DFTBA Short Story Contest

Greetings all!

Enclosed here is the second of our blog posts from the judges. Marcy Collier - A judge who took part in our debut contest, last year. A professional critic for the Western Pennsylvania branch of the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators as well as being the editor of the Golden Penn newsletter (a blog she regularly contributes to can be found here and her twitter is here).

Applied 21st Century Research Creative Nonfiction - What?
by Marcy Collier

“The prompt for the DFTBA Short Story Contest for 2013 is to write a story about something that was proposed, researched, discovered, developed or invented in the last 13 years. Many of the contest applicants have found the prompt confusing. If you haven’t read a lot or any nonfiction lately, the theme is no doubt daunting. But let me ease your fears and give you a few suggestions.

Having a background in journalism, I find straight nonfiction easier to write and have sold these types of stories to magazines for the children’s market. My current work-in-progress is based off of a lady from a community near where I was raised who accomplished some pretty amazing things in the 1930s.

The possibilities for story topics are endless. Personally, I think the key is finding a subject that holds your interest. Many people don’t read nonfiction books because they associate factual books as boring stories. They think of those awful books their elementary school teachers made them read. But a great nonfiction book is far from boring. It can bring a story and real events to life.

When you read the newspaper today or watch the news, think, really think about the stories you’re hearing. I’ll bet you wouldn’t have been able to make up some of the things you hear.

Now, think about a subject that interests you. Use your favorite search engine to do a little research. What books come up on that particular subject? Go to your local library or bookstore or download a sample of a story that sparks your interest. Delve into many more subjects until you find that particular one which excites you. The best writing stems from a topic that you as the writer will get fired up about because your passion for the subject will show through to your readers.

Here are a few books that have moved me to read more on certain subjects. I write for children, so my picks are from the children’s market. 
We Are the Ship by Kadir Nelson

(Book blurb as noted on amazon)

The story of Negro League baseball is the story of gifted athletes and determined owners; of racial discrimination and international sportsmanship; of fortunes won and lost; of triumphs and defeats on and off the field. It is a perfect mirror for the social and political history of black America in the first half of the twentieth century. But most of all, the story of the Negro Leagues is about hundreds of unsung heroes who overcame segregation, hatred, terrible conditions, and low pay to do the one thing they loved more than anything else in the world: play ball. Using an “Everyman” player as his narrator, Kadir Nelson tells the story of Negro League baseball from its beginnings in the 1920s through its decline after Jackie Robinson crossed over to the majors in 1947. The voice is so authentic, you will feel as if you are sitting on dusty bleachers listening intently to the memories of a man who has known the great ballplayers of that time and shared their experiences. But what makes this book so outstanding are the dozens of full-page and double-page oil paintings - breathtaking in their perspectives, rich in emotion, and created with understanding and affection for these lost heroes of our national game. We Are the Ship is a tour de force for baseball lovers of all ages. Winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Award 2009 – author award and illustrator honor; Winner of the Sibert Medal Home Page Award 2009.

You can find the link here

This book is absolutely amazing. As a kid, I grew up near where the Homestead Grays played baseball. Today, I look out the window of my office and can see the Homestead Grays bridge. Local history is fascinating to me. This book is beautifully written and illustrated depicting the heroes of the negro baseball leagues. I’ve read many books about the Homestead Grays and the story of their struggles of overcoming adversity to do what they loved most – play baseball. You could take any character from this book (players, managers or fans) and start asking yourself questions. Draw up a character sketch and a story outline. Relate their accomplishments to current ball players and the struggles they face. Think of the stories you could come up with!

Strong female protagonists fascinate me. When I take a step back and see how much women have done to progress equal rights over the last 100 years, their stories inspire me. This next book kept me up at night reading.
Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming

(Book blurb as noted on amazon)

From the acclaimed author of The Great and Only Barnum—as well as The Lincolns, Our Eleanor, and Ben Franklin’s Almanac—comes the thrilling story of America’s most celebrated flyer, Amelia Earhart.

In alternating chapters, Fleming deftly moves readers back and forth between Amelia’s life (from childhood up until her last flight) and the exhaustive search for her and her missing plane. With incredible photos, maps, and handwritten notes from Amelia herself—plus informative sidebars tackling everything from the history of flight to what Amelia liked to eat while flying (tomato soup)—this unique nonfiction title is tailor-made for middle graders.

Amelia Lost received four starred reviews and Best Book of the Year accolades from School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Horn Book Magazine, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

You can find the link here

I’ve read many stories on female fliers. This narrative is both compelling and interesting with a lot of heart and soul. The accomplishments made by young fliers like Amelia Earhart and many women you’ve never read about are unbelievable. Most of these women died young. The breakthroughs they made for women in aviation in a boys’ only club were compelling and admirable. Consider taking a young aviatrix and placing her into a steampunk story or futuristic encounter. Let your imagination fly away!

The third book on my list is Blizzard!: The Storm That Changed America by Jim Murphy.

(Book blurb as noted on amazon)

With his powerful and intriguing narrative style, Newbery Honor Book author Jim Murphy tells the harrowing story of the Blizzard of 1888. Available for the first time in paperback.

Snow began falling over New York City on March 12, 1888. All around town, people struggled along slippery streets and sidewalks — some seeking the warmth of their homes, some to get to work or to care for the less fortunate, and some to experience what they assumed would be the last little snowfall of one of the warmest winters on record. What no one realized was that in a very few hours, the wind and snow would bury the city in nearly 21 inches of snow and bring it to a ferocious standstill.

You can find the link here

I was fortunate enough to sit in on a five-on-five session last year with Jim Murphy at the Rutgers One-On-One Plus conference. He is as brilliant as he is nice. His books are fast-paced and the stories and characters he brings to life are both compelling and intriguing. I read this particular story during a snowstorm, which made it even more frightening. The what if scenarios are endless. Think of all the weather disasters we’ve had recently. You could take any number of these scenarios and write about what happened during or after the storm.

I hope that I’ve given you some things to consider when choosing your subject for the contest. Don’t allow the theme to scare you. Use it to launch real-life characters or events into an exciting story that only you could write. Let your mind carry you off into new and fascinating worlds. I can’t wait to read what you’ve written!”

Hank's Tumblr: NERDFIGHTERIA CENSUS!

edwardspoonhands:

John and I were talking yesterday and we realized that, though we have a somewhat distinct and ever-changing image of what Nerdfighteria is and who it is composed of, we aren’t precisely sure whether or not that image is correct.

Basically, there are a lot of things we don’t know about the…

• Question: Hey, I was just wondering if the fact that Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend changes the prompt of artificial limbs being used in the olympics. in any way? - kashadow
• Answer:

  I don’t think so. Keep in mind though, that the list of things I said could be prompts aren’t the only ones. If you gave other ideas, and can find some research on them done in the last 13 years, run with them.

• Question: Hello, I'm having some difficultly finding relevant articles for citation. Not that I've written my story yet, but in terms of searching for inspiration, these papers are quite illusive. Websites like google scholar and JSTOR are great for finding the articles themselves, but because I'm not registered to be able to see them (nor am I too willing to pay to read each one individually) I am struggling to find some quality source material. Any advice would be saintly, thanks. - Anonymous
• Answer:

  Hi there!
  
  I can understand your troubles. Let me say first that lots of popular journalism reference articles very often, so you have some help there. For example, when SciShow did its piece about Warp Drive they linked to a google document containing their references. And since the video did a lot of the explaining about the content of the article, you can use that as a definite starting point for your story.

  Also, you can get lots of free access to lots of scholarly articles via Google Scholar, the Directory of Open Access Journals, Student Pulse, HighWire, Questia, and freefullpdf. In fact, you can find a list of many accademic databases at the Wikipedia article “List of academic databases and search engines”.

  Furthermore, your local bookstore or library will have access to a large variety of creative non fiction, so you’ve got a great resource there, I’m sure. They may not call it “creative non fiction” so asking for that may get you some curious glances, but you can use your own judgement. See here for information on what to look for.

  Hope this helps!

  God Bless, Best Wishes, and DFTBA.

Greetings one and all,

I see that we have lots of new followers joining us recently! Welcome one and all. This post comes to you in two parts. Or perhaps, one and a half parts. I say that because the first part is something of an introduction to the second part and… okay lets get to it.

Part One: The Email

Recently, I sent a round-robin email to all our judges that asked them two questions.

1. What are your top three favourite creative non-fiction books that have been published in 2000 or after?
2. What kind of stories could you imagine using those books as a jumping off point?

And so here, in part two, is Aaron Simon’s response to these questions. To see more of Aaron’s work, click here.

Part Two: Aaron Simon

“Creative nonfiction’s not usually my thing.

Scratch that.

Nonfiction’s not usually not my thing.

We’re so inundated with the goings-on of real life - you might say we even live in it - that, man, at the end of the day, you just want to curl into the fetal position, grab a bottle of scotch, and either bawl yourself to sleep or read a book that’s not set on this planet.[1]

That said, I do occasionally venture out of the fiction bubble. I’ll pick up a book on Zen philosophy, or a human interest piece, or, if I’m feeling particularly daring, an incredibly dense - but enjoyable - book on the universe. Reb Trimmer asked for my top three of the 2000s so far, so here they are:

1. Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, & Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye. Long title, right? Well, around the time I was in my sophomore year of undergrad, I was really coming to the point where I knew that my religion up until then wasn’t for me. I knew that Islam and Christianity weren’t for me, either, so I did some poking around and found Soto Zen, then Zen in general. Now, I ain’t saying I’m a good practitioner of it, but I am saying that it makes a good amount of sense, and Brad Warner does a great job of chopping away at the ritual and ornamentation and showing what it is, based on Dogen’s work.

2. The Lost City of Z. It’s like an adventure novel, something you’d see by Arthur Conan Doyle - when he wasn’t writing about spiritualism or detectives - or H Rider Haggard. The catch is that it was written by a New York Times journalist, and tracks a Victorian explorer’s quest to find a long-mythologized lost city in the heart of the Amazon.

3. What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal. Laina Dawes writes about her experiences growing up as an adopted black woman in the heavy metal scene. The book talks to women like her from the metal and punk scenes, and discusses the genres’ pasts, present, and futures, and what those women have gone through. Obviously, it’s a human interest piece, and you have to be at least somewhat interested in the histories and scenes and cultures of the two genres to get anything out of it.

Second on Reb Trimmer’s to-do list was to to talk about what sorts of stories could be created from these.

Ultimately, I’m a believer in letting a writer stare at something long enough and - hopefully - she’ll come up with a story. However, I tell that to people, and follow up with “It works for me - most of the time,” and, judging from the amount of obscenities and rude gestures I get in return, that doesn’t quite work for other people.

So, personally speaking, I’d probably get the most traction out of The Lost City of Z. Something like a modern-day explorer going through the jungle to track down ruins spotted via thermal imaging, but runs into some really spooky shit. The exploration turns into a fight for survival as his party is hunted down by - something.

At the heart of the trouble, though, isn’t finding creative nonfiction, or journalism, or anything else. It’s making a story into a story. I mean, come on! There’s already a narrative - what else do you need?

Well, let me tell you what I think about real life: It’s boring. Dull. Yeah, even the exciting bits are pretty boring. Life can’t hold a candle to fiction when it comes to excitement. And why? Because there’s always another side. There’s always some logical reason for things to happen why they do, and, when there’s a logical reason, there’s consequences.

You don’t have to think about all of the stormtroopers who died in the first Death Star in the Yavin system, nor do you have to think about their families waiting for them after their tours of duty ended.

You don’t have to think about how severely screwed up the fact that a giant great white shark prowling the waters off a beach in Jaws is. (There’s no way there’s only going to be big sharks. There are going to be big everything. That shit don’t happen without other weird shit happening.)

And you know why? Because it’s fiction. It’s not real. We are free to place ourselves in a universe far, far away, where those dudes are supremely evil, and it, frankly, doesn’t matter what the consequences are. Or, we’re free to go “Yay! The big, mean shark is dead and the two guys lived!”

So, perhaps you should take a look at a piece of nonfiction that you really like and say, “How can I turn this into a rollicking good time? How can I turn this not into a narrative, but a rollercoaster ride?”

Will you run the risk of not being Literary because you’re not writing in a Realist mode? Will you not attain a position in the hallowed halls of academic literature because you’re not another Jonathan Franzen?

Probably. But, man, I hate to break it to you, but even the most melodramatic parts of your day-to-day life don’t always have some existential meaning. Sometimes stuff just happens.

Hell, some days go by when you’re not faced with an existential breakdown brought on by… I don’t know. What’s the buzz in the Times best-seller list these days?

Sometimes, you just have to have fun.”

[1] That’s not particularly true. Most of the time, it’s a high-gravity beer.

• Question: Can we reference other fiction? for example could you talk about the three law of robotics? - hollytheboredstudent
• Answer:

  You can reference it, nod to it etc, but there is a very strong rule against fan fiction, so avoid basing your entire story on another author’s universe. Obviously all cultural projects involve blending, so don’t be too worried by this rule. I trust Nerdfighters to know the difference between fan fiction that’s set in another author’s worlds and simply referencing culturally relevant material.

• Question: I started writing a short story for the short story contest about GMOs (Genetically modified organisms) till I looked more into it and found that the first one was invented in 1972 but GMOs are still big newest today because the government is doing lots of research on plants and animals to genetically modify them for many uses such as using modified bugs of espionage. What I was wondering is since there is still so much research going on today about them, do GMOs fit into the prompt?- Alex DFTBA - Anonymous
• Answer:

  Hi there Alex,

  So I just had a little look through JSTOR and indeed there is plenty of research that’s been conducted recently on GMOs. Not only that, but if you go to Google Books, you’ll find lots of recently published creative non fiction on the subject. So don’t worry, they’re definitely something you can use. Hope this helps!

• Question: I just wanted to tell you that the prompt this year is very fascinating and I got really excited to give it a try this year. However, with the deadline being August, and the fact that I'm due to have a baby *any* day now, writing this year just isn't feasible. However, I wanted to say, LOVE the prompt, it got me super excited, and I'm sorry that people seem to be being difficult about it :) - beatlechicksteph
• Answer:

  Congratulations on your future baby! And thank you very much for the support! It is very much appreciated! I’m glad there are people such as yourself out there who appreciate the prompt’s idea.

Dear all

Just a short message to help people along with the prompt. It seems some people are still having some issues with it, so to grease the wheels a little, I thought I’d introduce a very slight extension. The definition of “21st Century Research” can now include creative non fiction books.

What do I mean by this? Well there’s lots of kinds of non fiction out there, from textbooks to guidebooks to cookbooks etc, but creative non fiction often engages with its subject matter in a fashion to make a particular point or to explore something in a way that perhaps you hadn’t previously considered.

So I’m quite happy for you to take your prompt from something you learned about through a creative work of non-fiction. Crucially though, this means no textbooks. To give you some things to work off, here are some great pieces of creative non-fiction that I love.

The Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin

Immigrants - Your Country Needs Them! by Philippe Legrain

Mission to Mars by Buzz Aldrin

Moscow 1937 by Karl Schlögel

50 Facts That Should Change the World 2.0 by Jessica Williams

Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening by David Hendy

A True History Full of Romance: Mixed Marriages and Ethnic Identity in Dutch Art, News Media, and Popular Culture (1883-1955) by Marga Altena

A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements of Frances Perkins by Penny Colman

These are just a few. If you go to your local bookstore or library, you’ll find lots more. Maybe if you want to go down this route, find a biography of someone you are inspired by and write a fictionalised account of part of their life. Just remember, creative non fiction isn’t the same as general reference!

Thank you, God Bless, and DFTBA

• Question: Wow, I really appreciate you reblogging anonymous guy passive-aggressively bashing other nerdfighter's legitimate concerns. That's really mature of you. /sarcasm Look, anonymous dude: writing romance or fantasy is not easy. Do you *really* think Charlotte Bronte or JRR Tolkien are stupid just because they prefer to write stories that spark their imagination, rather than writing them based off a term paper? All we want is for a prompt to be genre-inclusive, in true nerdfighter spirit. - fangirldiaries121
• Answer:

  First off, I didn’t “reblog” anything. If you look at the format of the post, you’ll see they are questions people have asked. I’m not going to refrain from answering them.

  Second, as I’ve already discussed, you can write both fantasy and romance within the prompt. You look at reseach that has been done around the subject, and use it for inspiration. EG, look at some of the pieces I highlighted a little while back.

  Can you imagine the kind of dramatic tale you could write about cybercheating. Is it real? Has someone hacked my wife/husband/partner’s account? Or are they actually communicating inappropriately with someone online?

  Or what about the research into group interventions in college romances. How would a couple respond to the group’s intervention? What would it mean, what would it do?

  What about the article that researches elves and their representation in the environmental movement? There’s really great potential there.

  Or Banshees in Ireland. There is something ripe for discussion and inspiration.

  Thirdly, I don’t think the Professors, PHDs, and Masters graduates would appreciate you calling their hard written work “term papers”. These aren’t just random pieces of work, they’re peer reviewed, academically sourced, intensively written articles. The work isn’t just something someone had to come up with during the last rush of the end of term.

  Fourthly, if you want to spark your imagination, go to JSTOR and look up some of the things you find interesting. Chances are, someone else does too, and has written articles on it. There’s loads on there, from articles on steampunk to sibling rivalry, from missile defence to mole habits. Seriously, academia has a very wide reach. Just look around. JSTOR, Google Scholar, there are all kinds of services. If you have a specific thing you want to write about, and you can’t find something, send me a message and I’ll see if I can help.

• Question: What are the legalities surrounding the competition? Will authors still retain ownership of their characters, plot, setting etc? Who will "own" the story at the end? - Anonymous
• Answer:

  Yes, the authors will still own the story. We just reserve the first time digital publication rights. Although as a matter of courtesy, we’d appreciate it if the authors didn’t publish the stories on their blogs etc, simply because if everyone did that, then the entire anthology would be available elsewhere.

• Question: What is the maximum number of stories that are going to be compiled into the resulting anthology? - Anonymous
• Answer:

  That largely depends on the judges. The rule I am making is that a story must be approved for anthology publication by a majority of the judges. So I can’t give a specific number because it depends on what the judges say.

• Question: Oh, also, the prompt is a fascinating focus and an overall great idea. Really encourages people to think about certain ideas and challenges presented by modern technology. Much MUCH better than, as some folks want, a non-specific, unfocused free-for-all that doesn't require them to think. Just saying! - Anonymous
• Answer:

  Thank you! I’m glad people think it is useful to have a focus.

• Question: Hey, are there any particular sub-genres or themes that will be disallowed in the contest? For instance, elements of horror or dystopia? Does each story have to be "up-beat"? - Anonymous
• Answer:

  Horror and Dystopia are indeed perfectly acceptable. The stories don’t have to be “up-beat” especially, you can go down a darker route if you so choose. As long as it fits in with the prompt, you’re perfectly able to go in that direction. Just keep in mind the content restriction vis-a-via the 15 rating system mentioned in the rules, and keep any gore etc down to a level that that rating system envisions.

DFTBA 2012 anthology (2012) | Book reviews from Bullet Reviews

Like any anthology, the DFTBA anthology has its hits and misses, but is worth checking out in case you ever need to feel good about humanity.

Last year’s anthology is reviewed by the good people of Bullet Reviews. See what they thought!