Official Guidelines

Please read the following guidelines carefully. It would be a shame to be disqualified on technical grounds.

1. What is the format for entries?

Enter your 100 words or fewer story inside the text of an email message.

Attachments will not be considered.

Present your name, mailing address, repeated email address, and your story's word count at the top of your entry. (This will allow us to match author/payer in our records.)

We require good grammar and spelling. Demonstrably incorrect paragraphing, grammar, or spelling is cause for return of your story and refund of your payment.

JUSTIFIED LINES ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE! Use a plain 12 point font. We greatly prefer New Courier or Times New Roman.

2. What are the locations of entrants?

Entrants may be located anywhere on Earth.

3. Must the entries be original?

Your entry must be original, in English, unpublished and not accepted by any other publisher or producer at the time of submission. 100 Words Or Fewer Writing Contest retains one-time publication rights to the First and Second winning entries, to be published once on the 100 Words Or Fewer Writing Contest website.

No revisions of stories evaluated and critiqued on from any 100 Words Or Fewer Writing Contest will be accepted. Revisions from other contests you entered are certainly acceptable.

4. Is there a given topic?

Yes. For Contest Ten, there will be four topics: ONE: “THE ENCOUNTER,” TWO: “LOCKED OUT,” THREE: THE WEARY ENFORCER," and FOUR, "HE ALWAYS DID THE DISHES." In every case, anything lewd or libelous will be discarded immediately. The payment will not be returned.

5. Is the word count limitation firm?

Yes! Entries exceeding the word limit will not be considered. Type the exact word count (counting every single word, except the title and contact information) at the top of your entry.

6. What are the fees?

Please use Paypal for secure payment of entry fee ($15.00); entry plus checkmark evaluation ($25.00); entry, checkmark evaluation and critique ($60.00); and critique alone ($40.00). (An entrant may decide on a critique after sending in a story.) Under special circumstances, a check sent directly to us will be acceptable.

Three entries will earn you a free checkmark evaluation.

Four entries will earn you a free critique!

Possible $10 additional:

WRITERS MUST IDENTIFY THEMSELVES!!!
We spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to connect payer to writer, address (in PayPal) to writer, and sometimes pen name to paying name. We need the identification in the original email as follows:

Name of writer,
Name (not business name) of payer if it is different from that of writer,
address with zip code and phone number;
one email address.

We apologize, but because of the time involved, we now impose an extra $10 fee if the above information is not readily available to us.

7. What is the deadline?

The deadline for Contest Ten is July 18, 2012.

(Note this is a four month contest.) Any manuscript received after the deadline will not be considered. Entries may be sent immediately.

8. How will I know if I have won?

The four winners and ten honorary designates for Contest Ten will be determined by our Final Judge, Erica Bauermeister, on or before August 14th, 2012. Prizes will be issued by mail on August 15, 2012. The Winning writers and their stories, along with names of Honorary designates, will be posted on the website by August 17, 2012, or earlier.

9. May I send more than one entry?

Certainly. We welcome each entry. Fees are as stated in 6., above.

10. What is the basis for your decisions regarding each entry?

Judges will look for the following:

(1) immediate pull of the story’s fictional world,

(2) believable characters,

(3) voice, which should contain a personal flavor and possibly humor,

(4) intensity and drive of focus,

(5) power of images,

(6) cadence and flow of sentences,

(7) overall structural integrity,

(8) beauty of language,

(9) suspense,

(10) plot twist, or ending that concludes a coherent story,

(11) power of ending, and

(12) overall emotional impact.

Judges will first segregate stories into higher and lower groups. Stories with higher rankings will be read again and narrowed down for further segregation. This process will be repeated until our final judge determines all four winners. At each point, judges’ decisions are final.

http://www.100wordsorfewerwritingcontest.com

Click on the link above and go to the contest official site