Tag: Competition

Future Fire Grew inside Her

Patricia Flaherty Pagan

Ultrasound in hand, she scattered lupin-seed hopes on the wind.

Patricia Flaherty Pagan is a Second Prize Winner of Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024. She lives in a brown house on Boston’s north shore with her family and three mischievous rescue cats. She is the award-winning author of Enduring Spirit: Stories and Trail Ways Pilgrims. Her flash fiction has been published in journals such as Cleaver Magazine, The Ocotillo Review, and The Sirens Call. See more on her website.

Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024 asked writers for ten-word stories on the theme of DESTINY / HISTORY. It took us many many many re-reads to choose our winners. The selected stories stood out for innovative use of language, for making us feel and think, as well as careful engagement with the theme.

Briefly Write is a little literary space with big ideas. We publish a twice-yearly Zine of bold and brief micro poetry, prose and photography. We host two annual competitions – Write 10 and the Briefly Write Poetry Prize – and other occasional collections, including Briefly Think, a themed call for thoughtful short essays. We publish succinct, meaningful reviews of poetry and fiction, with a focus on debut collections and environmental themes. We also provide writing inspiration and personalised feedback in the Briefly Zone.

One moment to end – or save – our marriage

Helen MacDonald

One form, signatures required. Leave the pen. Take my hand.

Helen MacDonald is a Second Prize Winner of Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024. She is a Welsh crime fiction novelist who also dabbles in flash fiction and poetry, but not as often as she should. You can find her on X and Instagram (@helenmacwrites).

Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024 asked writers for ten-word stories on the theme of DESTINY / HISTORY. It took us many many many re-reads to choose our winners. The selected stories stood out for innovative use of language, for making us feel and think, as well as careful engagement with the theme.

Briefly Write is a little literary space with big ideas. We publish a twice-yearly Zine of bold and brief micro poetry, prose and photography. We host two annual competitions – Write 10 and the Briefly Write Poetry Prize – and other occasional collections, including Briefly Think, a themed call for thoughtful short essays. We publish succinct, meaningful reviews of poetry and fiction, with a focus on debut collections and environmental themes. We also provide writing inspiration and personalised feedback in the Briefly Zone.

A Myth

Heain Joung

My parents never hugged each other, but I was born.

Heain Joung is a Second Prize Winner of Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024. Originally from South Korea, she holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from Sussex University. She now lives in the UK. Her short fiction can be found in Full House Literary, Flashback Fiction, FlashFlood Journal, SugarSugarSalt Magazine, Tiny Molecules, among others. Find her on Twitter (@heainhaven).

Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024 asked writers for ten-word stories on the theme of DESTINY / HISTORY. It took us many many many re-reads to choose our winners. The selected stories stood out for innovative use of language, for making us feel and think, as well as careful engagement with the theme.

Briefly Write is a little literary space with big ideas. We publish a twice-yearly Zine of bold and brief micro poetry, prose and photography. We host two annual competitions – Write 10 and the Briefly Write Poetry Prize – and other occasional collections, including Briefly Think, a themed call for thoughtful short essays. We publish succinct, meaningful reviews of poetry and fiction, with a focus on debut collections and environmental themes. We also provide writing inspiration and personalised feedback in the Briefly Zone.

Notice

Emily Munro

Home for sale. Secure door. Own flood defences. Low price.

Emily Munro is a Second Prize Winner of Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024. She is a writer and filmmaker based in Glasgow. See more on her website.

Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024 asked writers for ten-word stories on the theme of DESTINY / HISTORY. It took us many many many re-reads to choose our winners. The selected stories stood out for innovative use of language, for making us feel and think, as well as careful engagement with the theme.

Briefly Write is a little literary space with big ideas. We publish a twice-yearly Zine of bold and brief micro poetry, prose and photography. We host two annual competitions – Write 10 and the Briefly Write Poetry Prize – and other occasional collections, including Briefly Think, a themed call for thoughtful short essays. We publish succinct, meaningful reviews of poetry and fiction, with a focus on debut collections and environmental themes. We also provide writing inspiration and personalised feedback in the Briefly Zone.

Ruins

Ilias Tsagas

Kids are playing in the temple, rearranging blocks of history.

Ilias Tsagas is a Second Prize Winner of Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024. He is a Greek poet writing in English as a second language. His poems have appeared in journals like Apogee, AMBIT, Under the Radar, Poetry Wales, streetcake, SAND, FU Review, Tokyo Poetry, Plumwood Mountain and elsewhere. Ilias will be an Artist in Residence at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2024.

Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024 asked writers for ten-word stories on the theme of DESTINY / HISTORY. It took us many many many re-reads to choose our winners. The selected stories stood out for innovative use of language, for making us feel and think, as well as careful engagement with the theme.

Briefly Write is a little literary space with big ideas. We publish a twice-yearly Zine of bold and brief micro poetry, prose and photography. We host two annual competitions – Write 10 and the Briefly Write Poetry Prize – and other occasional collections, including Briefly Think, a themed call for thoughtful short essays. We publish succinct, meaningful reviews of poetry and fiction, with a focus on debut collections and environmental themes. We also provide writing inspiration and personalised feedback in the Briefly Zone.

1847

Clodagh O Connor

Crops failed. People departed. Only birds harvest blackberries this year.

Clodagh O Connor is First Prize Winner of Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024. She loves to read and is working on becoming a writer. She particularly enjoys the challenges of tiny fiction.

Briefly ‘Write 10’ 2024 asked writers for ten-word stories on the theme of DESTINY / HISTORY. It took us many many many re-reads to choose our winners. The selected stories stood out for innovative use of language, for making us feel and think, as well as careful engagement with the theme.

Briefly Write is a little literary space with big ideas. We publish a twice-yearly Zine of bold and brief micro poetry, prose and photography. We host two annual competitions – Write 10 and the Briefly Write Poetry Prize – and other occasional collections, including Briefly Think, a themed call for thoughtful short essays. We publish succinct, meaningful reviews of poetry and fiction, with a focus on debut collections and environmental themes. We also provide writing inspiration and personalised feedback in the Briefly Zone.

Write 10 – The Published Stories 2024

Tiny stories have power.

This year we asked you to write destiny / history in exactly ten words. And that is exactly what you did (except two entrants who submitted 11 👀).

What can you convey in ten words?

We had stories about mood swings, witch hunts and homecomings. From ravens to dinosaurs, biographies to pizza parties, we travelled across time, space and shadows, through small choices and momentous decisions, into time loops and repeating mistakes, into the pages of newspapers, ruins and happily ever afters…

Judging so many wonderful tiny stories was a joy and a challenge. It took us many many many re-reads to narrow our choices down to the handful we are sharing below.

As usual, we read all entries anonymously. Our chosen stories were the ones that did the most with their ten words (plus title), used language innovatively, made us feel, made us think, and best responded to the theme.

The stories we chose to share are moving and in motion, shape-shifting, shift-shaping and sure to demand re-re-reading all the way home.

Share the words, share the love, share the joy of language. Let us know what you think! And please do write – and share – many more tiny stories.

Daniel & Elinor

First Prize

Clodagh O Connor, ‘1847’

Second Prize

Ilias Tsagas, ‘Ruins’

Emily Munro, ‘Notice’

Heain Joung, ‘A Myth’

Helen MacDonald, ‘One moment to end – or save – our marriage’

Patricia Flaherty Pagan, ‘Future Fire Grew inside Her’

In 2024, we will pay more writers than ever before. We are fully funded by donations on Ko-fi and don’t take anything for ourselves as editors. Find out more here.

Briefly Write is a little literary space with big ideas. We publish a twice-yearly Zine of bold and brief micro poetry, prose and photography. We host two annual competitions – Write 10 and the Briefly Write Poetry Prize – and other occasional collections, including Briefly Think, a themed call for thoughtful short essays. We publish succinct, meaningful reviews of poetry and fiction, with a focus on debut collections and environmental themes. We also provide writing inspiration and personalised feedback in the Briefly Zone.

Poster for Briefly Write's 'Write 10' competition 2023-24

Launching Our Ten-Word Story Competition 2023-24

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The rules are the same. The prizes are bigger…

Write 10 is the third instalment of Briefly Write‘s annual ten-word story competition. In 2021 and 2022, we followed a simple premise: Write 10 to Win 10. This year, we’re mixing things up a bit.

Theme: Destiny / History

The theme this year is Destiny / History. Use this loosely or literally – the choice is yours (or is it?!).

We want to see creative interpretations of the prompt. We want to see a tiny story with a full narrative arc. Or a snapshot of a moment. Or a moment snapped and shot. MAKE. EVERY. WORD. COUNT.

More Winners, More Winnings

Send us ten words (plus a few more for the title). Send us a story that makes us fall out of our chairs, fall out with each other, fall into a daydream or fall head over heels. Choose your words carefully.

Then we will read them all. And again. Andagainandagainandagain. Then we will choose (carefully) the ones that fell just right… and reward them with praise, publicity and a few pound coins.

If you would like to help increase the prize pot, please consider supporting us here – every penny we receive goes towards paying writers and artists!

Competition Guidelines

  1. Free to enter. One entry per person.
  2. Only entries made using this form will be considered.
  3. Story must be exactly 10 words and relate to the theme ‘Destiny / History’. Title is not included in word count.
  4. Please do not submit work that is under consideration elsewhere. Once submitted, your entry cannot be withdrawn.
  5. Opens: 10 December 2023. Deadline: 21 January 2024 @ 23:59 GMT.
  6. Entries judged anonymously. Editors’ decision is final.
  7. Winning and shortlisted stories will be paid and published online. All entrants will be contacted by email.
  8. Results published online by the end of March 2024. If this needs to change, an update will be provided here.
  9. By entering Write 10, you are granting us first electronic rights only. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication.
  10. If anything isn’t clear, send any queries to contact [at] brieflywrite [dot] com. Please do not email your entry.
ENTER YOUR TINY STORY

Poetry Prize 2022 – Judges’ Notes

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We were once again blown away by the quality and variety of the poems in this year’s Poetry Prize. Mark Strand sums up our feelings well:

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

But now the poems have been read and re-read and re-read, the arguments had, the heart-breaking decisions made. And we wanted to share a bit about what brought us to the winning and shortlisted poems we were so excited to share with you.

What follows is, inevitably, a personal take and nothing we say is supposed to be a “rule”: these are just our thoughts and reflections. We tried to include things that we, as poets submitting to other competitions, would find useful to know, and to cast some light on what can at times feel like an opaque process.

***

Moons and origami

There were some common themes in the poems we read. Covid was still influencing many poets. Grief and joy competed for dominance, while new beginnings started to bloom. Lovesickness remains hard to overcome.

Certain images also recurred: origami is a popular choice, as are roses, stars and grass. The moon still refuses to wane.

Using popular (stereotypical) images does not disqualify a poem. But you’re going to have to do something special with it to stand out!

If you’re writing an ode to origami, make sure you’ve considered all the connotations of folded paper. If you want to use the moon as a symbol, think carefully about what this is adding to your poem.

Vivid imagery makes a poem stand out

When reading through lots of poems, we found those which centred on a vivid and unique image had an easier job standing out. Being grounded in a concrete image can really make a poem pop and bring it to life. If a poem stays entirely at the abstract level and refuses to engage with anything real life, it can be harder to grab the reader’s attention and imagination. This can be in the form of an interesting metaphor or specific (relevant) details.

Standing out is not just about making an immediate impact. The winning poems often emerged in the later stages as those ones which dug in their claws and didn’t let us go. The vital hook, in many cases, was a wonderful image which we couldn’t get out of our heads.

Punctuation can be powerful

Punctuation can often be forgotten by poets focused on the bigger picture. But small can be mighty and we found that impactful or sloppy use of punctuation had the power to make or break poems.

Use commas, which help the reader navigate your poem, making it easier to read. And use fullstops. They can add drama. And flow. And if you’re feeling creative, experiment with colons: a beautiful image can follow. And dashes – though be a bit careful with these – to bracket off different parts of a poem.

Don’t feel the need to go big

Another thing we found was that a good poem doesn’t always need to be about the Big Themes. Often those that did strive for grandeur slipped into generalisation. We don’t want to put anyone off writing about Truth or Life or The Meaning of It All. But don’t feel like you have to. And only write BIG if you have something to say, such as bringing your own personal angle to these well-trodden topics.

Get out your red pen and be brutal with the cuts

A number of poems came across rather waffly and padded out and felt, well, like they could do with a brutal edit. Don’t be scared to make big cuts. One good place to look for edits is often at the beginning and end of a poem. It is natural to feel the need to start by setting the scene. But when your poem is so short, you don’t want to waste your first few lines describing the misty morning and the songbird’s warbling if they are not going to make a reappearance later in the poem. Jump straight into the action. Equally, resist the urge to add a last line neatly summing everything up. You’re not writing a school essay which requires the obligatory ‘In conclusion…’ to finish. Trust your reader. They don’t need to be handheld all the way through the poem.

Top tip: Set up a new file where you keep all the lines which don’t make the final version of your poem – they might just make the perfect springboard into a new piece!

Re-read, re-read, re-read

We know it’s obvious but it really is important to re-read your poem before submitting. Remember that to get through to the shortlist, a poem needs to be able to withstand many rounds of judging. It’s on these re-readings that the annoying little typo we were willing to overlook initially really starts to grate, the lack of internal coherence is exposed and a hastily chosen word finds it suddenly has nowhere to hide.

***

Here are four things you can do right away to get your poems straight back out there:

(1) Re-read your poem

(2) Re-edit. Have another look and see if there are any (small) tweaks you would now make. Is every word contributing to the overall effect of the poem? Have you thought carefully about line breaks and form?

(3) Re-submit. Find somewhere else to send your poem! Don’t delay: send it straight back out there to another competition or journal.

Then, (4) Bookmark this page ready for next year! The Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2023 will open next May/June. It will be FREE to enter again… and we’d love to read another entry from you.

Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2021 – Judges’ Notes

Three weeks ago, we released the winners of the inaugural Briefly Write Poetry Prize. If you haven’t yet read the winning and commended poems, you can do so here.

Now the dust has settled, we thought it would be a good time to share a few brief observations from the judging process. We hope this will shine a light on our decision making and provide greater insight into our aesthetic.

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines “to judge” as:

To form, give, or have as an opinion, or to decide about something or someone, especially after thinking carefully…

We can confirm that:

  1. We thought very carefully about our choices
  2. We were deciding about something (a poem) not someone (a poet) – we read all entries anonymously

The following points aim to reveal some of the factors that helped us form our opinion of the poems we read.

Judges’ Notes

As with any competition, a dozen different judges might pick a dozen different winners. Nothing we say below is supposed to be a “rule”: these are just our thoughts and reflections on reading 1,412 poems and picking our favourites.

  1. Think carefully about your idea. No matter how beautifully you craft your poem, if you’re not inspired by what you’re writing it will probably show. Give us something authentic, something you care about, something that only you could write. When we’re reading so many poems, those quirky snapshots which illuminate the poet’s own unique experience are usually the ones that shine through.
  2. Avoid the obvious. This follows on from the previous point: make your writing unique. We had hundreds of poems about heartbreak, love, dogs or poetry. These can all be interesting topics – if that’s what speaks to you, knock our socks off with a brilliant heartbreak ballad. But remember you will be competing to stand out among hundreds of very similar poems.
  3. Make every word count. This may sound like a cliché, but it’s not: when it came down to the final decisions, some brilliant poems missed out on the longlist or shortlist due to a single word that seemed hastily chosen or badly placed. You should know why you’ve chosen every word. This doesn’t need to be a ‘poetic’ justification: “it just feels right” can be a perfectly valid reason. But when a rose is described as “beautiful” or a night’s sky as “dark” in three consecutive entries, we can’t help feeling like the poets missed a chance to sparkle.
  4. Don’t over-write. This might seem contradictory to number 3, but it’s not: we want well-worked not over-worked. Often, when people try to write in a ‘poetic’ style, the result is an overly embellished poem that lacks authenticity. If you want to write like Shakespeare, that’s fine… but we still want to hear your voice. Use rhyme or don’t use rhyme – both techniques can be used creatively and to great effect – but please don’t feel like you need to use rhyme just because that’s what your Year 9 English teacher said a poem has to do.
  5. Let it breathe. We read a lot of poems that didn’t quite feel ready, work that could have been improved with a little more time and care. The Poetry Prize was open for three months and we recommend you wait a few days (or weeks or months) after writing your poem before you send it. We read generously but a sloppy, typo-laden entry will not make a good impression. Check line breaks, word choice, rhythm. Speak your poem out loud to make sure it sounds how it does in your head.
  6. Don’t forget the title. A surprising number of poems were called ‘Untitled’. It’s fine if that’s your thing, but when you only have ten lines to impress, the title can do a lot of work.
  7. Choose a good title! Several promising poems were let down by slap-dash, irrelevant or uninteresting titles. A strong title can be tantalising, tingling, informative and intriguing. Use it to tease our poetry senses: a title gives you the opportunity to set the stage, to tweak and play with the reader’s emotional state. Don’t give it all away before we’ve read the poem and don’t try to be too ‘out there’ for the sake of being ‘out there’. But do make the most of the opportunity to excite us in the first few words.
  8. Think big. As well as individual word choice, think about the larger structure. Can you use line breaks creatively or disruptively? Is the layout important to the message? If a poet does not think enough about the overall effect, a beautiful poem can become dense with too many unrelated images.
  9. Get the ending right. Poets often stress over the opening lines, but very few poems were turned down based on a poor opening alone. More often it’s the final lines that let a piece down. It’s very tempting to hammer home the key points at the end – but doing so usually results in a sense of over-writing. Trust your reader: if you’ve constructed a beautiful metaphor about a juniper bush and your first love, leave it to blossom in the reader’s imagination – don’t destroy the image by explaining that the juniper now reminds you of those idyllic days and you’re feeling sad you’ll never get to re-live them.