Flash Fiction Contest Advice

Having done the contest now for six years, and after receiving loads of requests for advice or tips about what works, I thought I’d put together a few notes on what in general seems to work and what doesn’t for these stories. (And this applies whether you’re considering writing for the first time or trying to figure out why I might not have picked your story.)

But first let me blunt: in the end, any editor has an arbitrary set of tastes that are their own. There’s no simple “objective” way to judge writing, or not any that really matter when it comes to creative work. If I didn’t pick your story, it’s not because I thought it was “bad.” Every year, I turn down stories that I actually adore because there were others that I just adored a tiny bit more. But my feelings might not be someone else’s. In fact, they obviously aren’t, because if YOU were judging the Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest, you damn well better believe you’d have chosen your own story.

I get no joy from sending out rejection slips. If it was feasible to include far more stories, I’d love to. But I’m already testing the attention spans of most listeners by cramming 20+ stories into a show. And each year I end up with about 75 or 80 stories, all of which I’d be incredibly happy having on. So the final decision is as much about trying to pick an interesting mix of topics, pacing, styles, and tones as it is just saying “This is good.” (There was one year I could have had 10 GREAT “Evil Santa” stories, for example. But I guarantee you that even if you’d written one, you’d be kinda bored with “Evil Santa” stories after the 4th or 5th.)

So I’ve got a few tips, but I want to start by sharing a “Note to writers” written by Linda Raedisch who helped me judge the contest this year. She was integral to getting this done since we had close to 600 stories to read. I couldn’t have gotten through them all without her. (She’s a wonderful writer, too, and you know her if you’ve listened to the podcast. She also just put out her first novel which is pretty much a sci-fi Halloween novel called Turn Left at the Mooncrow Skeleton, and you should buy it, read it, review it, gift it, etc.) So I’ll start with what she said:

As the recipient of over 70 rejections, I know how hard it is to get your hopes up only to be told, “You didn’t win.”  So I wanted to provide some explanations, remind writers that a lot of it is personal taste, and give them some suggestions on how to make their stores better next year. 

There were several stories that got everything right in the beginning and the middle but fell flat in the end.  There were a lot of others that had some style and/or grammar problems but really stuck the landing.  The second kind of story was more likely to make it onto my penultimate list. 

You don’t need to include your writing credentials with your submission.  I really didn’t care whether you’d had your stories published in five journals or if this was your first time putting pen to paper.  In the Weird Christmas world, everybody’s equal, though  I was intrigued whenever someone mentioned they were writing from somewhere other than the UK or the US. I had the pleasure of reading entries from Eastern Europe, Georgia, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, Nigeria, and other places I haven’t yet gotten to and probably never will.  Still, it was the writing itself that made or broke each story for me. 

I came into the judging knowing I had a personal prejudice against gore; bodily fluids; general grossness; casual use of foul language (thank God I wasn’t the only fucking judge, right?); and highfalutin language (unless it was spoken by a highfalutin character). I tried to set these prejudices aside and look at the quality of the overall storytelling.  In the process, I discovered new prejudices toward bad/dirty Santas, candy canes used as weapons, and little boys named Timmy.  (There were A LOT of Timmies.) If your story had any of these elements and you still ended up on my penultimate list, you know you’re doing something right. 

What I’d like to see next year, whether I’m asked to judge again or not: stories about gift givers other than Santa, or no gift givers at all; stories about obscure or invented (but not gorey) traditions; more Hanukkah stories; more sad stories.  Disturb me in beautiful ways!  And please, no more Timmies!

Back to Craig, and, just to be clear, I’ve got not problem with gore, foul language, OR high falutin’ language, given that I’m an academic at heart, and love to hear about intestinal rupture described with post-structuralist lingo… but I digress… Point there is that even the judges can disagree.

I’d also add that there’s no one thing that automatically gets your story rejected. I think a Timmy or two actually made it on the show, even. I’m also not a fan of “Santa going to a prostitute” stories (and I get a ton every year)… but I put one on the show this year. Emerson said something about consistency being bad. It had hobgoblins in it. I could look it up, but I’m getting off topic.

My wife also helps me read the stories each year, and her tips are pretty simple:

1. Don’t think gross equals weird. Same with “sex-gross.” We’re far beyond the idea that something “shocking” is actually shocking. It’s not. Make your gross meaningful or TRULY disturbing by doing something interesting with.
2. Tell a story! Too many people are like, “Ha! Santa’s got a candy cane up his butt!” and think that’s a story.
3. The world is full of spell checkers. How can you still have typos in this world?

I agree with all three of those. And as per #1, I always get stories that I can tell are written by someone thinking, “Oh, I’m gonna blow their minds with this one!” It’s the same tone from that teenager who thinks they’re a grand edgelord or something… but the stories are usually pretty dull. Look, my friends and I had hunted down all the Faces of Death videos long before the internet existed. And now I see that stuff on my Twitter feed without trying. Gore or kink is not, in itself, interesting. Now, by all means, use gore and kink, but DO SOMETHING with it.

The other thing I’ll say should be obvious: revise. I’m surprised every year by people who will say in the email, “I just saw the prompt and dashed this off real quick!” And unfortunately, it usually reads like it. Telling me it only took you five minutes to write something doesn’t exactly inspire me. Please take some time to think about what you wrote, what else you can do with it, maybe even try a couple versions. But if you haven’t thought about your story a bit and figured ways to improve it or complicate it or make it denser somehow, the folk who have are gonna get more attention because I’ll be thinking about their stories for a long time.

But the biggest thing from me is this: with most of these little flash fiction stories, there’s obviously not much space to wallow and muck around with the details. But the truth is that most stories I get are just an interesting idea that hasn’t been developed. I think of it as the “What without the How” problem.

Most of what I get, by far a majority of the stories, are great ideas. They have the WHAT: a cool premise or a weird, fun way to think about Christmas or a surprise twist or some such. But they leave it there. And this is a problem with most “genre” fiction: they have a cool idea, and the default position is just to outline the idea. And that’s fine, but that should be the starting point.

What makes a real story is when they do something with the WHAT. What story can you tell about that cool idea? What happens when you fit that idea back into a world? That doesn’t mean you have to turn it into a “heart felt tale of forgiveness” or some lame ass morality play, although in some cases that works. But you have to make it matter somehow, show how people react, how it affects the world around the people it touches, what unforeseen ripple effects really get weird, etc.

A good example of this is Han Whiteoak’s “An Angel for Christmas” from 2022. The “What” is pretty freaky in itself: what if people tied real living angels at the top of their tree? But what makes the story really work amazingly as a story is everything else she’s able to squeeze in there. I mean, every line is doing something extra with this already freakishly wrong idea: you get a bit of the family dynamic (middle class anxieties of keeping up, shopping obsessions, even marital tetchiness), you get the pov character trying to be the nice, aware person while also humoring his parents, you get other examples of the superficiality of Christmas traditions, but you also get the horrific details of this deranged “tradition” complete with blood and damage, all wrapped up in a nice little unnerving twist at the end (an angel filled with hate!?). It’s got so much going on in such a small space where almost every line is doing a few things at once. And the central “What” just enhances all those other things while also tying them all together into this tiny little anecdote. As far as craft goes, it’s an amazing example of making sure that everything does more work than you might think it could. That’s what makes it a really great story.

Now, the hardest thing to realize and live with is that all of the above is advice to get you out of the mushy middle of stories that either don’t work or have something distracting about them. How do you then write a story that stands out? That surprises? That makes me feel like, “Oh, god, I never would have thought of that, but now I’m never gonna think of Santa [or whatever] without that image sticking in my head”… ? If I knew, I’d be a genius writer living off the proceeds of his genius. Inspiration counts. Luck counts. But inspiration and luck come from just… writing and writing and writing and never stopping. And from writing even after rejections. And believing in your ideas and pushing them to be the kind of thing you love and that surprises even you.

The other catch is that I can also think of exceptions to just about each and everything I said up above. Creative work loves to break its own rules. And when all is said and done, it just comes down to what works for the particular story at that time, in that voice, in that story. That’s what makes it exciting, both to read and to write. If you’re a writer, I hope you’re in love with that surprise as much as I am to read it. And I hope you’ll keep looking for it because the only way to write better is to write more. So I hope if your story didn’t make it on this year that you’ll try again. I’ve gotten some great stories from people who got turned down one year and said they felt like, “I’ll show you, asswipe,” and kept writing. And I’m glad because we got some great stories because they didn’t think, “Oh, the great Taste-Judge Craig Kringle said he didn’t want my story, so now I will slink away…” Ignore my decisions. Ignore every editor’s decisions who didn’t take your story and keep writing. It may just be that I’m not your venue or outlet. I have plenty of friends who say they don’t like my choices because they’re too weird or too much horror (or not weird enough or not enough horror)… but that’s the point: taste is subjective. I hope that some of what we’ve put above is helpful, but in the end, you have to believe in your own voice, even if folk like me seem deaf to it.

All of which is to say: I never wanted to discourage anyone by sending out an “I’m sorry to say” note. I hope that you find some of this useful, tho, and I hope it at least gives a bit more insight into my thought process (and maybe that of other editors, too). Please keep writing, and please consider sending in another story next year.

— Craig

[Note: Fwiw, I completely understand the desire to send me an angry email if I didn’t take your story. I’ve wanted to send plenty of my own after getting rejection notes. Just be sure if you do that you don’t then try to resubmit a story the next year…

No joke, a guy once replied to his rejection note cussing me out, telling me how awful my judgment was, etc. So it goes. There’s always one or two each year. But… HE SUBMITTED A STORY THE NEXT YEAR! I had to check that it was the same guy, and, yep, didn’t even try to hide it. I sent him an email something to the effect of “Given how our previous correspondence ended, I don’t think it would be possible to work together.” And of course he sent me another email cussing me out, etc., etc. But, seriously… don’t do that.

My other favorite story was the guy who sent me a 3000+ word story one time. I replied that this was a flash fiction story contest, so it wouldn’t be an appropriate market, etc. Plus, I’d skimmed it, and it wasn’t really “weird.” So a few weeks later the guy sends me a shortened version of the story, like 500 words, but still not within the rules. I told him please read the rules before submitting and that it seemed like his story wasn’t the kind of thing that would work… it was a sentimental thing, and he’d obviously never seen any of the other stories I print. He finally sent in a 350 word version, and I just stuck it with the others. So of course it didn’t get on the show, and he sent me an angry email afterwards saying how horrible I should feel for making him do all that work to shorten the story and on and on… Some people live in their own little bubbles, man. If the lesson there isn’t obvious, I don’t know what to say. 😉

There’s also the “reverse psychology” approach. Twice, I’ve had people respond to rejection letters as if they’d been accepted. I wasn’t sure if that was a ploy or what, but… things were simply clarified.]