GRAND FINALE 2024
Challenge 3 Results, Standings, And Finale
This post is too long for email. Eat my shorts, internet servers! For best results, you should probably check it out at gibberish.substack.com. Thank you!
Drum Roll, Please
Yeah, you thought we were going to dive right into the results, huh? No dice. I get to say a lil something to mark the occasion.
This is the second year of running the Gibberish Writing Competition. This competition started as kind of a lark. Writing competitions are tough. If you want scale, you can’t provide personal feedback—there’s just no time. But if you’re willing to restrict the scale—personal feedback can be very valuable. And that’s the niche I wanted to fill. I wanted to have a controlled environment, and a limited range, where I could read people’s stories and offer feedback and try to help them grow.
GWC ‘23 was a HUGE learning experience.
knows this—she lived it. I had a lot of lessons learned that I brought in this year, and leveraged Sara’s experience as a guest judge and co-planner for this whole thing.The Gibberish Writing Competition is special to me because I am not an expert. I’m a product of Substack’s writing community, and I am trying to give back to the same community from which I emerged. Substack is a TOUGH GAME. There’s lots of people—its super easy to start a fiction substack, and it’s super easy to publish whatever you want. How do you know who is good? I thought—maybe, if I’m lucky, I can help elevate these talented and undiscovered writers. I can help someone skip a step in the journey, and I can help them grow in their craft at the same time.
We have five super talented writers in this competition, all eminently worthy of your subscription, your attention, and your support. FIVE talented writers who produced a collective 15 stories and around 30,000 or so words. They put their heart and soul into their craft, and Sara and I had the distinct privilege of trying to put our heart and soul into giving them the best possible feedback, the most helpful, the specific things they needed to grow.
So, by the end of this post, someone will be named a “winner”. Someone will take the prize, and someone will get to bask in the glow of well-earned triumph. But—no one loses, here. None of these writers came into this competition perfect, and none of them are perfect yet (though some came dangerously close). But they grew. They learned about themselves and their craft. They got actual, personal feedback on their work. So—as we continue to read this grand finale post, let’s take a moment of pause to celebrate all five contestants and their heroic efforts in the service of their craft.
To Brass Tacks
The Third Challenge. To expand their application story. I was so excited for this surprise. Sara and I came up with these challenges before we opened for applications almost two months ago, and we knew it was going to be both traumatizing and exciting. Let’s get into it!
The Stories, The Results
Presented in the order of the standings for just Challenge 2! I am going to truncate the analysis, because I go in more depth below! But each story deserves air time, so please take a moment to read these five excellent stories if you haven’t already!
of wrote “For Want of Safe Harbor”
Standings
After the third and final challenge, here are the standings:
Bringing up the rear, in fourth place, is the inimitable Hyun Woo Kim with 56 points (18 + 20 + 18)! Hyun Woo showed from the outset what an incredible competitor he is. His first story, “Howling”, grabbed my attention, and clearly demonstrated his talents! His next story, “A Long Cold Shower” showed improvement, and he really demonstrated his ability to make his readers feel the chill of life-long terror. But he also faltered a bit with this story—mistaking the instructions and whipping up his competition entry in much less time. His final story, “The Scetis Valley”, showed promise with his characteristic drama and style, but wasn’t quite able to rise the way he hoped. Thank you, Hun Woo Kim, for your valiant, creative, and energetic effort in this competition!
Once again tied for third place, we have Alice Meredith with 60 points (16 + 21 + 23)! Alice showed excellent growth in this competition—her first story, “A Martian Fairy Tale”, had some wonderful characterization of her Martians, which I have thought about multiple times since the entry was posted. Her second story “The Trial” built on this foundation, and gave us a look at a coming-of-age story in a bottle episode. Her final story, “In search of a friend, or why you should let monsters eat your pink socks” was heartfelt and poignant, truly a showcase of all her skills so far in this competition. While she couldn’t quite escape a rivalry with Eric, nor could she topple the other competitors who got out ahead of her early, Alice’s growth shows that children’s fiction can play ball with other fiction! Thank you, Alice Meredith, for inviting us into your wonderful worlds!
Shoulder to shoulder with Alice, but ever the good sport and supportive competitor, comes Eric Falden tied for third with 60 points (15 + 22 + 23)! Eric showed us a real come-back story. In the first challenge, I was afraid I had brutalized him, and he had the lowest score. But he showed the kind of care and attention to craft that we all can take a lesson from, and had the highest score of the second round! Eric’s first story, “One Head as Tribute”, showed all the promise of a pulpy, adventuresome fantasy epic. He tightened his work in his second story, “The Encircling Cells”, where he showed us a monk on the edge of civilization, and on the edge of society. But Eric’s real triumph was his final story, “For want of safe harbor”, where his time-jumping narrative showed us compassion, fear, mercy, and fate all mixed into one apocalyptic boat-ride. Thank you, Eric Falden, for your classy and encouraging spirit and for showing what we can do with resilience and craftsmanship!
In Second Place, the intrepid Hanna Delaney with 63 points (20 + 21 + 22)! Hanna showed she was a fierce competitor with a penchant for twists and turns in her stories that you couldn’t see coming. Despite the tough competition, she clearly put in the hard work and showed that she deserved to be here and was giving it her all to make up that painfully close margin against EB. Hanna’s first story, “Squeal, Little Piggy” split the narrative between a hunter and hunted—and invited us to question who was who? Hanna’s second story, “Copycat” was ridiculously clever, with a twist that will make you want to read the whole thing twice. Hanna’s final story, “For Better or Worse”, showed she is able to pivot on a dime and take those unexpected twists to poignant and meaningful resolution. Thank you, Hanna Delaney, for your creativity and deep love of your craft!
Hanna, as the runner up, you have won a one-year paid comp to both Gibberish and Blinking Blue Line!
THE WINNER OF THE GIBBERISH WRITING COMPETITION 2024 IS…
EB has won GWC 2024 with 69 points (21 + 21 + a perfect 27). She came out of the gate swinging hard, with “Dead Zone”, a twist on Jaws that showed how well she can make her readers’ hearts pump in danger, and also showed how she can take away the danger and make us feel, as co-judge Sara Dietz said, “WILDLY relieved”. EB’s Second story, “The Eye of Ra”, put us in the shoes of a young and precocious archeologist who saw fame in her future, and yet found some mysteries that were better left buried. Her final story, “Should you choose to accept it”, I cannot understate this, a PERFECT 27/27, filled my heart up and made me want to watch a whole movie with her two lead characters. I tried, I really tried not to give her a perfect score, but everywhere I turned I saw an artist who understood what she was doing with every detail. I told Sara that I almost marked EB down for setting, but realized SHE SET IT IN PARIS, THE CITY OF LOVE. I felt TRICKED. This was a well earned 27/27, and a well earned win for EB, who in addition to bragging rights, has earned a comp-for-life to both Gibberish and Blinking Blue line, AND a $25 amazon gift card.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
The Gibberish Writing Competition is a lean production, but it does not happen alone. I would be remiss to let GWC ‘24 end without offering my sincerest thanks and gratitude to a few people.
First and foremost, to our five competitors. All of you made this a wonderful, special competition. Your writing was amazing, you made this really difficult, and my hats off to you. Thank you so much for taking my tough comments in stride and for lifting each other up. You have proven why Substack Fiction is the best place to write online, period.
To all TWENTY NINE applicants (check out the full list here)! Many of you I really wanted to bring into this competition, and it is heartbreaking to see so many talented writers throw their names in the hat and to be unable to choose all of them. This fiction community is special, and you all are talented writers in your own right. Thank you for trusting me with this painful decision, and thank you for bearing the outcome with grace and tact. YOUR JOURNEY IS NOT OVER. Stay tuned later in May for an opportunity to get competition style feedback!
To my Guest Judge,
. Sara, I don’t know that you knew what you were getting into when you agreed to help. But you helped me plan, listened to me vent, served as a brain-trust throughout the course of this competition, and you helped me design it to iterate and improve on GWC ‘23. Thank you for joining, and for being a wonderful member of the Substack Fiction community. I do not know how to edit AT ALL and your expertise came in handy not just with the judging but with my own writing.To the anonymous application judges (you know who you are). Thank you! You helped in a pinch, and helped me choose not just five talented writers, but a diverse group that was sure to show us a wide variety of what Substack Fiction can do.
To Substack. Thank you for hosting this platform, where we can find creative ways to express our love of fiction, and connect with fellow writers and—importantly—wonderful readers. Thank you for making this possible.
To Gibberish Subscribers. If anyone bore the brunt of these extra posts—it was you. You sign up for fiction, and you get this competition!! What is that about! You are incredible, patient, kind people, and you showed up to support this competition in a big way. Thank you.
God bless you all—this has been as much of an experience for me as it has been for our five competitors, and as we close another competition I feel invigorated with a love of the craft. Keep Writing, Substack!
Congrats E.B. Howard! A well-earned win. And another round of cheers🍻 and salutes 🫡 for all my fellow competitors. It's been a narrative triathlon, and entirely worthwhile. 🤝
Congratulations everybody! Well done E.B!!!