2025 Heart Flash Fiction Contest
I was happy to sit for Writing Battle’s first-ever pro-judged contest! The rules are a bit different since this contest isn’t peer-judged; debrief will start shortly.
My cards were pretty good. I liked Comedy and Daydreamer, but I rotated through the Object card five times until I found something I felt I could work with.
My story, Hands-Free, is a dark humor tragicomedy that plays with form, stereotypes, and subtext.
Elliot Marsh, a 19-year-old Twitch influencer, is struck dead in Seattle’s streets while recklessly riding an e-bike.
Instead of narrative prose, I present the story as a collage of written reports and social media posts. Leaning heavily on inference humor, it’s a dark, satirical look at modern culture, using a fragmented storytelling form (police reports, social media posts, texts, voicemails, etc.) to expose the absurdity of how people react to tragedy.
The humor here is sharp, relying on irony, social commentary, and the callousness of digital-age discourse. It’s cynical of how people process death online — through detached Facebook posts, self-centered excuses, and conspiracy theories — forcing the reader to reflect on society’s weird, performative grief culture.
I tried to emulate the date/time, messaging, posting formats, and voice of each character participating on each social/technical media channel, hopefully creating a comedic effect from recognizing these various forms in play during the story.
Further, I tied each form of media to an age group. The Boomer used voicemail; Gen-X used Gmail and Facetime; Gen-Z was on Facebook; Gen Alpha used Reddit and TikTok. I didn’t specifically draw out the characters but inferred the various characters in each media post, forcing the reader to piece together the familial relationships. I also attempted to connect the voice of the character to each generation. The Gen-X aunt and uncle are judgy, whereas Elliot’s aunt is more concerned about the carbon footprint of his passing; the Boomer is self-centered and can’t be bothered disrupting their happiness; the Gen-Alphas use technology to turn the lens of social recognition to themselves rather than expend empathy on Elliot; the Gen-Z is vapid and disconnected, more interested in making sure they show up to the funeral with the right lash extensions.
As a tragicomedy, the irony is that nobody cares about Elliot. Elliot’s death is more inconvenient than a “tragedy” in an interconnected world, and most of the universe doesn’t want to be bothered by it. I try to redeem Elliot by having many Twitch followers attend his funeral.
I used a Podcast to introduce a conspiratorial twist at the end. I hope the judges see this as an attempt to elevate the story by subverting reader expectations and planting Easter Eggs into the prose, potentially forcing the reader to go back and look for the clues.
The story is 70% Oranges/30% Cat. It’s mostly an orange. I leaned heavily into the art of writing and took a risk on form, hoping to be rewarded by the pro judges.
I hope it does well! We’ll see how it goes.
R
2025.03.07 - Update! Well, things were looking pretty good there for a while. I won my 6th round bout and was sitting at 5/6 points. All I needed was to pick up a point between round 7 and round 8 … which did not happen.
Hands-Free landed in 7th place out of my cohort of about 50 stories (receiving an honorable mention) and missed the window to enter the finals. Bummer drag. Well, maybe next time!
