OH!CON Flash Fiction Competition 2025

Write the funny!

This year, our writing competition is all about humorous fantasy and science fiction. We are looking for fun, crazy, eccentric and humorous flash fiction with a fantastical, magical, or science-fictional theme.

Entries will be judged for their imagination, characters, plot and entertainment value. And for how much they make us laugh – if we injure or wet ourselves whilst reading your entry, you're absolutely getting a prize.

Closing date is 30 August and winners will be announced at OH!CON on Saturday 11 October.

The rules

• Entries will be judged in 3 groups: authors aged 8 to 11 years, authors aged 12 to 17 years, and authors 18 years and older.
• Anyone living in the Outer Hebrides or attending OH!CON 2025 can enter.
• Your entry can be in English or Gaelic.
• Your entry must be all your own original work. No group or joint entries please.
• You cannot use AI to generate any part of your entry.
• Your entry must be under the word limit for your age group: 8 to 11 and 12 to 17 = 500 words maximum, 18+ years = 800 words maximum.
• You must email your entry to us by 11:59pm on Saturday 30 August. We can accept entries as Word, Google Docs, or Pages attachments, or in the body of your email. Remember to include your name and your age. We'll let you know that we've received it (but it may take a day or so – don't panic  if you don't hear from us immediately). 
• If you are a teacher submitting entries for your class, each piece of flash fiction must be submitted as an individual document or email and have the name, age, and class and school of the author at the top of the page.
• You retain copyright of your entry. However, if you win, you grant us (OH!CON) the right to publish your story on our website and social media channels.

How to submit:

Email your entry to ‘beammeup@ohcon.info’

Make our lives easier by putting ‘Flash Fiction’, followed by the language and age category for your entry into the subject line of your email.

Other questions

What is 'flash fiction'?

It's just a trendy term for a really short story.  

What are you counting as fantasy and science fiction?

We're going to be pretty loose about this. As long as your story has some sort of fantasy or science fiction element – even a vague one – we'll allow it.

Does it have to be funny? What is 'funny', anyway?

Yep, your story does have to be funny. But we all know that funny means different things to different people, and it can range from wry, gentle humour to full-on, laugh-out-loud jokes. So, your story could include clever wordplay, or satire, or character comedy, or puns or...

Write something that you think is funny, and we'll probably find it funny too.

Does it have to be a story? Could it be a script or a poem or...

Hmm. To be honest, we are looking for stories here. However, if you normally write in another format and want to try your luck with that, be our guest – we'll certainly read it, and who knows, perhaps it'll knock our socks off. Just remember, the theme is humorous fantasy or science fiction – even for other formats.

Can I enter multiple stories?

No. Just one entry per person please. If you have several stories, send us your best one.

Is the title of my story or my name included for calculating the word count?

No - we're only counting the words in your actual story. To remind you, the limit is 500 words max for anyone aged 8 to 17, and 800 words max for anyone 18 or older. Your story's title, your name and any other peripheral text will not be counted (but don't go all Tolkein on us and include a load of appendices - they absolutely will count).

I write fan fiction. Can I include characters or settings from existing works by other people?

We're not going to disallow this, but the judging will heavily favour originality. So, if you do want to include Harry Potter, or Spiderman , or whoever, in your entry, do it in an entertaining, surprising and original way (it'll be more likely to catch the judges' attention – just saying).

Am I definitely not allowed to use AI to write my entry?

No, afraid not. Don't write your stories with AI. Not even for the boring bits. In fact, don't include any boring bits.

Really? How will you tell? Have you got some super AI-detecting bot checking the entries?

No, we're just going to read the entries and trust you. But, honestly, you'll write a better story anyway than your future robotic overlords will, so...