Three Sentence Ficathon

Hosted on Dreamwidth @threesentenceficathon

[three-sentence-ficathon]

Welcome to the Three Sentence Ficathon Tumblr!

What is the 3 Sentence Ficathon?

This is an open exchange where you answer a prompt with a fic consisting of only three sentences. It’s open to all fandoms and you can post and fill as many prompts as you want, as many times as you want.

How does it work?

The event is run over at the threesentenceficathon comm on Dreamwidth. You don’t need a DW account to play, though! You can use an OpenID login, or post as a guest or anon.

When can I participate?

The 2026 3SF will be open for new prompting between January 17 - February 15. Don’t want the fun to end? You can still fill prompts all year long.

So what’s with the Tumblr?

We figured it might be useful what with so many fandom folks being over here. Follow us for announcements or submit questions to the ask box!

Where can I post my 3SF fills? 

Anywhere you want. Fill the prompts first over at the dreamwidth comm (you don’t even have to sign in–anon prompting and filling is just fine). If you post your fills to AO3, feel free to add them to the 3SF Collection. If you share on Tumblr, tag your posts as #3SF26 and the mod team will do our best to reblog them here! 

Who’s on the mod team?

The event is currently maintained by @rthstewart, @bywayofmemory, @wingedflight and @oakashandwillow.

Any more questions?

Check out the 3SF explainer over on Dreamwidth. If you still have questions, drop the question in our ask box.

[three-sentence-ficathon]

Post #4

Okay, you all have moved so fast and so furiously we didn't actually put up a Tumblr thing for Post #3 or the annual friending meme before it was already time for

POST #4.

I repeat, not a drill, POST FOUR IS UP AND RUNNING. And actually has been since last night. (4 Fast 4 Furious.)

As always, previous posts are not closed to fills or responses to fills, literally ever, only prompts. We all know how it feels to be having A Winter, the whole point of 3sf is to enjoy yourself and not stress out, so do not worry about where you jump in or how you jump in. The only part that matters is having a good time.

Not going to lie, the fact that we're on Post 4 with a week to go is wild. We love all of you absolute maniacs (affectionate).

-be_themoon

[ao3org]

AO3 will be down for about 15 hours starting at 08:00 UTC on January 21 (what time is that for me?) while we make some improvements to searching bookmarks and series, including:

adding the ability to search, filter, and sort bookmarks by word count

making sure bookmark search results are correct when you use tags containing letters and numbers

preventing series blurbs from listing tags that were only used on draft works

preventing series blurbs from listing tags used on restricted works for guests

updating series bookmark search so it only searches the tags on works you can access

Please follow our status page for updates.

[ao3org]

Starting 24 hours from now, AO3 will be down for about 15 hours.

[ao3org]

AO3 will be going down for about 15 hours of maintenance at 08:00 UTC (what time is that for me?).

Posted: 20:06 UTC January 20, 2026

[ao3org]

AO3 downtime starts in one hour! We expect it to last about 15 hours.

Posted: 07:01 UTC January 21, 2026

[three-sentence-ficathon]

Can we interest anyone in some Three Sentence Ficathon while we wait?

[three-sentence-ficathon]

Post #2 is live

Because we’ve already gotten 4000 comments!

Holy smokes and well done, friends, we’re loving the enthusiasm 🥳

We are now closing Post 1 to new prompts, although please still go through and leave as many fills as you want.

(For anyone wondering why, Dreamwidth introduces captcha to replies after 5k comments, hence why we use multiple posts.)

[ao3commentoftheday]

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it doesn’t matter if your fic is only 57 words long, it deserves to be its own post. Give it a title and a summary and tags. Show it off as a standalone thing. Be proud of those 57 words and the love your poured into them. 

Fics don’t need to be long to be complete. Treat short fics as fics. That’s what they are. ❤

[lovebeyondmeasure]

I started my fanfic career in tumblr askbox drabbles. Literally just my friends sending me words and characters and me writing 100 words using that character and that word. And each and every one of those 100-word drabbles is available on AO3 as its own fic, because I had seen enough posts telling me that AO3 is an Archive, and Archives are there not just for the big, fancy stuff but the little silly stuff too. 

So this is me, paying it forward: you don’t have to write 100k of exhaustively-reseached tightly-plotted beta-read perfection. You can write 100 words, and it’s still worth a title, and a summary, and a tag or two. You’re not only welcome on the Archive, you’re meant to be there. That’s what it’s for. For saving and sharing your works, large and small, serious and silly. The Archive is for every fannish work you ever make.

Yes, even the itty-bitty silly ones. And not just as some huge multifandom multichap titled “Tumblr Fics.” They each deserve their own post! I promise! They will find homes in different people’s hearts, and every funny drabble and heartbreaking headcanon that might get lost in a big pile of other snippets can be its own work. 

It’s your Archive, as much as any big-name fan, as much as the founder’s, as much as mine. Your works deserve to take up space there too. It’s not fancy. There’s not some bar for entry, where only the best fic get their own posts. All the nonsense and funsense and gen and fluff and smut and angst and and and– it all belongs, and it’s all deserving of a title, and a summary, and a tag or two.

I promise. I promise. It’s your Archive too.

[ao3commentoftheday]

Archive of Our Own- and that includes you

[mrslittletall]

When I don*t have much energy to read 100 words drabbles are perfect. I just open a few of them in a row and read whatever mini story the author came up with. I don’t need a lot of investment in it and still can feel stuff.

[ao3commentoftheday]

This is actually a great reason to post your short fics separately. Lots of people search by word count. If you’ve got 50 drabbles in a single fic, it will show up as a 5K fic. People looking for a single 5K fic won’t read it and people looking for 100 word drabbles won’t be able to find what they’re looking for. 

[alexseanchai]

incidentally @three-sentence-ficathon is currently accepting prompts and always accepting fills

[three-sentence-ficathon]

Get ready, get set… Go!

That’s right, 3SF 2026 is now officially live. Time to sling some prompts, misuse punctuation, and have tons of fun!

[three-sentence-ficathon]

2026 3SF is on its way!

Dust off those prompts! This year's Three Sentence Ficathon schedule will be as follows:

First post opens: Saturday, January 17th Closing to new prompts: Sunday, February 15th

As always, fills can be posted year-round.

Get ready to prompt and fill like mad! You can also add any fills from past years to the AO3 3SF Collection! We can't wait to see what you all come up with this year.

Info post HERE.

Mod contact post HERE.

[chamthepeng]

In my humble opinion

[three-sentence-ficathon]

3SF Countdown + Friending Meme

This year's Three Sentence Ficathon is almost over! It will officially close to new prompts approximately midnight PST Sunday, February 9th. The current post open to prompts is Post #4 (SOMEHOW, again, wow, hats off to how much participation this year has had, last year getting to post 3 felt wild).

Please note that the ficathon is only closed to new prompts and that's not until tomorrow! As always, posts and prompts remain open to fills .... well, forever. (This particular mod has gotten a few year old prompts filled and is always utterly delighted when it happens.)

As part of our countdown to having to start storing up prompts for next year and only writing instead, there is a FRIENDING MEME up on the comm.

Please traipse that way, traipse to the post still open to prompts, check out all the bajillion lovely prompts on all four posts, and know that we are so delighted to have seen you this year (and however long it takes to enjoy filling prompts) and hope to see you again next year.

A very merry halfway out of the dark to us all.

[three-sentence-ficathon]

Final Week of 3SF!

Can you believe we're three weeks into Three Sentence Ficathon? And, for the first time, we're opening a FOURTH post, because you all have prompted and written SO MUCH this year. Incredible!

This is the last post of this year, and will remain open for prompts until Sunday, February 9th. Please continue to fill after we close to prompts (some folks have reported seeing fills on their prompts from last year and being delighted by it!).

So go forth and have a great final 3SF week!

[i-exist-solely-for-fandom]

what participating in 3SF feels like

[rthstewart]

I feel so seen

[three-sentence-ficathon]

Just kill your spell and grammar checker. It's kinder.

We also have a 12 comment thread on this and with another one spotted in the wild last night on the last pages

Embrace the bad grammar.

[uncleasad]

just stopping by to let you and other hosie people know that the 2025 three sentence ficathon is currently ongoing (open until feb 9) if you (plural) were interested in prompting or filling (hosie, pizzie, other fandoms, etc.) :D

Thanks for the heads up, anon! 🙏 I shall endeavour to spread the word!

I had to do a bit of digging to discover exactly what this is 😉 It’s a month-long multi-fandom microfiction event hosted on Dreamwidth where folks are free to post simple prompts and/or fill prompts with 3-ish sentence fics:

(There’s a tumblr presence, too: @three-sentence-ficathon)

[rthstewart]

Join us! We're already post #2 - because Dreamwidth imposes captcha once a post hits 5000 comments, we close each post to new prompts at 4000 comments give or take. But you can still fill any prompt on any post and new prompts can be made at post 2!

[three-sentence-ficathon]

It Begins!

Three Sentence Ficathon 2025 is officially live! GO GO GO

There have been a few updates to rules we would appreciate everyone taking a look at so everyone is on the same page and then

Go absolutely wild, torture language, write and prompt things you never dreamed of and others you've been dreaming of for ages and everything inbetween.

Have fun!

[three-sentence-ficathon]

It's That Time of Year Again!

That's right!! It's almost Three Sentence Ficathon season! Now that we've all (in theory) arisen from our holiday food comas it's time to write, and what better way to kickstart a new year than no stress no pressure abuse of every grammatical structure known to language?

So dust off those prompts! This year's Three Sentence Ficathon schedule will be as follows:

First post opens: Friday, January 10th Closing to new prompts: Sunday, February 9th

As always, fills can be posted year-round.

Get ready to prompt and fill like mad! You can also add any fills from past years to the AO3 3SF Collection!

We can't wait to see what you all come up with this year.

Info post HERE.

Mod contact post HERE.

We're all very excited to see you all there.

[minotauri]

the em dash and i are in a torrid toxic love affair

[edenfalling]

#our third is the semicolon (via @bywayofmemory)

[three-sentence-ficathon]

One Day Left! Calling all last minute prompts!

Holy smokes, the last few weeks have really flown past. But here we are, almost at the end of the prompting period for 3SF 2024.

So if you’ve got any last prompts, leave them now! The posts will be closed to prompting tomorrow at midnight PST.

Does this mean you’re out of time for fills as well? Not at all!! Fills are welcome all year round. 💖

[oakashandwillow]

i just want to reiterate that fills are welcome forever and always - i personally have had a rough couple weeks inspiration / health wise and haven't done many fills and i have SO MANY that i'm very slowly getting to bit by bit. there are three posts of prompts!! also yes please leave a few more before it ends for the year haha.

[bywayofmemory]

A very excellent reminder! I'll spend the next week or so slowly filling all the prompts I've pulled out as well.

[sharpestasp-deactivated20241106]

3 Sentence Ficathon: BSG'03

"First press of the wild grapes that turned into something that might be considered wine," the man says as he sits with the drink. "It's not like anything back home, but nothing truly ever is, I suppose.

"I just wanted to share a little with you, Laura, and tell you I wish you could tell me how terrible it really is," Bill said to the grave of his long gone love.