Join us for Rāmere Shorts

Your invitation to join us for a weekly writing exercise

Friday is our favourite day here at the Book Council. And not just because the weekend is looming. It’s the day we play #RāmereShorts.

Around 9am every Friday (Rāmere) morning, we begin by posting six randomly-chosen words.

To play along, use these words to compose a small story, poem or witticism. Post them on your twitter feed, along with the hashtag (both #ramereshorts and #rāmereshorts will work, as will #RamereShorts and #RāmereShorts). You can enter as many times as you like. Read the other entries and ‘like’ your favourites!

When we see a new entry, we retweet from our account, and at the end of the working day we post a winner.

Here are some more details:

Character count

Your entry can be any length, but only entries that use 140 characters or fewer will be considered for the winning place. Check the character count of your entry by pasting it here. The hashtag is not included in the character count.

Using the words

Winning entries must use all six of the words provided. These words can be tweaked to change the tense or plural, though. For example ‘drive’ can be ‘driven’ and ‘dog’ can be ‘dogs.’

Judging

Around 5pm on a Friday, we’ll choose a winning tweet. Every week, this task seems to get more difficult! We will usually go for the most succinct, moving, or funny entry. Then we check that it falls within the character count, and uses all six words.
We often choose a winner based on how many ‘likes’ it has been given by others throughout the day.

Group entries

We know of one office that plays #Rāmereshorts together as a team-building exercise each Friday. Everyone votes on the best entry, then that one is entered in to the competition. We would love to see more work groups, families or schools take part! Please spread the word and join us.

Inspiration

To get inspired, click the #Rāmereshorts hashtag on Twitter to read some previous entries.

Here are some of the winning entries so far this year:

May 25, 2018. Our words were: wild, beyond, sure, drive, time, note

My deodorant “Sure” sure drives the ladies wild beyond control. Important note: At times, it has the same effect on large dogs (@nickbakernz)

May 18, 2018. Our words were: letter, wake, there, cold, tempt, belong.

I know I belong now - a cup of tea right there to tempt me when I wake along with my letters to read. Tea is cold – bugger. (@nickbakernz)

May 11, 2018. Our words were free, secret, raise, stone, need, infinite.

You have always been free. That is the secret.
Raise the stone from your heart - there it is.
Need. Infinite need. Let it out. (@stellduffy)

May 4, 2018. Our words were feeling, city, paper, choose, invite, crunch.

Feeling bold, she invites the best food critic in the city
Chooses dumplings, light, paper thin…a triumph!
Until the acid cockroach crunch (@angew)

April 27, 2018. Our words were: mix, store, copy, pen, sweet, tin.

I will copy with my pen all the sweet things you say, collect and store them in this tin, which I shall not mix with my other lover’s notes (@atthebay)

April 20, 2018. Our words were dark, leaves, gold, abroad, careless, sink.

Jacinda leaves the dishes in the sink
Heads off abroad to mix with
Gold braid & dark suits.They love her.
Simon couldn't careless (@tony_gavigan)