About

On several occasions, Anthony Burgess chose random words from a reference book and used them to guide the plots of his novels. It apparently helped Burgess to craft stories with surprising structures. Mash Stories is born from this idea. Let’s see how you like it.
 

Competition

So, what’s the competition about?

Simple. Every three months, three random objects are selected from a randomly gathered list. Writers are invited to make a short, sensible, and convincing story out of them.

Awards

$100 for the winning story and a free quarter of Mash Club membership. The shortlisted stories will be published on Mashstories.com. 

Submission Guidelines

Max. 500 words, excluding the title. Go over 500 words and you’ll be disqualified.

Please make sure all three keywords (listed above) are in the body of your story. If they are not, your story will be disqualified.

This is a flash fiction competition, so no poetry or stories in verse will be accepted.

Another no-no is missing the deadline.

Any genre is accepted.

There is no submission fee.

Stories can only be in English.

Only one submission per person is allowed - meaning, multiple submissions are not allowed.

You can include your name anywhere you like.

You can choose any font you like. This is a story-telling competition, not a typography contest.

Submissions are accepted ONLY via Submittable.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed - meaning, you can submit the story you wrote for MASH Competition to another competition. But please let us know if it accepted elsewhere so we can remove it from the running.

Rights & Edits

Publishing rights of the winning and the shortlisted stories remain with the author. However, MashStories.com holds the non-exclusive publishing rights for the full term of the copyright in the work. By sending your story to us, you automatically agree to this statement.

Please note that our editors may require small changes to be implemented in shortlisted stories, in order to maintain the consistency throughout the website. These changes would never go beyond altering punctuation, or correcting typos. We will always ask for authors’ approval in such cases. However, if you’re sensitive about your writing, you may wish to reconsider submitting a story.

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