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First Line Fiction’s Inaugural Fiction Contest Longlist Released!
Deliberations, calculations, considerations, and cuts culminating in the first list of finalists
Before I get to the Longlist of writers’ stories selected for consideration of contest placements, let me thank all writers for submitting their stories. I appreciate each of your efforts, and you made it difficult for me!
The range of plots was vastly different. Imaginative, engrossing, captivating and moving stories gave me much to consider. It pained me that half of them needed to be culled.
As fiction is subjective to each reader, it surprised me that several writers took the prompt on a very literal level — seeing the “rabbit hole” as a warren, then diving down and chasing carrot tops and cotton tails. It also surprised me that several writers used Alice in Wonderland as inspiration — that premise never crossed my mind when I set the prompt.
Stories of all lengths arrived, from those that just reached the minimum read time to a few that pushed the upper limit, and I considered each on its own merit.
My considerations included: was there enough in the short submissions to provide a proper plot and conclusion? Was there an excess of filler words in the longer ones that…
