All You Need to Know About The Shorties!

Contest and Awards coming soon...

This has been a long time coming but the wait is over! It’s time to rip off the bandaid and make this idea a reality!

The Shorties serves a dual purpose: 1) friendly competition 2) community recognition.

Dates for the first contest in 2024 will be announced late Summer. In the meantime, there will be plenty of “Short Prompts” to help get you ready to compete in the Shorties 2024!

Here is an overview of how the annual contest and awards will go:

THE CONTEST

Anyone who wants to enter may do so and submit one entry per category. These are the four categories:

6-word story
50-word story
100-word story
Under 500, over 101 word story

Each category will have one winner. Of the four overall winners in each category, one will be the “Best of the Best.” If there are fewer than 5 submissions per category during the time when the contest window is open, they will all be combined and there will instead be 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners based on all entries regardless of length.

The contest is FREE to enter, we just ask that you are subscribed to MicroStack.

There are no genre restrictions, however, we reserve the right to remove a story deemed too violent or graphic in nature. Use common sense.

• The Contest will happen once a year (might consider increasing to twice a year depending on number of participants).

• The contest winners are chosen by a panel of judges.

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THE AWARDS

When it comes to The Shorties Awards there will currently only be two given out:

Contributor of the Year awarded to a member of the microfiction community for their unwavering support and contributions.

Story of the Year awarded to a story in the microfiction community that received the most buzz by Likes, Restacks, and Comments. This will be decided by community voting.

Contributor of the Year will have a spotlight interview and the Story of the Year will be published on MicroStack with a “behind-the-story” interview.

The awards will be done by nominations first and then voting within the subscriber community.

• The Awards will happen once a year. 

• The award nominees are chosen and given by vote by subscribers.

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FUTURE PLANS AND IDEAS

Some things I’d love to have happen around The Shorties:

PS = Contingent upon future Paid Subscribers. Paid subscriptions are not yet turned on.

• Digital badge for winners.

• Physical award for the winners. [PS]

• Monetary award for the contest winner. [PS]

• Flat rate payment for microfiction submissions. [PS]

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We are always looking for volunteers who’d like to contribute their time towards making The Shorties as amazing an experience as it can be for everyone. If you’d like to volunteer, please send an email to ericadrayton@substack.com, subject: Microstack Volunteer. Thank you.