Francis Lewis Hosted its third annual Scary Story Contest for students of all grade levels. The topic for this year’s competition was Careful What you Wish For, and submissions ended on October 25.

“It’s judged on a few things,” Ms. Kye said.  “The creative aspect, how creative a person was. Sometimes when you give a certain topic, [you get] similar responses. I think the judges like to see a little bit of creativity, something individualized with a twist. And it also has to tackle the topic.”

Ms. Kye was motivated to create this contest at Francis Lewis through her love of scary stories, and of course Halloween. 

“I love scary movies,” Ms. Kye said.  “I’m a big fan of horror and I just don’t feel like there are a lot of good scary movies and good scary stories out there at this point, so that was one of the reasons I was inspired. It would be cool to hear about what the kids are thinking and what they can come up with so it is sort of a dual purpose. I get a chance to read more scary stories and also the kids get a chance to express their own ideas.”

“I’m an English teacher and I felt like there’s not as many opportunities for creative writing as I would like to see in our curriculum for various reasons,” English teacher Ms. Kye said. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to promote the event, to promote creative writing within the whole student body, and I also love Halloween.”

Second place winner Chloe Wong found it engaging to write something that wasn’t necessarily for a class in her schedule. 

“It could be fun to just write something that was not school related,” Wong said. “I saw it in the past but I never had the time nor the thought to write a story because I was always busy with school work. As a senior, I have less classes and more time to do things. I wanted to do so when I saw the poster, I just thought why not?”

Ms. Kye hopes that participating in writing contests like this can motivate students to continue working on their craft.

“I think for some students, they don’t write enough, so if they are even compelled to write anything, it would be good for them,” Ms. Kye said.  “I think students might not like writing, so this will give them an opportunity to say, ‘hey, actually, maybe I do like writing’. It just depends on the structure. I don’t know that this will help them with their formal essays and stuff like that, but I do think it still might give them a different mindset about what writing could be.”

The word limit for all entries was 200 words, which can be quite challenging to create a story in a limited word count.

“When I finished writing it, I thought that it was not that good because it seemed kind of plain of a story,” Wong said. “All my protagonist is doing is wishing to see their parents and getting very desperate that they would do something without thinking about it.”

Ms. Kye is very proud of the “vast array” of student work she received this year for the contest. 

“Oh, super proud, yes,” Ms. Kye said. “And it’s cool because we get students from every grade.What’s so nice is I get to see the broader array of students who are in Francis Lewis because you know we have like 5,000 kids here. I only work with maybe a hundred. So now I see a more vast array of who these kids are, and get to sort of interact with other students, in that manner. I’m really proud of all the work.”