Back at the start of the year, I entered Kent Shawn’s yearly fun, Short Story of Doom competition, fished in by the brilliant promotional video, and the insanely tongue-twisting full title of the competition. A scan of the purgatory that is my Trello story ideas board and I thought I found a good fit. A couple of days of writing and editing later I submitted my story and then promptly forgot about it, cracking on with other projects. Then in May…
I learned my story Guess Who? had won first place. I can tell you there is no more entertaining way of discovering I’d won something than Kent and the team’s results vid. I truly took a double-take when I heard my name and story called out. Priceless. You can read the full story over on Kent’s website along with the fantastic second and third place stories from Jasmine Dayton and Sako Tumi.
I must admit I do feel a little guilty that my little tale of horror may have ruined game night in Kent’s household. If it’s any consolation I’m not planning on writing any other stories featuring popular board games. I mean, what’s the point Monopoly and Operation are already nightmares.
Fast forward a couple of busy months and the winning writers caught up with Kent and the judges to discuss the stories and the challenges of writing generally.
For those nerds like myself who like a good puzzle and are interested in the logic problem posed by the game’s rules, I highly recommend a read of Rafael Prieto Curiel‘s article Cracking the Guess Who? board game to get a feel for why the story unfolds like it does, given the chosen antagonist and protagonist.
Big thanks to Kent for organising this competition. Be sure to check out his website and YouTube channel for his books as well as some great writing resources.
