What's the 100 Story Challenge?
A writing exercise to build consistency, community and find what your readers love most. (Updated 20th Oct: What’s Not Cheating)
If you've been on Twitter in the last century, you may have noticed Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush's #Ship30for30.
It's a challenge, a cohort-based training program, and more importantly a lively, fun and supportive community of writers.
This 💯 Story Challenge is inspired by that, but for Fiction.
It's an experiment for asking questions
- Which ideas do people like most?
- Which craft exercises produce the biggest gains for me?
- What genres do I have fun with most?
If you join, use the tag “100 Story Challenge” and tag a friend as well. that’s how I got Kristen to write this beauty: Blowing on the Wind.
The Challenge Rules:
They’re rules and they’re also suggestions.
It’s important to do what works for you, to keep your words flowing and for you to keep having fun. All our challenges are about fun.
100 Stories in 100 Days, at least 100 words.
You can write longer, if you want to, and find that you’re in the zone. We don’t want to cut a good story short.
But don’t raise your bar too soon, it may become harder later to maintain. Take it a day at a time. Some days I write 100 words others 500, it’s all about the flow and having fun while I’m doing it.
Some of my stories are one offs and others are serials, because I want to explore the story world or the characters longer. It’s up to you.
It’s easier to maintain a 100 words a day for the long haul.
Publish Where You Find Easiest
This has been raised a couple of times — it’s not just you, so don’t worry.
- Paul, self-publishes all his pieces to keep things easy.
- I publish my stories in Redemption, Microcosm and my personal profile.
- But, you’re welcome to submit your stories to Microcosm for this challenge.
- I would also like to publish them in SciFi Shorts and Fantasy Shorts once I meet their requirements.
It depends on if you can match their submission guidelines with your stories, if you want that extra effort and you don’t mind the delay.
With publications, you need to be okay with your stories being scheduled or approved at a later time. Some writers prefer a story a day published that day, and that’s fine. My preference is building my audience, so I count my story done once submitted.
Like this one, I wrote this story days ahead of its publication date and was aiming for Transgressive Thursdays.
And I’ll write more in this series for their monthly theme. I like the idea of hitting multiple targets with one story.
Practicing in Public
A major part of this challenge is to test out your fiction ideas.
To write 100 ideas and see which ones your readers like the most. To test then invest. Our second challenge will dive into your best ten ideas and make more of them.
So share your stories at least on Medium but also on Twitter. If you’re not yet a writer on Medium, sign up with my link and you’ll support the creation and growth of these challenges.
You can also follow me on Twitter (I’ll follow back) for retweets of your stories ask me any questions you want. I’m always happy to clarify or offer suggestions or a kick in the pants.
Please use the #100stories hashtag on your tweets to make them easier for others in the find. You can also tag @our100stories, the challenge account, for extra likes.
You don’t have to write or publish a story every day
You could batch and schedule. Or catch up if you miss a couple. Life happens, we’ve gotta be flexible.
Especially if you’re submitting your stories to publications, which are good for audience growth. But you lose control of the publication date.
Consistency is the goal, though, and the aim is to encourage daily writing, not necessarily daily publishing.
Mainly, it’s a challenge to become more prolific.
How you wangle that is up to you. But the more you put out there, the more you can learn from reader feedback and engagement.
It’s not cheating to batch your stories — it may avoid burnout!
I batched and scheduled my stories. Especially because I wrote serials and many other writes who won the challenge did to. Including Jann and a Notion template to manage it all and track my engagement data — especially for the next challenge that’s coming.
You don’t need to use Unsplash Instant
Unsplash Instant is a Chrome extension that replaces your New Tab screen with beautiful editorial images from Unsplash.
I use it because I find it easy and inspiring. The random images push me in different directions and keep me from sticking to my comfortable genres.
My mind is also very visual, so beautiful images immediately conjure up scenes and stories. I did study filmmaking after all, so it’s in my blood.
But you can, like Paul Mansfield does, make use of Pixabay or Pexels too. I also pair it with Notion’s Web Clipper to store images I like and want to write about later in my 100 Story Challenge dashboard.
Tagging Other Writers ❤️
Something I’ve noticed the community do is link to other challengers. I heartily approve and try to do the same with each of my own stories.
So take your favourite stories, tag the author and drop a nice preview link at the end of your story so the reader has somewhere good to go.
It’s a good way to keep the community together, to help each other build momentum by saying:
“I thought your work was cool enough to share.
Keep writing.”
This is also a good way to share the challenge and maybe inspire another writer to take it on, build new muscles and a portfolio of ideas and stories.
Tagging Your Stories
I recommend: “Fiction” to start your Top Writer journey.
If you don’t use this tag, you won’t start counting toward it. This is the only one that will give you an official Top Writer email.
Other useful tags are “Flash Fiction” or “Microfiction.” They also have Top Writer lists but no official email.
Then use the “100 Story Challenge” to join the community. It will help us find your stories. You should also hit the Follow button underneath the heading to get these stories in your feed.
The more you read other writers’ stories, and highlight, clap and comment, the more they’ll read yours. This is a social network so get stuck in and you’ll feel more part of the group.
The encouragement from everyone really helps keep up with the challenge. Writing can be very lonely at times. So cheer each other on!
Other than those genre tags are good to use: “Fantasy”, “Horror”, “Science Fiction” although a lot of my stories are just “Fiction.”
But this matters more when you publish to genre specific publications like Sci Fi Shorts and publications that sort by genre like Redemption Magazine.
Tagging me, @Zane Dickens
It’s up to you, but I like it for a few reasons:
- I like to see who’s joining in. Please tag me in your first story so I can add you to the 💯 Story Community List. You’ll get one read at least, probably a few highlights, a friendly comment and maybe a new follower.
- It helps me find your stories
- As much as I liked to pretend otherwise, I have an ego, and it’s great to feel like I’ve inspired writers to experiment and share more.
💯 Story Community Lists
There are two lists now.
- To get on the First Stories List, tag Zane Dickens in your first story. I think if you edit your already published story and tag me I’ll still get a ping.
- To get on the second list, you need to be nominated by a community member using this form.
You’ll get a notification if I add you to either list.
I’d appreciate a self-serving clap on these lists to help spread your stories and mine. I still don’t know how Medium Lists work exactly, but I’m sure it helps.
You Can Write To Any Prompt You Like
Your stories can be unprompted, or inspired by Unsplash Instant, or instigated and challenged by the awesome prompts from Microcosm.
🌲 These prompts are evergreen. You can pick one and write to it, any time.
Community Feedback and Testimonials
That is the nice thing about this challenge: you learn a lot from experimenting with genres and your sources of inspiration. — Jann Christoph von der Pütten
The challenge absolutely helped me connect with so many other writers. I’ve made connections that have turned into friends and opportunities.
…my Medium audience has done nothing but steadily grow over the past several months. — Bradan
I used to publish once or twice a week, now I publish almost every other day. Writing habits are so important for growing and producing.
…following through and completing it was the most proud I have felt as a writer all year. It pushed me and showed me there was so much more in me as a writer …!
— F. Leonora Solomon
The 100 Story Challenge is one of the most demanding writing challenges I’ve ever undertaken. But despite that, I loved it. Not only did Zane Dickens’ challenge encourage my productivity and continuity, but it also helped tighten my writing and widen my vocabulary. — Cathylouise
I would encourage anyone who’s afraid of putting their short stories out there to give this challenge a try. — Lark Morrigan
I’ve interviewed a few challenge winners too
I love learning from other writers how they went about their challenge, how they found time to write, and what they learned at the end.
- F. Leonora Solomon shares her tactic for getting herself to the end in Leonora Competes With Herself to Win Her 100 Story Challenge or read her
- T.K. McDonald was the first to complete the challenge, A Short Interview with 100 Story Challenge Winner T.K. McDonald 🏆
- Bradan not only finished his 100 Story Challenge, he looks to be taking on his own version of the 10x10 Challenge too! Good luck Bradan! 🚀
Challenge Finisher Write Ups and Reflections
Cathylouise is taking it on a second time:
Other resources:
- The 100 Story Divider
- The community (and tag: “100 Story Challenge”) — click follow!
- Learn which of your story ideas should grow
Thank you to Smillew, Preeti, Bridie D and others for your feedback and questions that helped improved this article.
