Inspirations & results
Welcome to Inspirathlon 2024! This is the main page for our competition. Everything you’ll need to take part is here: competition information, Inspirations and round results. We’ll be keeping this page updated throughout the competition, so be sure to check back for the latest information. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram to get the very latest announcements, which may save you an RSI from refreshing this page.
A quick reminder of the rules
- Respond to the Inspiration (loosely, if you like).
- All literary forms are acceptable.
- 800 words maximum per entry.
- Entries in .doc or .pdf, please.
- Entries must be received before the deadline.
- Send entries to submissions@eggplusfrog.com
- Put your ticket code in the subject line, please.
round 1
Inspiration:
Entry deadline:
7/10/24, 23:59 (BST)
Results:
13/10/24
Our first Inspiration is about growth, time and the natural world. Condensing 1210 days into 8 minutes, this video reveals growth as a process of movement, shape and colour, allowing us to see what human-time normally obscures. We love this video because, seen this way, each of the plants takes on a new kind of life. It makes us wonder what our own lives might look like on fast forward. (Also, we like the music.)
Best of luck. We’re rooting for you!
Results:
Judge's comments:
First and foremost, congratulations to everyone who submitted work and to the ten shortlisted authors whose work I had the chance to read. There’s nothing more exciting than seeing so many new words being generated, and it’s a real honour and privilege to be a part of this project.
Writing to a prompt has a unique set of challenges. It’s easy to end up with a number of stories written in a similar way or tackling similar themes. And, just as a plant grown with the aide of a trellis can sometimes topple when the support is taken away, work written to a prompt can sometimes lean so far into the prompt that the piece doesn’t work when read on its own. However, for this competition, I was blown away by the impressive variety of themes, styles and structures, as well as the risk-taking and innovation. I found all ten pieces on the shortlist to be compelling, ambitious, interesting and original.
So that I could approach each piece with the freshest eyes possible, I read all the shortlisted pieces at least twice before I looked at the prompt. (I was strict with myself about not peeking during the run-up.) It is a testament to the skill of these authors and the freshness of the prompt that I couldn’t guess what on earth the prompt might be from reading the shortlisted work.
All ten pieces have many aspects I admire, and so choosing and ranking my top three was an excruciating process – I was rethinking and rearranging until the very last minute. In the end, I found myself drawn to pieces that took risks, whether that was with structure, format, subject matter or even the choice of a quiet, gentle ending.
Huge congratulations again to everyone who participated, and special thanks to all the authors on the shortlist. It was an honour and privilege to spend time with your words, and I’ll look forward to reading more of your work once your names are revealed.
-Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Highly commended
(in no particular order)
PlantWatch 2024 Exclusive: The Lives and Deaths of Bekah Blake’s Houseplants
Ashleigh Adams
The Boy with A Forest in His Head
Donna Greenwood
Estate Gardening
Chad Frame
Breakfast & Other Things We Do Over and Over
Sarah Lynn Hurd
All This Choreography
Adam Ainsworth
Wisteria
Christy Hartman
The Plant Does Nothing But Grow
Elysia Rourke
3rd place
Judge's comments:
‘Whenua’ is a gentle, touching story about family, loss, life, love, and heritage, told from the point of view of a child. The voice is simple and straightforward, focusing on the narrator’s observations and questions, but the story is deep, faceted and nuanced. What’s not said is as important as what’s on the page; we readers see the grown-up story unfolding between the lines. It can be incredibly difficult to pull off happier endings, but this story does so with aplomb. The story resists the temptation to over-simplify or to overplay its hand. There is no easy, overly neat solution to the challenges the mother and her children face; the new father and his attitudes are still there. However, there is a glimmer of realisation, hope and quiet self-assertion that we can, if we desire, imagine growing larger and stronger alongside the family trees in the garden.
2nd place
Judge's comments:
‘Ruminations on High School Biology’ is a skilfully-rendered hybrid/hermit-crab piece composed of diary entries, doodles, and science homework lab notebook submissions, complete with red-pen teacher comments. The story is pure high-school melodrama – Sheryl likes Jonathan but does he like her?! – told with playfulness, wit, a fantastic sense of humour and sharp comic timing. The high-school voice is note-perfect in its ups and downs, and even though the story is a familiar one, there is so much delight in the telling; I had a big grin on my face every time I watched it all unfold through these assembled documents. As light and airy as this piece seems on the surface, an incredible amount of meticulous crafting and attention to detail has been required to make it read so effortlessly.
1st place
Judge's comments:
This piece took my breath away. It’s playful and daring and simple and wise all at the same time. I love the way it jumps through time, the way it brazenly addresses the reader, and the way it knows exactly when to lean in and when to step back, inviting the reader to fill in the gaps. I’m also in love with the way it incorporates a short playlist into the story-telling; as I got to know it and realised what an important role the music played, I stopped thinking of it as a story and started thinking of it as a mixed-media piece. The fact that the last playlist item comes at the end is a stroke of brilliance; I love endings that feel like new beginnings, and the fact that we’re invited to listen to a piece of music gives us a structured format, space, mood and time interval in which we start that new story in our minds. I felt as if the on-the-page narrator was holding out a hand and inviting me to step inside the text for that final 1 minute and 49 seconds. The more I read and listened, the more I came to feel this piece embodies the delicious hardiness of hybrid plants: each time I revisited it, I found more to enjoy.
round 2
Inspiration:
Ten Heads, George Luks (C. 1905)
Entry deadline:
21/10/24, 23:59 (BST)
Results:
27/10/24
Our second Inspiration is about personality and imperfection. What story does a face tell? How about ten faces? When we discovered this drawing, we were struck that it is both unfinished yet complete, unrefined yet sophisticated. Drawn on a page of a notebook, possibly just for practice, these ten faces have nonetheless survived the decades, passing between hands and transposed into lines of code until they are here, looking you in the face, through the screen of a device unimaginable when they were created. That’s inspirational.
Good luck. There are great things a-head!
Results:
Judge's comments:
First and foremost, I take my hat off to the shortlisted writers for their varied, thought-provoking creative interpretations of the prompt. Just as with Round 1, I read each shortlisted submission before looking at the prompt so I could get a feel for them as stand-alone pieces, without the context of the inspiration. The work was so different, that it wasn’t until the ninth piece of ten that I even remembered there was a prompt – and it was only because I encountered the name ‘George’ a few times!
Just for fun, I did my best to reverse engineer the prompt after reading the shortlist. The only things I came up with (besides ‘George’) was ‘what happens after the story ends’ and ‘representing people in images’. I give myself points for the latter; it was close. As for the former, suggesting a world before and after beyond the page is, to my mind, a characteristic of nearly all well-crafted stories and narrative poems, so I think this guess says so much about the strength of the work on the shortlist.
As with Round 1, I found the task of ranking the shortlist incredibly difficult. The pieces range in form, style, theme and mood, and I find much to admire in each and every one. The more times I read them, the more they deliver. Instead of simply picking my favourites, I had to interrogate each piece to find reasons to leave it off the final list. In the end, I ended up taking the decision to honour pieces that took a particularly interesting approach to the theme and/or leaned in to experiment and play.
A huge thank you to all the shortlisted authors; it was truly a pleasure and a privilege to spend time with your work. The decision really was hair’s-breadth close. I hope and expect to see all the pieces not published here appearing out in the world somewhere, hopefully sooner rather than later… I will be cheering them on!
-Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Highly commended
(in no particular order)
Ten Seconds
Sarah Lynn Hurd
Who knew Georgie williams
Rebecca Hurst
Entartete Kunst
Karen Walker
When everyone is cc'd
Erin Lindsay Brandt
Desilvering
Peter Tobin
But first, today, we cover
Elysia Rourke
The Many Faces of george Luks
Wendy Markel
3rd place
Judge's comments:
I grew up on Choose Your Own Adventure books and am a big fan of interactive fiction (and poetry!), so the branching, non-linear narrative in ‘The Choices We Make’ was right up my street. I love how this (deceptively) simple story is bookended at beginning and end with passages that add an(other) extra layer of depth. I found the contrasting tones in the framing and body both interesting and effective, and I love how the piece cleverly uses repetition, variation, and an imitation of a CYOA book style to make its point. I enjoyed reading this in different orders as well as straight through from beginning to end, and am amazed how much the author was able to fit into such a tight word count. This piece definitely feels like more than the sum of its parts.
2nd place
Judge's comments:
I love the way ‘Guess Who’ takes a familiar childhood game and turns it into the spine of a story about unrequited love. While many narrative poems and stories focus (spoiler alert!) on a moment of change, this piece zeroes in on a moment when the narrator makes a decision not to disturb the status quo…and oof, that last stanza had me welling up! Structurally, this poem could almost be reformatted in paragraph form; the text has a lovely spoken rhythm and prose-like sensibility. However, I like the author’s choice to tell this story in the form of a poem. For me, the three-line stanza structure was a constant reminder of the third person always between the narrator and the friend — the ex-girlfriend, the girlfriend to come, or even just that picture of Maria on the gameboard.
1st place
Judge's comments:
I absolutely adore ‘If We Were in Another Life’. It tells a very old story in a quirky, absorbing, utterly original way. Its format and ‘if we were’ refrain works brilliantly…by zooming in on the lives and habits of various sea creatures, an entire story of a human relationship and family emerges in the gaps, ellipses, white spaces and comparisons; we learn what is by hearing about what’s not. This piece is a paragon of understatement, craft, trusting the reader, and choosing exactly what to put in and, equally, what to leave out.
round 3
Inspiration:
Entry deadline:
04/11/24, 23:59 (GMT)
Results:
10/11/24
Colour, chaos and chemical courage abound in our third and final Inspiration. Predator becomes prey, underdog becomes… overdog(?) – and all it takes is a squirt of magic. What could that do for you? We love the fun of this classic Disney short film, the wonderful combination of hand-drawn animation and orchestra; it’s the perfect opportunity to finish this competition in technicolor.
Best of luck. (Remember: good writing is just the right worms words in the right order.)
Results:
Judge's comments:
Phew! The previous rounds of the Inspirathlon were a joy to read and this one is no exception. For the third time, I’m bowled over by the strength of the shortlist and the exciting range of responses to prompt.
As with the first two rounds, I read each shortlisted piece before I peeked at the prompt; I like to get a sense of how each piece feels without knowledge of the inspiration casting its shadow. This time around, I had absolutely no idea what the prompt might be. After reading the first two stories, I thought it might have something to do with wealth. After a few more, I thought it might have to do with cold-bloodedness. After more, I wondered if there might be an aspect of humans becoming animals. By the end, however, I was thoroughly perplexed as to the nature of the prompt, and loaded up the Inspirathon page with no working hypothesis. As before, I think this is a testament to the shortlisted authors’ creativity and versatility, as well as to the ingenuity of the prompt!
Overall, this project has been incredibly difficult to judge as there is so much talent, variety and creativity in the resulting work. Not only did the themes vary from the funny to the serious to the delightfully bizarre, but the form varied from flash to poetry to screenplays to footnoted hybrid somethings. In every case, the pieces were well written and engaging, so I had to dig deep to come up with my final list.
As with other rounds, I feel it’s important to emphasise that I found much to love about each and every piece on the shortlist, and on a different day or with a different judge, the results might have looked quite different.
Thank you to everyone who submitted work to all three rounds of the Inspirathlon, and huge congratulations to all the winning and shortlisted authors over the past weeks. I loved spending time with your work, and it was truly an honour, privilege and pleasure to do so. I’m delighted that so much work is shared here at EGG+FROG, and I look forward to cheering on all the other shortlisted pieces when (not if) they find a home.
Finally, I’d like to thank the EGG+FROG team for putting together this project, and for inviting me to play a part. I’m incredibly excited and impressed with the work that has come through, and I can honestly say that it’s been an inspiration for me as well.
Congratulations again to everyone who put words down on paper that didn’t exist before, and happy reading and writing to all!
-Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Highly commended
(in no particular order)
What a lovely dinner
Ashleigh Adams
I Am As Strong As An Oak Tree
Melanie Mulrooney
It was an accident
Peter Tobin
Magic Whistle
Claire Marsh
Operation Cheddar
C.A. Fulwell
Douglas
Cuyler Meade
Strawberry girls
Sarah Lynn Hurd
3rd place
Judge's comments:
‘Bird Brains’ tells its story in the form of a screenplay, so I couldn’t help but picture it all unfolding in cinematic technicolor (with a little help from the glorious picture on the cover page). It leans into many classic tropes – magic potions, animals acting as humans, prey turning predator, the world is saved…or is it?, scientists with crazy hair, pied piper ice cream trucks, etc. – in a way that’s fresh, fun, and frightening…as well as fantastically bonkers! I thought the script was the perfect medium; we ‘see’ the intended story play out like a film or animation in our heads, but the stark black-and-white of the script highlights the strangeness of the actual tale being told (and invites us to think about how strange most cartoons are if one stripped them down to dialogue and description). The more I spent time with it, the more I felt that it could be read in two different ways as two different pieces: both as a screenplay for a weird short and as a hermit crab (prose) story disguised as a screenplay. The fact that it can work on both levels is no mean feat!
2nd place
Judge's comments:
‘Liquid Courage’ is a narrative poem that gives us a glimpse of a wealthy woman facing the end of her life and trying to live out what she has left on her own terms. The voice is straight-forward and direct and the scene is simple, yet there is so, so much packed into this poem: what wealth can and can’t buy; how humans grieve and support each other; the various factors – both the ones that we create ourselves and the ones inflicted by where and how we grow up (money, class, family, employment) – that divide and connect us; how we try to control what is, in its essence, uncontrollable; and on and on… So much swirls between the lines of this poem. I love how it pushes against expectations and stereotype, and how it puts compassion, tenderness and care at its centre.
1st place
Judge's comments:
‘In Technicolor’ grabbed me immediately with its unique voice and confident storytelling. I love the narrator’s perspective – her deep, specific interests and the way she attempts to make sense of the place she’s at, her relationship with her sister, and the situation that develops as the story progresses. The writing is precise, sharp and expertly crafted. The narrator’s thoughts continually interrupt and shift, and we jump from observation to reference to ellipsis as she processes the world around her. Each allusion is perfectly placed and as they pile up and weave together, the story builds to something absolutely devastating. Every time I read ‘In Technicolor’, it delivers more: it has teeth and it doesn’t let go.
...and that's a wrap!
Thank you so much to all our readers, writers, and our fantastic judge!
If you liked Inspirathlon 2024, listen up: we have plans for FOUR mind-boggling, soul-jiggling competitions in 2025. Look out for all the info, coming very soon to an inbox near you…
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