June 2023 Challenge: Secret Gate

[grundyscribbling]

Sherlock Holmes. Miss Marple. Lieutenant Columbo. Kurt Wallander. Benoit Blanc. Your preferred sleuth may vary, but there’s nothing like a good whodunnit. From the most arcane puzzle to the easiest open and shut case, all mystery novels require certain basic elements. This month’s challenge is a Matryoshka that presents you with the building blocks of a mystery novel. When requesting your prompts, make sure to specify the difficulty level you would like: Beginner (2 prompts), Easy (3 prompts), Medium (5 prompts), or Difficult (7 prompts). Contact the mods to request a prompt set or sets.

While the prompts are elements of a mystery, your fanwork does not need to be a mystery—use the prompts as you see fit. As June is Pride month, we have a special stamp for fanworks featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

How a Matryoshka Challenge Works

Matryoshka dolls are also known as Russian nesting dolls, with each doll containing a smaller doll inside. A Matryoshka challenge works similarly, requiring creators to fit their response to each prompt within a fanwork already underway for previous prompts.

You will receive multiple prompts for a Matryoshka challenge via email. You will include each prompt in your story. (See below for how to use the prompts for formats other than fanfiction.) Prompts will include directions about when you can open the next prompt.

You can request multiple prompt sets if you want. Each set will contain unique prompts.

If you want to create a fanwork other than fiction for a Matryoshka challenge, you can use any of the following approaches to your prompt set:

• You can, of course, use the Matryoshka rules for fiction. For example, if you are making a fan vid, you could open each prompt one at a time to guide the storyline and selection of video clips.


• You can use each prompt individually to create a series of flash fanworks using either the prompt title or the full prompt (or a mixture of both). For example, if you request a Medium prompt set and want to make fan art, you could do a series of five sketches that fit each of the five prompts.


• You can open all of the prompts at once and make a fanwork that incorporates them all in some way, using either the prompt title or the full prompt (or a mixture of both).

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 July 2023. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Many thanks to Varda delle Stelle for this month's lovely set of stamps!

Comments

[hhimring]

The link "Contact the mods" is not working, either here or in the SWG challenge post. (It seems there ought to be such a section in the FAQ, but there doesn't seem to be?)
I suppose the idea is to use this contact form?
https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/contact

[dawn_felagund]

Looks like a copy/paste error on my part when doing the markup for the challenge text. Grundy will fix it as soon as she can. In the meantime, anyone looking for the contact link, it is the link Himring posted above.

Thanks for letting us know!

[grundyscribbling]

Fixed!

[grundyscribbling]

That is what I get for posting in a hurry and not checking all the links... Thanks for letting us know, fixing now!