-no-more.
—capricy (one of chat’s picks)Whoosh… Whoosh…
The flames of a lone candelabra cast a flickering glow on the stones of the manor’s corridor sputtered in an unnatural wind, chased down the hallway by a rhythmic sound of a fanning… something, in the darkness at the end of the hall.
No matter how long Lord Scott had lived here, it was still unnerving. He flicked on the light, revealing his mighty dragoness maid sweeping the floor with her tail.
“Ah! Mr. Scott, shut off that light! You know my eyes are sensitive!”
—cozyrogers (one of chat’s picks)
Photo #3: A beautiful selfie of Abbey
Challenge: Write about 100 words or less describing this picture in specific, vivid detail.
Here’s some of the highlights for this challenge:
Abbey, dubbed the “Flower Girl,” was sectioned far away from the other patients. The white padded room echoed her grunts, burps, the names of flowers she’d mumble in alphabetical order. She squirmed in her orange straightjacket on a thick mattress with a smile afixed to her face. Bright white lights glimmered in the eyes of a person on the verge of snapping. Screams and howls of patients pierced the walls. The smell of alcohol and leather bombarded Abbey’s nostrils. At least it wasn’t flowers.
—joe_g89 (Scott’s pick)Oh…my…goddess. The smooth chocolate of her eyes, the milkiness of her skin, the perfection of her white teeth beneath her rosy lips—all that detail was hidden beneath an expression that belonged more in an insane asylum than on a Twitch stream. Maybe it’s the same thing. Wide orbs shone like the full moon, and her whiskers matched as if she had been turned into a adorable were-cat that would lull you to your eternal sleep with a purr-fect rhythm for your heart to follow along to.The heart on her nose shows the lack of heart in her soul, that she needs to… one must advertise that which they have not. Truly, this is a frightening—and frighteningly cute—were-cat of a woman. I shall name her Poopsie, and she shall be mine. She shall be my Poopsie.
—capricy (Abbey’s pick)I stared into the void, and what stared back at me were… chins. Not one, not two, not three nor four — countless chins upon chins, an Everest of flesh. Above hearts and whiskers, dark eyes overcast devoured mine own like a flower. The greatest mistake of my life — Photoshop was like a poisoned blade in the hands of an amateur.
—cozyrogers (one of chat’s picks)The girl leans back in her chair, positioning her phone above her. She plays with her mousy, brown hair, attacking various wisps that strayed from the scalp. She admires the thin cedar arches of her eyebrows, the thick, mahogany redness of her lips, how the light reflected off her hickory eyes. With a fat, sweaty thumb, she scrolls slowly through Snapchat filters, flower-crowns, doe eyes, rainbows after rainy days. Finding a suitable filter— a button cat nose and fitting thin whiskers, she strikes a triple-chinned pose, and takes the picture.
—buttermilks (one of chat’s picks)
Those were some amazing entries! But in the end the winner was…
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…capricy! Congratulations! As their prize, they requested that I draw the character Felcity Fairy from a story that they wrote.
The story is about Felicity, a fairy who loses her wings, but gets them back with the help of
her new friends Mole, Frog, Bear and Butterfly. Such a beautiful tale of friendship!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-11:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published, the writing exercises, or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming March 2019.