A few months ago, I saw an ad for a BART short story contest for BART’s 50th Anniversary. BART for those not in the Bay Area is Bay Area Rapid Transit. BART is the U-Bahn style metro in the Bay Area. I love BART so I needed to be a part of this project, or at the very least try!
So I saw the story’s length, which was a CHARACTER limit, not a word limit. This is because the stories will be printed out on receipt paper and they don’t want the stories to be too long. My first step was coming up with a concept and I had just watched Everything Everywhere All at Once and I was like, I can do that! Multi-dimensional traveling, alternative realities. I am on board!
Then of course I wanted it set in the East Bay because I felt a lot of the stories would probably center on San Francisco, which is fine, but I wanted a good East Bay story and being an East Bay resident we can sometimes be overlooked.
I then used the story structure guide I created from watching this course on Wondrium to make sure I had all the plot beats there. That even if the prose was ready-to-wear, the story itself would still be there.
I got the email that I had been one of the 30 winners selected and I was so hyped!
You can read the story here! Hope you like it!