The UnTapped Short Story Contest includes free editing services and mentoring as part of its prize.

1st prize: $500 and free full-service editing for one manuscript up to 100,000 words, along with one year of editorial mentorship.

2nd prize: $200 and a single editing service of the winner’s choice (developmental, copyedit, line edit, proofreading) for one manuscript up to 100,000 words.

3rd prize: $100 and a free manuscript evaluation or beta read.

4th prize: $50 and a free manuscript evaluation or beta read.

Winners would also be able to get their names posted on our sites, and any work that we help edit can also be mentioned in our portfolios. All submissions regardless of whether they win or not could also include feedback, even just a paragraph or two.

Apart from meeting the entering deadline, entrants would also need to meet a maximum 1,000-word count and use the genre, keyword, and conflict appropriately.

For example, if the genre is a thriller, it should be an accurate representation of the genre incorporating intensity, suspense, and impending doom. We could have accepted descriptions of each genre posted on the competition site.

The keyword would be a random word that would need to be utilized appropriately in the story. For example, if the word was “fear” a character would need to be visibly scared of something or use the word in dialogue.

The conflict would be the overarching struggle of the characters. For example, if the conflict was “man vs nature” the characters would need to be involved in a struggle against the elements or environment, such as a person surviving a shipwreck or adapting to climate change.

Submissions would need to be unique stories, not used with AI, and never published before so that we can judge without a conflict of interest. They would also need to be submitted in a Word or Google Doc.

For judging guidelines, I’m envisioning using the same guidelines that one would use for a professional edit – looking at structure, authenticity, tone, flow, pace, character development, spelling, and grammar in addition to the ability to incorporate the elements above.

Submissions would be entered anonymously through a third-party site (such as Submittable) and then we would divide the submissions equally and choose two of our favorites. Then, we would all vote unanimously on the final contest winners.

All entrants would hold full copyright and credit rights to their submissions at every point of the process. While most writing competitions offer some sort of publication to the winners, we would make it clear that while we aren’t publishing their work, we would help them with mentoring through the publication process and cleaning up their larger projects for publication. I did, however, have the idea to maybe build a Medium account for UnTapped to publish their story that way.