The Waitaha English ‘Steve Langley’ writing competition
Entries are now open for the Waitaha English ‘Steve Langley’ flash fiction competition. The deadline for submissions is November 8, and the winning pieces will be announced prior to the end of the year. First and second place in each year level will receive a $35 book voucher.
The task:
Write a piece of flash fiction that fulfills these three conditions:
The work must begin and end with the same word.
The work must contain the phrase “...and then the change…”
The work must be exactly 224 words (excluding the title), which happens to be the total of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 118 (109 words) and Six60’s Pepeha (115 words) added together.
Our suggestions:
Discuss what flash fiction actually is and unpack with students how they can go about writing it.
A great starting point is this Guardian UK article: Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction | Short stories | The Guardian
Explore NZ examples of flash fiction, and you can find some here: Archives / Issues | fingers comma toes and here: Flash Frontier. Pre-read these in order to select the pieces that are appropriate to share with your students.
This task could be presented as a whole class activity, or it could be offered as part of writing clubs or extracurricular opportunities.
Member schools are invited to submit up to five pieces per class to the competition via this google form. Please ensure each piece of student work is in a separate document, with their name, school and year level in the header.
Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash
