What Will You Write? #6 – It’s History

With the completion of #5, and our first guest judge, we now move on to the next round.  This time, the judge was supposed to be Tara Southwell again, but she passed it on to me.  So, you get another prompt from me.

What Will You Write? is a series of writing challenges that I am posting every two weeks.  How it works is, I post a prompt and give you the genre or theme.  You write the scene and post it on your blog. Please read the challenge page for more information and past winners. The rules are simple:

• First, read what I’ve written.
• Second, copy it and finish writing the scene.  Please keep your portion of the writing at less than 1,000 words.
• Then, post your story to your blog.
• Make sure you link back to this post so others can come and join in.
• Make a post in the comments below with a link back to your post (it’s likely that if you use WordPress, there’ll be a pingback, but please leave a comment with the link nevertheless).

The deadline is about 14 days from today.  Let’s make that 3:00 pm GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) on August 3rd.  I’ll be going to bed after that time, so I can give you some leeway if you post it within 5 or 6 hours after that deadline.  But after that, I need to judge.

After the deadline, I’ll read all of the entries and decide on who I think wrote the best scene.  Originality is very important.  I will judge it based on which one grabs my attention the most.  Once I’ve decided, I’ll post the winning story with a link back to the writer’s original post.  After that, I’ll include links back to everyone else’s entry so you can see what everyone wrote.  The winner will have the opportunity to write their own prompt and be a guest judge if they want.

This time, we have a genre and single line.  Similar to Tara’s prompt, I only provide you with one line to use.  You must use it, but it’s up to you where it’s used.  The genre this time is historical fiction.  You can base it at any time in history and at any place. It could be feudal Japan, ancient Greece, the wild west, it’s all up to you.  Now for the prompt.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

Very simple, isn’t it?  It can be what someone said or as a thought.  The this in the prompt should feature strongly in the story, but it’s up to you to choose what it is.  It could be a gun, a piece of pyrite (fool’s gold), a steam engine, anything.

Now it’s your turn to write.  So please enjoy writing your story, and I look forward to reading them.  To help us spread the word about this challenge, please share this post with anyone you think would be interested. Thank you!