When you are the moon, there is a person the people say is the
sun.
I saw the sun once and it came past me really fast and it was,
it was a cold the the eclipse and it came past.
But as it came past, I licked his back.
I don't know.
I licked his back, all on his yellow suit of the moon.
Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome to Not Quite Right.
My name's Ed and I'm Amanda.
And we are perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Totally.
We're just in harmony.
There's a little bit of yin, there's a little bit of Yang.
You know, it's all.
It's all peace and love.
Have you ever seen that movie 2 Hands?
Indeed.
How?
Excuse me, What demographic do you think come from?
Yes, I have seen the movie 2 Hands more than
once.
Good with a little bit of bad, Bad with a little bit of good.
So we're here for the longest episode for the July 2026 Not Quite Right prize,
full flash fiction.
So we'll be talking about our favourite prompt responses, favourite titles,
favourite lines, shout outs.
And you know, some competitions give individual
feedback, some competitions you might get peer
feedback, give and receive.
In this competition, we do what we call global feedback.
And so that's what this episode will be about as well.
Just talking through some of the things that we noticed in this competition,
in particular this round and how those impacted some of the stories.
So if you do hear your name and your story, shout it out during this episode.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you are in the long list.
It means there's something about your story that we wanted to call out,
but hang around until the end of the episode where we will be reading out the
long list in full.
And I just want to give a quick hello both to our newbies who are here for the
first time.
I hope you enjoy your long list episode experience, but also to our new perverts.
Yes, from our Patreon.
So the perverts will actually be getting all of this information a little bit
early, just as one of the little perks of being
a pervert and supporting us on Patreon.
So to those of you, please keep a lid on it.
Don't let the message get too far.
I imagine there'll be a little bit of gossip,
but let's just try and keep it amongst ourselves if we can,
just for that little bit longer.
Absolutely.
We don't want to spoil it for everyone else.
That's it.
So that's what we'll be talking about on this long list episode.
And in a week's time or so, we'll also be releasing the shortlist
episode, which we will be reading out the top six
stories, revealing our wild card picks and our
assistant Judge wild card picks for this round.
And course revealing the winner of this round two.
Yes, I've just texted our graphic designer to
get the trophy underway.
Excellent for this round's winner.
Can't wait to announce that.
So let's get into it.
This round we had the theme of yin and Yang, which I really enjoyed as a theme.
I think too, I don't know, it led to very different range of stories
for each team.
I think.
I guess we're all here about creativity, right?
We're all here to challenge ourselves, and so we wanted the kicker to sort of
offer something a little bit different each time compared to, say,
classic prompts.
Not to say we wouldn't necessarily use classic prompts down the track,
but the yin and Yang felt special.
I think, like a little bit different, little bit more open.
And we'll see when we get to our feedback.
Some people thought it was a little bit too open.
Yeah.
And that can be a little bit challenging in itself to try and narrow down the
possibilities.
But for us, it felt like a really fun place to take
it.
You can never please everyone.
No.
Well, I guess it's the yin and Yang of life.
Exactly, exactly.
Very apartment.
All right, so let's get into our stats for this
round.
We received 297 entries and a total of 144,000 and 50 words,
which is similar to The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak.
Lovely Australian book there.
Yes, well, Australian ultra.
Yeah, very UN Australian book, I should say.
Well, maybe non Australian.
UN Australian, not set in Australia about Australians.
All right, alright, well, let's get to the the important stats yeah
and the team breakdown because I did start off saying that everything is in
balance, but it really wasn't it really wasn't
round no.
So the total submission count for team Ed was 88 and for team Amanda 209 Woo.
So that's guys 30 to 70% landslide, which is pretty.
I think that's our highest.
And look, I'd love to take all the credit for that,
but I suspect it might have had a little bit more to to do with the prompts
themselves, which were of course similar.
Like we do kind of go with a similar but different vibe.
But I suppose people felt more inspired by yin.
Yeah, I definitely think that was the case.
And I think that the Yin view kind of inspires, I don't know,
maybe even more introspective deep story that people latch onto as an idea.
So I think maybe that was serious kind of bad.
Interestingly, we had a poll on our Patreon prior to the
kickoff.
Which team would you choose for this round?
And as of the start of the round, that was actually all 5050.
That was, I think it was 20% to me, 20% to you,
and the remaining 60% on the fence.
So the on the fence crowd all came to my team.
Exactly.
Made a difference.
Well, I'm interested as well because this
particular round was a little bit gender based, right?
Like going on that duality of masculine and feminine.
And so I sort of wondered to myself of was that a factor too?
We know that we often get like at least 60 more like 70% women.
Yeah.
Or people aligning themselves with the female gender in our competition.
So did you have a look at that?
Yeah, I did.
So this was actually the first round that we asked people for their pronouns.
And we.
We did that because we find ourselves occasionally wondering when we're reading
out some of these names.
Yeah.
Because we've got pen names.
We've got people who just use their first initials.
Exactly.
And we've got some sneaky people who use entirely different identities for the
competition and not to mention also, of course,
wanting to encapsulate those people who don't want to be referred to as he or her.
Exactly.
So in terms of the numbers, the raw numbers, interestingly, as I said,
we had 88 people for Team Ed and we actually had 87 people who have put their
pronouns down as he, him.
So that's almost a one to one in terms of the raw numbers.
But of course, it's not as though all of the he hymns
joined team Yang and all of the she hers joined team Yin.
In fact, it was split as you'd expect, but around 71% of team Amanda entrance
identified as she her, whereas only 59% of team Ed identified as
she her.
So definitely did my team definitely did skew more male in your team as well.
Yeah, right.
Well, I'm I guess I'm not surprised by that.
But you know, femininity and masculinity were just
aspect of yin and Yang as well.
So there are all sorts of ways you could have used those elements to inspire your
story.
But it is interesting to see that.
And I guess I'm not surprised then by the landslide.
I won't take it too personally.
Yeah, well, me neither.
And of course we had a number of writers who wrote for both teams effectively and
I just wanted to call some of those out.
So firstly, Andy Blakely, Sterling with the story The Best Orion
Elite who submitted for Team Amanda but said that actually wrote for both teams.
Former Daredevil there, Robert Fairhead with the story moving
from Yin to Yang.
Who says the story could have been either and he was unsure about which team to
submit for until the end.
Well, I will take that one personally, Robert.
I dare you.
We only just met.
Where's the loyalty?
Well, I appreciate the bone that you threw me,
Robert.
That was very, very nice of you.
Trevor Flanagan also with the story Meatloaf and the persuasive
implementation of Wishes and Karmic Universal Balance,
who satisfied both teams prompts but thankfully joined Team Ed.
Thank you, Trevor.
Yeah.
Thanks a lot.
And there were quite a few people who, I guess by nature,
what the prompts were this time around, incorporated yin and Yang into their
stories.
So Robert Fairhead, who I've mentioned was one.
A Lou Hayes is another In the dark of a Cypress Swamp was the story.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what yin and Yang is.
It's not just the duality, right?
It's the fact that each contains an element of the other.
That's the whole concept.
That's why, you know, you have the black and white symbol with
the little bit of white in the black area and a little bit of black and the white
area.
The idea being that they're both coexisting all the time.
I would suggest it's pretty much impossible to write a story that doesn't
have both.
But yeah, interesting to write a story that
balances the two a little bit more because of that.
There are many others who noted in their explanation fields that they did consider
both sides of the coin when writing.
So I think, you know, when it came down to people submitting,
a lot of people just chose which one most reflected their inspiration for the story
or like the vibe of the story.
But technically it could have been either.
There was probably a good almost 20 stories that fell into that bucket.
Interesting.
All right, so let's move to our feedback that we
received.
So this is mostly from the general feedback field in the submission form,
which we love to read.
There's always so much amazing praise and appreciation and and positive feedback
with the occasional little dig.
There are there and there we, but we get it.
You've just finished a gruelling 2 1/2 days of stressing out 2 1/2 hours.
If if that's the case for some, that's right.
I'm stressing out trying to meet the deadline and trying to like squeeze your
creativity out onto the page.
So we get why you would be a little bit critical, a little bit shirting.
And also we have to just remain on planet Earth.
We couldn't just have all those lovely positive comments because honestly,
our heads would inflate and we would float away.
Thank you for keeping us honest.
So we'll just call out a few that I think are worth responding to and discussing
specifically.
The first one is around the prompts.
So this one comes from Caro who said I thought the prompts this time and last
time were perhaps a bit too open.
This time I noticed multiple people across 2 writing groups comment that they
already had existing stories that could easily be tweaked to fit the prompts.
I wonder if perhaps you could look at tightening the limits a bit again in
October.
The January prompts felt the right level of restrictive in my opinion,
while the prompts this round and last round felt paralyzingly open and presents
the problem of people possibly not writing specifically for not quite right.
And that's a great call out there.
So thank you for your feedback.
I guess as we kind of mentioned at the outset,
it is difficult to please everyone with with the prompts.
What we really try to do is be inspiring more so than restrictive.
We don't want you to repurpose writing from the competitions,
and we do want you to write for this composition.
Yeah, I mean, technically it's in the rules.
We can't go checking, but I think a good faith approach is to
write specifically for the competition because everybody then has the same time
limit.
But yeah, as it comes to the prompts, like we really did have quite a balance
this time.
I think most people were positive about the prompts, to be honest with you,
but there was a vocal minority, but large minority that suggested that
the prompts were too open.
Look, the kick is going to change every time.
So it's going to vary.
And the other thing to consider is that it's your own perspective on it as well,
and that can change.
So I know that my own personal writing practise involves raging against whatever
prompts I get every single time.
That's just part of part of what I do.
And I think it's just a frustration that I haven't immediately thought of like the
world's best idea within the 1st 2 seconds of getting the prompts.
And that's a me problem.
And I do, if I spend the time, I do eventually come up with a story idea
that I'm excited to write about.
And I think the same thing applies just generally when we're considering prompts
because, you know, we've had people comment before, like, oh,
these prompts were so negative and awful.
Or these prompts were, yeah, maybe either too restrictive or too open.
Or these prompts for this one, I had feedback that these prompts on the
Yin team were forcing you to write a passive character, for example.
All of those things are coming from your own brains because nobody's actually
forcing you to write any specific story, no specific genre even,
and certainly no specific vibe.
You can play with the prompts and make them your ***** basically.
And I think it's that sometimes we don't give ourselves that freedom or sometimes
we don't spend enough time with the prompts to realise that we can actually
be quite creative and take it in literally whatever direction we want.
So I mean, feedback taken, but as you said, Ed earlier,
like we can't please everybody.
So we will just continue to try and give prompts that are inspiring,
open enough to let you do whatever you want with them while still hopefully
giving you something to sink your teeth into.
We're not just going to say the prompt is whatever, you know,
the prompt is still the prompt.
To be honest, the best writers, in my opinion,
take the prompts and make them integral to their story.
So it becomes about not just how can I get away with using the prompt,
but how can I actually make it so that my story relies on each of the three prompts
and without them, the story wouldn't exist?
Like, that can be the creative challenge for
you if you want to level up.
Like, how do I make these prompts intrinsic as
opposed to how do I just get away with them?
Hmm.
And that's on you if if you enjoy that challenge or not.
But if for those of you who found the prompts to open,
maybe that's one way of thinking about it.
When you get open prompts, like, how can I actually force myself to make
them essential?
Yeah, this is gonna be a sign.
Why smirking?
No, 'cause it's whole time.
Well, because I was just thinking, and this is going to be a huge tangent,
but I've been watching this guy called Arvind Haddad on YouTube and he does
mansion critiques.
Amazing because, you know, of course I'm like in the market for a
mansion and, and I'm so above it.
I'm going to critique.
Well, that's his job and he makes good money by
the looks of it.
But anyway, he talks about design as inside out and
outside in, right.
So when he looks at a mansion and he says, well,
this one's clearly designed from the outside in,
as in they picked the outside like a grand kind of.
Yeah, they they're like, this is how we want it to look from the
outside.
And then they kind of just fit the rooms around inside and it doesn't quite work,
right.
And then you have other houses that are outside in where, sorry,
inside out where you design the layout and the flow.
And then the outside looks like a complete mess.
And he says, well, when you design, you have to go inside out,
then outside in.
So you can have them both playing off each other and you get a cohesive house.
And I feel the same way about the prompts because you can start from the prompts
and derive a story that works from the prompts,
or you can start with a great story and then shoehorn the prompts in.
And I feel like what you need to do is let the prompts inspire you towards a
story, and then you kind of go back from the
outside in, and then you maximise the prompts within
the story.
You have to come at it from both ways.
So I don't know if that makes sense.
No, it totally makes sense.
It's a lovely little metaphor we've got going on there.
And I also think that assumes people have the time to do all of this,
which of course, many people don't, and that's fine.
So look, shoehorn prompts in if you have to.
Yeah.
But yeah, for those of you who are finding either
that the challenge is not great enough for for your creativity or feeling
paralysed by choice, maybe then see how you can make it work,
not just how or it can be ticked off.
But anyway, that's a little challenge for all of you.
Take it or leave it as you see fit.
OK, so next point of feedback, this one comes from John who says love
the challenges, struggle with the community.
It's so helpful and people are vulnerable and brave to post stories and also to
post suggestions and critiques.
Yet the feedback always initially leaves me in a funk of doubt and depression.
Posting feedback makes me worry I've misinterpreted or said wrong things.
So great comment.
And feedback is hard.
Yeah, you're not alone on that one.
I think the thing with feedback is finding your feedback buddy who you're In
Sync with.
And you can give them feedback and they give you feedback and the feedback feels
helpful and encouraging instead of destabilising.
And especially when you're early in your writing journey and you feel like these
people, maybe they've won the competition and you
think, OK, what they say must be golden.
I have to take it on board.
But something tells me it's not right and you're just not confident enough in
yourself to trust your instincts yet.
Like, it can be really challenging and it can
be really destabilising.
And that's a shame.
Yeah.
Because the last thing anybody I would suggest in this competition,
certainly not us, the last thing we would ever want is for
you to lose confidence in your writing.
That's that's not what we want.
And just remember, it is hard to hear critical things even
or even positive things about your story.
But just remember also that it is someone's opinion,
and it shouldn't always be taken as a fact or objective in any way.
So if you love your story, then it's probably a good story.
Yeah.
And again, like, even when it comes to our judging and
making a long list or not, there are plenty of people who've missed
our long list who've gone on to publication.
And it's not to say that your story is not great,
but just in terms of feedback more specifically,
there are some tips in the community about how to give constructive feedback.
It is an important skill to learn.
And it's important skill to learn to accept feedback, too.
Because if you want to continue with writing,
I can tell you right now you're going to get better a lot faster if you can learn
to not just cop feedback, but like understand it, analyse it,
apply it, use it to your advantage, use it as a boost rather than letting it
I guess cripple you with self doubt.
It is a skill to learn and it comes easier for some than others.
Some of us have been subject to very helpful,
constructive feedback their entire lives from their parents, for example,
and are used to it.
And others, I guess struggle a little bit more
feeling vulnerable enough to do that.
So I don't know, it's up to you.
You don't.
You certainly don't have to engage with it,
but I would encourage you to try and learn that skill if you can and find the
person who helps you feel encouraged, who's at your level with their feedback
and gives you what you need.
Final tip on that, I guess is to when you ask for feedback
in the community, tell people what kind of feedback you
want.
Yeah.
Say to people, I'm new at this.
For example, if you are John, and I'm not sure if you are,
say I'm new at this, what I'm really looking for is
encouragement.
If you can just like be gentle with me and you know what, they will.
Most people will.
You might still get the occasional person who can't help themselves,
but they will and you'll probably have a much better time of it.
Some more feedback.
A couple of people have said this.
I've got a couple in front of me from Kari and from Mari basically saying the
same thing, that they felt reluctant to submit this
round because they feel that their stories are never to our tastes.
And based on what we've talked about on the podcast or based on their previous
results, Of course we are people and we have
preferences.
We talk about all the time on the podcast, the kind of writing that we like,
but don't let that stop you because we are often surprised.
I think one thing that's an advantage of not quite right over some other
competitions is that you actually know who the judges are.
And very rarely do you know that.
So oh, not very rarely.
That's that's not true.
There are certain other competitions where you might see a list on the website,
but very rarely would you get this level of information about what the judges
preferences are right.
And so maybe that's an advantage, maybe not.
I would say neither of us.
While we have our biases and preferences generally in terms of what we would read,
for example, what we would choose to read, when it comes to the competition,
we've said before things that we don't like that have gone on to win the
competition.
We actually don't know what we like until we see it, which is very annoying to say.
We have stated this repeatedly, and I'm not sure how helpful it is,
but what we want to see are really great stories, right?
So it's not so much a particular style.
It's not so much a particular theme or genre or any of those things or
characters or topics.
None of that is really relevant.
What is relevant is what makes a story compelling,
what draws us in and makes us feel like either moved emotionally or entertained
in a way that rises above.
I guess the other general stories that we receive and all of basically all the
stories we receive are great, right?
So it becomes about, well, how do you rise above?
And, and that can be done in countless
different ways, none of which are unique or specific to
us.
There are infinite ways, I suppose, to stand out from the pack.
I think what happens, though, for people is in the disappointment of
maybe not doing well in a competition, not long listing.
And look, maybe you've long listed elsewhere or one
elsewhere or been published and you come here and you think, well,
why can't I crack this market kind of thing?
Like, what's wrong here?
There's a problem.
And the problem can't be my writing because I've been validated elsewhere.
The problem must be these people just don't like what I'm sending them.
And look, maybe, but probably more honestly,
if we're honest with ourselves, it's a case of needing to stand out and
not having stood out in a way that got us over the line.
There is a lot of luck involved as well in making a long list and making a short
list.
We're not comparing apples and apples.
Every story has its strengths and weaknesses,
and they are vastly different from each other.
So it may be true that our preferences lean towards or away from certain
strengths and weaknesses, and we value some things over others.
Or it may just be that you got unlucky, you know,
and all of these things are possible.
But I guess what I would hesitate to ever do is to say to someone your writing
doesn't suit here.
Yeah, I don't think that's true.
I really don't.
We've had such a huge variety of stories make the shortlist and the longlist,
huge variety stuff that we have said we don't like.
Yeah, You know, I've said I don't like hermit crabs
sometimes.
And then guess what, they appear, you know, and they get me.
And look, if you feel like you're just not hitting,
that's fine.
We won't be offended if you decide to go elsewhere.
Like do what serves you as an artist as well.
I will also say we've got 2 assistant judges that read with us and sometimes we
do differ on taste with them as well, but also a lot of the time we don't.
The ratings are quite consistent and that's because good writing shines
through and is appreciated.
Regardless really of what genre you're writing in and what your topics are,
there are definitely pieces that will resonate more with 1 judge or another
based on personal experience.
So definitely agree that there's a lot of luck to it.
But if you're a good writer and you're writing consistently,
you will get there I think.
So I guess what I would say as a headline is please don't ever write to us.
Like trying to impress us and thinking, oh I know the only thing they like is XYZ,
I'm going to write XYZ because that's all they care about.
It's just not true.
We want to seek your best work, and to be honest,
the stories that often resonate best with me are the ones that I can feel the
author cared about, if that makes sense.
Like they threw their whole selves into it.
And that emotion comes through, even if it's not a plot or even an
emotion that I particularly resonate with, I get it.
Like the empathy comes in and I can feel it because the authors put it out there.
So do what serves you.
But your stories are welcome here.
That's what I will say.
And we've, we've read them.
We've read every single one and considered them carefully.
So that's all we can do as judges.
Absolutely.
Next message comes from S Jones, who says that they're not a fan of the
new Niche section as it impacts people who want to improve their writing.
We can't afford to join and it separates the haves from the have nots.
Well, don't we have some good news for you?
Yes.
Yeah, because it doesn't.
The Niche is our Patreon exclusive podcast,
but it's not really about writing.
It's it's about other silly nonsense.
We in our latest episode, we introduced the dossier,
which is all about the female gaze.
We tend to talk about more personal stuff, more opinions and other things that are
entirely wouldn't affect your writing one way or another.
I should hope No.
So look, that's our little club, I guess, and people who love silly nonsense.
So no, we're not doing anything over there,
at least not at the moment.
Hmm.
That would impact your results in the competition.
So please don't feel like you're missing out on that.
Absolutely.
There are other perks.
We have polls and other discussions there on Patreon.
So it's it's more just a little bit of fun,
a little bit extra for people who enjoy the podcast and who want to support us.
But we have Veronica who said that they're not a fan of the leaderboard
concepts, probably because she's not on it and it
deters her from entering because the same names and same people are winning and
being shortlisted, which is fair enough.
I think that you feel demotivated by that.
But I do want to remind everyone that it is a blind judged competition.
So we don't award people based on who they are.
And if someone has achieved multiple shortlists, multiple long lists,
it is because they've earned it.
And I would just like to throw out there that this particular shortlist has some
brand new names.
It does.
It has a lot of brand new names.
Yeah.
And look, we love seeing the same names pop up.
You know, we've made relationships with people on
social media.
Well, I have because it doesn't go on social
media as we know.
But I pass everything along to him.
So he's friends by association.
But you know, that's joyful for us, I guess,
to watch the journeys of people who enter our competition to delight in their
successes.
And if you want to get more involved, we encourage you to get on social media,
talk to us, join the conversation because that's how
you get involved.
You know what I mean?
It make yourself known to us, stir **** on social media and you will
get our attention.
We welcome you.
So this is not an exclusive club by any means.
We love each and every person who enters our competition and we would love to get
to know you and we would love to become your friend too.
So please, please put yourself out there, Yeah.
And talk to the other people who enter the comp too, by the way.
Like there's a whole community of people who love to chat,
stir **** support each other, follow each others writing journeys,
and become real life friends as well, whether they meet in person or not.
And we'd really, really encourage you to do that.
And hopefully, you know, you start to hear your name a little bit
more too.
Who knows?
Absolutely.
And and we love to see new names come up on the leaderboard and in the long list
and the shortlist.
That's very rewarding to see people kind of move forward in their writing journeys
and and make it.
There's nothing at stake with the leaderboard, right?
You'd the winner doesn't get a prize or anything extra special.
It's more just a way to acknowledge people who've who've put in a lot of work
over the last couple of years and just something for them to see their names in
lights, essentially.
And it's also fun to gradually watch Dean name drop off the list as well because he
got up there early.
He made the shortlist twice.
You know, he he was doing really well, but of course, he can't enter anymore.
Same goes for a lease, by the way.
Let's knock a lease off the leaderboard.
This can be our new challenge.
But yeah, it's just a bit of fun.
And and I'm so sorry that you feel excluded.
Yeah, in that way.
But hopefully the longer you stick around, the more chance you have of making it up
that leaderboard as well yourself.
All right.
So well, let's close it out.
Just a couple more points of feedback.
So a couple of people asked if they can enter more than once, if that's allowed.
And yes, that's in the rules.
You can enter more than once.
But you do need to sign up with a separate email and a separate ticket for
each entry.
So it's one entry allowed per ticket, one entry per email address.
Do you just, that's how the way our system works.
Yeah, that's right.
So each account is tied to an email address.
So you'd need a new email address.
But we, you know, absolutely enter more than once,
if you've got that much creativity in you, go for it that much time on your weekend
for sure.
And just to acknowledge, a lot of people did provide some very
valuable technical feedback on the website.
Some suggested improvements and features which we will, as always,
take under consideration as we seek to continually improve the website.
And finally, some love being expressed for the vague
tweets there.
Hmm, really appreciate it.
I'd like to toot my own horn.
Yes, go go nuts.
I've broken my record.
I believe my previous record may have been two or three vague tweets.
I don't know my exact number, but I, I smashed it.
You smashed it out of the blew it out of the water.
There were at least 8 or 9 this time around.
It might have even been equal.
This time.
It may have been, I haven't counted.
But as always, we reveal our vague tweets at the end of
the shortlist episode.
So hang around for that.
And we should be clear.
We call them tweets, but really we should say vague posts.
We're not on Twitter anymore.
We're on over on Blue Sky.
So please do look us up there.
Not quite right on Blue Sky.
And it's lots of fun.
And again, another opportunity to engage with other
people who enter the competition, talk **** trash Ed for not giving enough
fake tweets, you know, that kind of stuff.
It's fun.
He's Ed's really on.
So one of my favourite things to do is trash him.
And he doesn't even know.
I don't even know.
I'll I'll about every four or five days I'll remember about the existence of Blue
Sky and I'll have a look.
So that's all for our feedback for this round.
Let's get into the prompts.
Let's do it.
So we'll tackle each of the three prompts and we'll kind of switch between the
teams.
Love switching teams.
It's very yin Yang.
It is insane, non binary.
Let's just get amongst just lit around.
I've had one drink.
We've had one drink, Amanda haven't even finished.
No, it's and it's 1 regulated standard drink.
By the way, that was measured on your little scale.
Did you spike it?
I spiked it with the alcohol that's already in it.
So we normally start with Team Ed, but I feel like we need to switch it up
this round because it's yin before Yang.
It really is.
So let's start with team yin.
OK, so team yin, so we're talking feminine energy.
If we're on that binary frame, we're talking dark side of the mountain.
We're talking shadow, the moon.
These kinds of concepts are what inspired Team yin this time.
We also had, of course, the word prompt moon and the action
prompt of concealing something.
All of this is very yin, and for my team, I'd just say some general comments.
What I really noticed was the moon was very prominent.
Yeah, the moon featured heavily, which is great.
That was the word prompt.
Of course, female energy also featured very heavily.
We had more lesbians than usual, which is fun.
And we usually do have a few.
We do.
And so just stitch the men all together.
That was how some people interpreted these prompts.
And I think because not just the yin and Yang, which is already kind of, I guess,
a bit mystical, but the moon as well, we had a lot of mystical stuff.
And I had talked about on the community there in my post about how I'm getting
into tarot, and we actually had a lot of tarot
references as well.
So people being inspired by that.
Yeah, we did in my team as well, which was surprising.
Well, I guess people are just reading both of
those posts probably, which is a great idea before you make
your decision.
But really on Team yin, it was very mystical.
Not only were there a lot of moons, there were also a lot of bodies of water.
I feel like moons and water go together, right?
So we saw that that a lot and randomly, I don't know why,
but two people are on the same wavelength with Tamagotchis.
So I don't know what screams yin about Tamagotchi.
Maybe it's just a coincidence.
But also 7 werewolf stories.
Well, OK.
And again, you got your moon.
What comes next?
I'm curious to know if anyone mooned anyone in your story.
We will get to that.
All right, so let's start with the word prompt.
Then on that note.
OK, so we have the word prompt of moon.
Now, again, it was generally a very prominent feature
of a lot of stories, a lot said at night all of a sudden.
And you know, just that vibe, that full moon kind of vibe was very
prominent in Team Yin as well.
So I just want to talk about some of the common usages.
And there were a lot.
So The thing is, and this is I guess where people were
saying maybe the prompts were too broad, that in fact there's a lot of options
when we talk about the moon.
So I'm just going to rattle them off and you might recognise yourself among these.
So the moon as a celestial steel body was absolutely by far and away the most
common usage, as you might expect.
And I didn't do the stats.
It was complicated because of, you know, there's a lot of overlap and so on,
but I would say at least 80% of the stories featured the moon like
prominently or very clearly.
So that was very much a strong theme coming through.
And therefore there were a lot of usages of the word moon that related to the
actual moon.
So moonlight, full moon, other specific types of moon like harvest
moon or Crescent moon, new moon, that kind of thing.
We had a few characters with the name Moon and a lot of Lunas as well.
We had some point of views of the moon, so the moon itself was the character,
which is fun.
I mentioned already we had tarot cards.
We had the moon tarot card feature, which as any tarot followers would know,
is the ***** of all the cards, right?
We do not love the moon card, but she's there to taunt us.
We had four honeymoons, just one baby moon.
We had a couple of full moon parties, which is fun.
I've never been to a full moon.
Money.
I don't know what that entails apart from probably a lot of a lot of alcohol.
And I'd expect some antics.
I feel like it has to happen in a field.
Yeah.
And there.
There needs to be a murder for sure, a murder or some sort of like life
changing, you know, issue.
We had moonstones featured prominently as well,
but often just by comparison to things like that, someone's eyes were shiny,
like moonstones, that kind of thing.
We had two references to Simoon, which I was not familiar with,
but Arabic origin there.
Very desert driven, so like a dry, extremely dry, hot wind.
I believe we had a couple of references to Shoot the Moon,
which is a card game moon.
Yeah, in the game Hearts.
Fun side note on the game of Hearts, do it.
But in year 11 and 12 in high school, I was responsible for a field.
I never missed a day of school of year 12, but I missed every single class because
we would spend all day in the schoolyard at the back of the Oval playing hearts.
This tracks for smoking and playing hearts and we played so many hundreds of
hours of hearts.
We got so good.
We all shot the moon many, many times.
It's a game that's near and dear to my heart, but I was recently thinking,
how do you play it?
And I couldn't actually actually remember how **** you played that game.
Yeah, my family plays the game.
I don't remember you.
You just forget in between you do this really tracks for you because when we
work together, we used to play card games every single
day.
Game guy we would our card game of choice was skipless, which again,
another game we tried to relearn to play with my kids because it's been so long
and also you're not very good at it.
But anyway, I for the record, we kept record of the games that we
played.
Don't you remember?
Because it was like whoever won the most gets a Coke.
But we tallied the mark and you, you won by one game out of like over
hundreds and hundreds of games.
It was pretty damn even.
No, I'll take that.
I won, OK, and I'll lose that forever more.
And well, that was can I remind you of that?
He could have told me any **** right then and I would have believed him too late.
But that was a lovely aside.
Thank you for that little journey down memory lane.
All right.
So loving to the moon and back was also a popular theme, which is very cute.
Love that we had four stories that mentioned moonshine.
Yeah, and I'll just rattle off a couple of
other things.
We had a lot of other things, so I'm sorry if I didn't capture yours.
There were a lot, so I don't want to be here all day.
But we had the Half Moon yoga pose, moon cakes, moon pies, moonlighting,
which of course we all have to do now in the gig economy.
We had moon River mentioned the word moony as in like as the vibe like mooning
about that kind of thing.
Moonstruck, moon shot, and of course Ed's favourite using the
word moon in place of month.
I know how much you love.
I'm so glad I didn't choose Team Yin.
No, there weren't many.
I think people have got that memo.
But also, you know, you're safe with me, so that's OK.
I will say I didn't count how many, but there were plenty of bare bumps as
well, which of course you know we're going to
appreciate here.
It not quite right, but disappointingly, not a single moonwalk.
Oh, where's the moonwalk guys?
Come on, missed opportunity.
Very disappointed in all of you.
But best news of all, not a single disqualification for missing
the word.
And as you do all know, that's pretty much the only way you can
get disqualified in in the not quite right prize.
And we didn't have any.
In fact, we didn't have any for either team.
No, but I just wanted to call out two stories
in particular for their creative use of the moon word prompt.
And one of those was a a long with the story.
London 65.
I don't know, no.
Was it a historical fiction or a creative nonfiction?
I don't know.
But it featured a character who had an affair and got pregnant to Jerry Evans.
Well, I assume it's Jerry Evans, an acquaintance of Keith Moon.
Oh, so the moon in that story was Keith Moon,
which is good fun.
So thank you for that one AA long.
And then the other one I wanted to mention was the story The Celestial
Rescue near the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham by Jonathan Dawson,
in which the moon featured very prominently.
The moon kind of like lands on Earth, like an asteroid kind of thing.
And they start to build a tourist attraction out of it.
And the main character realises that the moon's kind of worn out.
And so they stuff it up their jumper and then like everyone's like,
where did the moon go?
So the whole story was centred around that, which is good fun.
But I just wanted to call out one of the things that the townspeople did,
which was that they started selling moon coffee, right?
Amongst other things, moon everything right but moon coffee,
which was coffee with a bit more milk, which is just such a classic ********
thing to do.
So I did enjoy that Jonathan, thank you.
So now, Ed, please share with us your team's usage of
their word prompt.
Yeah, so team Yang.
And you know, just to go into what Yang means,
I think most people interpreted this in similar ways to yin in that what featured
very prominently was masculinity and the sun.
I would say like 90% of stories kind of leading into those elements.
And in terms of the word prompt sun, which is probably maybe a little bit more
flexible than moon, I think, but not too much in terms of different
words, I think it is, but not necessarily thematically.
I think both are quite open that way.
Yeah.
Most words that feature the word sun include the word sun in them are related
to the sun one way or another.
And so the number one word that was used, can you guess it?
It was sun.
So out of the 88 stories for Team Yang, 38 of them use the word sun just to mean
the sun.
A lot of stories taking place in the desert in very hot places.
Because of that, we also had sunlight with eight, sun,
day with 7, sunflower with four, sunset with four, sunny with three.
We had misunderstanding, which I like.
Tsunami very cool.
3 instances of that a Sunder 2 instances bosun,
which is one that I had to look up a that's a ship thing, right?
Yeah.
Position a job on a ship, a bosun sun dress, which I'm a fan of.
We have two instances of that.
Sunglasses, sunless, 2 sunrises as opposed to 4 sunsets.
And then there are several words that only featured in one single story,
so I'll list those out specifically.
So 1 instance of anti Sunwood and that was from Clements.
Roche and their story.
Running kisses for a love letter from Will Kelly in my name.
Sunday as in SUNDAE.
The only instance of that.
Oh really?
KA Vargas in the story feudal feasts featured the word sundering.
Only one instance of that, and just to call out Exeter T Stevens,
who I think had the most instances of unique sun words.
OK, the first of which is artesianate, and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that
correctly, but it's a potent anti malarial
medication used primarily to treat severe malaria.
OK, derived from the sweet Wormwood plant.
So I'm assuming Exeter took this from memory Absolutely completely.
That just came to you in a fit of inspiration,
not a Google rabbit hole whatsoever.
That's good fun.
It's always good to do something a little bit different.
So let's move on to the action prompt and we'll start with your Team Amanda.
So on Team Amanda, the action was to have a character who
concealed something.
You know, we're usually pretty flexible with how we
interpret that.
So again, there was some consistent themes here,
some things that were commonly concealed.
So one of those was sexuality.
So we saw a lot of stories around, you know,
coming out of the closet kind of thing or remaining in the closet.
We had concealed pregnancies, which became central to the story.
We had quite a few concealed illnesses.
And I will say that sadly, every single one of them was terminal and
true feelings as well.
So people concealing their true feelings for each other and more than a few dead
bodies as well, which you might imagine.
I just want to call out just one for AI.
Guess a little bit of a different and unique take on the concealed prompt.
And that was from Greg Schmidt, a familiar name with his story stages.
And I just really enjoyed the fun premise for this story,
which was to compare the five stages of grief with the levels in a Super Mario
game.
Yeah, memorable story.
And not just doing that right, because you can just do your sort of
hermit crab kind of thing.
But also getting into it and kind of thinking about how that character is
using the video game as a distraction as well to kind of prevent themselves from
experiencing and feeling their grief and concealing even to themselves that their
true feelings about their mother's death in this case.
And I thought that was a fun premise, but also an emotional story.
So thank you for that one, Greg, but I guess I just wanted to touch on
something a little bit difficult here.
And this is where we get into that inverted commas global feedback territory.
And that is that I feel like actually the conceal slash reveal,
which was of course Team Yang's prompt, actually caused a lot of trouble for a
lot of stories.
And the reason I say that is because what I was finding in my team stories was that
of course, because it's the prompt for many people
becomes quite prominent and the plot then is purely somebody concealing something,
right?
So for the either for the entire story, they conceal it all the way to the end
and they are still concealing it at the end or something happens and they conceal
it.
Now, that's not necessarily a problem, but from a if,
we're just talking big picture terms about what typically makes a satisfying
story, and maybe you'll see your story reflected
in my comments here.
If nothing changes, if at the end of the story we are still
in the same place that we were at the start of the story, that's a challenge.
It's a challenge to deliver impact with a story that starts and ends in the same
place with no real meaningful change or shift happening in that.
And often as well, the story is quite interior or internal.
So we spend the entire story in someone's head as they wrestle with the idea of
concealing something and very little action is happening because all they're
doing is refraining from spilling the beans.
It's not to say that you can't do well with a story like that in a competition,
and it's certainly not to say that you can't write a meaningful piece of fiction
or a meaningful reflection that has those features.
But in terms of standing out in a competition setting,
those stories where we're, we spend the entire time in someone's
head where they decide not to do anything, it's very,
very challenging to make that a compelling stand out winning kind of
story.
So I guess I, I just want to raise that and that's
uncomfortable.
Like people don't want to hear, I guess that their idea didn't work in
the setting.
But if you're wondering why, when we get to the long this stage,
maybe your story didn't make it, that could be the reason.
And that doesn't mean you're a bad writer, right?
Your writing might have been beautiful.
And in fact, most people write beautifully for our
competition.
But if you fail to deliver impact in that way, then I think that can be a problem.
And that can get between you and a long listing or a win.
Even if your story is in other ways emotional, heartfelt,
coming from somewhere deep within you, if it fails to connect from a
storytelling point of view, then that's a challenge.
So I don't know if you found the same thing over on Team Ed.
Yeah, well, it's almost a trap, isn't it?
It's like when we used to run the anti prompt, right?
We said break a rule of writing, but still make your story good.
So it's the same kind of thing where you want to follow the prompt,
but you need to be wary of the ways that following the prompt might take away from
the story's effectiveness if you were just doing the thing exactly as it is in
the prompt or featuring that centrally in your story.
To be fair, I couldn't have predicted this.
Like, I didn't know that this would be the
impact.
And it's only when you see it across all the stories, you know,
like we had so many stories and so many of them where, I guess you might say,
falling into this same trap of interiority and lack of change,
lack of a movement, where the the conflict never actually
eventuates because we're keeping it to ourselves.
To me, I found it a very, very interesting learning experience.
Like, how big of an impact that actually has to
keep that all internal.
And we knew that already.
But just that one prompt, how it could, I guess, diminish the drama,
the conflict and the change and the character arcs and all of these
fundamental parts of what typically is considered essential in storytelling.
Yeah.
And look, moving to the Team Yang stories, the action there being revealing
something, character, reveal something.
And what's striking is the kinds of things that they were revealing,
very similar to the kinds of things that people on your team were concealing.
So we had things like diagnosis, sexuality, infidelity,
aspects of their buried past, and that was the majority of the stories
that went in that direction.
And in the case of revealing something, it is very much aligned to a good
storytelling because that's exactly the kind of thing that creates conflict and
creates drama and creates a story.
And I can think of a, you know, several coming out of the closet type
stories that did exactly that.
Can I just add to that though, because of course,
I did read all the top rated Team Ed stories as well.
And so it was interesting then to kind of jump across and see that dichotomy,
I guess.
But to me, I call it a dichotomy.
To me, I didn't notice the distinction that much
because as you said, a lot of the things that were being
concealed and revealed were very similar.
But also the challenge in Team Ed that I personally saw was that again,
we're using that as our plot.
So the reveal is our plot.
And for many, many stories, the came right at the end and then we
didn't actually get to see the conflict that followed.
So we had this kind of angsting about the reveal.
The reveal came late and then we didn't get all the drama and the explosive
impact of this big reveal.
It kind of just ended.
And we're left with imagining what next.
And to me, the what next is often the story, right?
Like how does that thing impact your world?
How does that change your world?
And if you don't deliver that change, if you just deliver the moment without
the impact and the change, that's the same problem to me as
concealing something and never saying it because the change and the impact don't
ever happen.
Yeah, I agree with that.
But also, I think there were a couple of stories
that come to mind in your group that I read,
the highly rated stories that were very well written and compelling that didn't
do the reveal like to us because there was clearly something on the mind of the
protagonist and it was coming through really strongly in the writing.
But we never got to find out about it.
And I found that really frustrating as well.
Yeah, that's also true.
And in fact, that was something I think that I hinted
at in my post on the community before the competition began, which was around like,
try not to conceal things from the reader.
Try not to rely on mystery as being like your hook for a piece of flash fiction.
And the reason being that if we don't know as a reader what's happening,
we can't connect to what is happening.
We're kind of floating above it, wondering for the entirety of the story
and never getting emotionally invested until right at the end we go, Oh my God,
that's great.
But then the story's over and it's too late because we haven't been able to
invest.
So this is feedback we've given before on Daredevils as well.
Typically speaking, we would advise against having a mystery
throughout in terms of the reader not knowing what is happening.
There can be little bits, aspects of mystery that keep us intrigued,
but if we don't know what's happening and why,
if we don't know what that character wants or what they're trying to achieve,
then it becomes very, very difficult to connect with them.
And so, yes, if you're spending a whole story waiting
to reveal to both the characters in the story and to us what is actually
happening, then that will reduce the impact of your
story emotionally.
But also, if you never reveal to the reader what is
going on, and I think it's probably not really fair
to expect the reader to connect and engage with something that they don't
understand.
So these are just, I guess, some ideas to consider when you're
writing, what exactly the reading experience will
be and how satisfying that is to a reader.
Because in a competition setting, it's all about reader satisfaction.
It's something we talk about all the time, you know, unearned twists.
And often I find personal frustration reading a story when the ending kind of
subverts what you've been reading up to that point because you're invested in one
thing, and then you get handed another thing in
the last sentence.
Or, as you've said, the key elements are withheld.
And then you just find out at the end.
And it's too late to feel a connection at that point because you've just been kind
of waiting to be told.
And now that you're told it's over.
But I think that comes from a place of people enjoying mystery and twists in
writing.
But it really is about what you are withholding from the reader.
And what you shouldn't be holding from the reader is the critical information
they need to inhabit the mind of the protagonist #1.
Like, what are they?
Who are they?
What do they want out of the scene?
Like, what are they seeking?
You're creating mystery about other things.
Yeah.
And surprising the sometimes about the why or about, like,
what will happen next as opposed to what is happening.
Yeah.
You should never be wondering when you're reading, like, what am I reading?
Where am I?
What is he thinking?
Who is this character?
Those are things you never want the reader to.
And I say, you know, you can't talk in absolutes,
but pretty much never put the reader in that position.
Yeah.
And look, I don't want to get too negative about
this because there are stories that did rise to the top that did all of these
things.
And that's going to be incredibly frustrating because we'll get to the
shortlist episode and the people who've just heard themselves and gone.
Kicking myself.
I wish I hadn't done that.
And then you hear a story like, hang on a second, they did that.
That's not fair.
This isn't how that works, right?
Some people can still manage to deliver impact despite subverting some of those
typical expectations about what works in storytelling.
So we're never going to tell you you absolutely can or can't or should or
shouldn't all the time.
You can absolutely do all of these things.
It's more about being mindful of the impact.
From my perspective, I learned a lot this round.
I found the stories to be very passive, very internal,
which we have said before is typically not the recommended way to write an
impactful story.
So if that was you, and if you do find that you didn't make
the long list this round, then I give you my full permission to
blame the prompts.
We would do that.
We would totally do prompts and the judges,
but let's just go with the prompts.
Let's do that even though they were out idea.
All right, OK, so just to go through the rest of the
team Yang actions.
So as I said, the majority of those were were truths
and secrets being revealed.
A few people interpreted this as to be like revealing of a body,
a body being found, that kind of thing.
That's very like law and order.
You know, the Jerry Orbach start of the law and
order episode kind of thing.
But we had a few people doing like an internal realisation as the reveal,
something revealing something about yourself to yourself.
A few people with a literal interpretation,
like an object that's being revealed, like something that's been buried and
uncovered.
And then a few kind of more esoteric interpretations like a meta reveal,
a bit of word play and using a reveal within the structure of the story as well.
So some interesting takes there.
A few that I want to call out specifically from Jin.
We had happy Son family group chat and they really wanted to have a character
literally say read: veal.
So regarding veal that featured in that story, which I thought was very fun.
That's cute.
We had from Natalie Harris in the story Sunscape, you know,
leaning very heavily into the idea of the sun.
Here we have someone going blind, looking at the sun,
having the sun reveal itself to them and going blind.
By the way, just as an aside, does anyone remember that episode of
Neighbours when Kyle went blind because he looked at the sun?
That is one of my favourite all time storylines of Neighbours.
It's the dumbest **** you've ever seen in your life.
Everyone's like there's an eclipse and they're like, you can't look at the sun.
And Kyle's like, I'm just going to do it.
And is it what you say?
You mean Karl Kyle?
No, not not Doctor Karl.
No, I mean my actual all time favourite
episodes all feature Doctor Karl.
Anyway, so Kyle looks at the sun, he ends up with Ben.
He must have the bandages on his eyes.
Months.
And then the best part is that months later,
like they got sick of writing the blind character storyline and so he just healed.
He just got better.
They just got over and they're like, anyway, he can see now.
And then they've moved on.
Like probably Doctor Carl did some sort of questionable surgery on him or
something because Doctor Carl wasn't just a GP.
Also was like all over the hospital.
No matter what issue you're having, having a baby, having a stroke,
whatever it might be, Doctor Carl's there.
Anyway, that's an aside.
But quite seriously, if you love dumb drama,
you have to watch that episode.
It's the best thing that ever happened.
Anyway, that's for all the Neighbours fans out
there.
Hi to our UK listeners.
It's just like that's not making it.
Don't want it.
Might make it in.
Depends on what mood I'm in.
OK, so a few more so from Ben Daggers in his
story Double Dare in which the characters reveal their true feelings 30 years apart,
which I thought was a very powerful story from Bridget Chase Hot and bothered Yoga.
Great title as well in which the main character reveals that she slept with her
assistant last night.
That was a very memorable story.
That's hot and bothered.
A very unique story here by by Malcolm McCabe, Stare at the Sun,
in which a character revealed their body layer by layer to get to the source of
new life.
One of those WTF stories but very interesting.
And finally, from the one, the only Holly Sadowski in her story,
the historic battle at Tadcaster of Sir David and the River Serpent in the year
of our Lord 1351, I'm going to refer to Holly's own
explanation here.
She says, oh God, I'm so sorry.
The reveal is that the serpent has a *****.
So thank you, Holly, for that.
That's a tight one, if I recall.
Yeah, that was specifically mentioned.
And we initially rate stories and write our own comments.
And my comment was WTF, Holly Sadowski energy for sure.
We see you.
We see you exactly.
So thank you so much for your story.
So that's it for the action prompt.
Let's talk about the kicker.
All right, so let's get into yin.
I've pressed my palms together in a prayer pose because that felt that's
exactly what you're doing in the image right in the picture.
I'll get my foot out and stick it in the air.
Get your dogs out yes.
So we're in yin territory now.
And I did mention earlier like of course, we had all the moons and things.
That was the word prompt as well.
A lot of feminine energy, which of course we often get in the
competition anyway.
We did mention we often get like say 60 to 70% women entering our competition,
but I guess in particular feminist energy this time.
So some typical feminist gripes kind of being the theme of the story, I suppose.
One thing I noticed in particular in this round,
and I did already mention that the concealed thing was often a pregnancy,
but it was also often pregnancy loss as well.
And we had a lot of pregnancy loss unfortunately this round like a lot
noticeably.
And we do often have that.
It is of course a theme people write about.
It's deeply A distressing time for people.
And so of course, something that we like to process through
our art, which I absolutely appreciate and honour.
And I think people should do that if they feel like they want to.
I suppose as a reader, it's difficult when you're confronted
with a lot of that.
But you know, each story, we read it on its merits.
And so absolutely doesn't matter if you're going along with a common theme.
If you deliver an impactful story, then you know that's going to stand out
from the pack on that basis.
But I guess just, yeah, worth noting that that was quite common.
So now I guess before I get into, I'm going to do some shout outs of some
stories that I felt dealt with the yin prompt in a really interesting way.
But I'm going to get difficult again, OK.
And I say it all with love.
And I know this is going to be hard to hear for people.
And so brace yourselves.
It's your own personal daredevil if you did these things.
But I won't call you out by name because in fact,
there were far too many people who went down this path.
And I guess I just want to be real with you.
Some of the challenges that we found this round with the stories that we received.
And the reason I want to be real with you is because you're going to be wondering
like, why did my story maybe not resonate, even if it was something that for me was
deeply resonant or impactful or emotional for me?
And I loved this story.
This was a story that really meant something to me.
And then it goes nowhere.
This might be why.
OK.
And so take it or leave it.
But I guess I say this would love to hopefully help everyone understand what
I've come to understand this round of the competition about how this prompt
impacted stories in a way that left me wanting more,
and that is this idea of passivity.
Okay, so yin is associated with passivity.
That was one of the words, I guess, that we included when we mentioned the
different prompts in the email and so on.
Now, one of our listeners, near and dear to my heart,
did mention online that we had forced people to write passive characters
through these prompts.
Now, I would challenge that because we don't
ever force you to do anything.
It's a prompt, You do what you want, Okay, But the theme of passivity or the vibe of
passivity, sure.
That was part of the prompt, just one part.
But what this ended up doing with a lot of the stories is that we had all of
these passive characters who weren't acting.
So I already mentioned people who concealed things, meaning they, I guess,
failed to reveal.
So they weren't acting, they weren't revealing the thing.
But it was other types of passivity as well.
So a lot of people who, even though it was their story,
did nothing in their story.
Things happened around them and they had no impact or bearing on their own story.
Now, that's what we call character agency.
So characters who impact the plot and drive the plot, that's character agency.
When a story lacks character agency, we start to question,
is this even this character story?
Because they're not the hero in their own story that is watching things happen
around them.
So that's a challenge, but also, I guess passivity more generally.
Like again, we talked before with the conceal and
reveal prompt, if nothing's happening, if people aren't acting,
where is the story?
Now, choosing not to act can be a very
compelling and interesting thing, but the choice in not to act has to have
an impact Still.
If we are still in the same place at the end as we were at the start,
then choosing not to act has done nothing.
And then we question, well, how is this a story?
Because where is the thing that happened?
And if nothing happened, it's not really a story.
And we call these vignettes.
And it might be the most beautiful writing in the world.
And many stories had beautiful scene setting or beautiful character
development, but then everything remained static.
That is a vignette.
You're just giving me a snapshot of an image.
And to me, an image is not necessarily and usually
not what I would consider a story.
And so it sort of lacks that impact.
There were quite a lot of stories in Team Amanda that I personally enjoyed from a
writing perspective, from character perspective,
but that didn't develop into a story for that reason.
It was just kind of we end the story, we have a beautiful moment or we have
character sketch, but there has been no no development,
no action has taken place, no change from the start to the end of
the story.
And that's a problem.
It is, I mean, it can be.
And look, there were stories that succeeded.
And I would say I noticed I guess a little bit of a distinction between a
character who does nothing and just watches stuff go on around them versus a
character who makes a clear choice not to act or not to speak or not to reveal
something when they should have and when that would have had an impact.
And now we've got a different impact as a result.
They've kind of almost like they're their own worst enemy.
They've now ruined their chance of something.
So let's say it's a relationship thing and we're deciding,
are we going to reveal to this person that we're in love with them or not?
And the opportunity comes right at the climax and every all them,
the stars are aligned and you have your moment and you miss it.
That's a story, right?
Because you've failed to act at a time and now it's over and your chance is gone
and what have you.
I think that's more compelling than a character who just kind of,
the moment doesn't even arrive.
It's kind of the same as always and they're just continuing their usual
behaviour of not acting.
And it's a, it's a subtle distinction, but I hope people understand what I mean
there.
The difference, I guess between making a clear choice not
to act as opposed to just coasting along doing nothing kind of thing.
I guess another thing I would say, and this is, you know,
in the spirit of feedback as well, and maybe to reflect on your writing and
whether or not this was true in your story.
What I noticed in the Yin team, because we're sort of in this mystical
energy and what have you, which is good fun.
I noticed a lot of metaphors and often to do with the moon or similar.
These extended metaphors where we're exploring an idea as it might relate to
the moon.
For example, the phases of the moon or like aspects of
the surface of the moon or whatever it might be when we're thinking about the
moon and we're making a metaphor about something else, something else in life.
But the metaphor kind of never evolved into a story.
It was kind of like a thought experiment where we're comparing these things and
we're contrasting them and looking at it under a microscope,
but not actually developing action within the scene.
And again, while that can be really beautiful and
reflective and thought provoking, it doesn't necessarily make a compelling
story.
So maybe have a think about that if you if you did that within your story and
think about how you can take that beautiful metaphor,
which I love by the way, they're often very compelling,
but then make sure that we're still also creating a scene in which things are
happening and changing by the end of the story.
And then finally, I guess the one last point I wanted to
make about this, again, feedback if you want to reflect back on
your story and how you either did or did not stand out on this occasion.
I mentioned there were a lot of stories about the moon.
There were a lot of stories featuring water.
There was a lot of this beautiful reflection, beautiful metaphors,
kind of getting deep, you know, with some of these ideas.
So that was pretty common.
And I would just say to you, if you don't make the long list,
maybe think about like, what did you do to make your story stand
out?
So you might have had some beautiful ideas there,
but what made your story stand out beyond just lovely writing, lovely prose?
If you're relying on that moon and those feminine vibes and we're sort of getting
into that, great.
Like that's a nice vibe to start with.
But how did you deliver an interesting plot or an intriguing, interesting,
real feeling character who I wanted to connect to and follow them along their
journey?
These are the ways that you grab attention.
So you might have the perfect kind of, I guess, base that you're working with,
which is that lovely mystical kind of vibe.
But from that base, what are you doing to stand out from the
pack?
So those are, I guess, the things that I would say helped some
stories stand out very noticeably when they were delivering story,
I found myself saying my comments finally, a story, you know,
instead of a vignette kind of thing.
And, you know, I don't say that to sound ****** and I'm
sure it's, you know, not fun to hear.
But This is why we do this, right?
We pull back the curtain on the judging process.
That was my experience of it, so make of that what you will.
But I did just want to call out a few stories that I think did do some fun
things with the yin energy.
And look, there were a lot of creative takes on the
yin prompt, but I just wanted to call out a couple.
And one of those was from Jesse Dascanio, and I hope I'm pronouncing your name
correctly.
Forgive me if I'm not in his story Hearts with Audrey,
which I thought was particularly interesting because it was actually a gay
romance, right?
It's a story about a gay couple in Team Yin, Yes,
but the idea was having the Yin energy being like the femininity of in
particular one of those male characters that being a problem in the relationship.
You know, he's a bit of a feminine presenting gay
man.
And that that has been at the heart of the conflict in terms of introducing the
partner to mum, who is Audrey in that story.
So I thought that was an interesting and unique take on the Yin prompt.
And again, like this is, you know, how you can stand out to by just doing
something a little bit different to maybe what's expected.
I just wanted to also call out Last Night of the Wolf Bros by and I believe it's
Malta Springer.
Apologies again if I'm mispronouncing your name,
but this was another interesting take on the kicker.
So the moon featured prominently, which it did in many stories,
as I mentioned.
But the story again, was about men, right?
But we're talking about performative masculinity and men that you would
describe maybe as soft and passive.
So this is where Malta took this particular one,
subverting those common gender stereotypes.
And I think a few people wanted to do that with this.
And I love that, right?
I love that we've presented you with this gender binary and you've gone.
Hang on.
No, I'm going to challenge that.
And that's really cool.
So even though it was a male centric story, it's appeared in,
I guess the feminine half of the competition.
And I'd love to see that and I love to see how we play with these ideas and how
we use them to inspire us.
So thank you for that story.
And then Danielle Carlson in her story Complicit, again,
another interesting take on the yin prompt here,
where she was looking at women who are normally passive but finally standing up
to their abuser.
And of course, we often get stories about family
violence and similar in the competition, But we're looking at like,
I guess this idea of pushing someone beyond the brink,
and maybe we've been passive.
And what does it take to crack and to move over to the other side?
And what Danielle said in her comments here were the more I thought about it,
the more I liked the idea of silence and passivity being its own kind of weapon.
Sometimes the best course of action is doing nothing at all.
And that is true, right?
So again, you know, we challenge some of those ideas in terms
of doing nothing, but if we're actively doing nothing with
an intention and with an impact, then that can be compelling.
And the last story I just wanted to call out was Made With Love by Anne Emmeloch.
And this was a story about motherhood and coldness combined.
So we've got this idea of the feminine energy of motherhood,
but also this coldness, this darkness that comes within energy.
And of course, not all mothers are loving, kind, maternal type of mothers.
So NM in this story has combined the femininity and the cold to kind of look
at a dark mother character.
And I thought that was really interesting as well,
the idea of a motherhood when it becomes obsessive and chilling and, you know,
controlling as well.
So I found that to be a compelling and interesting approach to the imprompt.
So thank you to all Team Amanda members and I know it's,
it's been a bit of tough love here, so I apologise for that.
But also that's my motherly instincts and my coldness coming out together.
Yeah, they do go hand in hand at times.
So all said with real love though, because I do want you all to do well in
the competition and like I said, you can do well with those ideas.
It's just something to reflect on.
Absolutely.
Well, I think by and large Team Ed, Team Yang avoided some of those pitfalls
for the same reasons that we discussed with the action prompt.
So a lot of the stories feature as the representation of the Yang energy,
this idea of motion and sometimes like a desperation as well,
which is again drives a plot forward and creates tension and interest and all that
kind of thing.
That was definitely one of the aspects.
Another one, probably the largest percentage of
stories took this approach and they featured masculinity or male protagonists,
you know, often in like a highly active role as
well, aggressive, aggressive sometimes, yes, absolutely, sometimes violence.
And there were actually a few, a good handful of like critiques of toxic
masculinity, turning it on on its head and exposing
the flaws perhaps of a Yang outlook.
You just waved your hand in such a yin way just now when you when you say I was,
I was trying to do air points and and coupled with masculinity and mount
protagonists and aggression and all that kind of thing.
The other huge feature linked to the word prompt was this idea of sun heat, fire,
warmth.
So a lot of stories set in like deserts, a lot of fires, actually several sun gods,
a lot of this ritual sacrifice idea coming through in several stories,
cremations as well.
So all of that kind of energy coming through.
So just to call out a few notable examples of some unique or noteworthy
takes, we had the story Final Shift from Romani.
Jane and Romano's explored this idea that yin is even and Yang is odd as well.
So I think is the only story that did that and using a number,
an odd number as the catalyst in that story,
hence that being Yang energy from the story Stare at the Sun by Malcolm McCabe.
And my comment for this was major Yang energy because it kind of really dripped
through.
And this was one of those ritualistic sacrifice type situations, not exactly,
but very much sun violence kind of energy coming through on that story.
That's hot.
You're picturing something very different, I believe, right now.
Amanda, the story Nuptial flight by Christina
Wilson.
There may be in others, but I think this is the only one that
featured a character called Yang, who in this case was a drone bee whose
sole purpose is to mate just like any man.
Isn't that like that movie, The Bee Movie with Jerry Simon?
You know, I haven't seen the Bee Movie.
Oh, listen, I went to that movie.
I believe it was me and Andy's first date, if I'm not mistaken.
It doesn't hold up.
Well, I'm not sure it was good at the time.
It's beastiality movie, a beastiality movie alright,
and I don't recommend it.
It's not first, will you?
It's not great first, I mean.
Well, listen, maybe that Yang energy was going off,
but I digress.
Anyway, you're in your old world now from once
again happy son family group chat by Jin.
This one featured Cantonese food culture with hot Yang versus cold food and this
idea of keeping the body in balance.
So very culturally driven story there final departure by Michelle Ryan where
the Yang energy comes through the characters desperate attempt to reach her
father before he dies.
So again, this idea of desperation and striving
towards a goal, very Yang.
And finally, perhaps the ultimate Yang expression in
the story Sandworm by Steve Huff, which is literally about a penis.
Oh well, it wouldn't be a not quite right a
competition without a penis, would it?
And it wasn't the only penis.
It wasn't the only penis.
We do love a penis POV.
You're not quite right.
I thought I'd just not respond to that and see,
you're just gonna leave me hanging.
Thank you.
You're just gonna cut it off at.
We do love a penis.
You know what I mean?
And then you're gonna cut in some.
What I'm gonna do is splice that audio in like every 5 minutes.
Yeah, just we do love a penis.
That's it.
Followed by silence.
Oh, dear.
All right, well, many more to mention, but in the interest of time,
let's move on, I think to our favourite lines and our
favourite titles.
Let's do it.
So in Team Amanda, like just a little behind the scenes.
What I like to do is when I start judging, I pretty much just read the first story
straight away because I can't help myself.
And then I look at all the stories and I just look at all the titles and I get
very excited about certain titles and sometimes I can't help but click on them.
Can I ask, are you the kind of person that when you
have like a delicious meal, you'll eat the most delicious things
first?
Yes.
OK, that's me.
All right, so here are some of the titles that stood
out to me.
We had from Emily Rinkamar, once he stops throwing up,
Eddie Vedder and I are going to be all right, which was a compelling title.
And of course, I didn't know that authors when I was
reading the titles, but I'll shout them all out now.
From AC Stewart, we had a pony called Pickle.
She's very cute.
And I can just picture the pony called Pickle actually.
From WJ Arthur, former winner.
We had the shame of Hot rubber melting between my legs.
So that was like, what is this about?
And well, it's about wetting the bed really.
Namely, that's the the main theme of that story
we had from Lena Ram.
When all else fails, go online, which just feels like your mantra.
It's my mantra.
It's probably the worst life advice you could possibly imagine.
From Sandra Peters.
We had midnight poutine.
So shout out to all the Canadians.
Poutine's not for me.
What is protein poutine?
I thought we've talked about this, I don't know,
but it's literally chips and gravy.
So we have that here.
It's called chips and gravy.
It's not for me.
Don't sully my chips with gravy.
Oh, and sorry, and cheese curd and cheese curd.
Step too far.
Well, I was on board with the gravy and then
the cheese curd.
I've never experienced that.
I feel like you'd love it.
A whole country loves it and I think you'd love it from Keith Charles.
We have till the coals go out, which I just felt was vibe.
It's one of those titles that feels vibe from Cassandra Valesky.
We had Ubliet which is just a labyrinth trigger for me.
So we say the word Ubliet and all I can picture is David Bowies bulge,
which is colloquially referred to as the Ubliet.
No, I'm sorry to drag you down with me, Cassandra,
but it it was giving labyrinth vibes, which I did appreciate.
It doesn't take much to it's send you down there.
Literally takes nothing.
Next time, guys, just call your story Tom Holland's
umbrella performance or something like that.
Don't do that.
Now I'm gonna get 10 stories called that.
But anyway, moving on.
I know Holly Sadowski is taking notes right from Douglas Baumann.
We had that time I saw Ginny Henderson's ***.
So that was one of those mooning stories that did happen.
Thank you, Douglas.
And finally, Linda Atkins with Pack Up the Moon and
Dismantle the Sun, which to be fair is a little bit of
plagiarism, but it is a beautiful poem.
That's the Stop All the Clocks Yes poem, which is a lovely reference that I
appreciated as well, and also obviously quite relevant to the
prompts of this round.
So thank you, Linda.
Ed, did you want to share your favourite
titles?
Absolutely.
Well, I didn't have as many stories as you.
Well, so I don't have as many titles to shout
out, but some notable ones when you talk about
stories that make you jump at the chance of reading them.
This one, I think, was near the top of the order that I was
approaching this list from.
But it was **** nugget Boys by an author who goes by the name of just some guy.
Yeah.
And you would use a pseudonym for a story like that on the same line.
And look, this is Yang energy here.
People on my team are not depraved.
They just are.
You sure it's Yang energy, Amanda?
Alright, that's what we're calling service of the
prompts.
The next story is called It's a Penis Joke by Cordell Salvari.
And yes, it was a penis joke, so it paid off the title.
I enjoyed this one by Natalie McLean.
It was always burning since the world's been turning.
Obviously referencing the Billy Joel classic Billy Joel song.
We didn't start the fire.
Another bit of gentle plagiarism.
Love to see it.
It's not a bit harsh.
It's a little bit harsh.
I enjoyed Down in the Ground where the Dead Men Go by Dougie Squires,
a very provocative title that makes you want to read.
Another singer referenced you had Eddie Vedder,
I had Meat Loaf and the persuasive implementation of wishes and Karmic
Universal balanced by Trevor Flanagan.
All right, well, both of those artists feature on my
personal liked songs playlist on Spotify.
So approved tic tic support of those and Billy Joel and Billy Joel.
Yeah, another one.
She sells something by the Seashore by SL Rennie.
As always, I love a little bit of A twist on a well
known saying or, or an idiom or in this case,
a tongue twister.
That's right.
But that's all I have.
I'm so sorry.
I'll just go and cry.
All right, well, let's get into favourite lines because I
know you had some great lines in your team as well.
But we'll start with Team Yin.
So from Jonathan Dawson, who I mentioned previously with that
lovely story about the moon becoming a tourist attraction,
the Celestial Rescue near the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham.
And that was the opening line, which was she'd stuffed the moon up her
jumper.
And shout out here to the whimsy competition,
the new whimsy riding competition, because I feel like that line just slots
perfectly over there.
Just very whimsical idea that you could stuff an entire moon up your jumper.
From Andy Blakely, Sterling with the best Orion elite.
And again, this was a first line.
The frigid water made my ******* so sharp, my daggers now felt redundant.
Good fun from Michael Stone with trinket in a tin.
It's funny Paul can still picture her back then,
24 years old and as love manages to do, made pretty from all that made her plain.
Which I think is a really lovely way of expressing just love in general I guess,
and how you can experience that.
From Aileen Wallace, with the pianist.
The pianist?
Pianist.
Yeah, just the penis would have been on my
teeth.
This is yin energy.
So we're playing the piano.
The audience sighed and murmured.
They rose to their feet as one, their applause washing over the stage,
landing in waves, drowning the sound of the pianist uncle.
As her fingers flew across the keys.
She smiled, bowed her head and wished them dead.
We love a good pianist to hear it.
Not quite, I just love that turn that that took.
So we're just opening with this idea of like a sort of a piano recital or some
kind of performance and then this drama of not wanting to be there I think is a
great way to set up intrigue at the start of your story.
From Delina Shields with the date.
This was a literal lol for me, so I'll share it with you all.
And maybe you lol, maybe you don't, but know that I did.
Sorry, I didn't quite catch that.
Ben raised her chair back to upright.
You can rinse and spit now.
This was Lily's least favourite part.
It was impossible to look attractive while spitting.
At her last appointment, she'd swallowed instead,
but Ben had been distressed and confused rather than turned on.
What is it about this country?
There's a lot of like, sexy dentist stories that we see by every
round, and I did lol at that one.
So thank you Delina and from the story The Moons Gaze by Peter McDonald.
This one was just really evocative description.
I found this quite, I don't know, really got my attention,
I suppose you would say.
Francis, who had found the old book at an estate
sale.
Her rib cage reached up through her chest like an extra set of arms,
forever reaching for something she would never grasp.
Like this is one of the beautiful things in a writing competition when you read
sentences that you've never read before.
You've never thought that thing before, but you can picture it,
and it just feels so real and true.
And that is the kind of writing I love to see.
So thank you, Peter.
And finally, from Betsy Mallaud in the story Field
notes.
And this was about a child who is aware that his parents are fighting.
That night, Sam found Willow waiting by the fence.
He told her first before he'd told anyone, before he'd even told himself,
I think they're getting a divorce.
And I just found that really gripping, like, before he'd even told himself,
right.
This, this child who's trying to come to grips
with something very beautifully and evocatively told there.
So thank you, Betsy, but I know there were some wonderful
lines in the very, very small and poorly populated Team Ed
as well.
So please do share with us your thoughts.
What a way to put it.
Thank you so much, Amanda.
You're welcome.
I hope to repay the favour one day.
I'm sure you will.
All right, so a few of my favourite lines.
I'm going to start with Sunscape by Natalie Harris,
which has a great opening line on the morning that he goes blind.
Thomas Broadwell stares at his copy of Van Gogh's The Solar at Sunset one last
time.
No one for me recalled the opening line to 100 Years of Solitude.
Not the same, but it's that kind of reminiscent quality
to it.
And also this idea of like you, you start with this hook of like he goes
blind shattering moment.
Yeah.
From Eva RA in the story Unidentified dragon Plant,
A little bit of a nod to Yang energy there in Eva's Same, and this one had.
I lay down next to her, studying the rising and falling
silhouette.
From here, I could trace her curves, mountains, dunes, one man on a quest.
Even for science fiction, it was hard to Imagine Dragons here.
I wondered what kind of whimsy I'd gotten myself into.
Then she let out a snore.
That's the closest she'll ever be to a dragon.
And I kind of like that creation of a metaphor and then I guess,
knocking it down with this idea, this intriguing connection between a
snore and a dragon.
From 105 Scorching Degrees by Dave Cushing.
And the line is when they say it's not the heat, it's the humidity,
they're lying.
And that one spoke to me because, yeah, it's ********.
When it's hot, it's just hot.
No, Wrong.
It's always the humidity.
That's what's impressive.
But also when it's hot, it's still hot.
No, when it's a dry heat, no.
Dry heat's great.
You can handle the dry heat.
It's all hot.
That's what I'm saying.
It's all hot in the dark or whatever it is, you can say that too.
And finally, from Autumn Bettinger bleached bones and
creosote resin.
The final lions just took a deep breath.
Is he still alive?
I pull a fresh cigarette and light the end till the cherry glows red.
The first rain months hits the porch and we both instinctively recoil.
I watched till he wasn't.
And that's where where the story ends.
And on a kind of bleak and revengeful note of like he was alive,
but I watched till he wasn't.
I'm vibing with you, Autumn.
I feel like we're just on this, we're on our little revenge journeys
together and I love it.
Let's just process it through art instead of through violent crimes,
if those are the two options.
I agree, yes.
So thank you everyone who entered for Team Ed, you know,
it was a valiant effort.
You could write thank you notes, wouldn't take,
could send you all a personalised letter, might take an afternoon,
but I appreciate it.
I won't pretend we almost got there.
But like, there's the popular vote, it's a quality not quantity issue.
There's the long list, there's the points as well.
And there is, of course, the moral victory.
Who gets more in the shortlist and who wins as well.
And as we know thus far, yeah, the moral victory has gone to Team Amanda.
It has every round.
You're right.
The first round, all the other victories went to Team Ed,
but the moral victory went to Team Amanda.
And we shall see this time around.
There's still split the script.
There's still plenty to play for, in my opinion.
Absolutely.
But we're about to find out what the long list is.
Yeah, absolutely for this round.
So we'll read through the 40 names.
We'll split it by a team.
These are the 40 talented authors who have made the long list for the July 2026
Not Quite Right Prize for Flash Fiction.
For Team Amanda, we have Now We Eat by S Therese.
Crooked Answers by Brandon Wu once he stops throwing up.
Eddie Vetter and I are Going to Be All Right by Emily Rinkema.
A Pony Called Pickle by AC Stewart All of a Sudden,
Suddenly and All at Once by Chloe Page, Borrowed Like the Moon by Tornell in This
Version of My Life by Brielle Bates.
The Moon She Sees My Soul by Athena Law.
Little Treats by Catherine Cook.
Clean Edges Sweet with Rot by JJ Silkwood.
The Man at the Table by Tommy Baker.
The Shame of Hot Rubber Melting Between My Legs by WJ Arthur Bunyip by Ryan
Nanome.
The Celestial rescue near the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham by
Jonathan Dawson.
Earthrise 2168 by Thorgia Wintermere.
The Side we can't See by Jr Biffen.
Hearts with Audrey by Jesse Descanio.
Trains at Departure by Paulo Dougal or DGL,
400 kilometres to Cal by Jessica Elsie, Cornflower syndrome by Sarah Kennedy,
Phases by Chad Frame, What We Lost and All We Gained by Tatum
Shad Trinket in a Tin by Michael Stone.
Sometimes to do lists are completed by Ronanda Rich, The Lovers by James Fitzroy,
Like a Lullaby Like a Dirge by Carson Costa,
The Donkey and the Monk by Jane Stessick and finally for Team Amanda,
Midnight Poutine by Sandra Peters and for Team Ed, Double Dare by Ben Daggers.
The Door Frame by Sam James, A Broken Promise by Vada Tully.
Final departure by Michelle Ryan.
Married to the Sea by Andrea Cavito.
Sandworm by Steve Huff, Mamunasaurus by Sarah Banda,
In Bloom by Saskia Carla, Sunscape by Natalie Harris,
The Time my Daughter Came out to Me in the Plumbing Isle at Bunnings by Julia
Knuf, Bleached Bones and Creosote Resin by
Autumn Bettinger, and finally Unbroken Stone by Des Veers.
So congratulations to all of our long listers.
Well done everybody.
And I think the Mathema chickens among you may have come to the conclusion that
Amanda's team swept the popular vote within the long list as well as the
overall submissions.
But you know, Team Ed's coming in hot there given the
percentage factor.
But truly, well done everybody.
It was difficult to stand out this round.
And so if you did, all the more of an achievement, truly.
And of course, just a shout out to those who didn't make
the long list.
I will say that it was a close call for many stories.
This was one of those ones where it was very hard to make the distinction between
stories that made it and stories that didn't.
You know, if the wind had blown a different
direction, it might have gone your way.
But thank you always, it's always a win to submit a story as
well.
And of course, you know, there's still wild cards.
There's still a bonus prize to go.
So don't check out just yet.
Well, that's right.
So if you did make the longest, you are a contender for the prize money
for the trophy and the publication.
But if you're not in the long list, you may still be a contender for the wild
card.
We have 4 wild cards we've given away on our next episode,
which is the shortlist episode, as well as finding out who those
shortlisted entries are.
We reading all of the shortlisted stories in full,
which is going to be a lot of fun, so we hope you're listening to that.
And we'll also be giving away our bonus prize.
So the bonus prize draw will happen in the shortlist episode.
It will go to the winning team, which we can probably confidently say
this time around, sometimes it's some ambiguity.
It will be Team Amanda that gets the bonus next,
but of course there will be wild cards from both teams.
But the bonus prize this round is a hoodie.
By popular demand we've got a hoodie on offer as well as a coaching session with
me, which is always a good time.
And of course, we'll get to hear those winning stories
and what they did to stand down and maybe emulate some of our favourites to.
But of course, everybody who made the long list will get
a badge that you can use on social media or your websites or blogs or wherever it
is that you might like to share that badge.
So those will be up now on the honour roll section of the website.
If you are listening to this early as a Patreon subscriber,
then the badges won't be up just yet because we'll be waiting to announce that
along with the the official announcement to everybody.
So just hang tight on that one, but do be ready to jump.
And of course, we will also have our commiseration badge
for those of of you who did enter but didn't quite make the long list.
So check that out.
It's a bit of fun.
I don't know, I find it really hard.
You see me, Ed, go through these emotional ups and downs.
I get so excited for the people who make the long list and then I get so upset for
the people who don't.
And of course, many of those people are my friends and I
know how painful that can be.
But that's showbiz, baby, right?
That's how it goes.
That's the writing life.
Like you just keep bashing your head against that brick wall and God knows why
we do it, but we do it.
And that is part of being a writer.
So please don't take this.
I guess you could call it a rejection, but please don't take it as any
indication of your ability to write.
Because as we indicated earlier, there was some really bloody beautiful
writing among it all.
And if you loved your story, then that is enough.
And please do go ship it out and prove us wrong, get published somewhere.
And then you get to rub it in our faces.
And I can't wait to see that.
Yeah.
Just remember, it is our opinion.
And as you indicated, Amanda, it was very close,
especially around the long list cut off.
There are a lot of stories that judges disagreed on.
And as you said, on a on a different day may have gone a
different way.
So it's not an indictment of your writing if you didn't make the long list.
And yeah, as you say, shop it around and see if you can get a
published work on it.
We recently work on it.
Yeah.
Like, give us some more action maybe, if that's the case or whatever it might
be.
In fact, Speaking of Holly Sadowski, Yeah.
Holly let us know recently that the her first Daredevil story,
which was the story about a a sassy bogan fairy,
you might say that she shopped that one around.
She edited it a bit and shopped it around.
It's getting published by Silly Goose Press, I believe it is,
which is very apartment.
Yeah.
But you know, it does go to show that you wrote these
stories on a week weekend, so maybe there are some areas for
improvement.
Do it if you believe in it, do it, get some more feedback and then
absolutely send it around to the very slip mags and see if you can find it a
forever home.
We are always incredibly excited to find out that a story that was written for our
competition has found its forever home somewhere else.
So please do share if that's the case.
But yeah, I'm also super, super excited for the people who did make
the long list this round.
It is a big achievement.
And I guess we'll just have to wait and see which one of you won the whole damn
thing.
And we will find out who that is on the next episode of the podcast,
which will be the shortlist episode.
My favourite episode each round.
So stay tuned for that one and if you sign up for a coaching session,
those will take place soon as well.
So just make sure you've got a booking in the calendar with Amanda for those.
If you haven't already, check your email.
If you're unsure what to do, just reach out to us.
Yep, I'll be contacting you anyway to confirm
the time and early bird pricing for the October round is about to end.
So that ends at the end of August.
So if you haven't already got a ticket for the October round,
now's your time to get in before that that pricing ends.
I'm looking forward to that one.
We've got our prompts happening.
We haven't settled 100% on our, we've got our theme.
We've got our theme.
It should be a really fun one.
So I'm looking forward to that, absolutely.
But it's not over for the July round.
We've still got our shortlist episode, we've got our devil episodes,
Plenty more to come.
So we'll see you again in another week's time.
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.
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