Resources
From tips and tricks to product updates and inspiration, explore our resources to learn how to grow as a Vocal creator.
Challenges
FPS: Falling Leaves Challenge Winners
Welcome to the first stop in our Fall Poetry Series! How do we judge a haiku? Beyond the rhythm and the 5-7-5 rule, it’s less about counting syllables and more about catching a feeling. Does it paint a clear picture? Make you laugh? Make you stop for a second? The best ones don’t need to be picked apart, they just land softly and stay with you.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
SWS: The Shape of the Thing Challenge Winners
Welcome to the penultimate winners announcement in the Summer Writing Series! Sometimes it’s not what’s there, but what isn’t, that changes everything. For The Shape of the Thing Challenge, we asked writers to explore the weight of absence. Those shadows, echoes and almosts that still leave a mark. What came back were stories that showed just how real the unreal can feel.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
SWS: Somewhere Between Here and There Challenge Winners
Some poems show up in the middle of things. You’re halfway through a step, or catching your breath before the next word, and suddenly it all feels clear. That’s exactly where this challenge took us.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
SWS: Everything Looks Better From Far Away Challenge Winners
From oceanside leave to echoing stage lights, this challenge took us to places that seemed picture-perfect at first glance but carried something heavier underneath. For Everything Looks Better From Far Away, Vocal writers gave us sunsets that didn’t quite soothe, conversations that missed the mark, and homes that felt unfamiliar even after returning. These were stories where beauty sat side by side with tension and where characters stood just outside of where they wanted to be.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
SWS: This Is How I Remember It Challenge Winners
For This Is How I Remember It, we asked for poems built from memories that stay with us. Vocal writers returned with afternoons that still glow with sunlight and dust, the scent of someone who lingers long after they have gone, and houses filled with both laughter and loss. Some memories came through clear and sharp, others fractured and blurred, but all of them carried a truth that felt undeniable.
By Vocal Curation Team6 months ago in Resources
Introducing the Fall Poetry Series
Challenges on Vocal have always been about more than winning. If you joined us for the Summer Writing Series, you saw what happens when a strong creative spark meets the power of this community. Thousands of entries, new voices discovered, and a steady rhythm that kept writers returning to the page.
By Justin @ Vocal6 months ago in Resources
SWS: Leave the Light On Challenge Winners
For Leave the Light On, we asked for stories that unfold over a single night. Between sunset and sunrise, you gave us rooms thick with memory, countdowns that tightened with every passing second, forests alive with prayer and doubt, and hauntings that refused to stay buried.
By Vocal Curation Team6 months ago in Resources
SWS: Instructions for Disappearing Challenge Winners
For Instructions for Disappearing, we asked for poems written like guides to vanishing. Not recipes or roadmaps, but rituals, whispers, and warnings. You gave us disappearances that were bodily and brutal, quiet and dreamlike, haunting and necessary. Some slipped away gently, others tore themselves out line by line.
By Vocal Curation Team6 months ago in Resources
SWS: The Summer That Wasn’t Challenge Winners
For The Summer That Wasn’t, we asked for stories about the seasons that fell apart before they began. About the summers where nothing went right, or worse, nothing ever really started. You delivered elegies and unravelings, ghost stories and quiet griefs. Stories soaked in nostalgia, shaped by absence, and sharpened by the weight of memory.
By Vocal Curation Team7 months ago in Resources
SWS: Things You Can’t Say Out Loud Challenge Winners
Welcome back to the Summer Writing Series, and to a challenge that asked you to cross a line most of us avoid. For Things You Can’t Say Out Loud, we invited you to give voice to the things that usually stay tucked away. The quiet fears, the buried truths, the words that sting a little too much to say aloud. From quiet reckonings and family tensions to grief, shame, and raw defiance, these poems didn’t hold back, and neither did you.
By Vocal Curation Team7 months ago in Resources
SWS: Light Breaks Water Challenge Winners
Welcome back to the Summer Writing Series, and to our first poetry challenge winners announcement of the season. For this challenge, we asked you to write like sunlight touching the surface. To find the stillness before the ripple, the moment where something shifts without warning.
By Vocal Curation Team7 months ago in Resources
