1000 Words or Less - International Writing Competition

You can demonstrate your short story creative writing skills by submitting an entry to 1000 WORDS or LESS. Our Flash Fiction competition, based in Australia, is open to writers worldwide.

We have a standardised story template and an entry form which must be used when submitting your completed entry. Your entry must be your own work, written in English and fictitious in content.

You must be 18 years of age or older to be eligible to make the author’s declaration on our entry form, which is a condition of entry. If you are between the ages of 15 and 18 years on the closing date of the competition, a parent or guardian can make the undertaking on your behalf by completing the entry form. 

Our competition is open to residents of Australia as well as those living in other countries.

1000 WORDS or LESS has a set of submission guidelines. Our standardised story template and entry form must be used when submitting your work. To ensure entries are consistent and valid, please ensure your story complies with the following specifications:

• is written in English and has been checked for spelling and grammatical errors;
• is fictitious in content and the author’s own work;
• if previously published, the work is not restricted by any license or agreement to a previous publisher;
• the content of the story is the author’s choice as 1000 WORDS or LESS does not specify any particular theme, subject, time, place etc;
• does not exceed the 2 pages provided in the A4 size template (ISO paper size) which is 210mm × 297mm or 8.27 inches × 11.7 inches;
• the story typed or pasted into the template is in Times New Roman 12 point font only;
• is submitted in electronic format only via email;
• is saved and submitted as a Word file in .rtf or .doc or .docx format;
• is NOT submitted as a pdf file;
• does not exceed 1,000 words (it is at the author’s discretion whether words such as ‘a’, ‘and’ and ‘the’ are included in the word count);
• margins are not to be increased or decreased and must remain at 2cm or equivalent is 0.787 inches;
• do not change the spacing to proportional spacing.  Spacing is single spacing (1 x);
• do not include images, graphics or embedded objects;
• do not change the filename provided unless you are submitting more than one entry;
• the first page must contain the name of the entrant, country of residency and the title of the work which must match the entry form details;
• an author may also choose to add author notes if they wish (optional).