Short and sweet
It’s okay – we know you’re really here for the results, so we won’t keep you waiting long. But before we get to the shortlist, let’s take a look at some of the trends we saw across the board.
Creative takes on the prompts! While we don’t truly subscribe to the idea that there are only a limited number of stories in the world, it never fails to amaze us how many different ways any one story can be told.
Pushing the word count limit. We gave a range of 75-85 words for this challenge, and most writers took full advantage of the upper limit—without going over. (Our admin team thanks you—nothing feels worse than disqualifying an entry because it’s one word over.)
Thoughtful attention to details. One of the best way to connect readers to the original story is through anchor objects and characters. We enjoyed the choices many writers made to remind us exactly what story they were telling.
We hope you enjoyed our second microfiction challenge! As usual, anything that went right this round is entirely due to our admin team’s untiring work behind the scenes, and anything you hate is probably my fault. Unless it’s your feedback—hating and loving your feedback is just kind of part of being a writer.
Now, without further ado…
Congratulations to Our Shortlist
Let’s have a hand for the following writers, in alphabetical order, who are still in the running to win the micro Super Challenge:
Cecil Beckett
Carrie Beckwith
Katie Battaglia Delay
Brittany Fernandez
Kate Goodheart
Lydia C. Lee
Jen Mierisch
Jennifer Palmer
Leila Murton Poole
Congratulations, all!
Shortlisted writers, your stories will now be evaluated as a single group. On Wednesday, September 14, you will receive additional comments from YeahWrite’s Editor-in-Chief, Christine, who is arguably our biggest microfiction fan. Overall winners will be announced on Friday, September 16, around 3pm US Eastern time on our website. In the meantime, please do not post your work anywhere publicly just yet – we don’t want to influence our next group of judges by compromising your anonymity!
Wait, wait, there’s more!
Writers, if you don’t have your feedback, please send us an email at superchallenge@yeahwrite.me, ’cause that email should have reached you about twelve hours ago.
Now that this part of the competition is over, you’re free to post your work anywhere on the Internet you like (unless you made the shortlist!), or take our judges’ suggestions and rework your submission to send on to other venues and anthologies. If it finds a home, we’d love to hear about it in the Coffeehouse! And if you choose to post it to your personal site or blog, you can share that link in the Coffeehouse as well.
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
