FLASH FICTION CHALLENGES
Most reality competitions start with a low-stakes mini-challenge that jolts the episode with a bit of action (like the Quickfire in Top Chef). In the case of my proposed writing competition, these mini-challenges would be more of a concession to the fact that it’s a TV show than a real test of a person’s ability, but here are some fun ideas:
Agent pitches: I love the “go-see” episodes of ANTM, and the publishing equivalent would be agent pitches. Toward the end of the season, the final contestants will have to run around New York City pitching their book to major literary agents, and whoever makes the best impression on the agents wins. Nothing like this really happens in the publishing world for an unproven author, but this is fantasy-meets-reality.
Ghost-writing: A celebrity visits the show and commissions an uber-short story based on an incident from his/her life. The celebrity chooses the winner. (This challenge would make a lot of writers want to kill themselves, but come on … it’d be funny to watch a serious Iowa grad try to create art out of Kim Kardashian’s latest crisis.)
Book tour: Each contestant has to give an author reading at a packed bookstore.
Group-story: The contestants divide into teams of three. The team members can’t talk to each other, and they take turns writing one sentence at a time. Stories must have a beginning, middle, and end — best team wins.
Day jobs: Struggling writers often have to take crappy temp jobs in order to eat, and some of them might even sneak some writing while they should be answering phones. In this challenge, each contestant has to spend a day working at a job that’s especially busy and especially crappy and still find time to write a good short piece of fiction about the workplace by the time they clock out — and getting fired is an immediate DQ. Examples of jobs: Being the secretary to a horrible boss; nanny-ing evil children; working at an indie coffee house where the customers have really particular demands; pouring drinks at a bar full of NYU kids who need their IDs checked. Of course the producers would make sure the bosses are totally unreasonable and crazy.
Inspiration: Most of these challenges will involve writing flash fiction based on some form of inspiration: food, paintings, songs, etc.
Imitation: Each contestant picks a famous dead writer’s name out of a hat. The contestants have an hour to research the dead writer’s works. Then they have to write a 500-word story in the dead writer’s voice about some really contemporary topic, like modern love in the digital age.
“Hills Like White Elephants”: This is really MFA-nerdy of me, but contestants must write a short story consisting entirely of dialogue between one male and one female character. Two famous Broadway actors will perform each story; the guest judge will pick the winner.
The tear-jerker: After months of being cloistered during a show’s filming, reality contestants get starved for outside interaction — there’s always that weepy Survivor episode when loved ones from back home visit the island. What if the writers’ loved ones visit, and the writers have to read the one passage from their manuscript that they’re most uncomfortable about sharingto their loved ones? Especially intense since many writers are driven by unresolved family trauma.
Mini-prizes for the mini-challenge winners: Cash, one-on-one time with famous authors, notes by an experienced editor for the current week’s submission prior to The Workshop, publication in literary magazines, the opportunity to sell a winning short piece as a Kindle Single, etc.
