Not Quite Right features discussions that are unfiltered and uncensored,
and may include themes that are inappropriate for younger listeners.
Also, I swear a lot.
Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome to Not quite right.
My name's Ed and I'm Amanda.
Have you got your dancing shoes on?
I've got my dancing shoes.
I've got my dancing baggy pants.
I've got my dancing backwards cap.
I'm ready to go.
Australia jacket.
I do.
Well, it's time for the long list episode for
the April 2026 Not Quite Right prize for Flash Fiction.
Woo.
This is the episode where we share our favourite prompt responses,
our favourite titles, our favourite lions, all of our shout outs.
We'll share some stats from this round of the competition and some of your feedback
as well.
And at the end of the episode, we'll be reading out the long list,
the 40 stories that are still in the running for the shortlist and the win,
all the cash up for grabs, the place in the anthology at the end of
the year, and of course, that pointy, pointy trophy.
And I know a few people have their eyes on that particular prize,
but as we go through those shout outs and what have you,
it's worth remembering that that doesn't mean you did or didn't make the long list.
So the actual long list is right at the end.
So you have to wait for that.
And just to put this into context, so this is the long list episode where we
share our thoughts about the round.
Next up will be the shortlist episode where we read 6 stories in their entirety
as always, and we reveal the winner of this round.
And following those, there will be 5 Daredevil episodes,
5 Brave souls who've signed up to have their stories ripped apart on the podcast.
They'll be coming through after that.
But we also have some more episodes that will be coming through on the podcast
stream at some point.
We have three Bare Devil episodes as well that will be released and also a regular
episode.
We've recorded that as well.
Someone needs to edit those episodes.
I'm not sure who.
It's not gonna be me, I'll tell you that much.
No, just just spare a thought for me.
Who's gotta edit a long list episode, a short list episode 5 Daredevils 3 Bare
Devils, a regular episode and as of the time of
recording, we are getting ready to go to words on
the waves where we'll have a whole bunch of author interviews as well to edit and
release on our interview stream.
It would be super helpful if like I had any ability to do any of this with you,
but you just rock up, you say your things and you leave me with
the repercussions.
That's it.
So on that if you are at Words on the Waves,
I'm actually not sure if this is going to come out before or after Words on the
Waves.
But if you are at Words on the Waves on the Central Coast at the end of the month
and you see us there, do say hi.
Tell us that you listen to the podcast.
Tell us that you into the competition.
We'd love to hear from you.
Yeah, I love meeting all the local participants.
It's good fun and it's just a great time at the festival as well.
In fact, I think Story Club has sold out.
So I'm not sure.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I think it has.
So.
But we'll be at Story Club and we'll also be at the poetry slam.
So I'm not sure if that one's sold out, but they are a great time.
There's also obviously a lot of author talks,
there's a whole kids programme that'll be happening at the library and I think
we'll be actually joining them there at the library on the Sunday.
So yeah, lots of fun stuff to be doing.
It's a good time every year.
All right, so all that being said, let's get into the April round and we'll
start with just a little bit of an intro, I guess into the concept,
into the the theme for this round, which was a dance off.
So why did we choose this theme and why did we choose our little personas?
I actually recall that this all stems from you saying that you wanted to use
disco as a word prompt.
Oh, does it remember how this all went?
Yeah.
So you had said that you thought that would be a really fun word because
although disco itself conjures up a whole image,
it actually can be used also in a whole bunch of bunch of words, different words,
which, of course, many of our authors discovered.
And so from disco, I just had this image of you in the white
suit.
And then I'm like, OK, so if it's going to be a dance off,
what can I do instead?
And so then Ray Gun came to me.
Yeah.
In a flash of inspiration.
And it all went from there.
I just found out that Ray Gun's fairly local.
She's.
She's from Hornsby.
Oh, really?
Just around the corner.
I did not show that.
Gotten her on the podcast.
I'm sure she'd love to talk about it.
So I will confess that I don't actually know a lot about break dancing.
And I think it's probably safe to say that a lot of our entrants don't know a
lot about break dancing either.
However, they know a lot more about it now.
They do.
And same with Disco, and I think each of the team will get
into it, but I think they each had a bit of a
different vibe this time with some overlap, some similarities,
but some very distinct vibes on each side of the coin there.
Absolutely.
I think this is a fun theme as well.
OK, well, let's get into the stats for this round.
We received 293 entries and the total number of words read was 141,511 words,
which is A about on par with the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Mm Hmm.
Is it time to reveal the popular vote?
I think so.
Why not?
Look, this is as close as it gets, I believe.
Listen to you.
What?
Well, what we have here in the stats is team Ed
50% and team Amanda 50%.
That's it.
Because that's how close it is.
But there were there were an odd number of stories.
There were an odd number of stories noted that.
So who was it who had that?
What extra?
Well, yes, it was just one extra Team Ed 146 and
Team Amanda 147.
This never happens in any kind of Democratic voting situation where it's
like 1 vote in it.
Yeah, close as it gets.
But of course it's not just about who wins the popular vote.
As you were so keen to point out last round, we have a point system.
So if you're familiar with the point system we use in the community on the
leaderboard where we have 1.4 long list, two points for shortlist and three points
for the winner, it's the same for the winning team.
So even though you have won the popular vote, Amanda, congratulations.
Thank you.
I was waiting for that.
The competition is not over for us.
No, that's it.
And if you're new here and are interested to see the leaderboard,
you can do that in the community.
So you go into your profile in the community and there's a button there that
says leaderboard and you can go in there and see how you're faring.
Yes, and we have tied in first position Athena
Law and Emily Rinkamar and then from there we have tied in third position,
Greg Schmidt, Sam James, Chad Frame and WJ Arthur and it goes on
from there.
So that's pre the results of this competition.
So we will see if there's any changes to the leaderboard.
Yeah, we might check back on that after the
shortlist episode and see how things have changed.
Sounds good.
So congratulations again, Amanda for taking out the popular vote.
You are more popular, but not much more.
I'll take it.
But having said that, there were people who actually wrote
stories for both teams.
But of course, we make you choose.
We make you choose when you submit your stories.
So any of these people may have just chosen a different team and maybe swung
things around.
So Chrissy Driver, who mentioned in her feedback that she
wrote stories for both prompts, and it was difficult to decide which one
to submit.
So she actually wrote two stories and submitted one.
I think a few people do that, to be honest.
I don't know where people find the time.
Ivy Craven, who says that she also had a go at the
Team Amanda prompts and had lots of fun writing that story too.
But the hustle won out.
So both of those people submitted a story for Team Ed, and that is a good approach,
right?
If you're just not sure to write it out, see where it's going and sort of pick
your stronger story, I think if you've got the time for that.
Absolutely.
Michaela Bishop also originally was planning on joining Team Amanda,
but she switched to Team Ed.
So thank you for that, Michaela.
Conversely, SA McNaughton started out working on a
Team Ed story and it morphed into a Team Amanda story.
So swings and roundabouts.
And finally, Anne Marie Covford, who notes that her story technically also
satisfied Team Amanda's action and word prompt, so could be dual eligible.
But she chose Team Ed, which I thoroughly appreciate.
But it still wasn't enough.
It wasn't enough, it wasn't quite enough, but every little bit helps.
So that's it for the stats.
But as always, we like to go through the feedback that
we received as part of the submission form in the general feedback section,
which we love to read every time.
It's always so positive, especially at the end of the comp,
like when you know, when the home stretch and we see all the
stories come through and see all of that positive feedback.
It's great to read.
It makes it feel all worthwhile and we love that you guys by and large are
loving the comp.
We'll talk about some exceptions and some some feedback here,
but overwhelmingly the the responses are always possible, which we love.
And we speculated before that this is probably has a lot to do with people just
feeling relieved at that story.
And it's a good time to ask.
It's definitely a good time to ask.
Don't ask them at prompt drop time.
I'll tell you that.
That's true.
So look, maybe a little bit of controversy this
time around with relation to the prompts and the theme.
It was a little bit polarising.
Some people really loved the possibilities that these prompts allowed.
Like, we had a lot of different words there,
especially in the kicker that people could latch onto.
And some people, of course, found that that gave them too many
options.
And this is something that we can never really satisfy everyone on, right?
Some people really like the restriction, being forced into a few options and being
kind of told what to write essentially.
And other people love kind of going where their imagination takes them.
And I would say probably our tendency is to learn more to possibilities rather
than too restrictive, probably because that's our personal
preference.
But you know, at times they can be restrictive.
I mean, it's the prompts that you get on the day.
And so the other thing about the kicker prompt this round,
which is a little bit different to last round,
was the fact that we had a little bit of required research maybe as part of it and
a few people pushed back on that.
OK, We acknowledge that it does require a
little bit of specialised knowledge that not many people have.
Not many people know what are all the break dancing moves?
What are all the disco dance moves?
Which is why, and we put this in the email,
is that we posted in the community at the time of of launch,
some hints and suggestions.
We provided our own little list of dance moves that people could use.
And also the community is a perfect place to kind of throw around ideas.
And we're thrilled that people did throw around ideas and kind of get inspired by
each other in there.
I think that's something that we'll probably keep going in future rounds so
that people have that place to discuss, not only, you know,
once you've written a story and you could share your drop,
but just initialise ideas.
What these prompts inspiring you and what do they make you think about?
I think there's a possibility here that people are also overthinking things.
And I say that with my hand firmly in the air as an overthinker,
that they feel this pressure to like capture all of that and to understand
break dancing, for example, to be able to write a story.
And I don't really think that was required here.
You know, we made it quite open.
You could just take one break dancing move and run with it.
You didn't need to like research necessarily in great detail all about
break dancing.
You could have just sort of taken something from the surface level and run
with it.
So while I appreciate that critique, I think there are ways around it if you
just think creatively.
I think maybe sometimes it's that initial kind of shock of like,
oh **** what does this prompt actually mean?
But when you unpack it, it can be fairly straightforward.
And I would actually very strongly encourage people to jump on the community.
If you are feeling like you have decision paralysis or if you are feeling
overwhelmed by the challenge of a kicker, go and express that in the community.
And I guarantee there will be people who come back and reassure and support you
and help you find a way through that to get to a story idea that you're happy to
write.
And so, you know, it's hard to brainstorm on your own,
like you can reach out to the community to to help you with that process,
especially if you're feeling really stuck.
Absolutely.
And part of what really appealed to us about the theme this round and the kicker
in specifically was all of those options.
And just when you look at the dance moves on offer,
the variety of different options that gave you for settings, characters,
situations, that's what really appealed to us.
So we wanted to kind of have you guys also feel that,
which is why we wanted to give that list as a, as a starting point.
So totally understand that.
And it's not always, I don't think, you know,
every round is going to be different and we're not always going to have research
required.
It might be quite restrictive in some rounds more than others.
We've got some ideas already about future rounds.
So we will just have to wait and see about those.
So we had some feedback on the write off format, which is a new format still.
It's our second write off this round.
Lincoln said that they liked the yin Yang approach of the two prompts and the way
that they, you know, offered a complimentary but contrasting
set of options.
And that's a very astute observation, Lincoln.
I think that's what we're going for is to have that complimentary contrast.
Yeah, equivalent challenge, but giving you a different vibe kind of
thing, a different a different path, 2 roads diverge in a yellow wood,
you know that kind of thing.
Exactly.
And Liv points out that the two options make it more likely that one will spark
an idea.
And that's exactly what we're going for.
And that's the little competition that Amanda and I have between ourselves is
that who can spark the most ideas and who can get the most people on our own team.
But there are some people who are still holding a candle for the anti prompt.
Lisa, Ellen and Tom have all called that out,
which we understand we do.
Did the anti prompts thing for two years, more than two years and and loved it was
hectic.
Yes.
And look, everyone's gonna have their favourites
and as we've said before, we might bring the anti prompt back in
one way or another in the future.
But look, we love this new format.
We love the diversity and the difference.
It allows us each round to be creative in different ways and have fun and be
serious and be weird and all those kinds of things.
We look forward to all of these different things that we've got coming through the
pipeline that we're already working on our artwork and our themes for the next
round, and I'm super excited about that.
We've just seen the draught image from North.
Yeah.
And our plan this round is to actually share that image a little bit sooner.
Yeah.
Yes.
Why not?
It's because they're so beautiful.
And it might give you a little hint of what the prompts might be,
or it might send you completely down the garden path.
So, you know, that's a risk.
We want to get you excited about the theme, so keep your eyes peeled.
So there are a few technical issues this round, mostly around the submission form,
which we have talked about before, but I just want to raise a couple of them
again.
1 is a paste issue where when you paste a story that's around 500 words,
sometimes the form rejects it.
Now there is a little bit of a troubleshooting section in the form that
explains how to work around that.
It is just a consequence of how the form is set up.
We're always looking at improving that.
But just if you are experiencing issues pasting into the form,
just read that little troubleshooting section.
It will explain how to work around it.
And the easiest tip is to just copy it from something very simple like Notepad
for example.
Just copy your text in and then if you do want to do any formatting,
do it in the form or often you can just paste in smaller chunks.
Usually you only get issues if you try to paste everything all in at once and
there's formatting and things like that.
So if you don't want to redo your format, just like paste half the story and then
the other half.
And there's some other feedback on the website that we received.
We always read it.
We always take it into consideration and put some of your suggestions on the
backlog.
There is a huge backlog at the moment, which I intend to work on in the second
half of the year once all of our Flesh Fiction and Words on the Waves episodes
are out.
A few people have said that the form is hard to find.
We're looking at addressing all of that and making some other speed improvements,
other quality of life improvements to the website.
So all of that is coming this year.
Just a couple of other comments to read.
1 commenter said I'm not sure about the fact that only someone from the winning
team can win the randomised prizes.
Coaching with Amanda is a very good prize and for someone who has no chance of
winning but would like the help, it seems unfair to to debar them because
they picked the wrong team at the start.
And yes, someone in the community had pointed that
out as well.
And it's not something that we considered really as a problem necessarily when
we're looking at the price structure.
We just wanted to award a little bonus to the winning team just to make the team
thing a little bit more relevant.
Yeah, I guess I don't particularly agree
necessarily that it's unfair.
I think it's a chance thing, right?
That's the whole beauty of this particular prize is that it's chance.
And so you say you picked the wrong team.
OK, this time, next time maybe not.
Like that's part of the chance aspect.
And of course, the the bigger part of the chance aspect
being your name just gets completely drawn out at random once we get down to
that point.
So from our perspective, it was very much what it is a bonus prize
and just something, something extra to make the team thing
feel more relevant, not just to us, but to the people participating too,
that you want your own team members to do well,
whether or not you do particularly well that round.
And we also wanted to offer a little something extra to those of you who are
still early on in your writing careers, you know,
who maybe don't feel so confident about winning or taking home a cash prize in
that respect that you still have a chance.
And it's it's sort of something that everybody can do.
That's completely egalitarian, I suppose.
Having said that, I wouldn't rule someone new to writing
winning the whole damn thing either 'cause that certainly does happen.
But, you know, someone who doesn't feel, I guess,
necessarily as confident still has a chance of taking something home just for
participating.
And another factor for us is that we wanted to encourage people not to DNF.
So, you know, did not finish or did not submit a story.
We were hoping to encourage people to kind of push themselves and maybe even if
they weren't feeling super happy with what they created,
that they would still hand it in and give themselves a shot.
And the same commenter also suggests that we think about doing a pay it forward
scheme.
And we have actually had a couple of people donate some entries in recent
times and we've shared those on social media and had people snap up the free
tickets, which has been great.
There's a certain amount of admin overhead that comes with that.
And we're trying to really work out exactly the best way to manage that and
make it fair for everyone and make it, you know, easy to, to track and manage.
So that is something that we're thinking about formalising and implementing in
future.
So stay tuned and we'll let you know.
Another comment from Sheridan, who says I was disappointed to fall off
the leaderboard after the January round.
Is there a method to which of us in 18th or equal 18th place on four points made
the cut?
Or are we just unfortunate if our name is later in the alphabet and there isn't a
method?
I think it is, unfortunately, if you are later in the alphabet.
So I'll have a look at that.
And maybe we can increase the size of that leaderboard just to include everyone
who is of a certain level, or just increase that cut off.
Because I agree, it's not fair that if you have the same
number of points as someone who's on the leaderboard, you should.
You should definitely be on the leaderboard as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Another comment from James.
I missed out on the Flesh fiction, but now have an idea that I'd like to try
and write anyway.
Curious to know if there's an appropriate part of the community to paste it,
even though that one is done.
So we actually do have a section of the community that you can post to.
It's called the Share Other writing board.
So just click the link in the community and you can share that there.
And yeah, flesh fiction is over, but I'm sure there are a lot of people
who are hankering for some good old fashioned smart so.
Go for it, that's it.
And look, the best way again to get more feedback
in the community is to give feedback and you can share a link then to your story.
And it's usually quid pro quo.
If you feedback on someone's story, they often, not always,
but often will come back.
It's good etiquette to do that right, to sort of swap.
So that's how I'd recommend to get more feedback on your story.
And finally, a comment from Tina who says love the
option of two prompts.
I always worry that my style of story is a little is a little dark for this
competition, but I try to make it more and settling
than graphic.
Maybe one of the options could be a genre category.
So 2 questions there.
One about the genre category and that's something that we might do in a later
kicker.
Yeah.
No reason that couldn't be a kicker.
And As for dark stories, what are you talking about?
We love the hell are you talking?
Did you not hear the winner from last round, Tina?
Like, come on, bring it on.
Just please do not censor yourself.
Like I'm not saying that's all we want.
Of course it's not.
In fact, what I love most about reading the
stories in this competition is the variety.
That huge variety from the most dark, unhinged **** to light and fluffy to love
stories and comedies.
And I love it all.
Like I don't rule any story out of that consideration, including, by the way,
erotica, which we're now, funnily enough, getting a little bit more of in the
regular competition as well.
So please, please, please do not censor yourself.
We welcome it, Absolutely.
And that is all for our general feedback.
Let's move on to the prompt discussion and we'll start with my team.
My team was team Disco and there were a lot of stories that featured Disco as a
prominent ****.
Are you serious?
Surprisingly, I don't know why.
I don't know why, but I would estimate that almost 40% at
my account were stories that either were set in a disco or the prominently
featured like a disco song or, you know, disco was a major part of the story and
you know, you didn't have to do disco.
No, and that's an option.
The idea behind the whole thing is that you can pick and choose.
You can choose which ones inspire.
Obviously you have to include all the all the prompts,
but you can choose which ones to really lean into and let inspire you.
And it didn't necessarily need to be a story about disco was there to write
about something completely different.
But I guess the answer is there that it did inspire people.
Yeah.
So you absolutely can write about disco.
But the word of caution is, you know, if you choose the obvious theme,
then you're competing against a lot of other stories that are writing about the
same theme.
So it's a, it's a little bit harder to stand out,
I feel, if you write directly into the theme in
that way.
So it's true.
Having said that, you know, some disco stories obviously did make the
long list and and did do very well, but it is just a little bit harder to
stand out.
Another theme that was quite strong in addition to disco or I guess alongside
disco was this idea of nostalgia.
And a lot of stories went back into that era.
And even if disco wasn't like the primary thing where, you know,
we're in the 70s or the early 80s where exploring the music of that era or just
lifestyles of that era.
So it's a lot of stories that lead heavily into nostalgia as well.
But let's get into the prompt.
So my word prompt was disco.
And as I've just mentioned, that disco was something that people
latched onto.
So out of the 146 stories in my team, there were 74 that featured just the word
disco or discos as words.
So that's about half of them.
So in addition to disco and its variants like discos or discotheque,
there are a whole bunch of other derivatives of the word disco or words
that include it.
The second most common was discovered, but we had some unusual ones.
We had discombobulated or discombobulating.
We had discoloration, disconsolate, counted discompliance,
which was 1 instance of that by Janelle Greenon.
Discoid, which was used by Austin Gough.
What does that mean?
Like a disc shape?
Yeah.
Undiscouraged, which was used by Deb Gross.
Discoidal, which was used by Kenny Penn, former Daredevil.
Hi, Kenny.
Discomodius were used by former winner WJ Arthur Discogram,
which is intriguing by Victoria Harris.
Only one instance of Discord, which is surprising.
So and I haven't listed them all there were on my list here.
There were 39 different uses of the words of different variations of the word disco.
So quite a bit of variety, but what stood out to me was definitely
that there were quite a lot of discos that were featuring.
And actually, not only discos, but disco balls was one that I found
featured quite heavily, especially in opening paragraphs.
10% of stories, one in 10 stories featured a disco ball,
and most of those actually in the opening lines.
So opening a couple of lines introduced a disco ball.
Well, that's a pretty good scene setting piece
of detail, so that makes sense to me.
All right, so let's look at the action now.
And the action for my team was freaking out,
which is of course taken from the Song of the Freak.
So Chic, one general thought about this is that a
lot of people really leaned into this and made the freaking out the central plot
element of the story, which is a nice bit of conflict, really.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, it is great conflict.
And I think it's a wonderful thing to centre in your story.
It's a piece of interest and action.
Obviously all those things are good, but I would offer a word of caution and
just to make sure it's not like superficial like it happens because of
the plot.
Think about cause and effect.
It needs to flow from the story and what we know about the characters,
not just a thing that happens to meet the prompt.
And when the freak out is resolved or overcome in whatever way it needs to be
for the story, is that a satisfying outcome that flows
from the events of the story, or is the freak out merely over?
So just a few things to consider.
Definitely.
I think it's a strong way to approach the prompts and absolutely take advantage of
the fact that it does provide good drama and conflicts.
But as always, that idea of cause and effect, characters,
and satisfying conclusion are all things that need to work together to to make a
satisfying peace.
So a few of the responses, well, I guess freaking out was primarily an
almost 100%, I'd say, with very few exceptions related to the
act of someone losing their **** from one way or another.
And that could be due to panic.
It could be like an emergency that's taking place, an existential crisis.
It could be anger or a rage or other kind of outburst or a phobia,
a fear that comes to light.
So lots of different takes on that but all boils down to this idea of someone
just losing their ****.
So a few interesting responses to call out We had We Aren't Fishermen by WJ
Arthur where we had a fish freaking out and being caught and reeled to its death.
On the theme of non human freak outs, we had in A Beat of Wings by KA Vargas a
butterfly freaking out after its mother was eaten and seeking revenge by Chrissy
Driver.
Lots of the crossing we had a characters smartphone freaking out when its owner
diverts their attention away.
I mean why should we humans have all the fun of losing our **** Really.
Like, you know, equal opportunity freak outs.
We had a couple of sex related freak outs by Ivy Craven in the story crowned Jewel.
We had a sex worker freaking out because she can't match her client's penile
abnormality to anything in the brothels reference folder.
She realises it's a **** ring of some sort that's left its mark.
From Trevor Flanagan the unexpected pitfalls and predicaments of wine fueled
resource.
We had the character Ted freaking out when he's partner won't release him from
**** restraints.
Another little sexual mishap.
There was a little bit of flesh fiction overflow.
I would say another pun, but I we're out of puns.
I think we exhausted our supply.
We spent drained just a couple more to call out.
We had by Chad frame.
Where do I see myself in five years, which is basically the whole story,
is a freak out, a hallucinogen induced freak out at a
inappropriate moment in a job interview.
So it was a fun story.
That's a pretty bad time to get on the drugs.
I feel that's got to be up there.
Yeah.
Bad choice.
There's a bit of a culture of micro dosing in some.
I'm not sure this one was a micro dose.
I think it might have been.
So, yeah, like a lot of fun responses and really,
look, I don't think this was as wide open as
some of the other prompts.
A freak out's a freak out, right?
Your character has to lose their **** at some point.
And it was great to see all of the different responses to that prompt.
So finally, let's move into the kicker.
And this is the one that I was most excited about.
And when we talked about prompts and, and the theme for this round,
this is when it all came together for me, I guess.
And we posted in the community our an initial bit of research.
I did a fair bit of research on on this.
And part of what we had to consider was like,
how do we let you guys know what these quite niche dance moves are?
A lot of people were born later than the disco era, myself included.
So names like the Hustle, the Bus Stop, the Bump, the Funky Chicken,
these are things that I've heard of.
But if you had previously asked me to write a list of disco moves,
I wouldn't have come up with a an intensive list.
But there were a lot of diverse options here.
For me, these represented not only dance moves,
but settings and actions.
When we talk about the bus stop, it's a setting.
Hustle is an action or something that a character can do.
Roller skate might be something that they wear.
You know, hitchhike is something that a character
can do.
So there's so many options here and I and I was really looking forward to seeing
all of the responses and all of the different ways that you all would take it.
And look, a lot of the stories actually did portray
these as dance moves and you didn't have to,
you didn't have to have a character do the bus stop.
You could have just featured a bus stop.
So that was an option.
And but obviously a lot of these stories were set in discos and featured disco
dancing.
So it all kind of makes sense.
But as always, we're not stickers for the rules and
asking for natural interpretations of the prompts.
We the whole point of it as we see it, is to inspire you and to get you to think
creatively.
And we love to see the creative takes that you sent us.
So the most popular response was the hustle at about 1/4 quarter of the
stories feature the hustle.
And I think that's a good option to go with the character can hustle to,
you know, move quickly or they can hustle to get
the job done.
Or in a lot of cases, it was a literal dance followed by the
bump and then the Travolta, the OR the point or the disco finger.
That's the iconic move, right?
Yeah, exactly.
When you think of disco, you think of that move, the funky chicken.
Surprisingly, about 10% of stories, oh wow, featured the funky chicken.
And a lot of those stories, several of those stories, I should say,
featured funky chicken in the context of like an out of date of chicken, poisoned,
poisoned, salmonella ridden chicken.
Exactly.
Which, you know, I didn't foresee that that would be such
a large source of inspiration, people, but that was fun to see.
The bus stop, next highest YMCA electric slide,
the snap, the robot, which I thought would be a bit higher
robot.
I remember a few stories prominently featuring robots or maybe even AI.
Surprised that wasn't higher.
And you know, there are a lot of others and I welcome
it.
The list that we published in the community is not like comprehensive.
And so we encourage people to go out and do their own research.
And there are 1,000, 000 dance moves and there's no like
canonical list of disco dance moves.
It's a quite a open style and evolving and, you know, disco is still alive,
no doubt in some ways.
And there's I'm sure new moves that are being incorporated into modern disco.
So yeah, great to see those.
So just to call out a few notable specific instances from the point by
Calum Graves we had featuring very prominently in that story aliens
interpreting John Travolta's pose as humanity's philosophical statements.
So great to see the dance move, and in that case,
a literal dance move being very central to the story by Catherine Cook.
This is the dress, Anna, the bump in that was breast cancer.
So very, very sad, very poignant story and a, you know,
very clever interpretation of the prompt by Matthew P Davis.
The steel slide.
We had the electric slide as an actual playground slide that is struck by
lightning there.
Very, very unique, very original story there and one that
stood out to me for that reason by Hannah Hellyer in I Am Mr Blopez,
which the robot is a literal AI bot.
And you know, that one really kind of captures the AI
chat fatigue that we're all kind of going through.
But I really loved Blow Pez as a as a name, which the AI bought gets wrong.
But of course, Mr Quote, Blow Pez can't convince it otherwise.
And then finally, we had a couple of instances of the snap
and that snap being a moment where a character snaps and perhaps loses their
****.
So they might freak out.
Slash freaks out.
So yeah, a lot of great response to these prompts.
And yeah, although a lot of them were, as I've said,
very tightly linked to disco, we did get some out there stories,
ones that really didn't at all mention disco and managed to fit all of these
disco related themes into stories that had absolutely nothing to do with disco.
Both approaches are very valid and it's always great to see a range.
But Amanda, tell us about your prompts and responses.
All right, I just want to start by saying that I
issued a little bit of a challenge in the community,
which was to really just go out there, just put yourself out on the page,
like not censor yourself, just kind of go a little bit crazy.
And I'm proud to say that Team Amanda really delivered maybe over delivered.
I might say Team Amanda were already crazy to start with.
There is a little bit of a question mark hanging over that.
Yes, that's that's fair to say.
But sometimes the stories that were completely wild and unhinged really hit
the mark and sometimes they didn't.
And that's the case with any kind of storytelling, right?
Like you try to do something and sometimes it lands and sometimes it
doesn't.
But what I was really enjoying was the wild variety.
So as I was reading, I'm like, none of these stories are boring.
You can maybe say some ticked a box or failed to tick a box,
but the last thing you would say is that any of them were boring.
And so I really did enjoy immersing myself in this kind of wild mix of
stories.
And look, they weren't all crazy, but there was a huge proportion,
I have to say.
And I was living for it.
I really was.
But I would say a little bit of a word of caution there.
I did issue you with that challenge.
So thank you for rising to that challenge.
But also, you do need to think about being more
than just a funny idea.
It has to be a funny story, right?
You can't just give me an idea like that's interesting,
but you need to develop that into a story.
So we talk about the beginning, middle and end.
And you can listen to other episodes where we talk about that in detail,
but also a sense of character change, conflict,
all of these elements that come together to make a story.
And I think there were some entries that didn't quite deliver on that.
They had this really wildly unhinged, fascinating premise,
but that premise just wasn't fully developed.
So if you had a great idea and don't find yourself on the long list,
that might have had something to do with it, you know, that's probably our fault.
The prompts, I know Dean would be ready to blame our
prompts for this one where people are sort of feeling pressured to kind of do
something a little bit wild and a little bit like completely left of centre and
maybe forgetting some of those classic elements of storytelling.
And so I guess I would just say no matter what your prompts are,
you have to still come back to those classic structural elements and make sure
that they're there.
I mean, you can occasionally get away with
missing some of them here and there, but more often than not,
you really need to have all of that there for it to feel like a satisfying story.
Yeah, I think that's important.
I think the premise is always the starting point,
Like what inspires you to write the story?
But then you need to think like, how can I develop that into a story that
goes somewhere and has a change to land you with a satisfying conclusion at the
end?
That's it.
It's about developing and it's about going beyond that first initial step of a
great idea.
And sometimes like it's, it's a little bit like school work, right?
You have to structure that.
You have to turn it into something and that requires a little bit more thought
and planning.
And just as an extension of that, one thing that I mentioned on social
media was that I was going to be coming back to talk about Domino's.
And I've talked about Domino's before, but this is a central component of
storytelling that I feel is often lacking and which can lead to much stronger
stories.
And that is this idea basically of cause and effect.
So in your story, something happens, and as a result of that,
something happens next, right?
And I was seeing this kind of consistent theme of stories where things were
happening, but it was just a sequence of events.
They weren't linked necessarily to each other.
They just happened one after the other and we got to the end.
And there's a big difference between events just happening and events which
cause other events to happen and action, reaction, action,
reaction that might happen throughout a story.
So we call that Domino's.
Like the first domino falls and it knocks the next one and that knocks the next one.
And they need to be related in a, in a very critical and causal kind of way
for that story to feel satisfying.
So I will say that that did feel a little bit lacking in the stories this round,
and I would have liked to have seen more of that cause and effect.
And to some extent, I think that comes about as a result of
this emphasis on that wild idea.
And once you have that wild idea in mind and it kind of just takes over to an
extent and it kind of leads and you kind of sometimes I think,
need to rein it in a little bit.
You might need to trim some of it.
You might need to take some of those ideas and cut them completely and just
stick with one central kind of wild idea for that to really land as a satisfying
story for the reader.
So it becomes about editing then as well.
Once you've got that wild idea and you start to just let loose and let it all
out.
Great.
That is absolutely 100% something that you should do.
And while I talk about not censoring yourself,
I don't mean don't edit yourself, right?
You can structure things in a cleaner way.
You can refine your idea to its essence and make it feel more direct, clear,
and satisfying as a result of that.
Another thing I mentioned, and this was more in reference to your
team stories, Ed, Once I started venturing over to the dark
side and reading your top rated picks was just something I noticed then.
And that's not to say it didn't also occur in the Team Amanda stories,
but that once we're getting to that long list shortlist level and having to make
some of these tough decisions, it's not enough to just be a really great
writer.
And we say this all the time because.
We will see this round, writers who've won our competition before
and who've won other competitions are not making our long list in this particular
round.
Meaning you're in great company if you don't make the long list this particular
round.
But also just sort of indicating that sometimes it's just one thing.
So you can be a great writer, but one thing stands between you and the
long list or the shortlist or what have you.
And so I call those the fatal flaws.
So where your story is otherwise really strong and it ticks a lot of boxes,
but then it just fails on one element to the extent that it makes the judges go,
OK, forget that one.
And there's many things that could cause a fatal flaw.
And there might be a clunky ending is a big one.
I feel like you might love a story.
It's going really well.
And then the ending just kind of pulls the rug out from under you and it's all
gone.
Issues with emotional resonance for me is big.
So where I'm like, this story's fun and it's like really
clever and silly, but it doesn't feel real enough for me to
be able to latch onto it.
And so while I appreciate the fun idea, I'm not having that much fun because it
doesn't feel real to me.
And that's a big one.
I think that I saw this round.
Another thing that can be a fatal flaw is things that just as judges **** us off to
the point where we're like, I don't want to upvote this story kind of
thing.
And I think you see that more in a peer judged competition where people are
really bringing their personal biases into it.
I try not to to a certain extent, but there are times,
and I will call out the specific time where if you have particular knowledge of
a situation and someone's kind of writing about that situation from a place of
ignorance and you can see that ignorance, that can be incredibly frustrating.
And that will kind of in your mind cancel a story out.
When we talk about all the time is a story that's too internal or too interior.
Stories that are just a vignette, so where we're just getting a snapshot,
but it's not actually a story where something really meaningful or pivotal
happens or just in general stories where there's not enough conflict or not really
any stakes.
And it's so it's therefore just kind of a bit of a non event.
So all of these things are what I might call fatal flaws that can stand between
people and a long listing.
And I guess all of that is just to say that this was a tough round.
There were a lot of really well written stories that didn't make the long list.
And I guess it took that little bit extra and that little bit more finesse to stand
out this time.
So you've mentioned quite a lot of different like potential pitfalls for
people.
And I think it's probably hard for some people to work out which one to latch on
to to elevate their writing.
So we'll just say, like, I think one thing that's critically
important is in the editing process, especially once you have your first
draught, just always be thinking about how could
how you can progress your story and elevate your story and move like to the
next step.
If you're starting from a premise, how can I go to the next level?
How can I develop my story into a story from a vignette?
One thing that stood out to me this round that I noticed a lot of people doing is
that they came in with a great premise and then they like just lean into that
premise for the story.
And sometimes when you have like a wild, crazy premise,
what you need to do is have an even crazier place to take it or a normal
place to take it, but you have to take it somewhere else.
Like you can't, you can't just keep hitting the premise
again and again until the end because it's not satisfying because you're giving
the reader everything in the opening line.
Basically.
You have to kind of have that resolve and have that work through to the end.
So like it's impossible to give like the list of all the things they need to do
because there's too many things.
But I would say just as a general rule, as you're going through in the editing
process, think about what you have put on the page
and what you haven't put on the page.
How can you build that connection with your reader to the character?
How can you progress the story?
How can you introduce change?
How can you make the the change that happened, as you say,
follow from the character and from what comes before?
How can you make that ending more meaningful?
And it's a lot to consider.
And that's the difficulty.
And that's that's why so few stories like rise to the top because you really have
to do it all.
I think the number one issue that I saw this round,
because they can be each round like different issues that that seem to crop
up more and more.
And the one this round was this idea of like the premise kind of being the thing
that the author was leaning into at the expense of a satisfying story.
So you've got a really fun or wild or crazy or just clever, you know,
resonant idea, but it's taking that idea and developing
it into a story.
And I do think that there were quite a few authors who didn't quite do that
second step.
They came to us with something really wild and fun.
And as I opened the store, I'm like, yes, like you've got me.
I'm hooked.
And that is a huge thing, right?
That is not to be sniffed at.
If you've got the reader hooked immediately, you are doing a lot right.
But now where are you going to take me next?
You know, are you taking me on a journey or have I
already arrived at my destination in in sentence 1?
And I think what you need to do is take us from there somewhere else.
And Ed, you just said something quite insightful.
I think it's like you can't just have the premise.
It has to like from there, where do we go?
And yes, we might need to go somewhere even
crazier and Wilder, because what's a climax if not like
really hitting the maximum point of of that story idea?
Or we might, you know, flip it on its head and take it some back
somewhere else.
Like there, there are options, but you've got to take us somewhere.
We can't end in the same place that we start.
Absolutely.
At least not without some significant change having occurred.
We do love a bit of circularity, but we need to arrive back at the same
place with a new understanding of that place.
We can't just sort of loop back with with as if nothing has changed.
So I guess there are a lot of stories that I really wanted to love.
I would say like I open and I'm like, you've got me.
And then by the end, I was left sort of really feeling like I
wanted more.
From a storytelling perspective.
You've given me a great idea.
You've given me something really funny or fun.
I might have even laughed out loud and I did frequently laugh out loud.
But then what?
What happens in the climax of this story?
So if that's you like, go back and have a little look because I
think there were quite a few stories that that might have been their fatal flaw
that they didn't.
It didn't eventuate in a story.
It only ever really revolved around this idea.
And I did mention Domino's in my social media posts.
So Domino's to me, it's the cause and effect.
Like something happens and that knocks into the next plot element and that
knocks into the next plot element.
We need more than just a series of events.
We need the things to create a story.
We need change to occur as a result of what happens in the story.
So all that being said, I think that's probably my biggest
criticism for the Team Amanda stories this round.
And I hope people understand that and, and maybe can apply that next time around.
Yeah.
And I would say if you are unsure about what we're saying here,
listen to some of our Dead Devil episodes.
We talk about this stuff all the time.
We go into detail on these stories so that if you're unfamiliar with some of
these ideas, then TuneIn and we will talk about them,
no doubt.
Absolutely, but I'm just going to move into the
prompts now and and some interesting takes on the prompts.
So my word this round was the word street.
Now that was a much more actually limited word than disco.
There's not many words that contain the word street.
But of course, St itself is pretty open and there's a
lot of places that you can take that as a general thought,
I would say it pretty much faded into the background almost all of the time.
It's a bit of a nothing word if you don't make much of it.
And so it was easy to kind of hide.
There were 81 stories that just used the word St, like very much a generic St.
And to me, that's appropriate.
I think you had some other challenges with the other prompts and it's perfectly
OK to just let that one fade into the background.
About 10 stories referred to St lights or street lamps.
So that was another really popular usage.
And we had a few famous, very specific streets.
So we had the Beale, we had Lombard St, which is that really,
really steep one in San Francisco.
And we had Oxford Street.
And I don't actually know if it was our our humble Oxford St here in Sydney or if
it was London.
And my favourite of all, Sesame Street, which was just one story.
So we had a few famous ones there, my favourite take and what I was hoping
to see, and this happened in four stories, which was a reference to the Backstreet
Boys.
So I just want to call out Christy Hartman, JD Hodley,
Ma Rose and Paige Bowden.
You are my fire.
You're my one desire and I appreciate you.
So thank you so much.
There are, of course, also a lot of idioms that include the
word St.
And we had things like right up his St, living on the street, streets ahead,
things like that.
They were mentioned and a few other words incorporating St St wear, streetscape,
street smart, street performer and one St sweeper,
which I think is fun as well.
We had one story that referred to a birth canal as a street,
which was an interesting take.
A little bit, I'll be honest, a little bit jarring for me.
I wouldn't normally think of it as a street,
but that's a matter of interpretation.
And I'm just going to call out a few other notable and original takes.
We had Incohesion by Ivan Purcell, Quality St, which is a brand of chocolate.
Yeah, so that's a fun usage in the story.
Just Another Day at Wycorp or Corporation by Michael Davigi,
we had a monkey called Streeter, which is such a monkey name when you
think about it.
I don't know why, but that's such a monkey name by Mari
Mendoza.
In the story one minute until the end of the world we had Street Fighter.
So the game Street Fighter, which is the only game I could ever
really beat my brother at.
And that was just because I was really good at like mashing the game and I just
learned the like 2 moves, the 2 secret moves and,
and use them constantly.
But also a special shout out to Kari Marin in greetings ultimately work for me
who used the word St 9 times, which I think was a record for this round.
So thank you for that.
As for the action prompt, now my action prompt this round was
breaking out as opposed to freaking out.
And as you might expect, we had quite a few stories featuring
people breaking out of prisons or some form of *******?
And we also had quite a few breaking out of like a mental health facility as well,
was a common theme.
And for those stories, I would just say like,
that's great as a plot, but I also need to care about these
specific characters who are breaking out.
So you need to sort of set me up to kind of have a little bit more character
development about why is this more than just a typical gaolbreak kind of thing?
Like why do I care about these particular characters?
Why am I barracking for them to break out?
We also had a lot of breaking out of patterns of behaviour.
So whether that was like sort of stepping up or speaking out for the first time.
Maybe they were breaking away from their past,
like their parents and the way their parents did things or breaking out of
some sort of rut that they were in or, you know, removing shackles of some kind,
whether physical or metaphorical.
There were a surprising number of stories about breaking out of the rat race,
you know, like corporate life.
And that's very relatable for me, very triggering.
I needed a content warning for those.
We also had breaking out in pimples, right?
Skin breakouts and a couple I will call out in particular in the story on the
intersection of puberty and world domination by Romany Jane.
We had not just acne, but snack me.
So yeah, our point of view character in this story
was breaking out in pimples.
But when you squeeze the pimple, like different foods would come out.
Oh, yes, that's one, right.
And it it gave me vibes of the Sam James story that we received back in April 2024,
this snot.
So that story was called Everyone's a Winner,
where there was just this never ending supply of snot that eventually became
like a food source.
Yeah, which is alarming.
So a lot of issues of the world.
Yeah.
But anyway, so that was obviously disgusting.
Romani, thank you.
But a very interesting take and keeping it super weird with Kyla Meade in the
story What You Eat, we had a character who was breaking out
in men's facial features.
So like a nose would just come out or like an ear or whatever.
And that story reminded me of a of an Edgar Allan Poe story that I read
recently for our other episode on Poe, our regular inverted commas episode
called King Pest.
Yeah.
Where the characters all had these really oversized.
Oh yeah, freakishly large kind of parts of their
faces in there.
And it did have a little bit of a vibe.
So you're in good company there, Kyla.
I just wanted to note that there were quite a few stories that had more than
one type of breaking out.
In some cases, they were noting that in their
explanations in the form that they had sort of just to be sure,
I've got a literal interpretation of breaking out and something a bit more
figurative as well.
And to that, I would say, look, you don't need to be sure with us.
Like just go for it.
That's why the explanation field is there so that you can make sure we know and we
don't miss what what you were going for.
But look, you know, that's pretty common.
I guess that they would both coexist.
And so there's nothing wrong with that.
But I guess just to highlight that it's not necessary to cover your bases.
Just go with the one and and go in with confidence.
But a couple more stories that I wanted to call out for their interesting take on
the action prompt in Team Amanda were Marissa Hanley's Tombstone Windmills,
which is actually just one example of a story where we were merging both the
action prompt and the kicker.
So breaking out like a contagion of dance, and in this case break dancing.
So there were a couple of other stories that did that as well,
and I'm sorry I didn't note those down.
However, that was like a bit of a common theme.
So merging those two together, I think is quite clever and it and it was
a fun idea as well.
And then finally in an afternoon swim or two by Jessica Martel,
just simple but different mentioned breaking out the good stuff,
which was ice cream in this case.
And I thought that was a nice little usage of the idea of breaking out that we
didn't see elsewhere.
So well done, Jessica.
And so just moving into the kicker.
So of course, my kicker was similar to yours, aunt.
And we had to prominently feature a break dancing move.
I was actually really surprised by how many people included literal break
dancing.
You said the same like how many people actually had a disco setting?
And it kind of, I felt guilty in a way.
I was like, oh, I hope you guys knew you didn't have to
do that because it was challenging.
You know, if you're like me, you don't really know anything about
break dancing.
It's not like I get it.
I know what break dancing is, but I have no personal experience.
And so it would be difficult for me to write a resonant story about break
dancing when I I'm not in that world.
And I think that was a challenge here for some people who were getting into it and
doing the research and, and I applaud that,
but maybe not quite hitting the mark in terms of what felt real and true.
It's very difficult to write something that feels true if you're not from that
world.
So I would, I would raise that, I guess as the word of caution in that
case, you've got to find your way in, I think to the prompts.
You've got to find the, the thing that is that is you and through
your brainstorming activities like get to that essence that feels really true to
you and communicate that.
The other thing is that in some stories, the break dancing moves,
they weren't really serving the story.
They were kind of just sort of shoehorned in.
And I think that's a problem.
You know, when we're reading you, you get that jarring feeling of like,
wait, why are they dancing all of a sudden?
Or it doesn't feel again, real.
Like if you're out in your normal life, if someone started break dancing,
there'd be a bit more of a reaction about that.
It wouldn't feel like a natural flowing incident that would happen.
Yeah, it's it's the same feedback I gave about
the freaking out.
MMM.
Is that it still has to flow from the action.
And when we're reading these stories in the context of a competition,
we we know what the prompts are and we see what you're doing.
Yeah.
But it still does have to flow from the action.
Yeah.
That's it.
You.
I guess it's got to feel cohesive.
So the dancing has to feel like a logical and rational and meaningful and
purposeful part of this story, not just something that happens randomly,
like it would have happened even if that wasn't the prompt.
Yeah, exactly.
And I have to say, there were quite a few cases where it
didn't feel that way.
It felt like, hang on, why are they suddenly dancing?
And you've got to keep also that tone, the story's tone.
And if you're in a really serious place and then suddenly people start break
dancing, like there's got to be kind of a
connecting element there that makes that work that can be difficult to do and a
reminder that you didn't necessarily have to include literal break dancing,
so you didn't need to force it that hard.
But I don't want to be too critical here.
I guess I just want to be very clear for those of you who loved your story and are
wondering why it didn't make the long list.
That might have been a reason that we just found it didn't quite gel for us.
Another way the kicker was used was using some of those break dancing move names to
describe people's movements in a metaphorical way.
So you had, in your case, like hustling, for example.
And the same was true here in the break dancing team.
And then of course we also had the usage of the break dancing move names as just
like the idea.
And there were quite a few interesting breakdance move names.
And I did put some of them in my post on the community.
But like the Corkscrew, the windmill, air baby, you know, all of these things,
like the kind of fun names, but you don't have to make it the dance
move.
You can go just down some completely different path.
And plenty of people did that.
And if I'm thinking about how I would have handled this particular prompt,
and I always come in after the fact, I think, well, what would I have done?
And it probably would have been something like that parachute, you know,
what does that open up for me?
And then I've got a story all about that that has nothing to do with break dancing
at all, to be honest, is probably how I would have approached
that prompt.
That's not to say that's the correct way.
That's just like, my way.
But I think there was a lot of scope there.
Yeah, I would have done the same, I think.
Just choose one of those words as inspiration, right?
Not as a dance move, but just as a an idea, place, action,
whatever it may be.
And I say that because I'm not a break dancer, right?
And so it would have felt pretty unnatural for me to include break dancing.
So a couple of notable instances of the usage of the kicker in Team Amanda
included Penny a Nichols, who had a reference to a helicopter mum.
So helicopter being the break dancing move,
but then taking that to a place that I suppose felt resonant for Penny.
So that I think that was a smart move.
There are a lot of worms in Team Amanda.
And of course the meme of would you still love me if I were a worm?
And Ed knows that I love to use that, that little question.
And so that resonated with me.
I did enjoy that.
But of course, we also had the worm as a move and we saw
that a bit as well.
Another evocative break dancing move name is the dead cat.
And so we had unfortunately, a few felines pass away over on Team
Amanda and just as Ed.
Had a lot of hustling on Team Amanda.
We had a lot of shuffling.
So and I think again, appropriate, if you need that move to kind of work
into the background, you can.
So it just goes to show there's a huge scope for creativity with all of those
prompts.
So a couple of stories I wanted to call out in particular included More Than a
Whisper by Louise Walton, which was an incredibly sad and quite
visceral and and emotional story about pregnancy loss,
where the term air baby was used to describe these babies that are never born.
I thought that was quite a lovely usage really of that particular break dancing
move, a surprising one in Don't Move by Elder
Orosco.
We had another story about a plague, a dancing plague,
and that's two winners in a row.
They're two former winners.
So, you know, coming in with coming in hot with strong
ideas.
And then we had two stories that I just want to call out.
We had The Heist by Jeff Gore and we had for Laughter, for Tears, for Madness,
for Fears, for Screams, for Dreams by Avril Robertson.
And both of those stories basically packed in as many break dancing move
references as they could.
And I have to say they did a pretty good job of squeezing them all in there.
So thank you for taking such a confident and bold take.
But yeah, I have to say I was really proud of Team
Amanda.
I was particularly proud of those of you who I guess took my suggestion of letting
your freak flag fly and not censoring yourselves.
It did make for a particularly interesting batch of stories and I really
appreciated it.
Fantastic.
So before we get to the long list, which is what everyone's waiting for,
let's call out a few of our favourite lines and favourite titles.
And I think I'll just do a few, you know, just in the interest of time,
let's call out a couple favourite titles.
Look, you know me, my brow is on the floor at times.
Sometimes I'm highbrow, a lot of the time I'm lowbrow.
So here are some titles that stood out to me from Louise Sutherland Rode Hard and
Put Away Oh wow, coming in hot, Coming in hot.
Panic at the clinic, which I enjoyed.
I like the subversion panic at the disco.
Interesting, because the theme was disco, but you removed the disco.
The title.
Yeah, going that one step further beyond the
first obvious choice, exactly, which I like.
I like the subversion of a cliche from Libby Bramble.
You don't need to be a goth to want to Die,
which I feel is a very evocative title from Tom Brodkin,
who knows the key to my heart with his story titled **** Farts and a Penis.
Thank you, Tom.
An interesting one from Morgan Kostelnik, which was an eye for an eye is the is the
title.
And this is a story about a person who wants revenge on a blue eyed person and
goes back in time to kill like the most recent common ancestor of all blue eyed
people in order to get revenge, which is a bit over the top I feel like
as far as revenge.
Hello, have you ever met a scorned woman?
Are you real?
That's true.
I was really loving the Team Amanda titles.
I'm just gonna shout a few out now.
So I'm gonna say the one that made me absolutely bolt to read the story was
Poor Eddie.
And that was by Douglas McAfee.
So thank you for that one.
That was good fun.
That was about a dead goldfish called Eddie.
Oh, yes, I remember that one.
We had two stories with the same title on Team Amanda.
So both Jenny E and Hannah Thomas came up with a story called The Worm.
So thank you for those.
And Michael Stone took it one step further with the story.
Babe, would you still love me if I were a worm?
And so you're you're speaking directly to my heart there, Michael.
And I appreciate that.
That was a very wild story about it.
A worm.
It was a reincarnation story.
Yeah, it was really, wasn't it?
From Julia Knuth, we had clueless, and that's spelt CLEWLE double S,
which wasn't a word I was familiar with, But a clue is like a the collective noun
for worms.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
So we got quite a few there in the worm territory, so thank you for that.
From Brandon Woo, We had, if you think a girl's name is Cherry,
she's probably a pornstar, which I just found fun.
I was like, is that very philosophical kind of year
of the world?
From Lisa Vitale, we had Amy and Abby go day drinking in
the Hunter Valley.
And I feel Amy, Abby and Amanda could all go day drinking
together in the Hunter Valley and we'd all have a good time.
And then I just want to call out some that were just evocative.
So, you know, when you read a title and you're just
like, oh, what's that about South?
From Jennifer Ann, we had be like the dandelion.
What does that mean?
You have to read to find out.
From Leah Kinnenmont, we had Is life an existential crisis or
is an existential crisis life?
And that's a question I asked myself on the daily.
From Kelly Johnson.
We had a little performative grief to atone for my sins.
And I just love the idea of performative grief.
That must be a thing.
And yeah, And I was excited to read where that was
going to take me.
From Ellen Arwen Tristram, we have I Only Believe in Prime Numbers,
which which has a vibe of like, birds aren't real.
Yeah, it really does.
But that was that was quite a cool story.
I really vibed with the protagonist in that one.
From Jade and Christopher, we have Mama Always said,
and I just want to give a shout out to John and Justin from the Writing in
Progress podcast, who sort of talk about how if you start a
story with Mama Always said, then it's going to like resonate with
people and you're going to do really well in a competition.
So that title made me think of them.
From Natalie Busco, we had What Cassandra Four Saw,
which called back a previous story, a previous entry to They're Not Quite Yes,
from Alicia Rourke in October 2024, who delivered What Cassandra Saw.
So this is like, is this the prequel?
And then finally, I would be remiss of me not to mention
Bernie Rushton's IYPYP or if you Poe, you Poe.
So thank you, Bernie.
That absolutely got my attention.
Very cool.
Well, I'm going to call out a few lines.
The first one comes from Andy Blakely Sterling and it's the opening line to
metamorphosis, which is a great title as well.
Mention and that line is I always thought Kafka was a bit dramatic,
but I get it now.
And this is a story of a of a metamorphosis and implied maybe by the
title little clap.
A bit of word play there, but also a great opening line that grabs
you and makes you want to read on by Tommy Baker in the story Jive Walken.
At first I was afraid I was petrified.
Nobody wants to discover they have Tourette's, which I think is great.
Like another subversion.
I really, I love subversion.
You know, I love when you expect one thing and you
get another thing.
There you go everyone.
That's your way to Ed's heart.
And finally from Ivy Craven in the story Crown Jewel.
And once again, let's drop the brow out of the floor.
And the opening line is.
I looked frantically from the discoloured penis in my hand to the display folder of
reference images on my lap and back again.
Page after page of diseased little ***** and not a match to be found.
So look, there's something to be said for just
grabbing my attention, hitting me, hitting me with some ***** and seeing
where things go.
Keep that in mind.
Now I've got a few more.
So, from Team Amanda, we had Madeleine W in the story and
Unorthodox Guide to Survival in the 21st Century.
The day Annie found herself stopping in the middle of traffic was the day she
realised she craved death the same way pregnant women craved Pickles.
Which is voraciously, I feel, from The Space Between by Nicola Bell.
Her gaze drops from mine and I want to break her ******* fingers because at
least that's fixable.
And that's quite dramatic.
That's actually a story about two sisters who are, I guess,
confronting grief and trying to find a way to communicate.
And I just loved how dramatic that was.
I felt that was quite resonant from the story.
And I'm Still Silent by Sarah Kennedy.
We had the lines.
They've been down there too long.
I listen at the door, but their voices are muffled.
What if they've moved past talking?
What if I went downstairs in his shirt and nothing else?
What if I climbed out the window, ran through the street,
liberated and bare, screaming?
Look at me, I'm here, I exist.
Then I'd be seen.
But I don't.
And that's a story about the other woman, I suppose,
hiding upstairs while the husband confronts the wife downstairs.
And it was nice to get that little insight into that character's mind from
the story.
I only believe in Prime Numbers by Ellen Arwen Tristram.
We had the line Miriam, that woman again, her predictable orbit.
I'm her son, her five minute day, and that was so evocative to me.
I don't know if this is a phrase that's come elsewhere,
it's the first time I've ever read anything like that,
but the idea that she's orbiting you every 5 minutes and you're the son and
she just keeps coming back around and around every 5 minutes,
I thought that was quite clever.
From Princess in a Headspin by TJ Burgoyne.
We had helicopter sweep into windmills and everything hurts, but who cares?
I used to dream of turning the pirouette on its head.
The audience spins and I see Mum in the front row in this upside down world.
She smiles and I love this idea.
So this is a character who's on stage and they're doing a head spin,
so they're upside down.
While they're upside down, Mum's smiling, which implies that Mum is actually, yes,
Frowny.
That's a closing line, right?
To the.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's quite.
Yeah.
Very impactful, very resonant.
This idea of seeking your parents approval,
I guess wanting it so bad you imagine it's there in Jive walking by Tommy Baker.
I just love this little tiny little bit of characterisation about a particular
character where he says he's a guy who brings a pillow on a one hour flight.
Yeah.
I don't know exactly what that's implying, but I love it.
I bring a pillow on a one hour flight.
Would you?
What would you do with that?
I'd have an app by now, a flight.
So that's Sydney to Melbourne.
That's a Sydney to Melbourne flight.
I used to grab a pillow on my commute to work.
Like it's, it's an hour, but you know.
OK, so you are the guy in this story.
I'm the guy.
Alright.
Wow, OK, I've learned something about you.
Speaking about You from Poor Eddie by Douglas McCabe.
The lines for spontaneity.
I decided to dance as if nobody was watching and I dazzled with the Corkscrew,
the baby freeze, the backspin.
I was really grooving, wild and free.
Unfortunately I was driving myself to hospital at the time.
That was a completely ridiculous, unhinged story.
So that line fit perfectly from What You Eat by Kyla Meade.
We had that scared Janet off eating men for a while.
She intended for good, but it's never easy to stick to a diet.
From Beatbox Genesis by Dead Carcosa and Hello to Dead Carcosa we had in the
beginning.
There was grey and silent Infinity.
The concrete and dust of dead universes lay ruined and forgotten.
Darkness covered an endless crumbling web of walls and streets.
The bee God beheld all this from nowhere and saw that it was wack.
Nothing good could come from nothing.
And there is actually a disco equivalent of that story.
Over on Team Ed.
We had two Genesis stories, one for beatboxing and one for disco.
So quite fascinating how two people can go on the same train of thought.
But finally, and look, I'm not actually going to name the author
or the story title for this one and I'm not even going to call out any favourite
lines.
What I will say is that this particular story was full of favourite lines for me
and it made the shortlist and in fact it was our second place story on the
shortlist.
So I'll just leave it at that because we'll all get to hear those in the next
episode.
So you don't need me to read them now.
We will all enjoy them together.
But that brings us to the end of our shout outs.
Well, then that takes us to the moment we've
all been waiting for, which is the long list for the April
round.
40 stories, 40 names.
All of them remain in contention for the grand prize, the pointy trophy.
And for our shortlist is some cash.
Yeah, decent, decent chunk of change.
You know, in these uncertain times, who doesn't want in these extremely
precedent times?
Yes, it would be lovely to have a bit more
money.
Yeah, absolutely.
And of course, all of these shortlisted authors will
also appear in the anthology at the end of the year.
So from these 40 stories that we're about to read, six of those will appear.
Yes, as will all the names and the titles of
the story.
As always, we publish those in the anthology.
So if you hear your name read out now, your name and story title will at least
be in the anthology.
So without further ado, here are the 40 stories of the long list
for the April 2026 Not Quite Right Prize for Flash Fiction for Team Ed Divorced by
Rachel Phoenix After the Cyclone, Alice Springs by John Schultz.
Repeat After Me by Karen Mitani, Honeymoon snaps by Freya King,
Coin toss by Elizabeth Hoban, Death in a Nutshell by Tarnell,
My Brother the Alien by Josh Lowe, Back of House by Georgina Priest.
The end will be televised by Tatum Shard.
5 finger discount by Amanda Todisco.
The Steel slide by Matthew P Davis Unpacking by Anastasia Anderson Tina is a
punk rocker now by RC Barajas Rosetta Stone By Chloe Page.
Where do I See Myself in Five years by Chad Frame.
We aren't Fishermen by WJ Arthur Dancing with Death by Douglas Baumann.
I Am Mr Blopez by Hannah Hellier, The Point by Calum Graves and now
representing Team Amanda, we have I'll Be a Kangaroo by Penny A
Nichols, More Than a Whisper by Louise Walton.
Round Trip by Sam James.
How I Learned My Desk mate was a backup dancer for the Backstreet Boys by Christy
Hartman The Bogan by Liv Stenhouse On the intersection of puberty and world
Domination by Romney.
Jane Babe, would You Still Love Me If I were a Worm
by Michael Stone.
What His Congregation doesn't Know by Chris Doty Dunn.
The Last Dance by Lorena Oates.
Harden Up by Steve Huff.
When You're Dead.
Best friend communicates via the Spotify playlist.
So fresh.
Greatest Hits 90s and 2000s by JD Hodley.
Be Like the Dandelion by Jennifer Ann.
How to do the Robot by Harry Humber.
The Year of Haemophilia by Autumn Bettinger Almonds by Philip McGann.
Anthem of a 19 year old Girl in November 1982 for whom Atlanta is the only major
city worth running toward by SF means and I'm Still Silent by Sarah Kennedy,
Wand Play by Ryan Nanome, Waiting by Athena Law,
The Pale Blue Dot by Ruth Lord, and finally The Space Between by Nicola
Bell.
So congratulations to all of our long listers,
especially those on Team Ed and the very observant among you will notice that the
teams are still very equal.
We had one, one story difference in the overall
submissions and we've got one story difference in the longest two.
Well, yes, okay, but one the minimum difference, let's say.
So it's 19 for team Ed, 21 for team Amanda in the longest.
And we didn't plan that.
We didn't know trying to make it equal.
We didn't really think about whose team.
Once we get to that longest stage, we just have everyone in a bucket and
we're picking the best stories.
Yeah and it worked out that the teams did kind of wash out very evenly.
And The upshot of that is that anyone could still win it from a team
perspective, right yeah so the bonus prize that goes
to the team and.
And look, if your name didn't can appear on the
long list on either team there, you're still in the running for the bonus
prize, the lucky draw.
We will be revealing that in the shortlist episode as well.
That's right.
So any team can win, any person can win the lucky draw.
And also we have 4 wild cards to reveal next episode.
We've got 2 guest judges, so 4 wild cards.
It's an extra four bonus prizes, and I can tell you that not all of those
appeared on the long list.
So there's still a chance for all.
But, you know, there were some really big names in that
long list there, some former winners of this competition,
which might feel a little bit intimidating,
but also there's some really big names that didn't make the long list at all.
And I think there's probably going to be some disappointed people who worked
really bloody hard and who were really trying to deliver something special this
round and who did not hit that long list.
And I know that feeling is really, really painful.
I've been there myself.
And to those people, I want to say like, that doesn't mean we didn't love your
story.
There were so many that were on the cusp, or maybe,
like I might have indicated before, had a fatal flaw.
So it's like your story's like so close, but then there was just one thing that
for whatever reason, kept it off the long list.
So by no means does that mean you can't write.
It's very much a case of, hey, maybe with some edits,
it might have been a completely different case here.
But I just want to extend my thanks to everyone for putting your whole selves
into this, because it is.
Draining.
It's draining to use your creativity and I appreciate that you gave that to us.
It always feels like a little present when we read your stories and especially
those ones that are targeted just for us.
We do read all of those and swap them around and have a giggle,
so they were very much appreciated.
So thank you so much.
Absolutely.
We had a lot of fun reading all of your stories as always,
and if you have made the long list, please head over to the website and grab
your badge.
Your name and your story title is on there and you can,
you can do what you want with that badge.
There's nothing stopping you from printing out 1000 copies and putting them
in the letterbox of every person suburb, just junk mailing everyone.
I mean, there's some pretty good reasons why not,
so I'm not encouraging that behaviour, but it's legal.
It's legal, that's what I'm saying, not legal advice, not a guarantee.
But yes, if you want to grab your badge, you just need to go to the honour roll
section of the website for that.
And of course, there is one there for those of you who
did not make the long list but who still feel like sharing the win of being in the
mix.
So please go and check that out.
And of course, this is not the end for the April round.
There's still plenty more to come.
We've got the shortlist episode.
So whether or not you did make the longlist,
the shortlist episode is always worth listening to because as as always,
we'll be reading out the six shortlisted stories for this round.
Always good fun and also good learning experience too.
Like, what is it about these stories that made
them stand out?
And we'll share a little bit of that insight, I suppose,
to to what triggered us to love these stories in particular.
Yeah, very exciting.
And I'm looking forward to reading these.
I think some of these stories will translate very well to audio format as
well as such fun.
And what else we got.
We've got some coaching coming up.
If you signed up for some coaching with Amanda, that'll be happening imminently.
So if you haven't organised a time already,
reach out on email and set that up.
But that'll be happening very soon.
And then of course we'll have our daredevils another five stories to read,
more feedback to get this.
Plenty to come for the April round, but tickets are on sale already for the
July round, which is going to be a lot of fun.
As we've hinted at a little bit earlier, we reveal the theme for this round a bit
earlier.
Get everyone excited for the theme, which we're excited about.
We've seen the initial artwork.
It looks like a lot of fun.
And yeah, so Daredevils have already sold out for
July because of course, all us writers are all masochists and we
love to punish ourselves.
But we do still have some coaching packages available for that.
So if you'd like your feedback a little bit more private,
that's an option for you, but it's also an opportunity to talk
about just your writing goals more broadly.
So we do talk about in our coaching sessions, your piece, you know,
that you entered, but also we can sort of expand beyond
that and just think about like, what do you want to do with your writing?
And I that's, for me, really rewarding.
I've been enjoying talking to the different authors.
Like everybody's got such a different goal.
So I think that's really fascinating.
But yeah, I get a lot of out of that, and I hope my coaching clients get a lot
out of that as well.
They do.
We see their feedback and everyone's very happy about it and, and look,
those do sell out and they are selling out very fast.
So get in if you want to get in on that.
Absolutely.
I really enjoy meeting people online as well.
Good fun putting faces to names.
But thank you once again to everybody for giving us your time, your creative energy.
We really, really appreciate it.
And I hope that the wildness of many of these entries reflects a sense of fun
that you had in writing these stories as well.
I hope you did feel like you got to let loose, let your hair down.
That's what we love to see, that you're just having fun and being
creative.
So thanks once again.
And I look forward to the next episode.
And listen, I'm going to try to release this episode
early if I can to it and people will love it if so.
I was going to say we'll be back next week,
but it might be a bit longer than one week if I do get this out early.
But we'll be back very soon in any case with our shortlist episode where we will
find out not only the winner of the whole thing, but which team won as well,
which is super exciting.
And the bonus prize for this round is a coaching session with me,
but also hot off the press.
Yes, a copy of Flesh Fiction Volume 1.
We've just got our grubby little hands on it.
Now you've had a sniff.
The sniff.
How did it smell?
Smell good.
No.
I goods not gonna cuddle.
Smell good.
It smells so good.
I want a bit more description than that.
What I smell like?
I don't know.
I'm not.
I.
Do you not, like, enjoy the smell of paper?
This is.
Am I weird?
You are weird.
That's not without question.
But look like I'm not against it.
It's just not something that I don't know.
But I really, really enjoyed sports books.
Not not in a sexual way, not like that.
I just like it alright.
I always liked it.
Well, can you describe the smell of this?
Well, it's a new.
It's new, which is less satisfying.
No, I like a new book.
OK.
Yeah, some people like the old book smell.
I I do lean towards the new book smell.
OK.
You like meow?
Like.
Yeah, you like them hot off the press, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I thoroughly recommend it just for the
smell.
Like if if for no other reason, just just order it and have a sniff.
But like is that before or after 8 different people have read this book?
Because I feel like it's gonna smell a little.
It might smell a bit too.
Don't get this book out from the library is what we're saying.
Get your own copy.
Really need to get your own coffee for safety reasons for hygiene.
No, but quite seriously, these stories aren't all going to get you
off, right?
Like, I think that might be a little bit of a
misunderstanding that people think that this is just going to be like, Wham bam,
thank you ma'am.
Absolutely.
Some of the stories are like that and I'm not going to name my favourites,
I'm not going to pick favourites here and now, but I do have them.
But it's just this spectrum of like wild **** right?
It's just the most amazing little slice of life.
I feel we've got everything in there, from horror to comedy,
proper beautiful romance to stuff that's more dark, like it's all there.
And you know what?
This is what we should be sending out into space.
It should be flesh fiction.
The aliens.
This is what they want to read.
Like there's aliens in there.
There's aliens in it, and they're gonna be like,
this is the user manual for the human race.
I love it.
So yes, check that out on the website.
And thanks again to everyone who has entered this round.
It it's not over, we'll be back very soon with some stories,
with our show list and with our winner.
But until then, right on, right on.
Thank you for listening to Not Quite Right.
If you'd like to reach us via email or follow us on social media,
you can find all the links on our website notquiterightpodcast.com.
That's WRITE.
And if you enjoyed the show, we'd love it if you could leave.
It's a five star review on your favourite podcasting app.
Something doesn't seem quite right.
I was thinking while you're talking about Domino's,
we should get a sponsorship going from Domino's.
I am like we talk about Domino's all the time on the podcast.
Send us pizzas or something.
Send us just like ******* heart attack.
Send us the worst possible pizza.
Send us a pizza.
That's literally what it's worth that we paid, which was $5.
How do you make a profit?
They don't have $5 pizza.
They just bank on the fact that you're coming back for more when drunk and not
ordering sensibly.
Yeah, true.
The amount of times I've done a cheap order on Domino's,
I've done an expensive order on Domino's.
Alright, come on.
We're merely there.
Let's.
Yeah, let's do it alright.