Are you able to inform a significant and attention-grabbing true story out of your life in simply 100 phrases? That’s the problem we posed to youngsters final fall with our first-ever 100-Phrase Private Narrative Contest, a storytelling type popularized by Fashionable Love’s Tiny Love Tales collection.
The reply, we found, was a resounding sure, so we’re bringing it again for a second yr.
We’re not asking you to put in writing to a specific theme or to make use of a particular construction or model, however we’re on the lookout for quick, highly effective tales a couple of specific second or occasion in your life. We need to hear your story, informed in your distinctive voice, and we hope you’ll experiment with model and type to inform a story that issues to you, in a method you take pleasure in telling it.
And, sure, it’s doable to do all that in solely 100 phrases. For proof, simply have a look at final yr’s 13 successful entries. We even have a step-by-step information full of recommendation that’s grounded in 25 glorious 100-word mentor texts, in addition to a rehearsal house, revealed for final yr’s contest, that has over 1,000 student-written mini memoirs. As a result of that house was so profitable, we’re retaining it open for this yr’s contest. We hope college students will use it to get inspiration, experiment and encourage one another.
Check out the complete tips and associated sources beneath. Please put up any questions you might have within the feedback and we’ll reply you there, or write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com. And, contemplate hanging this PDF one-page announcement in your class bulletin board.
Please learn these guidelines rigorously earlier than submitting an entry. You could find extra particulars within the Regularly Requested Questions part beneath.
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Your tiny memoir must be a brief, highly effective, true story a couple of significant expertise out of your personal life.
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It should be 100 phrases or fewer, not together with the title.
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You should be a pupil ages 13 to 19 in center faculty or highschool to take part, and all college students should have father or mother or guardian permission to enter. Please see the F.A.Q. part for extra eligibility particulars.
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The work must be essentially your individual — it shouldn’t be plagiarized, written by another person or generated by synthetic intelligence.
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Your piece must also be unique for this contest, which means, it mustn’t have been revealed anyplace else on the time of submission, similar to in a faculty newspaper.
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Maintain your viewers in thoughts. You’re writing for a household newspaper, so, for instance, no curse phrases, please.
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Just one entry per pupil is allowed. And whereas lots of our contests permit college students to work in groups, for this one you will need to work alone.
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New for 2023: As a part of your submission, you will need to additionally submit an “artist’s assertion” that describes your course of. These statements, which is not going to be used to decide on finalists, assist us to design and refine our contests. See the F.A.Q. beneath to study extra.
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All entries should be submitted by Nov. 1, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific utilizing the submission type on the backside of this put up. Entries submitted through the feedback part is not going to be learn by our judges.
Assets for Lecturers and College students
How do you write a tiny memoir? Take a look at these useful sources:
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A step-by-step information for writing a 100-word narrative: This information walks you thru six steps, from studying examples of tiny memoirs, to brainstorming your individual significant life moments, to writing and modifying your closing piece.
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Writing prompts: Our step-by-step information has a associated PDF filled with prompts to assist college students brainstorm “significant moments” from their lives. If these aren’t sufficient, you will discover many extra inquiries to encourage you in our up to date record of 525 Prompts for Narrative and Private Writing.
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A “rehearsal house” for youngsters to experiment: Final yr, we revealed a pupil discussion board asking, “What Story From Your Life Can You Inform in 100 Phrases?” In it, we lead college students by just a few questions, and supply just a few examples, to indicate them how. As a result of that house already has over 1,000 feedback, we’re retaining it open for college kids to make use of once more this yr. We hope that college students will use it as a spot to brainstorm matters and check out methods, in addition to discover inspiration and encouragement for his or her writing.
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Two lesson plans impressed by Instances columns that inform tiny tales: Our fundamental inspiration for this contest is Tiny Love Tales, a collection from the Fashionable Love column that invitations readers to submit 100-word tales about relationships. Here’s a lesson plan that may enable you educate and study with this column. You can even discover quick memoirs within the Metropolitan Diary column, the place readers submit tales about New York Metropolis. Here’s a lesson plan and a writing immediate you need to use to show and study with that characteristic.
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A private narrative writing unit: This unit contains mentor texts, writing prompts, lesson plans, movies and on-demand webinars that educate the abilities important for any sort of narrative writing. (Sure, they have been developed for our unique narrative contest, however the suggestions for making your writing shine apply to this format too.)
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Our contest rubric: These are the factors we are going to use to guage this contest. Maintain them useful to ensure your piece meets all the {qualifications} earlier than getting into.
Regularly Requested Questions
Nonetheless have questions? Publish your question within the feedback or write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.
QUESTIONS ABOUT WRITING
What’s a private narrative?
A private narrative is an essay about an expertise out of your life. It’s a sort of nonfiction writing, which implies that no matter you select to put in writing about must be true. And take into accout the “private” in private narrative; it’s best to inform your individual story, not another person’s.
Private narratives can take many various types, however for this contest, we’re asking you to inform a story. Meaning it’s best to deal with a specific second. There must be a transparent narrative arc — a starting, a center and an finish — that’s pushed by a battle of some form, which finally will get resolved or spurs an try at an ongoing life change.
Take into account, nevertheless, that any story out of your life can work. It doesn’t must be essentially the most dramatic factor that has ever occurred to you; it could possibly, as an alternative, be about baking brownies along with your brother, or a dialog you had on Tuesday’s bus experience to high school. What issues is that readers perceive why this second was significant to you and maybe take away some higher which means or message they’ll relate to.
Sure, all this may all be achieved even in 100 phrases, and our step-by-step information, and final yr’s winners, can present you ways.
How can I make my 100-word narrative stand out?
Whereas we’re asking you to put in writing your private narrative within the type of a narrative, we’re not asking you to make use of a specific construction, model or tone. We hope that is the place you’ll have enjoyable.
We need to hear your story, informed in your distinctive voice — with the phrases and phrases you employ in your on a regular basis life and your particular humorousness and emotion. You may experiment with method, similar to dropping your reader right into a scene, utilizing particulars to indicate as an alternative of inform, integrating dialogue purposefully, or making an attempt out artistic storytelling types (learn final yr’s successful story “Child Tim” to see what we imply).
And keep in mind, with solely 100 phrases to inform your story, each phrase issues. The editors of Tiny Love Tales counsel approaching your piece as you’ll a poem, taking part in with sound, punctuation, sentence size and repetition to make every syllable rely.
You could find examples of all of those writing strikes and extra in final yr’s successful essays, in addition to in our step-by-step information for writing a 100-word narrative and our private narrative writing unit.
I don’t know what to put in writing about. The place ought to I begin?
Everybody has a narrative to inform. Don’t imagine us? Check out final yr’s successful mini memoirs to see the vary of matters — massive and small, severe and lighthearted, emotional and laugh-out-loud humorous — that college students wrote about.
Then you definately may reply to some writing prompts that get you enthusiastic about significant moments from your individual life. Begin with our pupil discussion board “What Story From Your Life Can You Inform in 100 Phrases?” and this PDF of prompts taken from our step-by-step information. For extra inspiration, scroll by our record of 525 Prompts for Narrative and Private Writing that features questions on childhood reminiscences, friendship, journey, social media, meals, sports activities, faculty and extra.
After you’ve responded to a couple questions or classes that curiosity you, you may select one that you simply loved writing about to show into your closing memoir.
The place can I discover examples of private narratives in The Instances?
The Instances is stuffed with private narratives — on life, love, household, rites of passage, our animal mates, dwelling with disabilities and navigating nervousness.
For examples of mini memoirs like those we’re asking you to put in writing for this contest, have a look at Tiny Love Tales, a collection from the Fashionable Love column that invitations readers to submit 100-word tales about relationships, or Metropolitan Diary, a long-running column of quick reader tales from New York Metropolis.
Plus, there are the winners of our first-ever 100-Phrase Private Narrative Contest and our conventional Scholar Private Narrative Contest from 2021, 2020 and 2019.
QUESTIONS ABOUT JUDGING
How will my 100-word narrative be judged?
Your work might be learn by New York Instances journalists in addition to by Studying Community employees members and educators from round the US. We’ll use this rubric to guage entries.
What’s the prize?
Having your work revealed on The Studying Community and being eligible to be chosen to have your work revealed within the print editions of The New York Instances.
When will the winners be introduced?
We plan to announce winners in early January 2024.
My essay wasn’t chosen as a winner. Are you able to inform me why?
We usually obtain 1000’s of entries for our contests, so sadly, our workforce doesn’t have the capability to offer particular person suggestions on every pupil’s essay.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RULES
Why are you asking for an Artist’s Assertion about our course of this yr? What is going to you do with it?
All of us who work on The Studying Community are former academics. One of many many issues we miss, now that we work in a newsroom reasonably than a classroom, is with the ability to see how college students are reacting to our “assignments” in actual time — and to supply assist, or tweaks, to make these assignments higher. We’re asking you to replicate on what you probably did and why, and what was arduous or simple about it, largely in order that we are able to enhance our contests and the curriculum we create to help them.
Another excuse? Now we have heard from many academics that writing these statements is immensely useful to college students. Stepping again from a bit and making an attempt to place into phrases what you needed to specific, and why and the way you made creative decisions to try this, may help you see your piece anew and work out easy methods to make it stronger. For our employees, they provide vital context that assist us perceive particular person college students and submissions, and study extra concerning the situations below which youngsters all over the world create.
We gained’t be utilizing your statements to decide on our finalists, or publishing them alongside the successful work. As an alternative, they may strictly be for our employees to learn. If we later resolve to put up one thing about pupil course of utilizing these statements, we are going to ask in your permission earlier than quoting you. In different phrases, that is pretty casual; simply be your self and be trustworthy in telling us as a lot as you’ll be able to about the way you labored and why.
Who’s eligible to take part on this contest?
This contest is open to college students ages 13 to 19 who’re in center faculty or highschool all over the world. Faculty college students can not submit an entry. Nevertheless, highschool college students (together with highschool postgraduate college students) who’re taking a number of faculty lessons can take part. College students attending their first yr of a two-year CEGEP in Quebec Province may take part. As well as, college students age 19 or below who’ve accomplished highschool however are taking a niche yr or are in any other case not enrolled in faculty can take part.
The youngsters and stepchildren of New York Instances workers usually are not eligible to enter this contest. Nor are college students who dwell in the identical family as these workers.
My piece was revealed in my faculty newspaper. Can I submit it to this contest?
No. We ask that your 100-word narrative be unique for this contest. Please don’t submit something you might have already had revealed on the time of submission, whether or not in a faculty newspaper, for one more contest or anyplace else.
Whom can I contact if I’ve questions on this contest or am having points submitting my entry?
Depart a touch upon this put up or write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.
QUESTIONS ABOUT TEACHING WITH THIS CONTEST
I’m a trainer. What sources do it’s important to assist me educate with this contest?
Begin with our step-by-step information for getting into this contest and try final yr’s successful entries.
We even have a full unit plan for private narrative writing. It contains writing prompts, mentor texts, lesson plans and on-demand webinars that educate the narrative writing abilities important for this contest.
Do my college students want a New York Instances subscription to entry these sources?
No.
College students can get free entry to Instances items by The Studying Community. All of the actions for college kids on our website, together with mentor texts and writing prompts, plus the Instances articles they hyperlink to, are free. College students can seek for articles utilizing the search device on our residence web page.
Nevertheless, if you’re inquisitive about studying extra about faculty subscriptions, go to this web page.
Submission Kind
We’ll put up the submission type right here on the day the competition opens, Oct. 4, 2023.
