So girls and boys, now are you ready? I'm issuing this challenge not so much as a competition but rather as an encouragement to get out there and WRITE. The beauty of this fandom is that it is has such a thriving and supportive and engaging community. It's one of the busiest fandoms on either AO3 or Tumblr and I think that will continue on, albeit in lesser amounts, well after the final movie of the trilogy.

So, this challenge is for both established Reylo authors and anyone who wants to try to write but never quite pulled the trigger. And the rules would work for any fandom, really, so if there's something else that's captured your creativity go out and write for that too! Here's what you need to do:

Rule 1: write a minimum of 300 words a day. That comes to about one page of a Word document. If you can write faster, write faster. If not, aim for as close to 300 words a day as you can.

Rule 2: And you have to write every single day. Trust me, there's time. 5 minutes here or there, or dedicate an hour to get down to business.

Rule 3: We're going to be writing one chapter one shots. If you're bursting with more ideas than a 1-shot, write those down and keep them simmering on the back burner to turn your 1-shot into a series. IMO series do just as well if not better than multi-chapter pieces, and they offer greater flexibility because you can have more time jumps or slightly different worlds and events etc.

But, for this challenge, we're doing a relatively short and self-contained one-shot. It can be a little open-ended if you like, just make sure the ending is satisfying on it's own and not a super cliffhanger.

Rule 4: So what's the challenge word count? I'm going to give a big range of 1,200 – 7,000 words. Very compelling stories can be written in just over 1k of words, and I find that anything longer than 7k can be tricky to maintain momentum if you're not an experienced writer. Of course, if you ARE experienced and suffer from the same sort of word diarrhea that I do, write as long as you want to, as long as it's still a 1-shot.

Rule 5: Your story should contain only one primary scene. Don't feel like you have to do too much. A single conversation interspersed with action can easily span a thousand words. A love scene (and I'm hoping to see lots of those), well… we don't want to rush our happy couple, do we? If, when you're figuring out your story, you find yourself gravitating to having more than 1 major scene, ask yourself why? I think there's a good chance the whole first scene can be dropped and you're thinking too much about the exposition. I've already touched on this in ch1 of this story, but remember that you don't need all that exposition. We know who these characters are, we know the universe, we know why they're in opposition with each other. Which brings me nicely to rule 5…

Rule 5: You're only allowed 5 sentences and up to 150 words of exposition. This is the backstory. The static part of a story where you tell the reader where and why the characters are at their starting point.

This is the boring stuff. The stuff that makes readers yawn and scroll until something actually HAPPENS on screen.

If you find yourself absolutely unable to write without knowing the how and why of before the curtain rise, here's what to do: write a letter to yourself explaining in ugly, bullet point notes how the characters came to be. Keep it at 300 words or less (and really, it should BE less). Make it factual and write it in such a way to get your own thoughts in order but not anything anyone would want to read (hence the ugly bullet points) so you don't feel tempted to break rule #5 and actually put this in. This is purely for your own notes.

So, 5 sentences, 150 words. In chapter 4: technical aspects I'm going to give you some tips on your opening paragraph, and you can probably guess that your 150 words of exposition aren't going to fit in there. It's best to sort of weave them in with the rest of the narrative, ala:

In TFA audiences didn't immediately see in Rey's first scene that she was both: a lonely scavenger who was force sensitive and whose parents had abandoned her. No, we only saw one of those three at first and then the other two were revealed in the narrative at later stages, right?

Rule 6: spend 2-15 minutes pre-writing

This goes back to the pre writing I talked about in ch1 and then the outlines coming in ch3. You need to know what you're about to be writing about. The level of detail that you need to know before you start typing will vary on many factors, experience and personality, but for this challenge you're going to spend 2-15 minutes scratching down some notes on what's about to happen before you write it. And then you write it.

Rule 7: maximum of 10 minutes editing once a day

Ideally you won't be editing at all until you type THE END but, if you absolutely must, you are allowed to spend no more than 10 minutes at the end of every day editing what you have done. No more. No more often. Then, after THE END, take however much time you need. Try to edit openly and don't re-edit the same paragraph again and again. Wide strokes then medium strokes then publish.

Alright, them's the rules:

300 words a day minimum

write every day

one-shot & simple

1,200 to 7,000 word length

one primary scene

no more than 150 words of exposition

2-15 minutes pre planning

max 10 minute editing

Got it? Good! Now onto the next part: outlining. 6 Outlines you're welcome to use to get you from here to there.