Welcome once again to The Fiction Shelf. We think competitions keep things fresh and help to give writers a good focus. Competitions are a good start for our readers to take their first steps into writing and a great place for our established writers to hone their skills.

We will be running plenty of competitions, the gem of these being our annual ‘Fiction Shelf prize for Short Fiction and Poetry.’ All competition winners and runners‐up will be included in our first Fiction Shelf Anthology along with other prizes on offer for each competition.

This brings us to our first competition:

The Fiction Shelf concerns itself with the best in short fiction and poetry. We are challenging you to produce something even shorter. We would like your best short story in only 123 characters. The subject for the competition is ‘New.’

The prize for this competition will be £20 worth of Book Vouchers and the inclusion of your piece of Flash Fiction in our first anthology.

All entries are to be submitted via Twitter. Just tweet in your usual way and end the tweet with #tfsflashfiction. After the hashtag is in, you have 123 characters remaining for your story. Winners and runners up will be contacted via Twitter. Ensure that you put a space between your piece and the hashtag (see example below). Please don’t shorten words or use txt speak unless this is an important part of the piece. Getting all you want to say into such a short space is all part of the challenge.

This competition closes on 30th December 2011. Anyone can enter but we do ask that you help us in promoting the competition by tweeting a link to this page following your entry.

Example:

His dreams lay broken on his birthday. It was already 2020 and things really hadn’t picked up in the way everyone had hoped. #tfsflashfiction

Further details here.

London Comedy Writers does not endorse any of the competitions or opportunities listed on this site and cannot be held responsible for their administration. We provide these links in good faith. You must make your own judgment and do your own research before entering any competition or partaking in any opportunity. If you have had a bad experience with any of these competitions or events listed on the website, please contact us so it can be removed.