2023 NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge #2
NYC Midnight hosts eight writing challenges throughout the year. Their Flash Fiction Challenge is a 1,000-word story in 48 hours.
Their contests draw thousands of writers worldwide to participate in a multi-round, scored elimination.
Writers are grouped into cohorts who receive the same prompt.
For the second challenge, my cohort had roughly 40 writers this year, and we received the prompt: romantic comedy, a coffee house, and glue.
My submission for the second round was Go Find Your Sunshine. Here’s the public synopsis:
Leaving town to surf, Trei pulls into a bikini coffee for a hot beverage and hits on Wren, the barista.
More to come! Contest results are due September 20.
The results are in! Go Find Your Sunshine scored a 9 (7 Points) in the second round giving me 15 total for the competition. It’s great to be in the top 15 and receive points for the story, but I expected the story to do better - I needed to land a 1-6 position to stay in the game.
Further, I had a couple of top-shelf hitters in my group; Duggar, Chamberlain, Guy, and Maude maintained their pole position from the first round, keeping that top-5 bar pretty high. I came in 7th overall, missing the top 5 by 4 points.
NYCM always puts on a great show. The judge’s feedback was very kind and targeted specific areas where I could have improved the piece.
I needed this story to stand out, so I took some conceptual risks.
First, it was supposed to be a romantic comedy, so I wrote about a non-binary character, Trei, and their love, Wren, a lesbian. I specifically wanted to write a story including they/them pronouns instead of more traditional, binary, him/her, etc.
Second, I wanted the setting not to be a coffee shop but something more interesting and sexy, like a drive-through bikini barista. I was trying to spark some originality points with the work by doing something unlikely to be used by the other contestants.
Third, I wanted to mislead the reader into thinking their confrontation was between two strangers and, in the end, twist the story so that the reader finds they already had a connection and engaged in some flirty role-play. To strike an emotional chord, I wanted to engage the characters in a way where partners and lovers often find themselves playfully role-playing and joking with each other.
I also wanted to time scenes with something relatable, like making espresso. When I wrote the story, I first started writing the Wren character making an espresso. I then layered in the dialogue and added subtle sexy descriptions in time with Trei’s coffee. So the dialogue and action sequences would pair, and, lend a bit of sexy innuendo.
“She hit the steam valve; a stream of tar-black liquid extruded into the shot glass. The milk frothed. Trei squirmed in the driver’s seat. ”
This was a comedy so I needed the characters to be charming in their own right, but also sympathetic to gain interest in their connection from the reader. So Trei has a troubled past with their parents accepting them as non-binary, and Wren wants non-traditional work that takes her away from an office setting. The two find a connection in sunshine, but it’s also a metaphor for being a positive, warming influence in each other’s lives.
It was a great experience. Maybe, next time, I’ll be lucky enough to be placed with a cohort of less talented writers! Onward and upward, as they say! Another writing competition starts today.
