Member-Sponsored Year 20XX Story Prompt Contest

Details

Constraints drive innovation. With that in mind, we built a story generator that produces a character suggestion and two key story prompts. We took the output from a single run of the generator, and we're hosting a contest to see what kind of science fiction stories are spawned from them.

The only requirements for this contest are as follows: your story must fit in the science fiction genre; you must have a primary character who is an insomniac; and your story must deal with loneliness and "the last one."

We'd love to see the diverse range and depth of science fiction stories that can come from a shared set of ideas. Build your story in any way you see fit, in any sub-genre you'd like.

Why an insomniac? Why loneliness? Because our robotic story generator told us those were required. What does "the last one" mean? That's up to you! Come check out our Scribophile group if you'd like more information about how these came to be.

This writing challenge is hosted by Year 20XX, a fledgling science fiction publication. Winning or submitting a story does not guarantee publication with us, although we invite you to submit in the future after crafting your story here on Scribophile! Come workshop your pieces with us! We'd love to see them.

Please note that this is aimed at science fiction stories, and the winners will be selected from that genre. We love it if you write stories in other genres that are inspired by these prompts, but we can't accept them as winners here.

Winning entries

Winners have been announced! Log in to see them.

Prizes

Rules

• To enter the contest, post your work on Scribophile and check the box that says "Enter this work into the Member-Sponsored Year 20XX Story Prompt Contest."

• The checkbox will be visible until the contest deadline.

• Entry is free, but you'll need karma points to post your work. You can earn karma points by writing critiques of work by other members.

• If you have already placed your work in a previous contest, you may not resubmit it to this one. Stories submitted here should be created based on the themes, so they should be new.

• Only one entry per person is allowed; multiple entries will be disqualified.

• Please ensure that submitted stories fit in the Science Fiction genre. All other genres will be disqualified (sorry!).

• Honourable mentions will be notified in the contest thread in the forums.

Submission guidelines

• Entries must be no more than 5,000 words per Scribophile's count. There is no minimum. If your entry is longer than 3,000 words, please post it in parts to respect Scribophile's length guidelines.

• Novel chapters are not allowed. Please don’t post them.

• Your work must have public visibility on Scribophile until the winners are announced.

• Only new, previously unpublished work will be accepted.

• The contest will run from now until March 20th, 2016, at midnight UTC. The winner will be announced by the end of March, 2016.