Wanted to let you know about a neat contest for writers of flash fiction. On the first Friday of every month, the Australian Writers’ Centre hosts a contest for writing a very short story.
The contest is called Furious Fiction, and it’s kind of the writing equivalent to a cooking contest, a la The Great British Baking Show. You have 55 hours to craft a story that includes a maximum of 500 words. It can be in any genre. But the stories have to include certain ingredients that change each month. That could be the setting (wedding or funeral, for example). Could be that a character has to do a specific action (make a decision, for example). And a few key words need to be included.
I have entered the contest a few times, and it’s an interesting challenge. I’ve found that prompts poke my creativity in different ways than thinking up a story that could be about anything and be any amount of words. A photo prompt can rattle my brain, causing ideas to pop that wouldn’t have otherwise. Same with the prompts in this contest.
While the contest’s turnaround time added stress to my writing, it also prodded me into finishing the stories. A stronger motivation than thinking, “Maybe I’ll finish this story next month.”
If you’ve never tried to write flash fiction, you may want to start with a weekly prompt that offers more time to put a story together. It’s not a simple thing to try to tell a story in a small amount of space. After you’re comfortable with the format, maybe try this contest.
The winner gets $500 Australian dollars. When the winner is announced, the story is published on the website of the Australian Writers’ Centre — along with the stories that made the short list. The hosts include descriptions of what they liked about those stories. That’s helpful to learn what was successful about the stories, and you could use the lessons when you’re writing new stories.
Dave Williams 