Go here to see what the challenge is, the rules, and the trigger instructions.

In general:

How Liberty Hall’s Flash Challenges Work:

To participate, registration at Liberty Hall is required. If you cannot see the Flash Challenge forums, either you are not registered or you have not logged in. Please register or log in.

Challenges start on Friday mornings and end on Monday mornings. Actual start and finish times might vary each weekend, depending on the Moderator. There will be an announcement made on Liberty Hall when the Flash Challenge is OPEN. You are free to start once we post the announcement.

How to take up the challenge:

1. Ensure you have at least 1.5 hours to do the challenge.
2. Read these rules and the formatting guidelines.
3. Send a request for your Flash Trigger to the given email address.
4. Check your email immediately for the trigger. (see Troubleshooting if you have problems)
5. Begin writing your original story inspired by the trigger. Flash is usually 1000 words or less. You may write more than 1000 words, but others may hold this against you during voting. We will accept any length story. Please write a brand new story, do not edit or rework a story you’ve already written.
6. Email your titled story back to the “reply-to” email address before time runs out. The time limit is noted in your trigger email. It is usually 1.5 hours, but it may be less.

We post all stories anonymously on Monday morning. Your story will be in one of several groups.

On Monday and Tuesday, each group critiques and votes on the stories. We also open up the Guessing Frenzy. You are encouraged to comment in the group(s) that DO NOT contain your entry. However, you may comment in any group. Critiques and comments are open through Friday.

A Final Vote Off between the winners of Best Flash in each group occurs on Wednesday. Final Best Flash voting starts and ends Thursday. The Overall Winner of Best Flash chooses the next weekend’s trigger. Please begin to consider your trigger if you are a finalist in the Vote Off.

Thursday, we open the “Reveal Thyself” board, and you may optionally reveal which story you wrote.

Friday, all topics are locked and the next Flash Challenge Begins.

Troubleshooting

If you do not receive your flash trigger within 5-10 minutes of request:

1. Check your email; you may need to manually force a send/receive.
2. If you manually forced a send/receive and you still do not have your trigger, contact a moderator or administrator immediately.

[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited May 20, 2005).]

Don't worry about the old ones. Participate in the challenge and read the new ones.

When we write stories for the flash challenge, we are working together to create a fun and useful writing exercise that will get the fingers going and the ideas flowing. The stories are often good, but almost never good enough for a magazing or webzine editor out there to buy them...at least not yet. That's where the critiques come in.

After the flash challenge is over, we take the critiques, take the stories, and either chuck them in the trash or revise them. When we revise them, we often have an eye for publication.

Now, let me explain publication. Publication simply means, according to Merian-Webster:

quote:

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1 a : to make generally known b : to make public announcement of
2 a : to disseminate to the public b : to produce or release for distribution; specifically : PRINT 2c c : to issue the work of (an author)
intransitive senses
1 : to put out an edition
2 : to have one's work accepted for publication

---

As you can see, simply making a story publicly available (ie by putting it on a web page accessible by the public) means that the story has been published. For some people, this form of self-publication is good enough.

Not for me. And not for many of the people here.

The flash challenge is password protected for the express purpose that it not become publicly available...this means that the stories there are not being published in any sense of the word. You have to be a member of a group that exists to help its members improve their writing skills, essentially a critique group.

If this were not true, then we could not honestly send those stories to, say, Fantasy and Science Fiction and offer them first worldwide publishing rights. We would have already given them up by putting them on a public forum.

Void, when you get ready to get a story published, try the following:

1. Send the story to severl PROFESSIONAL markets. These markets are recognized by the SFWA as being respectable enough that if you get three stories published in these markets you can become a member of the SFWA. They include, but are not limited to: F&SF, Asimov's, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons...(for a full list, go to SFWA's home page)
2. Send the story to several high paying semi-pro markets such as Abyss and Apex, Ideomancer, and others. This link: http://storypilot.com/ will help you find and identify appropriate markets.
3. Send the story to paying markets (you can still use the link above to help).
4. If you still want publication, are are not, as I am, opposed to giving the story away for free, try sending the story to 4the luv markets. (no pay)

Basically, what can it hurt to try the best first? But you can't sell first publication rights to ANY of these markets if you've already published on-line.

Once it's as perfect as it gets, you can start looking around for possible markets. There are approximately seven gazillion markets, all very different from each other, so you have a crapload of research ahead of you.

There are a number of lists of markets. Writer's market, for one; ralan.com for another. Start skimming through those.

The guides usually list basic information that you can use to narrow down the list. So if your story is a 5000 word action-adventure story about evil robot monkeys, don't send it to a romance market that is only looking for fiction under 1k words, you know?

So then you get a list of possible markets. Start reading the markets and see if your story would fit in. If they tend to publish funny stuff, don't send them your story in which horrible things happen to mean people and then they die (and vice versa). That will narrow down your list further.

Then I reduce that further by comparing my perception of the quality of the market with the quality of the story - I don't aim for top markets unless I think my story is extraordinary. Most of the time I aim lower. I also don't aim for the bottom publications, unless I've totally given up on the story - so that eliminates a lot of markets, too.

So now you've got a modest list of maybe 5-10 realistic possibilities. I put them in order (based on which ones I'd most like to see accept my story) and then send it off to the first one. If it gets rejected, I pop it off to the second one that same day. And so on.

christine and i have the same basic approach, although I don't bother with the top markets unless I think my story is extraordinary; I think it's a waste of everyone's time to always send stuff to the top markets just because they're the top markets.

but, well, i'm not going to convince christine any more than she's going to convince me! it's enough to say that there are different strategies.

anyway, yeah, this should probably be in a different topic.

But inevitably, those stories don't sell anywhere at all.

Those two posts answered 95% of my questsions and misunderstandings about the publishing industry. I think.

Otherwise, you have to ask the right questions and people like me (who have been here a long time and have already asked, had answered, and then personally answered thoe questions twenty times or more) have to be in a mood to answer.

Any thread that teaches us is a good thread, off-topic or not!

We have 14 entries now. This is a record for a Friday.

We have, over the life of the flash challenges (8 weeks) generated an average of 20+ stories per challenge. We are currently generating 30 stories a week. At that rate, without increase, and figuring that we will be lucky to do this 48 weeks out of the year, we can credibly set a goal of 1,000 stories generated in our first year.

If LDS is successful in his goal of flashing every week he'll have over 50 stories by then. Over 50 trials by fire, and with an average of 10 comments per story, he will have received approximately 500 mini-critiques. He'll be able to see weaknesses, strengths and trends in his writing, and he'll have written the equivalent of 1/3 of a 100,000 word novel, in only 1 hour a week.

I may toot the flash challenges horn, but it works. It simply works. And when you combine that with the common sense, insights and techniques to be found here at Hatrack, then you have an unparalleled opportunity to learn.

So, flash with us, then bring your creation to Hatrack and make it better and then put it out there for the world to see.

*the masked man unapologetically bows and steps off his soapbox startling the lone pigeon (who fell asleep waiting for the voluble fool to throw some crumbs) into flight, and walks off through the empty square*

quote:

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I wouldn't get anywhere near as much done on my sermon!

---

Hmm. Try keeping it under 500 words. You'll have more free time to write, and your congregation may well appreciate it! After all, in only 500 words you have to say it well if you;re going to say it at all.

EDIT: Our previously announced email trouble is now resolved. We are up and running.

the discussions on how we are doing things this time are prticularly contentious

38 all told, with only 1 disqualified entry

it may take a while to get all the polls up and running

quote:

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it may take a while to get all the polls up and running

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They are up and running, now.

by the way, anyone know the origin of 'mayhem'?

Etymology: Middle English mayme, from Anglo-French mahaim, from Old French, loss of a limb, from maynier to maim, probably of Germanic origin; akin to Middle High German meiden gelding, Old Norse meitha to injure

I will try for the next one (9).

Then you will have a 'Down Under' one.

Ahavah, you can't look at the current trigger until you are ready to participate. The reason is that after seeing the trigger, you have one hour and thirty minutes in which to prepare a story (or something...not everything I've written could honestly be called a "story") and sent it back.

You can read this: http://www.munsil.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=658 which gives you an overview of how the process works.

I can also tell you (I don't suppose there's any reason not to) what some of the past triggers have been like. There have been several photographic pictures...that is, the e-mail you are sent with the trigger gives you a link to a picture that may or may not inspire you (we hope it does). Last week's trigger was this: http://www.webwombat.com.au/entertainment/humour/Grumpy_Old_Coot/116ride.htm.

Several weeks ago it was this: http://www.munsil.net/flash5.gif

Here's one from about a month ago that was *not* a picture:

quote:

---

transom n.
1. A horizontal crosspiece over a door or between a door and a
window above it.
2. A small hinged window above a door or another window.

Bonus for working in the word "Alacrity" and using an example of
"Metonymy".

alacrity n.
1. Cheerful willingness; eagerness.
2. Speed or quickness; celerity.
"he accepted with alacrity"

metonymy n. pl. metonymies
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for
another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of
"Washington" for the "United States government" or of "the sword" for "military
power".

What's a Transom?
A transom is the bar or lintel above a door. In the days before air
conditioning, many offices in large buildings had windows above their
transoms, which were often left open for ventilation. A transom window left
ajar was a boon to an aspiring author, who could sail his or her
unsolicited manuscript through the opening. These days, a manuscript that
comes in "over the transom" simply means one that a publisher wasn't
expecting. Although there is a preponderance of advice against this approach
to finding a publisher, many famous books found homes with publishers
in this way.

---

Anyway, I regret that you cannot read the stories until you register with the site. The reason is simple: We want to come up with something publishable, but nothing is publishable if it has already been published for free on a web site. As long as a site is password protected with limited viewership, it is not considered publicly availably and therefore it has not been published.

You send an email to the Flash Challenge address. We send you a trigger: which is a word, several words, or even a photograph with words to inspire you to write a story based that trigger. You have 1.5 hours to write your story and send it back. The clock starts the moment you make your request for the trigger, by the way. So, don't send your request until you have at least 1.5 hours to write a story.

Okay, so then you send your story back. On Monday, we post them up anonymously onto a protected message board. Other authors read and critique your story. We have voting in several different categories. A final vote-off to choose Best Overall Flash (and the winner of that chooses the trigger for the next Flash Challenge). We play guessing games during the first few days for fun -- guessing who wrote what.

We laugh. We make fun of each other. We have a good time. And we all learn something and best yet: We write. It may turn out to be complete crap, but it's still writing and helping us near our goals to be professional, published authors.

Basically, the flash challenge is a writing exercise to stimulate your writing ability and get it in gear. Everyone who has participated these past two months has improved with each new challenge. It really is something to see. It's also growing more than we ever expected.

(BTW, I could change my sn to my real name, Amanda, but I don't think that would help much. I just stuck with what I use over at Hatrack 1830s)