Judging the Contest

The first quality I look for in a story is freshness, a new experience for me as a reader. My preference is for originality. But most stories return to familiar subjects for our time and place—divorce, divided families, serious illness, the traumas of aging. In such cases, I want a unique approach, perhaps one that plays against common expectations.

But freshness is just a starting point. The story should develop coherently, economically, and consistently in ways that are more inventive than my expectations as a reader. I want to be surprised, not by tricks, but by the richness of an imagination. And I don’t want to be distracted by material that doesn’t belong, undermining the story’s integration.

Finally and crucially, the story must have an ending that emerges from the material and gives it a sense of aesthetic completeness. The issues raised for the characters don’t have to be resolved; in fact, such a closure might be a falsification. The ending could be a final insight into the situation revealed through a scene or even an image. But it should satisfy by conveying a sense of wholeness.

Walter Cummins, December 2003

First and foremost, I want to thank Beverly Jackson for inviting me to judge Lit Pot's first Flash Fiction Contest. It was an honor to be considered for the job and a pleasure to read so many fine stories. Lit Pot continues to attract new writers and fine talents. I wish her and her staff the best.

There is always some ambiguity for various responses to a work of fiction. Tastes and attitudes dictate. Certainly what follows is a highly arbitrary short list gleamed from a number of impressive entries. I wish there could be more winners, more names, more prizes.

The overall quality of the submissions I read was high. I found something to admire in all of them. Some pieces, to my mind, needed further development (a tweak here, a tiny twist there) but most were well-crafted, and all of them were enjoyable to read.

The "flash" form puts heavy demands on the writer to make every word count, to make every action resonate, to walk a tightrope of character and development and plot. I admire such tension. I crave it in my reading, and often go back to masterpieces like Hemingway's "The Killers," for another dose of relentless pacing and taut suspense, another fix of immersion in a precise and vivid fictional dream.

I congratulate the winners (whose names, at this writing, I still do not know) and I thank all the writers for sharing their wonderful, wonderful dreams.

Bob Thurber, December 2003