New First-Readers

Posted by: @storysinger

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I heard that Kary English will have help with submissions. Who are the ones that will be helping?

I've wondered that as well. Does that mean results will come quicker? Or are the extra readers due to the rise of AI-generated stories and the need to weed out a higher volume of stories to uncover the pearls sent on to Jody? Anyway, I'm sure they will do their best to use a rubric of some sort so that the entries being passed upward are consistent.

I'm sure there will be a fun announcement.

I will say only that you will not be disappointed!

@tj_knight Hi Dustin, Change of topic - I wondered how you got on in the 24 hr challenge - bearing in mind you have said - 'Sadly, I'm not a new idea generator factory person.'

My 24 hour story logline-ish: A woman tells a story to a corpse in 3rd person.

So, yeah, I had a blast with it. The lock/key I received really helped/inspired.

I knew I wanted a female lead, but that was it. I got my lock/key and the first sentence popped in my head. From there I jotted notes, went to dinner, wrote 300 words then went to bed. Next day jotted notes, wrote some, went to the gym, wrote more notes, wrote more words, finished around 1pm. Read the whole thing over for typos, then pushed "send" at 1:52pm (2pm deadline). 3500 words.

Getting crits now, and hope to send it out soon. Would *love* to sell this one after years of hearing legendary tales of 24 hour stories' sales...
Appreciate you asking!  

Posted by: @tj_knight

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The lock/key I received really helped/inspired.

A lock inspired you to write a story about a woman talking to a corpse? Shakes puzzled head. Let us know if it gets published. Hope it does.

Back to 1st readers. So you know who this will be. I look forward to the reveal.

Posted by: @tj_knight

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lock/key

what is it?

Here's the little lock/key combo.

Yeah, I figured she had found the key to unlocking death - and went from there.

@tj_knight hope it does well. 

Just what is this challenge though?

Thinking about Magic out of a Hat (and fortunately, neither Tim nor Jody put a wastebasket on anyone's head), we were given a random object (check out the blog day 2 for others'). The idea is that *something* about the object either sparks a story or is a facet of the story - or might even disappear from the story - but is there for you at the start.

Then we have 24 hours completely on our own to write ... something. The minimum goal is/was around 2k, but we all shot for higher. I believe someone reached 7k. Spencer, I think?

I felt like I had an easier time of it than others. Maybe because of my lower word count, although I can crank out word count in a pinch, I think it was because once I had my beginning and end, I just had to fill in the plot, which in this case needed only 3300.

The lock gave me the beginning, then I thought, how does this character change? Then I thought precisely: she doesn't. And that's when it became a horror story.

@tj_knight I'll give it a go once I've got my q3 out the way. 

I remember magic out of a hat from the workshop. That was a story in itself. 

Posted by: @tj_knight

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I'm sure there will be a fun announcement.

I will say only that you will not be disappointed!