The Pete Wood Challenge • “Static”

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.

This time the challenge was to write a 125-words-or-shorter flash fiction piece keying off the word, “static,” whatever the writer might interpret it to mean. As usual, the results have ranged from amusing to disturbing. Without further ado, then, the winners are…

First Place: “The Nightingale Sings,” by Sylvia Heike

Second Place: “Angels,” by Sophie Sparrow

Third Place: “My Name is Static,” by Christopher Degni

Honorable Mention:

“Symmetry,” by Gustavo Bondoni

“Sound Effects,” by Kimberly Ann Smiley

Thanks to everyone who gave this challenge a try, and we look forward to seeing what you can do next month with the next Pete Wood Challenge!

---

If you like the stories we’re publishing, join our crowd-funding campaign today. We do Stupefying Stories out of pure love for genre fiction, but in publishing as in tennis, love means nothing. To keep Stupefying Stories going at this level we need to raise at least $500 USD monthly, and rather than do so with pledge breaks or foundation grants, we’d rather have broad-based and ongoing support. If just 100 people commit to donating just $5 monthly, we can keep going at this level indefinitely. If we raise more, we will pay our authors more.

If you really liked this story, tell your friends about it! Remember, likes and hearts are nice, but shares and retweets boost the signal!

Categories: Showcase, The Pete Wood Challenge