Can you write an extraordinary short story with only 50 minutes to deadline? If you are up to this challenge, NYC Midnight will start its 17th Annual Short Story Challenge on 20th January 2023.
The Short Story Challenge organised by NYC Midnight is a creative writing competition open to writers around the world that challenges participants to create original short stories in as little as 24 hours. NYC Midnight Movie Making Madness is an organization founded in 2002 with the mission to discover and promote a new wave of talented storytellers.
There are four rounds of competition. In the 1st round, beginning on January 20th, writers are placed randomly in groups and are assigned a genre, subject, and character assignment to write an original story no longer than 2,500 within eight days. The judges choose a top five in each group to advance to the 2nd round where writers receive new assignments, only this time they have three days to write a short story no longer than 2,000 words. The judges again choose a top five in each group to advance to the 3rd round, where writers receive new assignments and have two days to write a short story no longer than 1,500 words. Judges select finalists, and the remaining writers are challenged to write a story no longer than 1,250 words in just 24 hours in the fourth and final round of the competition.
Feedback is provided on every submission and you will have over 24,000 writers to support each other on an online forum. Don't worry, writers retain all the rights to stories they created during this competition, There is currently over $15,000 in cash and prizes for the winners of the Short Story Challenge 2023.
Sound like fun? You can download and read the
Official Rules & Participation Agreement. When you are ready, you can register
here. The entry fee is USD$52* until the early entry deadline of December 8, 2022 and USD$62* until the final entry deadline of January 19, 2023.
All competition start and end dates are in the Eastern Time Zone (New York). If you live in another time zone, you will need to make sure you are aware of how many hours ahead or behind you are from New York.
Click the
FAQ section to find out more about this event. If you need some ideas before you put your writing cap on, click
here for a sample of a winning story. Subscribe to their newsletter so you won't miss a thing.
