Short Story Makes Fun of Word Count Limit, Wins Contest

[Philip Overby]

While I believe publishers limit word counts for a reason, 600 words is pretty short. If you're good at flash fiction you can make it work. However, this writer took the opportunity to complain about the word count in his actual story. And he won.

Pretty funny stuff. Thanks to Colin for the link!

Short Story Makes Fun of Contest, Wins -  Scott Bartlett, novelist

 

[Chilari]

Ha, that's brilliant. The ending was perfect.

I've never been good at keeping things short. In a story I've been working on recently, that I was aiming to come in at 8k words, in which the hero, one of several kings within an empire, went looking for the kidnapped/stolen body of the late Empress, I spent nearly 3000 words just getting to the bit where the kings discover the Empress's body missing at the funeral. The rest of the story, at that rate, might end up 20k words in first draft. Some cutting required in the rewrite, I suspect, to make it short enough to submit as a short story to a paying magazine.