Fucked Up Fairytales - Finally, THE FINALISTS! (Community Voting Activated)

First, to get a little bumpf out of the way. If you missed it, here is the challenge:

I recently did an update, which you can see here:

Community Voting

Caroline, Hannah and I have whittled it down to five stories, each from a different author. Now I'm asking you to choose your favourites and score them like this:

• Your favourite - 3 points
• Your second favourite - 2 points
• Your third favourite - 1 point

Please do choose a 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and make it really clear in your comment which is which! (If you only choose a favourite, it won't be counted.)

Editing to add: Finalists may vote if they would like to, but may not score their own stories 😁 I will check in with CJ and HM whether we should count those or not. (I should have thought of that. Apologies!)

I'll close community voting 11:59 (GMT) Sunday night (23rd June) using the super high tech solution of screenshotting. I'll do the counting and post a winner on Monday.

Reading these five pieces should be about 10-15 minutes of your time, possibly less! Vocal estimates each story at about 3 minutes, which I think is quite generous. All the same, I'd like to give you all a good few days to join in if you want to. Each piece will be linked below, and I will leave off any commentary from us for now.

Please consider:

• How much did I enjoy the story?
• Did every word do a lot work? This is an important thing about writing microfiction. How well did the author nail it? Was there extraneous language in there?
• The twist! The twist was an integral part of the brief, so what did you think of it? Was it original, was it clever? Did you see it coming?

Feel free to include in your comment WHY you chose that piece on your list. What made it stand out? What was your favourite thing about it? I'll quote a few of these when I open the gold envelope next week.

I recommend reading the finalists in a block, rather than reading one or two and circling back to read some later. This way each one is fresh in your mind. I think it makes for fairer comparison. (Note: not a good approach when you have 50+ to read! But better for a small, fixed number, in my opinion.)

Thank You

So many thanks are necessary here! Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who crafted a Fucked Up Fairytale. I honestly expected there to be a handful of entries, five or six maybe. I thought maybe if more people entered, I might need a hand with judging, but even then I was imagining twenty or so.

There were FIFTY entries to this unofficial challenge 😮 I never expected so many. It was wonderful and humbling. I was wildly unprepared for it, which is why this is all happening a few weeks later than I'd anticipated. I thought there "might be more than five", maybe.

Thank you, as well, to everyone to offered support by reading and engaging with those pieces. Thank you for reading this one and (hopefully) joining in with voting. I think (hope) it'll be fun!

Biggest thanks go to Hannah Moore and Caroline Jane who were so generous with their time, effort and expertise to help me read and judge the entries. Please go and show them some love if you haven't already! They are both excellent writers and an absolute delight to be subscribed to.

Reflections

Reading through and giving each one a fair shake was a bigger task than I had time for, due to the sheer number of entries. To my mind, a delay was better than not doing it properly. Each story, and the person who wrote it, deserved proper attention and care.

I would love to do another unofficial challenge in future, but I will be much better prepared for it. Here is what I would do differently:

• Get a team together early on, rather than dithering over accepting the help
• Limit to two or three entries per person
• Beg Vocal to NOT award the piece Top Story, pretty please and thanks
• Be prepared for the possibility Vocal might "decline to acquiesce to my request", and the challenge might get some legs. I need time allotted and helpers press-ganged to assist me in managing it within a reasonable timeframe, and I need those things lined up from the outset, just in case.
• Keep up with reading them as they come in

The Finalists

Here they are, in alphabetical order:

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Thank you again!