The 14th annual Florida Weekly Writing Challenge launches Round 3 this week, offering a new set of photos curated by our editors to inspire readers to write short stories. For Round 3, you have until 11:59 pm on Tuesday, June 18 to email us your original story using just one of the two photographs shown here as a starting point. You can submit only one story per two-week round.
These are the rules for submitting entries to the 2024 Writing Challenge:
Write your first and last name, email address, phone number, and city/state of residence at the top of your story.
Next, write a title at the top of your masterpiece.
The maximum is 750 words, including your contact information and title (no minimum word count). And no poetry, please.
Write your story through the spell checker!
Important: When you write the subject line of your email, you must start the subject line with the code WC24 (no spaces between letters and numbers) so that the challenge moderator will detect that it is an entry for the 2024 Writing Challenge ; then add the round you’re entering (like “Round 2”) and write a simple description of the photo you’re responding to (like “man with dog,” etc.). This simple photo description will probably be different from the title you give your story. Below is an example of what a subject line following this format would look like: WC24 Round 2 man with dog.
Copy and paste the full text of your entry into the body of your email and verify that the full text has been copied before hitting send. (You should send your story as plain text in the body of the email; do not send any attachments.) Also, do not embed any images in your entry.
The Writing Challenge email address is laura.tichy-smith@floridaweekly.com (and yes, be sure to include the hyphen between tichy and smith in the email address).
The challenge moderator will send you a personal email confirming that your entry has been received; Please allow up to one week to receive this acknowledgment. Remember to check your spam or junk mail box if you don’t see the confirmation email after a week.
Once you have submitted an entry for a round, you will not be able to submit a revised version, so follow all instructions carefully. Round 4 and beyond
We’ll be printing new photos for Round 4 in our June 19 and 20 issues, and you’ll have until 11:59 pm on Tuesday, July 3 to send us another story, just one. And so on, with new prompts every two weeks for five rounds this year. The deadline to participate in Round 5 will be Tuesday, July 16. Enter as many rounds as your creativity, time, and discipline allow, but only email one story per round.
The 2024 Writing Challenge winner and three honorable mentions will be notified at the end of July, and the first-place winner will receive tuition for an online Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Honorable mentions will receive Amazon gift cards.
We’ll publish the top four stories sometime in August (the winning writers will be interviewed for an article to accompany the publication of their stories). The runners-up, typically the fifth through 10th place picks, will be released as space permits in the coming weeks.
So, carefully re-read the rules, study the photo prompts for Round 3, and harness your creativity. Remember: The deadline for this round is 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, June 18.
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