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Welcome to the Flash Frontier contest and submission rush! logo is flash frontier's What is this? Flash Frontier is a New Zealand-based micro fiction publication that has featured many goons over the years. It's high time we overload their inbox once more! They are currently open to international submissions for their December issue. The current theme is wonder.  As you can see, their maximum word count is tiny! 250 is a hard upper limit. They won't accept stories that are 251 words. You could totally write 250 words about wonder. Why a contest? Because it's a fun excuse to give out prizes and kudos. There won't be a loser and participants can opt out of crits if they want to. Just post something like no crits please with your submission. That said, if you intend to submit your story to Flash Frontier, I highly recommend allowing critical feedback. How does this work? You submit a story between now and November 23 at 11:59:59PM PST (that's one week from today). The story is judged by November 25. If you didn't opt out of crits, you'll edit your story based on whatever feedback you received. After that, you'll hopefully submit it to Flash Frontier! While judging is in progress, I'll strongly encourage folks to critique each other (respecting those who don't want that type of feedback). Can I just submit to Flash Frontier without doing this contest thing? Of course you can. Feel free to let us know in this thread so we can cheer you on! Can I do the contest without submitting to Flash Frontier? Yep! What do I get if I win this contest? Winner is entitled to the avatar of their choice AND a donation of $25 to the charity of their choice Runner up is entitled to an avatar of their choice OR a donation of $10 to the charity of their choice. What if I already wrote a WONDER story for the Thunderdome birthday week? You can edit it and enter it again here. It will be judged like a new story against all the other stories. You can also write a completely new story if you want to. Flash Frontier submission guidelines A note about submissions: Like most magazines, Flash Frontier doesn't publish things that have been featured elsewhere. However, they make a distinction between prior publication and workshopping sites. I would say Creative Convention counts as a workshopping site, not a publication. It's up to you whether or not you disclose that you posted on SA first. This hasn't been an issue in previous submission rushes, but they mention it on their site so I'm mentioning it here. Good luck! Feel free to ask questions if anything isn't clear. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Nov 17, 2022 |
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Nov 17, 2022 05:44
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:11 |
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Just over 2 hours left to submit to the contest! I will try my best to have it judged by Friday night, which should leave time to make any changes.
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Nov 24, 2022 06:53
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Yes! Feel free to discuss and exchange crits, though please don't edit existing posts containing stories because I need to know what I'm reading isn't going to change under my nose. Submissions officially closed. I won't be considering any stories or edits posted after this post.
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Nov 24, 2022 09:43
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 Contest restuls! Thank you everyone for your submissions! These were all a pleasure to read and you should feel very pleased with yourselves. Please feel free to continue to discuss and workshop in this thread. You can also let us know if you submitted to Flash Frontier so we can cheer you on! This goes for anyone, not just contest submitters. Winner My Shark Waifu! See crits below for my thoughts. You are entitled to an avatar of your choice, AND you can let me know if there's a charity to which you'd like a donation made in your honor. Runner up This was really tough because they're kind of all runners up in my book--each story has some uniquely good quality and choosing between them was hard! Finally, I settled on Chernobyl Princess as the runner up. You are entitled to the avatar of your choice, OR you can let me know if there's a charity you'd like to see a small $10 donation made to. Crits in order of submission! Untitled by Wallet Even before I read the other comments, I got the sense of being in some sort of crypt or ossuary. What I'm missing are grounding details that connect me to the experience--for a long time it's not really clear that the subject of the story is looking for a particular body. The choppiness of the sentences definitely creates a mood, and I think that mood would serve the story better if the prose gave me even a little insight into the protagonist's feelings or motivations. I'm completely here for descriptions of interlocking bones, but I think the story meditates a little long on bones and doesn't give me any human texture, even though there's a character who is presumably has a reason to find these particular remains. Also I struggled to form a mental image from some of the lines, like this one: quote:The brazier laid low to shear distended flickering clefts. I guess I can kind of imagine this. It's a brazier where the flames are low enough in the basin that they're sort of just barely visible, or maybe flickering decorative gaps in the construction of the brazier. Either way, that sentence isn't important enough to the composition to justify how long it took me to parse the image in a story this tiny! Does it hit on the theme of wonder? Possibly. The descriptions of the bones certainly have the potential to be wondrous, but without a stronger connection between the reader and the subject, I'm not feeling much one way or another. My Shark Waifu I love the small, intimate sense of wonder. That moment where you're rewarded for being exactly who you are, where you are, when you are. I think you could sort of play up the contrast of elements--namely, the theme of things changing and things staying the same. Family dynamics change, but the sea stays relatively unchanged. Strange birds come and go among the predictable movements of local birds. Stuff like that. I think if you tweaked the language to meditate more clearly on the small, subtle themes of this piece, you could make it feel even more intentional. Does it hit on the theme of wonder? I think it absolutely does! Chernobyl Princess The wonder levels in this one are off the charts because we get to see a neat rock through the eyes of a little kid! Being a kid is like tripping balls on the world without any drugs. A child's POV is primed for wondrous experiences. That said, because this is micro-fiction, I initially went into this thinking that the 'you' was pure 2nd person, rather than a parent watching their child. Sometimes the 'you' of second person exists within the story, but sometimes it's more of a displaced 'I'. Especially because the parent/narrator seems to have a lot of insight into exactly what their child is perceiving about this rock. This is a super easy fix, though! You could add a couple words of description of the child in the first sentence or two. Something like: quote:You stopped and knelt next to it, a look of open fascination on your little face Except better than what I just wrote. You don't need to do much to clear up the POV muddiness; really just a word or two that confirms 'you' is a child a little earlier on. Does it hit on the theme of wonder? As I said above, absolutely! Uranium Phoenix The good news is: this is really well-written! Reading it feels like biting into a cake that is just the right amount of dense and just the right amount of fluffy. In typical UP fashion, you've put a pound of story into an eight ounce bag. And it's not even totally pessimistic! These people seem to have found a way to thrive in spite of the post-apocalyptic hardship, since kids seem abundant enough to be described in very general terms. I think you could crank up the wonder, if you so chose. Maybe the kids latch onto some interesting aspect of the ruins that adults don't pay any mind to. Maybe the kids make up their own stories about the ruins and feel wonder at our fallen civilization for reasons that are totally their own. Kind of like how sometimes a kid will be more interested in the box a gift came in than the gift itself--I'd challenge you to toss a line or two in that gives the children a more defined or unique perspective on the fallen world into which they've been born. After all, they haven't lost anything--they never knew nintendo or netflix, so the sense of loss in this story is very much rooted in the fears of a modern 21st century person. I think if you wanted to tap into wonder a little harder, you could do as I described above and root the narrative more clearly in the unique perspectives of children who haven't known anything different. Does it hit on the theme of wonder? It does, but as I said, you could absolutely tweak a couple lines to highlight that wonder more clearly. A friendly penguin This is another one that has the wonder levels set to max. I can definitely relate to being so filled with wonder that I sort of forgot to take care of necessities like rent and bills. I'm also personally fond of characters who are able to truly see themselves as a part of the world around them, almost to the degree of complete passivity, sort of like the practice of ahimsa in buddhism/jainism/hinduism or whatever. In terms of prose, I always love reading the words you write about nature. You write about plants and animals in a very tender way. One could assume, based on the prose, that you share a sense of wonder with the character in your story! How I think you could punch up the quality of this story: Focus. You describe lots of lovely things, but I wonder if it would be more effective to choose maybe a plant, animal, and weather effect, and focus really tightly on those, rather than the whole beautiful cacophony of nature's bounty. Have your narrator fix more cleanly on a couple very particular things, rather than describing all of the birds and bugs and other critters. Maybe toss in a couple hints at the state of this person's home--if they are on the verge of eviction, what else has been left to fall apart? Does it hit on the theme of wonder? Absolutely! But the wonder could be refined down to a couple clear points of focus. Antivehicular Okay, I admit I read the short discussion on this piece in this thread, and am familiar with other feedback it's received. I don't know if I agree with the description of it as a piece of nothing, or whatever. I do think there are a couple things you could do to make it feel more storyful. 1) Change the POV. That physically hurts me to say but I think first person would actually give this piece the glossy TV camera blur of storyness. How would you write this differently if it was written as 'I' instead of 'you'? 2) Okay I'm just going to do some minor outpatient surgery on this piece and sort of illustrate what I think could add punch: quote:It's the birthday of someone you used to love. You memorized it long ago, back when every fact about himself he shared with you was a gift, and it's never left. Every year is the same: the realization, the wondering where he is now, and then the well-wishing. 3) Give the protagonist a defined reason for still thinking of this person. Are they lonely? Nostalgic? Are they in denial of lingering resentment? Do they feel better when they send out loving thoughts to this estranged companion? Are they otherwise doing okay? These are things you could hint at in a few words, especially if you revamp that big meaty second para. Does it hit on the theme of wonder? It's interesting because there's a lot of inquisitive wondering. Maybe you could punch up the wonderous wonder too--maybe the subject of this story is genuinely amazed that they still have this little ritual of silent well-wishing even after all these years. Kaom Okay sorry you activated my deep sea boner because I loving love tube worms and bone-eating snot worms (osedax is rad) and basically every form of proto-life that's been gooping around at the bottom of the ocean forever. I actually think the story might benefit from focusing on the tube worms (or whatever deep sea thing) and why Susan might feel called to "return" her remains to animals and environments that haven't really changed in millions of years. I get it--these are creatures that have survived multiple apocalyptic events, sort of living fossils. There's something circular in giving your remains to creatures like that, which seems to be at least part of why Susan wants to have her body to the deep sea. But I think I see it that way because it's how I already feel. Someone who didn't have a pre-existing interest in tube worms and what have you might not follow Susan's logic. There's an implication that Susan has wanted to get to the bottom of the sea her whole life, but it's sort of tacked on at the end. I think that piece of information should show up near the beginning. Also, the narrator is both too much and too little of a presence. There's enough texture to them that I wonder what their deal is (some kind of career criminal that Susan can trust to see her wishes through?) but not enough info to triangulate who the narrator is to Susan exactly. So I think you need to choose whether or not to even include them; you could certainly tell this story without 'I'. As far as word count, you could pretty much cut this: quote:Space would’ve been easy, if she’d meant the Big Bang. Even a volcano wouldn’t be too bad, if she’d meant Earth. But she was Susan, so naturally she meant the bottom of the ocean. and boom, that's almost half of your extra words gone. This is the kind of sentence that the writer thinks is necessary because it establishes very clearly what susan doesn't want as a way of setting up what she does want. But it's just extra words used on ideas that don't actually affect your story in any way. Does it hit on the theme of wonder? Kinda, but I think you need to center the prose a little more on Susan's feelings about the deep sea and possibly ditch the narrator, just IMO. Something Else I'm torn on this piece because I really like it, but I think it kind of misses the mark on the prompt. What does it do well? It's a tiny story that packs in a lot of imagery. You imply a lot about the Tau Ceti aliens in very few words, and there's a genuine sense that if they'd arrived a little earlier, things might have been okay. But I'm not sure what I'm meant to feel at the end of the story. I certainly don't feel a sense of wonder, though the dog-like character literally wonders aloud whether the humans and Tau Cetians might have been friends. The problem is, I think, that the humans are all dead and the aliens are kind of just going about their business, so there isn't a character who gets to feel true wonder at any of it. I was a bit confused by the POV. At first the story seems like it's in an omniscient POV, with the camera of the narrative pointing first at the last dying human and second at the arriving delegation of aliens. It's only in the 4th paragraph that the story shifts to I guess a first person POV, from the perspective of the dead human corpses. And then it goes back to an omniscient POV. That's not necessarily illegal or anything, but I was left feeling as though you could have grounded the narrative a little more in the 'we' of dead humanity. Maybe in doing that it would have been easier to transmit feelings of wonder. Does it hit on the theme of wonder? As I said, not exaaaactly. But I think if you shifted the POV to include a little more of the dead humans' perspective (this is microfiction so we can take some poetic liberties for effect), you could instill a little more feeling into the story. Alternatively, you could make the aliens a little less aloof, maybe have them feel some sort of wonder at the state of Earth. I dunno, there's a lot of ways you could do it.
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Nov 26, 2022 21:30
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Sorry for the delay! I fell asleep at my computer while writing this up last night. Also I'm not sure if FF submissions close on the 30th NZ time (which is a day ahead of US time and many other time zones), so I wouldn't delay too much if you do want to submit.
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Nov 26, 2022 21:32
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:11 |
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I know a bunch of people submitted, so CONGRATULATIONS to all of you for getting your words out there. Best of luck! The winner and runner up have decided to be charitable because they are amazing humans   
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Dec 2, 2022 21:26
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