I’ve done a number of contests through the NYC Midnight organization, including short stories and short scripts. Just over an hour ago (midnight NYC time, not coincidentally) we received the assignments for their latest contest: 100-word microfiction stories that are to be completed in twenty-four hours.
What the NYC crew does is randomly places the entrants into groups and then assigns those groups three specific aspects that must be included in the submitted entries. In this case, we’re getting the genre, an action, and a word that must be used.
This approach not only helps ensure that the submissions haven’t been written and polished beforehand–I suppose there’s a chance that the assigned combination could just happen to have been been done previously, but personally I can say I know that despite writing a fair number of 100-word stories in the past, I haven’t done any romantic comedies that include applying sunscreen and the word “strange” in them (my assignments this round)–but it also helps to mix up what the contestants work with. It’s pretty common for writers to have a strength in a particular genre, for instance, so this removes the chance for writers to only stick with what they excel at and makes them stretch themselves in a way they may not have done before.
As an added bonus, the assignments also help kickstart my brain on ideas. One would think (or at least, for a long time, I certainly believed) that no limits on genre or topic or length of story would be the most creatively energizing way to go.
Such freedom!
But it can also be daunting. With no limits, you can of course go anywhere and do anything, but then the possible ideas to sift among to find the one you want to pursue right now becomes a real challenge and can be overwhelming (or it often does for me).
Whereas with limits in place–it can only be this long, it has to be this genre and use this word and take place in this setting, etc.–well, now I’ve got something to work with.
Ironically, it seems like putting limits or expectations on projects doesn’t quell my creativity, as I would’ve expected, but instead that helps me contain and focus it, which gets it working more effectively.
Maybe that shouldn’t be too surprising, as many people have said that they work better on projects with deadlines in place (even if they’re entirely arbitrary) than without any deadlines.
I guess limitations like genre and word count and deadline give me the distance and wind speed to set my sniper shot for.
It sets the bar so I know how high I have to jump to get over it.
It… has some other metaphorical benefit…
*ahem*
And yes, 100 words is the limit. Unlike other similar stories I’ve done, where I decided that the body of them had to be 100 words exactly, this contest is saying that the stories can’t be any more than 100 words.
More parameters.
Love it.
It occurred to me as I was writing this that the parameters may be part of the reason I’ve loved the haiku format for so long: It’s three lines, with five, seven and five syllables respectively.
Go.
I’ll have to do some introspection about that some time when I’m not on a tight deadline for a contest.
Speaking of which, I need to submit my story inside now 22.5 hours.
I’ve got a couple of beta readers lined up, I’ve got my assignments, I’m finally about to get to bed so maybe my brain can get some ideas going and I can wake up with the assignments rolling around in a refreshed brain…
Let’s do this.