Concepts for the Ninth TV Tropes Writing Contest

If I'm not overstepping my bounds here, I'd like to see another writing contest happen. If I'm not alone, let's get to the brainstorming, ladies and gents.

I've got a couple bad ideas bouncing around in my head right now. For example, the staggering number of people last contest who submitted without a title almost makes me cheeky enough to want to suggest a contest in which everyone uses the same title. But I recognize that feels very similar to the last contest, so I'd rather see something else.

Whatever we wind up doing, I'll go ahead and volunteer myself to host and be a judge.

edited 8th Sep '13 5:04:54 PM by FingerPuppet

I would be totally interested in participating in this next contest, though I have no ideas for it :/

Hmm... How about a story with no conflict? That would be a cool challenge to see people attempt.

That is a very bad idea.

Narrative with no conflict...

That's an oxymoron, isn't it?

edited 7th Sep '13 11:17:46 AM by ramuf

Well there are pieces that have no conflict, generally things like "vignettes" and such. However those are not stories, as stories are defined by conflicts. Also by using such a nebulous idea as "conflict" to define what can and can't be submitted might cause issues with rules and "stories" without conflicts tend to be boring so the judges would be unhappy about this too.

How about something setting based? The contestants could go to a site like Atlas Obscura, hit the 'Random Place' button, and then write a story set in or even just inspired by the location they get. Or perhaps the judges could pick a single place and every contestants story would have to incorporate it somehow.

Maybe not a story w/o conflict, but maybe one without a Big Bad? Good Versus Good perhaps?

That still sounds terribly unspecific as a prompt.

Extremely localised writing? So the whole thing has to take place in the same house/castle/small village.

Or mythologically-based setting? You find a random location on the map and write a story where that place's myths are true.

One recurring natural feature? So it has to be focused on the sea/mountains/rivers/icecaps/fields/forest/steppe anything.

Politic-based? So focused on the backstabbing and politics of some Deadly Decadent Court or even a modern setting?

Culture-based? Entirely focused on experience in a fictional or real culture.

No humans (or humanoids) allowed? An attempt at Xenofiction from the mind of something entirely inhuman. Maybe The Fair Folk with an awful lot of Blue-and-Orange Morality?

Some suggestions (to be taken separately from one another):

• All stories must end with The End of the World as We Know It.
• All stories must feature a literal use of a Chekhov's Gun.
• All stories must feature a literal use of Chekovs Gun.
• All stories must begin with a funeral.
• All stories must feature a main character with a Meaningful Name which is not revealed until the end.
• All stories must begin with an onomatopoeia.

edited 8th Sep '13 10:02:32 AM by porschelemans

Er, what's a Chekov's gun? I'm looking at the trope and I don't get it. It's a gun that isn't important? That's it?

It's something that's mentioned as a minor thing early on ('there was a gun on the wall') that becomes important later on ('X shot Y with the gun')

No that's a CHEKHOV's gun. Notice the H.

I'm talking about the one underneath, Chekov with no H. It's like a joke trope without an actual joke.

edited 8th Sep '13 11:01:21 AM by hermiethefrog

I think the second one means that your story has to involve the phaser used by Pavel Chekov from Star Trek.

edited 8th Sep '13 11:08:55 AM by ohsointocats

...Didn't notice that. Now feel like an idiot. It's a silly trope, though.

It's a joke page. Probably should be in the Just For Fun section, but I still got a laugh out of it.

OK, if I remove the silly suggestion linking to a page reminding tropers to ensure they spell the names of tropes correctly, how about some consideration of my other suggestions?

• All stories must end with The End of the World as We Know It.
• All stories must feature a literal use of a Chekhov's Gun.
• All stories must begin with a funeral.
• All stories must feature a main character with a Meaningful Name which is not revealed until the end.
• All stories must begin with an onomatopoeia.
• All stories must feature at least one use of obvious deliberate alliteration (as opposed to something like "It is idiotic to think that...") in every paragraph.
• Every story must have 26 paragraphs, each beginning with a different letter of the alphabet.
• All stories must feature a macguffin.

IMO the MacGuffin one is too vague, and #3,5,6,7 wouldn't really have much effect on the consistency of the works but might be too restrictive. Not bad ideas though.

We could decide that all stories have to involve a particular public domain character.

How about Jesus? Or God? Or Zeus? Or Hades?

I like Hades. I vote Hades towards that idea.

I vote Dracula. Or the Morrigan. Or a historical figure.

This just occured to me out of the nowhere, but perhaps each writer could do a story involving some historical figure of his country? Granted, there's the fact most writers here are Americans, so there would be problems (e.g forty stories about George Washington). Still a cool idea I think.

But in case we stick with the general public domain character idea, I vote for Odin, William Shakespeare or Dracula.

@The public domain character idea: that's kind of interesting. I actually had a similar idea with a contest related to character development where everyone uses the same protagonist with the same job, personality traits, etc., but put in different situations. Of course, that would mean we'd have to collectively create a character to begin with, so it would definitely be easier to just yoink a character that already exists.

I think the main problem with this is that it makes it kind of difficult for certain genres (e.g., it's difficult to write sci fi starring Thor without getting silly).

Same thing goes with the historical figure thing. It's hard to write a fantasy story starring Benjamin Franklin without getting really surreal or gimmicky. I think the idea of everyone using the same character is interesting, but it should be someone who can fit in a variety of stories because I don't want to penalize people for writing in the genre they're most comfortable with.

edited 9th Sep '13 12:19:25 AM by FingerPuppet

Awhile ago one of the suggestions was a story with no dialogue. I'd suggest the inverse of that: a story with nothing but dialogue. The challenge would be establishing things like setting and time solely through dialogue.