FAQs

FFEditors

@FFEditors

What is a prompt and how do I work with it? Can you explain the types of prompts provided?

A writing prompt is a brief passage of text (or sometimes an image) that provides a potential topic idea or starting point for an original essay, report, journal entry, story, poem, or other forms of writing.

Prompt skeletons: The basic plot around which your story will revolve. 

String of words prompt: These words become the key components of your story and drive the plot of your story and also have to feature in your story.

Song prompt: Use the full song or part of its lyrics to convey the story. You can either include the song itself, or its lyrics can appear in the dialogue as a part of your story, or your story can be based around the song. Be creative on how you use the song/lyrics. But remember, it plays an important part in the story and cannot just be casually mentioned once and never alluded to again.

Dialogue prompt: A piece of dialogue spoken by the characters in the story that necessarily has to feature in your story, so you can work your story around this, making the piece of dialogue appear in it at any point in the story. 

Paragraph prompt: The entire paragraph or a part of it features in your story at any point in the story. 

Gif prompt: This works like a picture prompt i.e all the action, including dialogue that is happening in the gif should feature in your story. For eg. If the gif shows a character with his mouth open and an expression of shock on his face, you need to have this action expressed in your story on any character.

How should I include both the gif and the prompt in the story? 

The prompt fulfillment should be your main goal i.e. writing the story around the second part of the prompt that we will PM you. However, you will also have to work in the gif provided (that you picked) as part of your story. Judging will be based on how well you managed to integrate both parts of the prompt into the story. By including gifs/ songs we don’t mean you should actually paste the songs/ gifs in your story. We want to see the action/dialogue in the gif featured in your story. 

(check next question to know how to include gifs in the story)

How do I include the gif in the story?

Suppose we use the above gif. So, you can write a story about how two characters went cycling. You don’t have to write on the same characters/ actors featured in the gif. What we’ll look for is the action/scene background in the gif being included in the story.

How do I write an original character if there is a gif given?

You can write a story on another character played by the actor in the gif, a totally different fictional character or an original character whose actions are similar to that of the character in the gif.

Using the example in question 3 in the FAQs, again, you can write how Shanaya from Student of the Year and Ram from Main Hoon Naa ended up cycling in Goa or write about Sunny and Ayesha from Dil Dhadakne Do going cycling or write how completely original characters ended up cycling. They need not even be in Goa. They can be in the Netherlands or Timbuktu. What we’ll look for is the action/scene background in the gif being included in the story. In the above example, it’s two people cycling down a path on a clear day with palm trees on either side.

The prompt gif shows a male character, can I change the genders of the characters?

Yes. Irrespective of the genders in the gif/prompt, you can decide what you want to do with the stories. The prompts will contain the genders so that distinction between characters is possible, but the ball is in your court. Feel free to switch genders and write same gender pairing if you so wish to. In short, you don’t have to stick to anything in the gif apart from the setting and the action happening in the scene. Take the example in question 3 in the FAQs - you can have 2 men, or 2 women, or a man and a child - Anyone at all can be cycling!

Please note that the gif from “Dear Zindagi” is just used for explanation purposes. However, one-shots based on the movie or its characters will be accepted.