Yes, the first Stop-Watch Gang 24 Hour Story Challenge!

From 6pm tonight until 6pm tomorrow, a bunch of us are holed up at my house for a 24-hour writing challenge modeled on the 24-hour writing challenge at Writers of the Future.

The process:

a) Random word and image prompts have been distributed to the members of the Stop-Watch Gang. While not limited to the idea presented, the goal is for the prompt to start you thinking in a direction you might not have thought of before. You then run with it.

b) Between receiving the prompt and Friday at 6 p.m., is research time. Random books from the library or bookstore (or online sources) that are consulted to teach you something you didn’t know before. Try to take enough notes about interesting stuff that you can use in the story.

c) Also interview or talk to a stranger without letting them know you’re writing a story. Find some aspect of the person that might inspire a character or chain of events that you can use in the story.

d) The goal is to have a completed, original story (zero draft, as good or bad as you like) in 24 hours. It must have a plausible beginning, middle, end (i.e., a real story).

If you want to read more on the process, check out my Writers of the Future journal for full details.

And what do we have to fuel our writing frenzy?

$300 in cash. Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheet of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

Actually, that’s a lie. We’ll probably have Doritos. Maybe some Pepsi. Not very Hemingway, I know, but there you are.

See you on the other side.

– S.