Drumroll please 🥁 Our inaugural Frankenstories Triathlon presented by INTERFACE Magazine is challenging New Zealand classrooms to stretch their literary abilities across Narrative, Persuasive, and Poetry writing during Term 2 2025.
With categories for Junior (up to grade 4), Middle Years (grades 5-8), and Senior (grades 9-13) classes, every class competes on its own playing field. Each of these category winning classes will receive:
- 5x 12 month Frankenstories Pro subscriptions
- 1x $150 gift card for classroom books
- 2x books for the class teacher: The Writer’s Practice and More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner
- Exclusive Frankenstories merch (including stickers and a Franky plushie class trophy)
- Class certificates
Plus, for those classes that don’t complete the 3 challenges (Narrative, Persuasive, Poetry), there’s still wild card prizes up for grabs if you create a particularly great Frankenstory in any of them: $50 gift card for classroom books, 1x Frankenstory Pro subscription, and Frankenstories merch.
The starting pistol fires on April 28th with the finish line on 27 June.
How to participate
1. New Zealand teachers will need to be registered with a current Frankenstories Pro plan (paid or free trial)* to enter the challenge.
2. Visit our Frankenstories Triathlon: New Zealand Schools page (find in Discover) and open one of the 3 competition prompts (narrative, persuasive, and poetry).
3. Select "USE PROMPT" and start a new game. PLEASE NOTE:
- Do not ‘copy settings’ from someone else’s game.
- You are welcome to change the image, or tweak round scaffolding instructions to better suit your class, as long as the underlying genre is preserved (review the associated lesson on Writelike if you want to check - it's linked on the prompt too).
- Every game has the same default settings. For this competition, we'll allow extensions to the writing and voting rounds: max 180 seconds writing, and 120 seconds voting.
4. Play the game with your class through to completion, for each genre (Narrative, Persuasive, and Poetry) by 27 June 2025. That's it! You're now automatically entered.
Teachers new to Frankenstories may like to watch this video before getting started. We have more help videos and a resources page if you'd like to check them out too
4 MAY UPDATE: We have updated this urban legend challenge prompt with a brainstorming round. (We want to encourage players to move beyond the given image.)
Are you game? No sweat bands necessary, but team collaboration is essential!
PLEASE NOTE: This competition is open only to classes at New Zealand schools and is subject to our terms & conditions.
*This includes registering for a free Frankenstories Pro trial, which we’ll extend by another 30 days after you play one of the competition prompts. It may take up to 8 days for the extension to appear in your account. Any issues please don’t hesitate to reach out to frankenstories@writelike.org.