Rashomon's Legacy - The Multi-POV Contest

[Claire]

In the spirit of the classic Japanese film Rashomon, this contest challenges you to write a medium length (5,000 to 15,000 words) story with the only restriction being that in your story the same events are depicted from at least two different points of view. You have until Sunday September 7 to write your story. The winner is then decided by two weeks of community voting, possibly more if we get a lot of entries.

Rashomon is a classic Japanese film from 1950. In Rashomon, the same event, the death of a samurai after the rape of his wife, is told from four different perspectives. These accounts contradict each other about who killed the samurai and how, and the film withholds any single “true” version. In the spirit of this classic film, you are supposed to write a story that retells the same events from two or more different perspectives. Ideally, these different perspectives contradict each other or reveal something new that was unknown. What your story is about, what these different perspectives reveal, how many different perspectives there are, whether you write this as mutiple first person or third person POVs: all of that is up to you!


Rashomon's Legacy Contest Rules for Entries

• Theme: MultiPOV Ambiguity
• Language: English
• Length: Medium (5,000 to 15,000 words)
• Required Tags: Eng, Finished, Medium, (NonCon or Con), MultiPOV
• Deadline: September 7 2025, 22:00 CEST
• Voting Window: From September 7 2025, 22:00 CEST to September 21 2025, 22:00 CEST

Rewards

• The winner's story will be pinned for a week to the top of the Public Stories board.
• The winner will receive a special title of their choice (unless they are part of the moderation team).
• 50 reputation points for the winner, 20 for the runner-up.

If you want to enter your story, please post it in the public stories board and reply to this thread with a link to your story. Also, the subject line of your story should reference the contest in the following way:

• Title of your story - Rashomon's Legacy

You may remove that reference once the contest is over. Also, please include a link to the contest thread before the beginning of your story and tell your readers that the story participates in the contest.

Even if your story isn't finished yet, I would appreciate a short post to let us know if you're interested in participating.

[Blue]

@Claire
Interesting topic.
I have a story of almost 15,000 words. It involves a woman who is kidnapped and then repeatedly raped by three men. The story is written in the third person tense, and alternates between describing what the victim experiences and what the three criminals do to her.
It's not a typical Rashomon story, though, because there are no different versions of the plot. Rewriting the story like that would be difficult. But I'm working on a sequel. If you can submit two stories to this contest, I could try to adapt at least this part a bit more to Rashomon.

[Lucius]

I'll do it.

[RapeU]

So, essentially a 10,000 word story would consist of (roughly) 5,000 words of Character 1 POV then 5,000 words of Character 2 POV?

Sounds difficult. I'll probably come up with something.

[Claire]

@Blue Write whatever story you want. The only requirement for the contest is that the same events are described from at least two perspectives. In the end, the readers will judge whether they think the story is interesting. Personally, I would hope that readers would not vote for a story that just shows two different POVs without any discrepancies between these two POVs. But the readers will decide whether the multiple POVs of the same event do anything interesting or not.

@Lucius Nice! I also have an idea for this contest.

@RapeU You have up to 15,000 words. So theoretically, you could write three 5,000 word short stories, each of them being a different POV. But not all events in your story need to be told from all POVs. You could write a story about two characters meeting for a date . The differences in POVs only comes into play for the date itself but the prelude/aftermath to the date is unique to each character.

[Blue]

@Claire
I've rewrote the story slightly so that the story continues from the perspectives of each participant. However, it can't be turned into a true Rashomon story, and I don't have time for a new, long story right now. If the contest doesn't receive much participation, I can still translate it into English and submit it. Then at least the readers will have something to do. Otherwise, I'll post the original German version in the regular forum.