The Hunger Games and Olympics meet Writers in the ultimate month-long flash fiction contest
The Writer Games is a month-long flash fiction contest created to bring the FUN back into writing. Built with a mixture of unique challenges, elimination rounds, and writing tips, this contest is made for writers of all backgrounds, skills, and aspirations!
The contest begins January 1st, and runs through the month
The Writer Games begins January 1st and continues for the entire month, typically ending February 5th. This way we can give our writers time to complete each round without stress, and provide a writing experience that lasts.
There are four rounds total
Three elimination rounds. One final round. All epic, writerly fun! TWG is divided into four total Rounds, each of which last roughly about a week, and containing different requirements/challenges for participants to test their skills through. Only a specific number of writers will move on to each round, dwindling the contest down to three Finalists in the last round.
Everyone has a chance to win prizes
A contest isn't fun without its prizes! Which is why we've decided to give all of our participants the chance to win cool prizes--regardless of their writing skill or if they win the contest. In addition to the Grand Prize (for our contest winner), and Finalist prizes, we host a random draw giveaway for each elimination round. We also offer prizes for those who win our Arena challenges.
All writing challenges are flash fiction
We're a firm believer in the power of short fiction! It doesn't take a full-length novel to create a story with meaning to it. In fact, sometimes just a few simple sentences can be far more powerful, and moving than a full-length novel. Short fiction also provides writers an opportunity to tell a story when they don't have a ton of time to commit, and it helps to grow writing skills essential to creating larger works. And that's why all of TWG's challenges are flash fiction!
Submissions are anonymously rated by a panel of four Judges.
Each year we gather four awesome volunteer Judges from the writing community. At the end of each elimination round, our Judges receive an anonymous list of all the submissions. They read and rate each submission. Once the points for each submission is tallied, the top ranking stories are passed on to the next round.
Favorite submissions & the list of participants are posted here on our website
After each round a couple of the Judges' favorite submissions are put on display on our Story Wall page for our viewers and participants to enjoy. If you're curious who is currently participating in the Games, you can view the Round Table (names of those eliminated will be removed from the list as the rounds continue).
The three finalists are paired with writing Mentors for their final round
As a special perk to making it to the final round, we assign each of our finalists a personal writing mentor! This writing mentor is a author chosen specifically from the community. Their job is to beta-read their finalist's final submission, offer writing advice, and just have a fun time chatting and answering any questions their finalist may have!
The winning story is determined by public vote
Readers are vital to a writer's journey (after all, the whole reason we write is so that people can read our stories!). So here at TWG we like to give our fellow readers (and eliminated writers) a chance to participate in the fun! So, for the final round of TWG, the submissions are opened to the public to read and vote on. The story with the most votes is named the winner of the Games!