Short Forms Contest - A Few Things to Think About
by Barbara Westwood Diehl
Our general guidelines are provided in each Submittable category, but some additional thoughts on the short forms are included here. Keeping in mind that there are very few “rules” for writers with boundless imaginations and creativity.
Total word limit for each contest category (prose poem, flash fiction, flash creative nonfiction) is 1,000.
One, two, or three flash fiction works in one Word doc, but no more than 1,000 words for all works combined.
If a finalist is not selected for a $400 prize, the editors may decide to select the work for publication with payment at the BR’s usual rate of $50.
Judging criteria:
- Adherence to the submission guidelines. No more than three works and/or 1,000 words total in a submission. Submissions in the prose poem category should clearly be prose poems, e.g, not lineated.
- Other grounds for disqualifying contest submissions: Use of copyrighted material such as song lyrics or lines from other writers’ poems. Other legal and/or ethical considerations, such as plagiarism or defamatory or demeaning statements. Writers misrepresenting themselves. (The identities of contest submitters are concealed, but we do check for this later during the judging process.)
- Contest submissions should be well crafted and not in need of significant editing. A punctuation error or a skipped or misspelled word in otherwise well-written work—not a problem. But prize-winning work should show careful attention to language.
- Clarity, concision, precision, authority, evidence of the writer’s skill with language and grasp of subject matter. No factual inaccuracies. Smooth, logical flow. We should feel like we’re in capable hands when we read the work. We can slow down and enjoy the writing; it would likely be a pleasure to read it out loud.
- Does the work fit the short-form genre? Would the work be better suited to a longer form? Maybe it feels like the writer has a lot to say but is squeezing it into a flash for contest purposes. Or narrative lift-off is taking too long. Or the work doesn’t end well. You’re left unsatisfied. The work should have a tight focus; there’s usually no space in the short form for going off on tangents—unless those tangents serve a purpose and enrich the work; they’re clearly part of a design, the architecture of the work.
- Is the content fresh, original, surprising—or address a familiar subject in an unexpected way? If it delivers a message, does it do so without feeling heavy handed, agenda driven? Does it grab your interest and keep it until the final word?
- Does the content feel significant, meaningful, have some sort of emotional impact—not frivolous, silly? Humor can be good—we all love humor—but it should still be meaningful.
- Does the ending have power and contribute to that feeling of emotional impact? Is the ending the natural culmination of everything that came before? Twists and surprises of various kinds can work in flash (great flash is often full of surprises), but they should make sense in the context of the work. Endings shouldn’t come out of the blue; they also shouldn’t feel like a punchline. Subtlety can be lovely but not to the point of dullness, or being overly ambiguous, or leaving the reader with a flat feeling.
- The short-form work can be a tightly compressed narrative, stream of consciousness, burst of emotion through images, or something experimental, like a set of operating instructions or a classified ad. The possibilities are endless. Short forms are a wonderful license to experiment, e.g., when writing a prose poem, for the prose writer to be more playful with language and for the poet to write without the constraint of lines. When experimenting with forms, think about how that form (such as a recipe or prayer) may, or may not, enrich the meaning of the work. Does the form fit the content? Does the experimental form cloud the meaning? Or does the form enhance the work and provide an experience that would have been lost in a more traditional form?
Our contest deadline is November 30, and the final judge is Francine Witte.
Surprise us. Make us wonder how you abracadabra meaning into such a small space.