Just three weeks until our 31st Award closes on October 5thl .Thank you to everyone who has entered so far. We’re getting pretty busy.

To remind you, the prize fund is £1460. All 50 longlisted writers are offered publication in our tenth anniversary anthology and a free copy of the anthology will be sent to all contrinutors. Judge is muliti-award winning writer and tutor, Kathyrn Aldridge-Morris. Read my interview with her, (which also mentions her reaently published collection, Cold Toast here
Results are announced on this website by the end of the month and the long and short lists before that.

Here are three tips for you for creating new flashes or revising old ones. Yes, many of you know all these sort of things but every one forgets at least one of them.

1.Consider entering three stories. Readers have different tastes. Entries for three are discounted to £18

2.To make your story standout, go for your 3rd, 13th or even 33rd idea on a theme. So many editors and judges make the point that within competition entries there are many, many stories on familiar themes. You might not even realise how many dozens of stories can be about relationship break ups, dementia, or the end of the world. Many of these are excellent but the best ones add something new and arresting.

3.To add unusual departures in your stories pick three random words from three different pages in a non-fiction book, with the number three included, if you get stuck with your story. This activiy will be your personal version of ‘Word Cricket’, the exercise popularised by well-known writer and teacher, Vanessa Gebbie which she offers each year at the Flash Fiction Festival Bath Flash Fiction sponsors in Bristol in July each year. Vanessa starts off the whole group writing with the same phrase and bowls in random words at intervals which can make strange and wonderful things happen in a story. Often festival participants bravely read their new stories to the whole assembly. It’s extraordinary the drafts people write in a very short time, emboldened by the words and how differently the writers make use of these words.

I am suggesting a non fiction book to pick the words from because they often have a number of interesting words on any page. For eg. I just found up a copy of Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald a book of essays about the natural world and chose disarticulated, qualms and nightjar from three different pages. Including such words could make a potential story about a rocky relationship, for example, go in unexpected directions.

Best wishes everyone. The picture shows a lucky four-leaved clover! Three leaved clovers are far too common of course. So just add one extra extraordinary thing to your story for luck. A great title, a fantastic ending. Something oddly amusing.

Thanks

Jude
September 14th, 2025