the lowercase

Voting was really close. Just about twenty votes separated the top three. Here’s our grand prize winner:

I was in the bathroom of a bar when my future self appeared with a bright flash in one of the stalls. He looked only a few years older than me.

“Listen,” he said, grabbing my shoulder, “I’m about to save you from making a huge mistake.”

“With that girl?” I was chatting up this girl outside. He nodded.

“Wait here five minutes.”

I walked out five minutes later to see him leaving with his arm around the girl. He turned and smirked at me. In the future, I’m a time-traveling, cock-blocking jerk.

—CJ Ciaramella 

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This is your last chance to vote for the finalists in our first ever Fiction 101 contest. It’s been really close all week — just a few votes, 20 or so, separate the top four entries, so anyone can take this.

Head here to vote: http://bit.ly/Fiction101Vote

From Cat:

Machine revving. She felt the ship buck around her; her skin grazed with fire. The crew hurriedly moving to the escape shuttles. The warning bells swarming her senses as more and more pain gripped her hull and ripped at the alloys protecting them. The site of her passengers and masters jettisoned from her vessel gave her a calming safety. Alone. Tears welled in her eyes as emotions swelled and drowned the laser weaponry cracking the shields. The intelligent ship. Bred to better care for humans aboard and to alert them of possible damage. Eyes open. The finale. Big bang.

Enter your short story (101 words or less) here for a chance to win an Amazon Kindle. Submissions close at the end of the day on December 1.

Short.

That pretty much sums it up. We’re all about the short story here but when we’re talking flash fiction, the caps get low … very, very low. Our Fiction 101 contest, for example, sets the bar at 101 words, though most people would put anything under 500 in the flash fiction category.

The truth is, though, writing short is often harder than writing long. A tiny word count forces you to get to the point, cut out the clutter and be snappy. There’s no room for dull adjectives and weighty adverbs, no plot-slowing exposition. It’s just story.

We like that.

So what about you? How do you define flash fiction?

By Meleny:

Amadeus padded thru the darkness, her glossy black fur absorbing all light her leathery wings tucked flat against her back. She was a hell cat, born to seek evil and bring it home. Tonight she followed her instincts into the depths of the slums. She had been sensing the vast evil being in the area for weeks. Pain and suffering hung in the air like fog. Her whiskers quivered in anticipation. This one would not go quietly. His decrepit soul bent on causing much more grief before its time on earth expired. Little did it know, its time had come.

Enter the contest here.

By Candace Simmons:

Jakrab closed his eyes, chanting repeatedly, “aquamallaha, aquamallaha”. He opened them and saw the prison walls morphing into water. The rapid waves knocked the other inmates around like helpless ants. Their muffled screams sound like music, he thought. Jakrab raised his arms forcibly in a swooping motion that created a path of dryness around him. He walked across the dry path that only he could enter, humming to himself as if he were taking a morning stroll. Being surrounded by the sounds of death was peaceful, and this was only the beginning. Soon, the sleeping town would wake to his wrath.

Enter here. You could win an Amazon Kindle.

We’ve had a lot of traffic to our Fiction 101 Contest today and the entries have just started coming in. Here’s one to get your creative juices flowing:

When I looked at the mold under a microscope, I saw them: tiny little people building villages and digging out roads. Yes! I’d created life. Soon though, they outgrew my petri dish and overtook my table. Then my entire lab. They advanced so quickly, creating technology even I didn’t understand. In the end, my choice was clear. I lit the match.