The Weekly is a community project in the form of a series of micro-fiction contests, inspired by the discontinued Community Writing Competitions on Halo Waypoint. Each week, users can challenge themselves to write a short prose response to a prompt chosen at the start of the week by the competition's judge. At the week's end, the judge selects a winner to receive a shiny new Weekly Winner eraicon on their entry's page, and the entry will then be displayed on Recent Changes for the next week for all to easily see and read.
The project was conceived in response to a long-standing downturn in prose writing on the site, in hopes of encouraging more prose by presenting a painless, easily-attainable length as a target instead of a hopelessly-long novel length. The ideas the writers incorporate to hone their craft under such constraints might then become the seeds for events their own characters go through, or even be worked into whole other long stories.
How To Participate
At the beginning of each week, a new prompt will be posted on this page, for users to write in response to. Working with in the length and topic restraints (which could have to do with the theme, or subject, or writing style like "only dialogue"), users then write their response and create a new page on which to post it. Remember to include a Writer Template ("{{Writer|your username}}") at the top and categorize it "The Weekly" ("[[Category:The Weekly]]") at the bottom. A paragraph at the top can be added to introduce the piece and context for it without going towards the word count, so long as there's a horizontal line ("----") between to make set them apart distinctly. Unless specified otherwise, the word length is 1000 800 words, and while you may submit multiple entries for each week, they must be individual entries (while having multiple entries be sequels/prequels to one another is a grey area, they must still work as stories on their own, rather than multiple-part stories).
Then, simply add a link to your entry's page in the scrollbox for the appropriate week for it to be counted. The judge (LegendOfElTopo, currently) will then read the entries, between the following Monday-Wednesday depending on availability, and pick a winner for the week. Bear in mind, the judge's decision may be based on subjective judgements, but good spelling, grammar, and punctuation go a long way towards impressing by presenting a professional and easy-to-read appearance. Winners will then be given a unique Weekly Winner eraicon and displayed on the Recent Changes page.
Current Judge Notes
- Feel free to suggest prompts and topics for future weeks - ping me in the Discord if you do.
- If posted after the end date, I'll still read and review your work, it just excludes you from the standings for winning the weekly (although in some cases I may shift things to allow for more competition). Yes, this means...
- ...all previous weekly prompts (including those before I took over) can be written for and I'll give them a look, just bear in mind that it'll be a lower priority than more recent things. That being said...
- ...I won't be accepting works written beforehand, or in general submissions not written specifically for the Weekly and then added to it afterwards.
Weekly Challenges
Week 192: Dear Humanity
Prompt: One year ago, I dropped a stupid "hindsight is 2020" joke as a prompt; this year, I'm doing the same again, since it isn't any more. On a more serious note - since the 2020-in-review picked out some particularly good character-driven pieces, I'm hoping to pivot a little more towards those these days.
This prompt is all about regrets; things that were done, weren't done, or things that could-have-been. These can be spanning years, decades even - or just muttering "I should not have said that-" as soon as someone leaves the room. Go wild - at least, as wild as you can while aiming for this week's more generous 1000-word target.
Start Date: January 2nd 2021
End Date: January 17th 2021
Week 193: The Kids Are Alright
Prompt: Partly inspired by Tide's interesting playground game, and partly from how I actually had fun writing something to this theme last year: this week's prompt is all about the young'uns. Something about children, about youth, with a pretty broad scope thematically - after all, kids can be kind, they can be cruel, they can be innocent or jaded, and the Orion Arm has a vast range of different environments to grow up in. Still, I'd rather it at least be something in line with an image of childhood rather than just "takes place with young characters". In particular, while young, early Spartan candidates being taught the best places to stab someone isn't really what I'm after - and while lighter moments like in my piece above would work, more mundane human (or alien!) kids growing up would be plenty welcome too!
Looking to be a little shorter and sweeter this time; 800 words is your target.
Start Date: January 11th 2021
End Date: January 24th 2021
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