How It Works

Writers’ Playground, LLC invites you to participate in our Tenth Playground Challenge: A Fiction Short Story Competition. The contest will be a time constrained challenge that will start the writers off on an equal playing field by giving them prompts to choose from, and a fixed time period (10 days) to write a short story up to 3000 words (with a 100 word grace limit). Writers will pay a $28 entry fee USD and all writers will receive feedback from the judges. You will receive a confirmation email upon the completion of registration.

The prompts will be emailed to the contestants upon the commencement of the contest (8pm New York EST on January 9, 2025). At that time, the entrants will be given directions on how to submit. Each contestant must select 1 of 5 possible characters, 1 of 5 possible settings, and there will be one “thing” that must be included in each story. This “thing” could be a major part of the story or it can simply be mentioned in passing but it must appear at some point. The one character selected does not have to be the protagonist, but they must play a significant role in the story. Finally, the story must take place in one of the listed settings (there can be some deviation from this setting but the story must primarily take place at one of the locations from the prompts). You will then have ten days (including two weekends) to write your short story in any way that you see fit. All stories must be submitted by 11:59pm EST on January 19, 2025. Any submissions after this time will be disqualified. Contestants will receive a confirmation email upon submission of their piece.

The prompt is fun, original, and can inspire each contestant with a starting point while still giving you the freedom to choose which direction to take your characters. This also makes sure that the writers are not coming into the competition with something they have previously written, putting you all on an equal playing field. From there, you have the opportunity to write a story in any genre, and in any way that excites you.

This competition is open to international participants, but all stories must be written in English.

This competition is for adults. With that being said, anyone under the age of 18 may sign up with express written permission from a parent or guardian. Said guardian must register that underage individual, and send us an email stating their name, the name of the participating individual, and that they have read and agree to our rules and participation agreement.

Please read our Official Rules & Participation Agreement HERE.

Prizes

1st Prize - $500

2nd Prize - $475

3rd Prize - $425

4th Prize - $375

5th Prize - $325

6th Prize - $275

7th Prize - $225

8th Prize - $175

9th Prize - $125

10th Prize - $100

Honorable Mentions - $50

We award 10 Honorable Mentions

All winners will have their stories published to our website along with their name/pen-name and where they are from. We can also add a link to the writer’s author page or social media page if interested. If, for any reason, a participant wishes not to have their story published on our website, they are free to decline their prize. The writer still owns all rights to their story. The denominations listed above are United States Dollar.

What the Judges are Looking For

The judges are looking for creativity and inspiration. Make us think. The most basic advice is - be interesting! Make your story stand out among the crowd. We are fascinated by human behavior and this crazy little thing called life. Give us an interesting perspective. Be observant. Make us look at something differently than we might have before. Make the mundane come alive. Make us believe in your characters. Move us. Make us laugh, make us cry, or scare the hell out of us. All the technical aspects will also be taken into account – spelling, grammar, sentence structure, character and plot development. Take a look at winning stories from our previous challenges to get a sense of what we have been drawn to in the past.

Our goal would be to have our results in 12 weeks at the conclusion of the competition. Timing will be based on the amount of participants and we will give you a clear idea of when to expect results at the conclusion of enrollment. We will do everything we can to get the results back as soon as possible while giving each piece the time that it deserves.

Submissions

Stories will be submitted by email attachments and the address will be included in an email at the commencement of the competition.

Each entrant must submit their story as a Word Document (.docx) or as a PDF. The name of the file must be the title of the short story. The body of the email should include the author’s full name, the title of the story, the word count, and a tag line (one or two sentences giving us an idea what the story is about without giving anything away). For reasons of anonymity, the author’s name should not appear anywhere on the document itself. The employees, family members, friends, and affiliates of Writers’ Playground, LLC and its members and managers, may not enter this competition.

The judges would prefer the document to be double-spaced, in Times New Roman, and with 12 point font; but there are no strict guidelines if you wish to get creative for any reason. Please keep in mind, if the font is difficult to read, the judges will take that into account in their final decision.

All stories must be written in English. Feel free to enter words or phrases from another language when necessary, but the judges will not be responsible for translating any of that writing.

Additional Info

Writers will retain all the rights to their own work. We will post the winning stories to this website, but the authors will still retain full rights to their work.

This competition is an exercise of skill and cannot be considered gambling, or a game of chance whatsoever.

All dates and times are in accordance with New York Eastern Standard Time.

All stories must be created and written during the given time period of this competition.

PLEASE READ OUR FULL LIST OF TERMS & CONDITIONS HERE:

All contestants that register for this challenge shall be deemed to have carefully read and agreed to all of text within this Official Rules and Participation Agreement, as well as all text posted or emailed regarding this competition.

Contact

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us on any of our social media platforms, or directly at:

admin@writersplaygroundllc.com