Member-Sponsored Crossroads Contest

Details

Life is full of decisions we make, taking us along one road or down another.

There are moments where unpredicted happiness makes us glow, where events we hoped for are abandoned on the way, dreams lying forgotten by the roadside and sometimes the choices we make bring pain or joy in ways utterly unforeseen, for ourselves and for those we love.

Here is your chance to explore and illustrate the way our choices can change the roads in our lives in ways expected and unexpected.

Write a short story that focuses on the pivotal decisions that influenced a life or lives and the consequences of those decisions. Give us your magical words, sprinkle the letters with your magnificent and unique writing style, perfect your prose with your most poetic lines.

Maximum word count is 3,000 words. Entries are judged on the skills of the writing —originality, readability, engagement, characterisation and meaning delivered —and on the close adherence to the theme. There is no restriction on genre but only fiction and creative nonfiction will be accepted.

Please note: Once an entry has been submitted to the competition, it cannot be revised.

In addition to the prizes below, each winner also gets one free entry to the Lit Up contest on Medium, which has a first prize of $100 and featured publication in the Lit Up Magazine, our new literary journal which will be announced soon.

Prize money for this contest is provided by the Scribophile Writing Contest Prize Fund.

Winning entries

Winners have been announced! Log in to see them.

Prizes

Rules

• Maximum word count is 3,000 words, per Scribophile’s count.

• Entries are judged on the skills of the writing — originality, readability, engagement, characterisation and meaning delivered — and on the close adherence to the theme.

• A limit of 1 story for each author. There is no restriction on genre but only fiction and creative nonfiction will be accepted.

• No poetry or novel excerpts for this competition, please.

• Entries must not be previously published.

• Note: Please, take the time to ensure your drafts are read through and presented in the most professional manner possible, with a minimum of typos and grammatical errors, and formatted to standard, accepted publishing conventions. We are on Scribophile after all!

Submission guidelines

• To enter the contest, post your work on Scribophile. If you want to have the work critiqued and revised before entering the competition please do not check the box that says "Enter this work into the Crossroads contest" until you are no longer revising. Once the work is entered into the Submissions list no further alterations can be made and your work will be judged on independent criteria for story engagement and writing skills, not against the other entries. Your work will automatically be considered. The check box will be visible until the contest deadline, which is in UTC time.

• Entry is free, but you’ll need karma points to post your work. You can earn karma points by writing critiques of other members work.

• First, second and third place winners must have a valid Paypal account.