Writing Challenge - 2 - Belief

May 14, 20178 min read

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Published: May 14, 2017

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Every month or so we bring you a new challenge to expand your creativity and writing skills.

Challenge yourself with these writing prompts or exercises designed to broaden your writing scope or simply inspire you. Everyone is welcome to join!

This Challenge is now Closed to NEW entries - continuations of existing ones are accepted though

Stay up to date with the entries with Belief - Divine Accounts, a journal dedicated to keeping you posted with the newest chapters and entries.

With the success of Challenge 1 now under our belts, it's time to move on to the second of our group activities.
The latest poll tells me that you guys are excited to go for another Story Challenge and so without further ado I deliver the new proposal.

Challenge 2 - 'Belief'

"Gods and Goddesses are nothing new, throughout history mankind has created deities or beings to believe in, in order to explain existence.

The world is constantly changing however, and these beings, once revered, must give way to new beliefs - changing and evolving to adapt, or dying in a time that no longer needs them."

Your Task

Browse the 'characters' below and write a short extract from their point of view. Poets, you may also join! You may write more than one for this challenge, you are no longer limited to one character - but remember, if you end up working in collaboration with other writers in this, it's more considerate to them, and easier to maintain, if you only pick one character to write for.

A god, goddess, or other entity 'dying' or 'fading'
A god, goddess, other entity who has managed to evolve or change to fit the times
An emerging god, goddess, or entity
A devotee, priest, priestess

We give you full creative freedom to take the brief outline above and run with it in whichever direction you feel. As always this is a challenge you are encouraged to work with others on as well!

Consider the world you are creating and the place your narrator fits in to it. How are they feeling, how have they survived? What was life like before the great change, and what caused it? Is it a natural cycle they knew about? Are they just going to sit back and allow themselves to be forgotten or are they going to do something about it? What about our devotees? What are they doing to follow these new gods, or help the old ones?
A whole new world of possibilities awaits!

Challenge Specifications

For extra challenge-points, please TRY NOT TO write for an already 'known' god or goddess from an ancient culture or already existing one. This is as much a creation challenge as a writing one. I don't want to read about Zeus living it up as a stripper-club owner in Las Vegas - ok maybe I do now that I wrote that, but try to steer clear of the already known pantheons in favour of creating a culture or setting of your own if you can. I'm not saying you can't here, but try to step outside the box of 'already done ideas'. Having said that, if you write Zeus as a stripper-club owner, please link me to your work! I hope his club is called the 'Shock-Factor'.

If you DO choose to simply explore an old god, goddess, or entity, do not mention who/what they are overtly, so the readers can play the guessing game!

Word count - max 2,000 - 4,000 for prose - this limitation is a bit more free for poets as I currently am unaware of what is considered an 'average length' and would like your feedback on that.

Stay strictly limited to gods, goddesses, or other 'worshipped' entities - I do not want any generic vampires, werewolves, or other creatures of myth popping up here.

You may write in any POV style.

Please do not use any existing characters for this if you have them. WORK MUST BE NEW - made specifically for the challenge.

You are given full creative freedom to do as you wish with the general outline of the setting provided above

Important Things To Keep in Mind Before Submitting (work)

Please make it clear this is for the group challenge

Please submit to the new 'Writing Challenge' folder - all other rules apply.

This activity will always be here for you to take part in - but any entries beyond the close date will not make it into the end feature journal

This challenge will be active from May 14th to the end of July

A Note on The last Challenge

Our previous challenge is still open to collaborators currently in it, despite the introduction of the new one. All challenges will remain open beyond their end date.