ONC Journal 2022

Prompts - Recognizing and Utilizing (1/11/22)

2021

"'You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.' - Dark Knight"

Most people did quite well for this prompt, though I did see one or two stories where the writer thought something along the lines of anything super hero going. A few tried reversing the quote, or so they said in the comments section, but reversing the quote. wasn't an easy feat. There were also other super hero prompts this last year, and I remember one where someone tried changing every single element and asked if it was still recognizable and it was like, nope, you've got a completely different prompt instead.

"A storm is raging outside, but you're cozy at home reading a good story. When the lights go out, you figure it's the result of the storm, but when they come back on, you've been transported into the alternative aftermath of the book you finished reading. Where are you and what happens?"

So, there was actual confusion regarding this prompt last year. My personal interpretation of the prompt stemmed from the word aftermath (Merriam -Webster) meaning "the period immediately following a usually ruinous event" or "consequence, result", but there's actually another prompt from this same year which delved into alternative universes where everyone gets a happy ending, so my thoughts were that this involved ending up in the not so nice ending to an event, but that the event didn't necessarily need to be the end either. I wasn't the only one who thought this, but they meant the ending, any alternative ending. Which, to me doesn't quite make sense given the other prompt, "the story is finished. The end! Now everyone can go home. By that, there's a world where all the characters live, and guess what? You, dear creator, have stumbled upon it. Now, what's your tale?" ended up covering it. Oh, and ther was also, "you wake up in the middle of a battle of your favorite game. Who are you fighting and how does the game end?" was yet another prompt which involved falling into another universe, so—I ended up combining them as I was utilizing parts from each.

"Your main character is in an idyllic relationship. Your task? Make - then break the ship."

For this particular one, there was a bit of a miss in understanding the importance of starting with an idyllic ship and then breaking them up and not making them end game was. It ties into the fact in fanfic ones OTP which stands for one true pairing which in turn is the pairing you'd argue as most true for a character - aka, your idyllic relationship - is practically never broken up. The fact it had to be an idyllic relationship because of this nuance and that this wasn't something that could be changed I ended up explaining to a lot of people last year, but I came across a fanfic where the writer started off with a ship that they didn't at all present as idyllic. In fact, the reason for breaking it up was because the writer didn't think it was idyllic.

"A job application results in you becoming embroiled in the very real lived of your favourite fandom."

For some reason people didn't understand that the job application along with the job applied for was important and so there were a lot of questions of whether a story where the character got embroiled through other means would have worked.

"The whole school thinks the most popular person in the school hiarchy and the hottest football player are together, but in reality, they have the most epic friendship."

For this one, it had to be explained that no, you couldn't have the popular person and the football player get together by the end. They needed to remain just friends.

"Quotes..."

There were a lot of quotes last year, so unless there was something else going on, I'm putting them under this particular umbrella, but basically some people mistakenly thought simply quoting a quote without any relevence to the story would work. It doesn't.

Take Away

How you use the prompt is definitely important for ONC. Some prompts are straightforward, such as last years, "when the siblings found al ost fairy in the garden shed, they decided to help her find the way home. They were in for an adventure." Sure, you can change she to he (I did) and fairy to another kind of creature (mine was Christmas Elf), but the plot for your story should be the plot noted in the prompt.  "'The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.' - Albert Einstein," where a less straight forward approach can be taken in that time can mean a lot of different things, so whereas stories based on the first will have similar takes on different prompts, for the latter, the stories will also vary in the type of plot used.

One of the things to be careful with is getting away from what the prompt is asking for, so asking yourself what a prompt is asking for is a good idea. For example, quote prompts aren't asking for a story with a quote in it - they're asking for stories inspired by said quote. Other prompts, such as the one invovilving the garden shed is asking for a specific type of plot, so descerning the type of plot asked for is important. Some are focused on specific types of relationships, so for those you want the main focus to be that type of relationships.

Of course, this isn't the only thing. As I've noted with the prompt from a couple of years ago involving the wrongfully convicted, there are a few extra ideas beyond the plot such as the age and place which serve to help the story stand out from other stories with someone who is wrongfully twisted, yet in this same regard it is possible to come up with a creative twist to a prompt which will catch a readers interest, so the prompts which follow the prompt to the letter or which perk the readers interest will fair better than a story which simply goes with the plot given.

Another thing to be aware of is how the narrative is presented. Yes, writers get scored on it, so if your abusive parents aren't abusive or abusive in a way that isn't realistic, you're not going to do as well as a story where the parents are abusive and the abuse is realistic. In fact, it wouldn't be fair to the writer who did write the story where the parents were abusive and the abuse is realistic for a story where they're not actually abusive or abusive in a way that isn't realistic to do as well or even better than their story as they obviously tackled the prompt better.

Of course, one can hit all of what I said and get nixed at some point along the way, and while some of the things I've mentioned may be why a story gets nixed in later rounds, there are a few others.

- Show, don't tell. A story where the writer tells the reader everything rather than letting them discover the world as the story unfolds is rather boring.
- Wordy doesn't mean better. In fact, getting needlessly verbous with your writing is bad writing, can be seen as an attempt to pad the word count. You also don't want a dry read for readers, even if your story is of the historical genre. No, especially if your story is of the historical genre as there is this misconception that wordiness and dry narrative are a part of the genre when it's not.
- Make sure the words you use mean what you think they mean, particularly if you're writing in an antiquated manner. I found myself cringing at some uses of words because I knew they were wrong when I read them.

Even with this, it's good to remember you may not have done anything wrong. Competition is steep with the number of stories increasing every year since ONC started, so even a good story may end up with a score that doesn't meet the threshold for a given round.

Oh! And don't forget that you can use the prompts outside of ONC for shorter and longer stories!