Taking Submissions: Story Unlikely’s Annual Short Story Contest – 2024

Deadline: January 31st, 2025
Prizes: $1,500 first place, $1,000 second place, $500 third place
Theme: Speculative Fiction

Contest guidelines below. READ CAREFULLY. Failure to do so may result in disqualification!

Story Guidelines:
Attention storytellers: we just want good stories! There are no restrictions on genre: fantasy, sci-fi, memoir, fiction/nonfiction, etc – we don’t care as long as it’s written and told with quality and care. The story itself cannot exceed 4,000 words (exept for paying MEMBERS, who get a bonus 1,000 words added!). There are no restrictions on age or location of participant, and no need to ask us for permission to participate in the contest – just follow the guidelines below.

What do I win?
$1,500 $3,000 prize package will be divvied up like so: $1,500 first place, $1,000 second place, $500 third place. The winning story will be featured on Story Unlikely’s website, will be strongly considered for our annual (print) sample magazine, and may be sent out as the bonus story for signing up, which means a lot of exposure to the winner. All three placing stories will be published in the monthly issue, and all three will be illustrated.
Don’t forget about the honorable mentions! That’s right, you honorable little losers, you. Is that harsh? It’s supposed to be a compliment. Anyway, we do NOT notify honorable mentions ahead of time, because we’re lazy busy, so very, very lazy busy. Rather, we announce them in the monthly issue along with the winning story, which you need to sign up for in order to be eligible to enter. If your name appears on this list of honorables, you’ll be prompted to contact us and we’ll send you a fancy-schmancy certificate for proof that you, indeed, almost won a writing contest. But not quite. Plus, if there is a strong showing, some of the finalists may be considered for publication in our monthly magazine.

When can I submit?
The submission period runs from October 1st through January 31st (midnight central standard time).
When will my story be published?
Stories will be published – at our whimsical discretion – the following calendar year between June and December. Winning authors will be notified, at the latest, by May 31st. All authors MUST be signed up for the Story Unlikely monthly magazine (free!) to be eligible for prize and publication. Please note that although you’re welcome to unsubscribe at any time, just wait until the contest is over, otherwise we’ll consider that a disqualification of your entry. DO NOT mark our emails as spam (and we know when this is done) – not only will you forfeit your entry, but you’ll be barred from future submissions. Harsh judgement, sure, but easily avoided.

Halftime break!

Reading guidelines is the worst, so we’ll try and make this as painless entertaining as possible, if that’s even possible. So let’s kick things off with a video from our latest acquisition to the magazine, berating our editor-in-chief for not hiring her earlier. All you Office fans may recognize this classy gal: the one and only Meredith Palmer…

How do I submit?
If you’re a Member, make sure to use the Member submission form HERE, otherwise your story will get shuffled into the wrong bin, and you may lose out on all those perks (will come back to this later). For everyone else:
We accept email submissions only, and from legitimate email addresses, not tied to some private school server that will bounce back. If your submission (or email you use to subscribe) comes from one of these, it will be disqualified. Attach the entire story to the email (Microsoft word doc or docx) Do not put a link to Google doc – actually attach the document. Be sure to remove ALL forms of identification from the story (If your story happens to be about you, just be sure to remove your last name).
Due to our endless quest to get our stories past overreactive spam blockers, we’ve changed our submission email to: [email protected]. As long as you type the word ‘Submission’ in the title, your story will end up in the right place. And this is important, so we’ll say it again: make sure you type the word ‘submission’ in the title of your email, otherwise it may be lost! So email submissions to [email protected] in the following format:

(Email Subject Line) Submission: TITLE/GENRE(In the body of the email)Dear Editor,TITLE, GENRE, WORD COUNT[Insert FIRST 250 words of your story (rounded to the nearest sentence) here]# (insert page break, or double space if you can’t)(Insert short author bio, including any previously published stories, as you want it to appear below your story if/when published)(Tell us how you found Story Unlikely, and why you decided to submit)Sincerely,
NAME
Contact information (best email contact, phone number (just in case), country and state, and email)

If that’s confusing, then emulate our sample below (minus the red lettering part), or even better, become a member and submit via our oh-so-easy submission form by clicking HERE.

A special treat for reading this far

You, dear writer, are clearly a cut above. You slogged through all those guidelines, and we thank you for that. So as a little token of our appreciation, enjoy another absurd video – our contest submission song. I mean, we wrote it just for you!

Perks for members

As mentioned, we have a host of perks for our paying Members (giving you a slight advantage over your competition) both for reading and submitting. To view the list click on our Member Homepage HERE!

Contest FAQ

Do you accept multiple submissions?
No, one submission per author.
EXCEPTION: If you are a card carrying MEMBER, you can submit up to THREE stories!
Do you accept simultaneous submissions?
No – do not send your story entry out to other publishers prior to May 31st, and do not withdraw your entry. We offer a generous prize package with NO cost to enter – in return, we ask that you give us the time we need to give every story a fair shake.
ANOTHER EXCEPTION: Once again, paid members ARE allowed to make simultaneous submissions. To become a member CLICK HERE.
What type of formatting should the story be in?
Standard manuscript formatting is fine – we’re not picky, so long as its not obnoxious. If you’d like an in depth look into modern manuscript formatting, then read this article by Bruce Bethke over at Stupefying Stories, which pretty well sums up how we feel.
Any tips on winning this thing?
Many stories get ‘bumped’ before we finish reading the first page (that’s right, we’re a merciless bunch). A trained eye can tell the quality of a story and the ability of the storyteller from only a few sentences, so tighten that opening! It also helps to read some of our past issues, like our 2024 contest winning story HERE. Besides, you want to become the best writer you can be, right? Well then, to do that, you need to read the from the best writers out there, and who’s publishing better stories than us? Seriously, SUBSCRIBE NOW and see for yourself.
What are you looking for?
To put it simply, good stories. Entries will be judged both by the technical and literary quality as well as the author’s ability to tell a story. All entries must be previously unpublished. Here’s what we’re NOT looking for: Excessive anything. Think PG-13, R if necessary. We’re not attempting to salt the earth with more cultural dogma couched as mediocre fiction, or writers who are jockeying for the title of Most Woke. There’s enough of that out there already. You want to impress us? Write a good story. You want to win? Write a great one.
Anything I missed?
Likely you skimmed over two things, and they’re OH so important:
#1. To be eligible for the contest, all writers must be signed up to Story Unlikely’s monthly issue. Did we mention it’s free? Because it is. Totally free. You can unsubscribe at any time, just wait until the contest is over, otherwise we’ll consider that a disqualification of your entry. DO NOT mark our emails as spam (and we know when this is done) – not only will you forfeit your entry, but you’ll be placed on our Excrement List, aka lifetime ban from submitting, where only a generous donation to the human fund can bring you back into our good graces. Ok, we’re joking about the human fund, but not on the ban.
#2. Re-read HOW we want you to submit (like, the first 250 words of your story, we really do need that in the body of your email – it is of utmost importance to us).
#3. Now that you’ve waded through all of our rules, how about a little word of encouragement from the Story Unlikely team?
#4. If you have any additional questions, see our frequently asked questions page.
#5. Oh, and if you submit and forget to attach the story, don’t sweat it, just resubmit the whole thing (right away!)
#6. Don’t use ChatGPT or some other AI to write your story for you. Yes, that whole thing is kind of fascinating (as well as frightening), but we’re not looking for Skynet’s poetic side. In spite of large language models being able to form cogent thoughts, they can’t write worth crap, and we won’t make it past the opening – not because we know it’s AI, but because it will be terrible. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.
#7. Although we’re not genre specific, we do have a cool deal running with Tangent Online, where any sci-fi or fantasy stories we publish get reviewed by them. Pretty sweet, huh? All the more reason to submit.

Rights requested:
The use of the Work by Story Unlikely entails the assignment of first, non-exclusive Anthology Rights, for publication in the English language, and continuing, nonexclusive right to use the Work in the edition as long as Story Unlikely remains in print/publication. (In other words, you can publish your story anywhere else after it’s been published here, we just ask that you mention that it was published in Story Unlikely first, and after a set period of time after original publication, generally 3 to 6 months.)

One last important note, for those who enjoyed our contest submission song…

Via: Story Unlikely.

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