Congratulations everyone. Fantastic competition. Thank you Molly, the judges and everyone who took the time to read and comment on the works. And of course, the writers, without whose imaginations we'd have nothing to read.

Applause all round.

Quote by WriterGirl
You win funniest title for a Summer Love competition!

Couldn't resist a play on the words of Tarantino/Scott. 😀

Okay, it's in. I've no idea if it works or not, as it's a rather dense barrage of words and may have missed the humanity along the way. But one has to experiment, right? Hopefully it's a fun read if nothing else.

Screw Romance

I've submitted one. Fingers crossed it gets approved. Trying out a bitty narrative style, so who knows if it'll work.

Flash is good — and has a great difficulty level — but as TheShyThespian and others say, 3-3.5k is a decent chunk to develop an idea.

As for genre, I love sci-fi because it has broad scope (not just space, aliens or the future). But crime also is a top idea simply because there's always an inciting incident to drive the story.

Superb picks. Expressomarkie had it sewn up from the start. Congratulations to all who entered and entertained us. Such a great comp theme and tonnes of imagination in its interpretation, so thanks to Molly for dreaming it up and the judges for the unenviable task of ranking the stories.

Fun to be a part of. And I echo the sentiments above: StoriesSpace needs more writers. Promote! Promote!

Quote by Meagananne1986
READ IT! It is simply marvelous.

It is.

Mine is submitted. Hopefully the hour hand doesn't strike 12 before it can be verified.

EDIT: Yes! Made it... Just...

https://www.storiesspace.com/stories/flash-fiction/a-fresh-perspective

Quote by Meagananne1986

Tom, if you write at the speed of light, the hours to you will be years to the observing mods. So you have plenty of time.

Gotta love a relativity gag.

Science japes like that remind me of the Amazon review of the Uranium Ore (product link sadly, unavailable now). But the top comment, a wonderful half-life gag, is still there. 🤣

Quote by WriterGirl

Tick ……. Tock …

But, no pressure. Take your time, Tom 🤣😉

Pfft. I've got hours yet till the deadline. 😂

Quote by WriterGirl
... and what then oozes from your mind to your fingers onto the keyboard and screen

How do you do that?

997 words sprung from me this afternoon. Might be something in them. Will see.

Two days to the deadline and I'm still staring at a blank document with a blinking cursor. Oh the irony.

What a contest. Verbal's piece is amazing and a worthy winner. Big congratulations to the top three and to everyone who took part and came up with twisted and/or soulful angles on the theme. Such diversity on show. Really enjoyed reading them all, and pleasantly surprised my off-piste story with its unhappy ending even made the top 10.

Many thanks to the judges who took time to read and rank. This site deserves more eyes on it to attract more authors.

Quote by Mendalla
10! We're at 10!!

I made it 11. Someone else will have to enter now to even it up...

https://www.storiesspace.com/stories/flash-fiction/absentia

Quote by Mendalla
quite naturally pretty and should probably ditch some of that makeup.

Definitely.

Shrewd and confident with flashes of genius in her songwriting; other times lazy. Decent singer. At least she doesn't need autotune.

Catchy songs overall. Certainly wouldn't turn them off if they came on the radio, but wouldn't turn many of them up either.

Visually she's not very appealing. Waaaaaaaay too much makeup = insecurity for me. But I'd fight Kistin for stock if Taylor was a company. She's badass at getting what she wants.

Fabulously worthy winners. Such amazing creativity on this underrated site. Congratulations.

Really enjoyed reading the entries, and thank you WriterGirl for the amazing support you give to us all.

What a fabulous idea, WriterGirl, thank you.

I'll throw my hand in with a piece entitled "Nowhere To Turn"...

----

I pause to wipe sweat from my grit-streaked brow. The relentless desert heat shimmers forever beyond the brittle brush and dusty tracks my idling car made, countless uninhabited miles from the interstate.

Summer had been brutal. I repeat under my breath: “I had no choice. No option.”

Casting a gaze to the Pontiac’s trunk, flies buzzing above the stench, I suppress more tears and vomit, then continue digging her grave.

Astounded to have even been close given the great stories I was up against. Wow. Congratulations to everyone who won and entered. Some amazing takes on what was a tough theme.

Thank you Molly for organising it, and the judges for their unenviable task of ranking the entries.

The theme and concept seemed so simple on the surface, but when I got down to it, proved decidedly more difficult than I expected to fashion a story. Maybe that should have been the story itself!

Judging by the excellence of other entries, this might have just been a me-problem, though. Loving this field.

Ghostbusters.

Primer.

Ronin.

The Usual Suspects.

Quote by Mendalla
They are basically building from scratch stuff that software like that (Xenforo, vBulletin, IPS, etc.) has been capable of for years

Not Invented Here, lol.

I've never seen forum software that does the quoting in quite the same way as here (not saying that's good or bad), nor the paste-a-link-over-the-text-to-hyperlink (which is unintuitive, but cool in a way, even though you can't easily edit the link after). But my exposure to forums has mainly been limited to punBB, FluxBB, phpBB and Vanilla. And I'm used to markup-based forums that use BBCode (shudders), Textile or Markdown rather than WYSIWYG style.

I expect (guessing) the sticking point for integrating an off-the-shelf system is licensing. None of the software you cited is open source, and runs proprietary code.

Open source forum software has also traditionally been a pain to customize. They always do something you don't want and you spend ages either searching for a plugin or have to find a way to hack it yourself.

I don't advocate DIY when there's good software already tried and tested, but maybe they have reasons for it.

Quote by Mendalla
I find it's a bit flaky, though

You and me both. As you say, quote too much and it doesn't work very well. Also trying to quote "By 'eck, it works" from one of the posts upthread failed. Not sure why. Might be because the user is "unknown", or because it contains an emoji, or any number of other factors.

It'll probably get fixed in time.

Quote by Mendalla
Update for the new SS 2.0 interface

Update on the update. You can partial quote for better focus:

1) find a bit of a post you want to quote.

2) select it.

3) tap Quote beneath that message.

4) the bit you selected will be copied into the Write a Reply box. Type away to reply to that point.

5) rinse and repeat steps 1 to 4. Each time you select stuff and hit Quote, the quoted text and who said it will be appended to the Write a Reply box for you to reply to in context.

I'm in. Just tell me what I need to do.

What a fantastic result. Well deserved to the top three and congratulations to all my fellow entrants, top ten or not. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the different approaches to the theme. And thank you to the judges and everyone behind the scenes keeping the site running.

Quote by Mendalla
Anyone else getting pumped to hear the results?

Yep!

Yep, some amazing stories. No way I'd be able to judge this.

I think I have an idea. 1300 words in, and it's going well. Fingers crossed it turns out okay.

Got my work cut out for me after reading WriterGirl's though.

Congratulations to Ping, Violet and WriterGirl for their outstandingly chilling/wacky tales. Supremely well deserved. And well done to everyone else who entered. I read them all and was thoroughly entertained/spooked.

Only just ventured into the forum to find I don't need to promote my story, Dark Image, because Mendalla already did it for me. Thank you!

Really enjoying the creativity in the stories on display. Some absolute crackers.