Taming the Muse

May Challenge
Hello everyone! *waves*

It’s time for our May monthly challenge! There are a few changes this time around. We're setting the word length to 1000+ words for all the monthly challenges.

We're also going to start allowing the challenges to be incorporated as part of a larger piece - so not all will be one shots. So, unless a challenge specifies it's a one shot, you can use it as part of a longer piece. Both fan fic and original are welcome.


So, without further ado...here's this months challenge:


Write a story/chapter using the Third-person, omniscient narrative style.


Entries will need to be received by midnight 31 May. at GMT -12. We’ll issue a closed post as we do with the weekly prompts.

When you post your entry, please tag it for the challenge.

You do not have to be a regularly contributing member of the community to participate. This challenge is optional and open to everyone.

• You are allowed to use the monthly challenge in conjunction with any of the weekly prompts this month as long as you follow all the requirements for both. So, for this month, you would:


• Include the weekly prompt in your story


• It would be a 1000 words or more told using the narrative style of Third-person, omniscient


• It would be posted by the earlier of the two deadlines (midnight Saturday, or midnight on the 31st).

If you're not quite sure about the specific narrative style...here's the info from the Wiki:

The third-person omniscient is a narrative mode in which both the reader and author observe the situation either through the senses and thoughts of more than one character, or through an overarching godlike perspective that sees and knows everything that happens and everything the characters are thinking. Third-person omniscient is virtually always the narrative mode chosen for sprawling, epic stories such as J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Fielding's Tom Jones, or the great Russian novels of the nineteenth century.

However, while a godlike all-knowing perspective necessarily uses third-person omniscient, there are other uses for this narrative mode. Third-person omniscient simply means that the narrator can tell the reader things that the main character does not know, or things that none of the characters know, or things that no human being could ever know (e.g., what the first conscious creature felt like as it climbed out of the primordial ooze). While third-person omniscient is associated with sweeping, epic stories, not all third-person omniscient narratives stray beyond the characters' knowledge and experiences. For example, Jane Austen's novels are third-person omniscient in that the narrator describes the thoughts and feelings of more than one character, but Austen's novels typically focus closely on a very small number of characters and their milieu.

Third-person omniscient point of view can change viewpoint characters instantly, by contrast with the third-person limited point of view, which limits narration to what can be known, seen, thought, or judged from a single character's perspective.


An Example can be found here from the book "The Bad Beginning" by Lemony Snicket:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4231846

Good luck!

Let us know if you have any questions.

~tamingmods (~calypso)