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#343 Tension, Twists, and Turns with WOW!

This week, we’re running a takeover in collaboration with our friends over at WOW! Women on Writing. The winner and two runners-up will receive a special bonus prize: a free entry with critique into WOW’s Flash Fiction Contest, which awards over $1,350 in cash prizes! Here's what WOW! have to say about their takeover:

Hi writers!

Angela and Melanie from WOW! Women on Writing here. At WOW!, we’ve had the pleasure of running a quarterly flash fiction contest for almost twenty years, and we’ve noticed that stories filled with tension, turns, and jaw-dropping twists really catch the attention of our judges — so we’re thrilled to bring you this week’s theme!

Pivotal moments change the course of our lives, especially those with unexpected outcomes. Why not light up your characters’ lives with the same fuel? Readers connect with protagonists navigating angst, action, and annoyance. Choose one of the prompts below to set the expected ablaze and send your characters on an adventure they hadn’t anticipated. Write on!

Special Update: The Results 🏆

The top pick for this takeover was "Forgiveness" by Harry Stuart. Here's what Angela and Melanie from WOW had to say about it:

Beautiful lyric prose coupled with tension, inner and external conflict, and drama that kept us on the edge of our seats to find out what would happen by the story’s ending. As readers, we were totally invested in the scene the author creates. Excellent snappy dialogue and fast-paced exposition that does a great job exploring the prompt, “Set your story over the course of just a few seconds or minutes.” Well done!

Thank you to all for sharing your wonderful stories! It’s been an absolute joy to read the work of so many creative and talented writers.

Congratulations to contest winner Harry Stuart and the runners-up, VJ Hamilton and Pi James! They'll all be given a special prize from WOW: a free entry with critique into WOW’s Spring 2026 Flash Fiction Contest with over $2,298 in prizes, sponsored by Reedsy Learning!

🥇 Winner

Forgiveness

Winner of Weekly Contest #343 🏆

Wasted moments are sins. I am cursed by each one that I have slung with casual indifference. Her smile broken by my temperament. My thoughtless disregard. Instead of being hollowed out by regret, the fear stirs and sinks its claws into what is left of me that feels.I can’t see.Backing out of the driveway, the light refracts. It is stunted by the heaviness of drifting clouds. I grip the steering wheel tighter, knowing I have no choice but the road ahead. The weakness of my brother-in-law. Summoning me to the hospital to be the one to render t...

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⭐️ Shortlisted

This week's prompts

Write a story that goes against your reader’s expectations.

– 97 stories

Set your story over the course of just a few seconds or minutes.

– 96 stories

Your protagonist faces their biggest fear… to startling results.

– 41 stories

Start your story with an interruption to an event (e.g., wedding, party, festival).

– 38 stories

Write about someone who strays from their daily life/routine. What happens next?

– 70 stories

Stories

Behind the Black Glass

Weekly Contest #343

I.The first time I ever saw the greenhouse, I was fascinated by the way its smoke-stained glass dyed the sunshine grey. The way it illuminated bits of dust reminded me of church, how the stained glass windows tinted the sunlight and made the dust look like souls rising to heaven. At least that was how my pious child’s mind saw it, my hands clasped, my eyes large and earnest, my mind distracted and thinking of anything but prayer. But they say God loves the mind of a child, so I assume He was at least amused by mine.Years before, there had be...

20 likes 4 comments 4
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The Fourth Trimester

Shortlisted for Contest #343 ⭐️

Fourth Trimester I wake a little sore and a lot disoriented. The room is as large as our two bedroom apartment, but somehow cosier. In the corner, a clawfoot bathtub is filled with ice and what looks like craft beers, French champagne and those fancy ‘all natural’ sodas Charlie prefers we drink. Vases of flowers, the remains of a chocolate fountain and a tower of fresh fruit crowd a table by an open window. I can hear the ocean. A banner comes into focus: Congratulations new parents! Oh, no. The baby. The panic that leaps into my thro...

18 likes 12 comments 12
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Duel of the Spiritualists

Weekly Contest #343

Some guests arrive fashionably late, others, intrusively so. Upon entering the ancestral mansion of the Duchy of Shrewsbury, Han Xiaoli The Great removed his green-on-black nuanmao hat and handed it to a perplexed servant. I then watched him stride into the main hall in a manner befitting his stage title: purposefully, posture-perfect, his brown eyes focused intently ahead. He nodded to each partygoer he passed, his mouth stern, his pupils barely straying from straight ahead. He wore an immaculate emerald-green silk robe with a matching dra...

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THE DAY JJDALION BROKE ROUTINE

Weekly Contest #343

Every morning, before the world woke up, before the comments and duets and algorithmic demands began clawing at him, jjdalion listened to his breathing. Not peaceful breathing.Not the slow, rested inhale of someone who slept deeply.His was sharp, clipped, already bracing for the day ahead. He sat up, spine stiff, stomach hollow from the fast he’d forced on himself the night before. His phone buzzed on the nightstand — notifications piling up like snowdrifts. Mentions. Tags. Requests for the next challenge. He didn’t check them yet.That was R...

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The Primer

Weekly Contest #343

The envelope sat on the kitchen table like a landmine wrapped in paper, gathering dust but losing none of its danger.Samuel had placed it there eleven months ago, the day after the funeral, and had not touched it since. Iris's handwriting covered the front. He recognized the shape of his name in her slanted letters the way a man recognizes a face without knowing its bones. The rest of the words he could not read. He had never been able to read.Seventy years he had carried the secret. He'd built houses, framed roofs, cut dovetail joints so ti...

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Half an Inch

Weekly Contest #343

The sound his back made was not loud.It was small. Wet. Mechanical.Like something important slipping half an inch out of place.He didn’t scream. He just stopped moving.Halfway down the rain-slick metal ramp, refrigerator strapped behind him, his boot missed the edge by less than an inch. His spine absorbed the difference.There was that sound.Subtle. Internal. Final in a way no one recognized yet.He lay on his back staring at a sky that didn’t look different at all.That was the moment he stepped out of his life.Not dramatically.Just slightly....

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The Tea Party in the Woods

Weekly Contest #343

Dahlia sometimes struggles to differentiate real life from fairytales. In her world, big bad wolves, wicked stepmothers, and cursed little girls are all very real things. At least, she figures she must be cursed, because none of the other girls or boys show up to school with bruises on their arms. After school, on a particularly cold but beautiful February day, she comes home to her lonely cottage unaware that her theory about fairytales and real life being one and the same is about to be tested. Dahlia sits at her desk and pulls out a p...

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I Love You. Forever.

Weekly Contest #343

We were in love. No, not past tense. We are in love–present. Still are. Forever, I had sworn on that beautiful evening. How much of it does he remember, I wonder? I can recount every detail, from the dainty lace trim of my ivory dress to the exact shade of navy blue of his lapels. I can still see the surprise in his expression as I had turned the corner, holding my bouquet, the matching silver bangles he had gifted me gleaming in the morning sun. His eyes had gone to my lips first, wearing the exact shade I knew he loved. Cherry red. Pristin...

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Derelict

Weekly Contest #343

*there are a few swear words in here, which I felt were needed, and you may not. Otherwise, it's pretty clean. You’ve all heard it, there’s no sound in space. I’m here to tell you, brother, that it’s a fucking lie. Drifting through space in the last working spacesuit the Naut had to offer, I hear plenty. I hear the hiss of the oxygen as I suck it in. What’s left of it. A minute, maybe two, and then? Nothing, I suppose. A few desperate, grasping breaths that yield nothing, and I’ll pass on. To where? No fucking idea. Maybe better than here, t...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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The Framework

Weekly Contest #343

Normality is safe. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the comfort and reassurance birthed by a familiar existence. Leslie sank into that feeling of contentment without reservation. She basked in the warmth of it, while settling into her metal chair. Bathed in its steam and ready to indulge in the weekly offering of spaghetti and garlic bread, she took a deep breath and felt her body melt. Every Wednesday, since before she could remember, she had enjoyed the hot bowl of red sauce that allowed her to shake off the mid-week slump that inevita...

17 likes 16 comments 16
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What Breaks the Skin

Weekly Contest #343

Lena had spent most of her life learning how not to show her teeth. It began early. A kindergarten teacher pressing two fingers lightly to her chin and saying, “Gentle smiles.” An aunt laughed when Lena snapped at a cousin and murmured, “Good girls don’t bare their teeth.” A boyfriend in college who told her she looked “feral” when she argued. After a while, she learned the mechanics of restraint. Lips together. Jaw relaxed. Breathe steady. Whatever rose inside her — anger, hunger, heat — could be managed if she softened the mouth first. Dan...

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The Green Thumb In the Garden

Weekly Contest #343

The Green Thumb In the GardenClyde Byrd I was seven in 1954, in Alba, Pa., population 175. My parents, my grandpa, two sisters and two brothers shared an antebellum house in town. I was in second grade in the one room school where the boys liked to tease me but they mostly left me alone. My name is Bess by the way. I spent most of my time at home with my family. I loved my doll, Daniel Boone, who was my one very private secret that I only shared with Cindy, my friend at school. Cindy and I had just tons of secrets, mostly made up stories abo...

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Center Stage

Weekly Contest #343

“Why isn’t she playing?” Someone hissed. It was Mrs. Zachary, the flaunty PTA shrew that Lydia had always hated. The manicured, diamond-encrusted hand covering her mouth did little to conceal the whisper that practically bounced through the domed ceiling of the hundred-year-old symphony hall. Three rows behind her, Lydia cleared her throat and forced a grin. With teeth. A bright splotch of heat bloomed across her neck and chest as she stared straight ahead towards the stage, where her fourteen-year-old daughter, Opal, sat at a Victorian-e...

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After the walls came down

Weekly Contest #343

Mira had always said she was “independent,” the way some people say they’re “allergic to cats.” It wasn’t a preference. It was a condition. Her friends met partners in bookstores, at work, through apps with cheerful notification pings. Mira met them too—bright, kind men with warm hands and steady eyes—and then she left. Always just before things became real. Her fear wasn’t dramatic. No single betrayal. No spectacular heartbreak. Just a slow childhood erosion: a father who promised weekends and forgot, a mother who loved fiercely but unpredi...

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Hold Your Peace

Weekly Contest #343

When it was time to object, Gemma stood in front of the forty or fifty assembled guests and ran her hands down the front of her slightly wrinkled cream dream. She cleared her throat, and all forty or fifty heads turned to look at her. It’s moments like these that people believe are staged or performative. There’s so much inauthenticity in the world that anything out of the ordinary begins to feel produced. Gemma looked down the aisle at the happy couple. Their officiant was their favorite college professor. His name was Eduardo String and he...

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