The Writers Challenge
Each year since 2019, the Project has had a little challenge running.
The challenge is to produce an entire Tale in exactly 100 words. A ‘Wilson’s Tale’ brought up to date, using words wisely and frugally to spin the yarn, as we do in our rewritten Tales, but in exactly 100 words.
The challenge has broadened, firstly to the public and now to the World. It started as an entertainment at our annual dinner. Now it is a global competition with a small prize.
In 2025 we re-introduced a category for school age children.
In 2024 we trialed the concept of the Audio Tale.
The First 100Word Tale.
The first Tale in the first edition of Wilson’s Tales of the Borders was ‘The Vacant Chair’. It is 4200 words of tragedy, suspense, and joyful ending. Here it is morphed into 100 words – and with a humorous ending.
"The Vacant Chair"
Poor Tom Elliot.
Snatched by smugglers on his 18th birthday. Enslaved on a Dutch man o’war Forced to fight the English, then the French, who took him prisoner. Finally escaped – now aged 30.
Battled his way back, to the Christmas feast where his parents still kept a vacant chair awaiting his homecoming. Finally, surrounded by his loved ones, he sank exhausted into the chair that had stood unused these 12 years past.
All watched horrified as the chair legs crumbled, throwing Tom backwards to crack his head on the hearthstone. He lay motionless.
“Dead!” cried his dad. “Murdered! By woodworm!”© Joe Lang 2019. All Rights Reserved
