Historical Rulers Challenge

Time again for another official Modern Bard challenge for the Fall!

Historical Rulers Challenge

Rules: 

The topic of this challenge will be to write a story about or involving a historical ruler. It can be a king or queen, or a roman emperor, or barbarian leader, it doesn't matter. It doesn't even have to be directly about them as long as it involves them in some way. Use your imagination! You can do historical or alternate history too if you want. 

As usual, let's keep the stories under 10,000 words, but going over a bit is still acceptable if needed ;-)

When:

The due date for this challenge will be December 19th. That's when I will need the story entries. 

As always, if you are not currently a writer for Modern Bard and wish to be one, feel free to comment below or email me at sirwilliamssquire@gmail.com to let me know you want to join in! Feel free to ask me any questions you might have.

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Also, on another topic, The Voices Beneath will be back from hiatus next week and will resume the normal posting every Wednesday (just like all the TV series!) So I hope you will all enjoy continuing Mordred's story. And if you haven't read it yet, now is the perfect time to get caught up! 

I hope to see you all again soon, and look forward to seeing what everyone will come up with for this challenge.

Cheers, Hazel 

Dictionary Word Challenge/ Call For Writers

Well, it's nearly the end of September and it's time to post the stories for the Dictionary Word Challenge for this month. If you missed it, I picked ten words at random from the dictionary and we had to incorporate them into a story. I'm really excited to post the stories because we got some very cool and varied results from the words that were picked:

1. Carpenter

2. Ginger

3. Natural

4. Aloft

5. Stretcher

6. Mire

7. Justice

8. Feat

9. Nomad

10. Throb

Now for the posting schedule:

Shadows: Caroline Keeth-- September 29th

Easy: Abigail Leskey-- September 30th

Conventional Issues: Hazel West-- October 2nd

And if you still want to do this challenge, feel free to do so and post on your blog or wherever and drop me the link so I can read what you came up with :)

And now it's time for our next:

Our next challenge was provided by Abigail and is going to be to write a story about a historical ruler. Whether it's a Roman emperor, a queen or barbarian chieftain, anything goes. This challenge will run though December. I'll be back with more specific dates in a later post after the Dictionary Challenge stories are posted. If you're interested in joining in the next challenge, let me know now, so I can start getting a head count.

Until then, I hope you will all come back to check out the current challenge stories :-)

Dictionary Word Challenge

I previously said that I would provide more information about the Dictionary Word Challenge, so here it is!

What is it? 

This challenge involves me picking 10 words at random from a dictionary that will then have to be used in a story. I've posted the words below, and what you will do is take them and write them into a story. It can be about anything as long as you incorporate the words in it somehow.

You can come up with a completely fresh story for this challenge, or you can do this with characters already established. I find these are easier to do if you already have a theme. There's no wrong way to do it. Feel free to use your own already established characters, or even write a fan fiction with the words, whatever you want to.



Rules (or whatever you want to call them):

-These are meant to be short fun writes that aren't meant to be too stressful. If one you're working on doesn't work out, try again! Let's keep the stories under 5,000 words this time.

-Yes, you can use variations of the word (tense and such) but it has to psychically appear in the story. Like you can't just use the idea of the word. And if the word has more than one meaning you are allowed to use any meaning.

-This challenge is open for anyone who wants to enter. I'm aiming to post the stories of all the participants here on Modern Bard, but since this isn't an official challenge, if you have your own blog or a site where you post stories, feel free to post them there instead. If you do, send me the link and I will link it to the post with the finished challenges.

When:

Since this is a short challenge it's only running through September. I'm going to post the stories from the 28th to the 30th.

If you are going to send me the story itself, I'll need it by the 27th at the latest.

The Words

Here are the official words of the challenge:

1. Carpenter

2. Ginger

3. Natural

4. Aloft

5. Stretcher

6. Mire

7. Justice

8. Feat

9. Nomad

10. Throb

Comment below if you want to join in the challenge. Please also note if you are planning on sending me the story or if you are going to just send me a link. If you are sending me a story, please email me at sirwilliamssquire@gmail.com so that I can get your email and you can send me the story when you're finished.

And a note for the people who will be giving me links: You can either email me or just post them in the comments here. Also feel free to post your stories wherever you are going to at any time. I will just add the links to the challenge post when I get the others up =)

If you have any other questions, please let me know, and I really hope to see what you come up with for the challenge!

Slainte, Hazel

Classic Authors Challenge/ Call For Writers

It's nearly time to post the results of Modern Bard's most recent challenge! This time we wrote stories that involved a classic author, and I think we've done some pretty interesting stuff this time, if I do say so myself! Here's a schedule of the titles and when they will be posted:


The Curse of Oz: Mara A. --August 26th
Nothing That Needs Poisoned: Abigail Leskey--August 27th
A Grimm Profession: Hazel West--August 29th

Like last time, I hope you will all join me here at Modern Bard next week to read the challenge stories!

And that leads to another:

Instead of jumping right into another long challenge, I decided to do a fun short one to end summer with. Anyone who wishes to join in is certainly welcome, I will post more specific details later, but here's a little about it:

It's going to be a Dictionary Word Challenge. I have done this before and found it to be really fun. How it works is I will pick 10 words at random from the dictionary and we will all have to write a story using all the words. 

I'll try to have specific info about this challenge up by September 1st, but if you are interested in participating, please email me or comment below with your email address so I can add you to the list of interested people. You can email me at sirwilliamssquire@gmail.com 

Again, hope to see you next week, and I hope you will consider doing the next challenge with us too!

Slainte, Hazel

Modern Bard's Summer Writing Challenge

First of all, I would like to apologize for the fact that I do not have a new chapter of The Voices Beneath up today. This week has just been so busy, and I'm doing the "Sweet Summer Read-A-Thon" for my other blog, which is taking up all my spare time and I'm in the course of editing my latest novel so writing Mordred's story just didn't happen. Since we're in the climax, I didn't want to just throw a chapter together last minute, so I might put it on hiatus for the next couple weeks while I finish writing the story entirely and have time to fix it up. So I apologize for that, but it will be better in the long run :-)

And that leads us onto the topic of this post! If you've been on Modern Bard, I'm sure you have seen our Spring Challenge about writing retellings, and now we have a brand new challenge for the summer!

I'm always looking for writers eager to join in, so if you would like to, here's what it's all about:

Write a Story Involving or About an Author

These are the rules:

-The author (an actual author, not just a fictional character who is an author) doesn’t have to be a children’s author, or even a favorite author; but they do have to be considered a classic writer. 

-They can be the protagonist, or not, but they MUST be very prominent in the story.

-The story doesn’t have to be historically accurate; you can even put a fantastical twist on it! i.e. Lewis Carroll went to Wonderland, Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol because he encountered ghost-like aliens, etc.

If you would like to join in on this challenge, the date to finish is August 20th. Please email me if you want to participate at sirwilliamssquire@gmail.com so I can give you further details and answer any questions you might have! I would love to see you there.

Another fun announcement is that I made an official Modern Bard blog button now, (seen below). If you write for Modern Bard or like to read it, feel feel to snag it for your own blog. I don't know how to do the html, so you can do it the old fashioned way and copy and paste it, just remember to link it back to Modern Bard!

Modern's Bard First Challenge / A Call for Writers

Greetings Readers!

I am very excited to announce Modern Bard's first official Writing Challenge; the produce of which you will be able to enjoy through next week. One of the things I wanted to do when I first started Modern Bard was to be able to invite guest writers to write for it, because, while writing is good by itself, if you never share it, you never get any better at it. So I had an idea to make Modern Bard partly a critique group, and how I wanted to do that was to create writing challenges that other writers could participate in to try out some different things that maybe they wouldn't normally think of writing. It's a great way to exercise your writing abilities and fun to share them with others to get constructive criticism.

My first challenge I did kind of as a test run, so it was by "invite only". (I tested it on a couple of my writing friends, thanks ladies ;-)  but since it seemed to go off well, I'm opening my next challenge to any interested writers. Which comes to the other part of this post:

If you are interested in becoming a writer for Modern Bard and want to participate in our challenges, I'd love to hear from you! Here's why you might want to do this:

~It's a way to get your writing out and seen by people who might not normally see it.

~I encourage all my writers to read and comment on every challenge story so you'll always receive feedback.

~You get a reason to write something for a reason ;-)

~Everyone gets a chance to choose a challenge topic.

~It's a good way to meet and support other writers which is always fun since we tend to stick to ourselves a lot of times.

I'm going to be sending out info on the next challenge in June, so if you want to get in on it, email me at sirwilliamssquire@gmail.com so I can put you on the list. Summer is a great time to write, especially if you're still in school, so I'd really like to get as many people as I can to participate in the next challenge!

But back to May's Challenge!

I challenged my fellow writers to write me a retelling of either a fairy tale, a ballad, or something from mythology and I am really excited to share the results with you. Here's a short schedule for when each story will appear:

The Red Violin: Mara A.--May 27th

Death and Honor are in League: Abigail Leskey--May 29th

Ronan of the Noble Heart: Hazel West--May 31st

You can find more information about the stories and writers up on the tabs under "Stories" and "Writers" where the links to the stories will be posted when they come up. 

I really hope to see you all at Modern Bard next week. We would all love to hear what you think of our first challenge!

Until then,

Slainte, Hazel