The following are not prompts, but examples of the sorts of things, tonally and formally, we’d like to see.

• 1 mistranslation

• 2 concrete poems that require the use of mirrors

• 3 stories that include images, not as illustrations, but as integral parts of the stories themselves

• 7 answers to the riddles in The Exeter Book

• 5 manifestos

• 1 story that would make Kathy Acker laugh

• 1 story that would make Donald Barthelme cry

• 1 Heian-period pillow book

• 2 stories or poems that require folding or cutting the paper on which they are printed

• 2 ransom notes

• 2 responses to ransom notes

• 3 stories or poems in the form of rules to an imaginary game

• 30-40 drawings for a corner-of-the-magazine flip book

• 1 story in musical notation

• 1 phenomenology

• 1 collaborative essay in the form of tracked changes to a shared document

• 2 poems that require legal advice

• 2 poems that require bodyguards

• 5 stories without characters

• 1 distich

• 2 monostichs

• 2 stories written in bad faith

• 1 mathematical proof

• 5 transcribed field recordings

• 7 diagrams of horrible machines

• 1 treasure map to a real-world object hidden by the author

• 1 narrative in the form of a maze

• 1 maze in the form of a narrative

• 1 story that requires us to print in the gutter

• The Voynich manuscript, decoded

• The contents of a specialist’s drawer

• 5 poems or stories in the form of equations

• 1 time bomb, ticking or otherwise

• 10 calls for moratoria

• 10 calls to arms

• 1 story designed for easy disassembly and transport

• 3 show bibles for unairable sitcoms

• 1 ode written in code

• 15 aphorisms

• 10 fractals

• 2 contradictions

• 2 contraindications

• 1 piece you’d tell a child not to put in its mouth

• 1 threat to national security

• 3 comics

• 4 labyrinths created using parentheses, footnotes, endnotes, etc.

• 1 bundle of hate mail tied with a shoelace

• 1 bundle of love letters tied with a licorice lace

• 1 story told entirely in screenshots

• 3 of the saddest sentences ever written

• Something that will stump our graphic designer

• Something that includes a Greek chorus

• Addenda to Minima Moralia 

• 3 choose-your-own adventures

• 3 adventures you chose on your own

• 4 pieces that require you to show your math

• 1 invitation to an invitation-only bacchanal

• 1 poem in anagrams

• 1 poem in charts

• 1 story in novels

• 2 stories or essays that require active reader participation

• 1 “real” essay on the subject of “fake” essays

• 1 “fake” essay on the subject of “real” essays

• 3 poems that would make good pets

• 3 instants

• 3 instances

• A dictionary in miniature

• An encyclopedia in miniature

• A thesaurus in miniature

• 1 story that is entirely true

• 1 story that is entirely truthful

• 1 story that is entirely “true”

• A couple good jokes

• 2 fits

• 2 starts

This list is a continually updated version of Artifice’s original wish list for issue 1, archived here.