How quickly a year goes by! We have a treat for the final #WriterPrompt of the year but first a look at the micro-writing workshop's beginnings.
How #WriterPrompt Came To Be
Short Story Day Africa’s online writing workshop was launched back in April, 2015 with a gleaming line of text running across an image of an ominous alleyway;
“He wasn’t from around here, not really.”
Those words invited the damned and the lost and the aspirant, who came from far and wide with pockets full of pretty words and devastating imaginations. They breathed fire, and #WriterPrompt was a living thing.
Beneath the editorial gaze of SSDA’s devoted team, daring writers learnt how to interpret prompts in new and surprising ways, how to shock and inspire awe, create believable, loveable, detestable characters and how to navigate all those tricky bits like grammar, punctuation, sentence structure or flow. All in under 250 words. That’s all you get, and boy, do they make every word count.
Fellow writers, or indeed, voracious readers are able to stop by and drop their constructive critique, overwhelming praise or their simple thoughts into any given offering. This creates a productive learning environment for the writers – and at the end of the allocated time window – the piece which blows everybody away the hardest is chosen for publication on SSDA’s website.
To date, SSDA has published a multitude of winning pieces and unearthed diamonds.
The Twist In The Tale
The recently re-launched, re-vamped #WriterPrompt introduces a new twist – your stories may be critiqued and judged by guest authors. Some of the selected prompts have a new guest – and don’t expect them to pull any punches.
For the last #WriterPrompt of the year we decided to end with a bang, roping in Wole Talabi to be our Guest Writer. Here's a little bit about this fascinating writer.
WOLE TALABI is a full-time engineer, part-time writer and some-time editor from Nigeria. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Lightspeed, Omenana, F&SF, Terraform, Abyss & Apex, The Kalahari Review, the anthologies Imagine Africa 500, Futuristica Vol. 1 and a few other places. He edited the anthologies These Words Expose Us and Lights Out: Resurrection and co-wrote the play Color Me Man. He currently lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. You can keep up with him on Twitter too: @WTalabi or catch up with him on his blog.