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Free Creative Writing tips and videos for prose fiction authors.

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OWT Short-Fiction Prize on hiatus At Online Writing Tips, we've been privileged to read thousands of your short stories in the process of awarding the annual OWT Short-Fiction Prize for the past four years.

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"Rollaway" by Lorna Wood: read the story that won 3rd prize in the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Competition

“Rollaway” by Lorna Wood: read the story that won 3rd prize in the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Competition

When I got to my hotel room I found I had the wrong rollaway suitcase. As I opened it, a light floral aroma transported me to my mother’s spring tea parties in Westport, with the lilacs trumpeting their triumph over winter while the lilies of the valley nodded more modestly around the borders of the newly cut lawn. Once, home from college, I had seen a young woman there, just turning towards the…

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Piece of My Heart by Hannah Whiteoak: Read the story that won the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Valentine’s Day was always busy at Piece of My Heart. The couple waited in the doorway for over a minute before I had a chance to dash over and greet them. The woman was staring up at the chandelier, wide-eyed, when I approached. The man returned my smile.

“Do you have a booking?” I asked.

“Jackson,” the man replied. “I called last week.”

They were an odd couple. She was so thin she looked like…

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Lizard by Mina Ivosev: Read the story that won 2nd prize in the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Lizard by Mina Ivosev: Read the story that won 2nd prize in the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Katie was not much for similes but she once said to Darin that a man is like an appendix. They were in the shower when she said this, and she was holding him in her warm hand, or maybe it was just the shower that was warm. Darin doesn’t remember what he said back, and maybe because he can’t remember the next line the scene can’t move forward and so it replays in his mind over and over: the…

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Congratulations to the winners of the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Congratulations to the winners of the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Today, we’re pleased to announce that four people will receive prizes, but sorry that almost 600 others have been disappointed along the way. We’ve ried to make our decisions as fairly and diligently as possible, but disappointing news isn’t nice to receive or deliver. We take comfort in knowing that with so many brilliant entries, the authors who didn’t get the breaks in our competition this…

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And then there were 12: Short list announced for 2019 OWT Short Fiction Prize

And then there were 12: Short list announced for 2019 OWT Short Fiction Prize

We started with almost 600 stories, and choosing a long list of just 60 wasn’t easy. Now,  regrettably, we have to lose all but 12 of the long-listed stories. There were so many great stories we wanted to keep in the competition! Back in 2016, when we first offered our prize, we wrote about the difficulties involved in judging a competition such as this one, and now, with the competition in its…

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Announcing the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Prize long list

Announcing the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Prize long list

With almost 600 entries to consider, selecting our favourite 10% was never going to be easy. But the decisions this year have been especially difficult, as the standard of entries is the best we’ve ever seen. We’re thrilled to have attracted such a range of excellent fiction, sent to us from six continents. As always, we’re delighted that our long list features a mix of multi-published,…

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Submissions closed: let the judging begin!

The 2019 OWT Short Story Competition is now closed for submissions: let the judging begin!

Submissions have now closed for the 2019 OWT Short Story Prize, and we want to thank everyone who has shared their work. We’ve received 486 submissions, which is slightly fewer than last year, but still a lot to read!

The judging now begins. Alas, we have only three prizes to award, so we apologise that there is no way we can give all entries the recognition that they deserve. Please know how…

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Announcing the OWT Short Story Prize 2019 Yes, the Online Writing Tips Short Fiction Prize is back for 2019, and the deadline has just been announced as midnight on Friday May 31st (GMT).

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Coetzee’s Disgrace: The fractal structure of novels (tip 82)

Coetzee’s Disgrace: The fractal structure of novels (tip 82)

In this video, DD Johnston discusses why novels are structurally similar to fern leaves, analysing JM Coetzee’s Disgrace as an example.

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Featured Market: Flash Fiction Magazine

Featured Market: Flash Fiction Magazine

We haven’t done a featured market post for ages, so here’s something for those with short pieces they’re looking to submit. Flash Fiction Magazine is accepting submissions all year round. Their word limit is 300-1000 words (any genre). There is no payment for stories published on the website; however, they pay $40 per story accepted for their anthologies. You can submit here.

It’s free to submit,…

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"A Little Folding of the Hands" by Hillard Morley: read the story that won the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Prize

“A Little Folding of the Hands” by Hillard Morley: read the story that won the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Prize

Hillard Morley

She had refused to move to Australia. It hadn’t been an easy decision, though she’d made it almost instantly. The question had surprised her, coming out of the blue; it had made her feel conventional, square, because she knew immediately that she needed to say no.

“I tried to consider it, tried not to answer out of lazy prejudice,” she told herself, but to be honest the energy…

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Congratulations to the winners of the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Congratulations to the winners of the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Today, we’re pleased to announce that three people will receive prizes, but sorry that more than 600 others have been disappointed along the way. We’ve tried to make our decisions as fairly and diligently as possible, but disappointing news isn’t nice to receive or deliver. We take comfort in knowing that with so many brilliant entries, the authors who didn’t get the breaks in our competition…

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Announcing the shortlist for the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Prize

Announcing the shortlist for the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Prize

First there were over 600, then there were 70, and now there remain just twelve. Twelve good people and true. Our dirty dozen. Choosing just 12 finalists from our 70 favourite entries has been hard. We were tempted to publish another list of all the pieces we wanted to squeeze onto the shortlist and couldn’t, but it would have been pretty much the same as the longlist.

The 2018 shortlist includes…

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Announcing the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Prize longlist

Spare a thought for the dutiful team at Online Writing Tips who’ve been chugging coffee in a bid to meet their midnight deadline to publish this year’s longlist. With more than 600 entries to debate, selecting our favourite 10% has been fraught and exhausting. But we’ve made it, just.

We’ve picked a longlist of 70, which is actually more like 11%. We could have picked any of several hundred…

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OWT Short Fiction Competition - update

OWT Short Fiction Competition – update

The 2018 OWT short fiction competition is now closed for entries – thanks so much to everyone who has submitted their work. We’re still counting the entries and it looks like we have nearly 600! Once again, that’s almost double the number of entries we received last year (in 2016 we had 148 entries, in 2017 we had 300 (exactly), and now we have almost 600; if the competition continues to grow at…

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Story structure example: The Very Hungry Caterpillar (tip 81)

US President George W Bush once named The Very Hungry Caterpillar as his favourite childhood book. Alas, it wasn’t published until he was 23 & fresh out of Yale. It's not advanced post-grad reading but it does have a perfect structure

Some years ago, former-US President George W. Bush named The Very Hungry Caterpillar as his favourite childhood book. Unfortunately, it wasn’t published until he was 23 and fresh out of Yale. Still, while it’s not advanced post-graduate reading, it does have a perfect structure, from which we can learn a lot.

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