The Friday Challenge - 6/12/09

Four entries this week, including a few from people we haven't heard from in a while. As of this morning, we've received:

Torainfor, "Unity"

Arisia, "Alien Slave"

Al, "The Nightmare Begins"

Ben-El, "As I Die Laying"

As always, even if you didn't submit an entry this week, you're invited to read, comment on, and vote for your favorite. Don't be shy about leaving feedback on the authors' blogs, either. Writers thrive on knowing that someone out there is actually reading their words. The winner will be announced on Sunday.

And now for this week's Challenge:


Chapter 5

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You know that novel you always meant to write, if you could just figure out how to start it? But before you could do that, you had to figure out how to set up the backstory, which meant you had to plan out the plot, and you had to work out the main character's biography, which led you into an exercise in world-building, and before you knew it you'd once again set out to write fiction and ended up deep in researching the differences between Monophysitism and Monothelitism?

Well, you've started it. You've established the setting. You've introduced the sigma character and told us everything we need to know about him or her (or it). You've introduced the main supporting character or characters, and given us at least a strong foreshadowing of the conflict that's at the heart of your story. All that stuff that writers always get hung up on is already done. We, your readers, now know it in sufficient detail; any more explaining or scene-setting and we'll doze off. There is one and only one thing we care about now: what happens next?

That's it. The motor of your story is running. We don't care about what you see in the rearview mirror or what you drove past awhile ago. We aren't expecting you to end the story any time soon. We just want you to get this bucket moving and tell us the next few hundred to few thousand words of your story.

And make 'em good, so that at the end we'll be burning to find out what happens in Chapter 6.


As always, we're playing by the ever-evolving but still not updated Official Rules of the Friday Challenge and playing for whatever is behind the frequently updated Door #3. The deadline for this challenge is midnight Central time, Thursday, 6/18/09.