Flash Fiction Submissions Guidelines

Flash Fiction Submissions Guidelines

Flash Fiction Submissions

Free Flash Fiction is open for submissions! Please read this page thoroughly before you submit.

The Most Important Things

• We accept flash fiction stories that are 200-1000 words.
  
• We're mostly interested in original stories that have not been published already. We will consider a reprint if it hasn't been published online.
  
• Even though flash fiction is short, each story still needs a setting, character(s), plot, conflict, and resolution. We're not interested in anything that reads like a blog post, book report, or a slice of life. Read our Tips from the Editorfor more on this.
  
• We do accept and encourage unpublished authors to submit.
  
• We do not accept poetry or fiction formatted like poetry.
  
• We only accept stories written in English, but you can live anywhere in the world.

Submitting

Multiple Submissions: No. Please only send us one submission at a time. Don't send another until we have responded to the first one.

Simultaneous Submissions: Yes! You can send us a story and then send it to another publication at the same time. Just be aware that if we accept your story first, you give us the right to publish it at freeflashfiction.com. If someone else accepts the story before we get back to you, let us know right away so that we can take it out of our queue.

Genres

This website is organized into the following genres: Action & Adventure, Literary & Contemporary, Horror & Thrillers, Romance & Erotica, Satire & Humor, Science Fiction & Fantasy. This should cover just about any story. These genres are really just for organizational purposes, so don't worry if your story doesn't exactly fit into any of them. We accept all types of stories.

What We Don't Want

• We don't want depressing stories. Many people have been experiencing hard times lately, and it's theraputic to write about that. However, we don't want to send more sadness out into the world. Dark and scary is totally fine -- we just don't want "these terrible things happened and in the end it was all terrible."
  
• We don't want stories that advocate hate or violence against any person or group of people, or stories that claim that members of this or that political party or religion are all nutjobs.
  
• Speaking of politics and religion ... a little is okay, but we'd rather the story wasn't centered around it. Best to save it for your Thanksgiving dinner.
  
• We don't want stories detailing activities that are illegal in your country of residence.
  
• We don't want stories that have poor spelling or grammar, or that haven't been proofread.
  
• We don't want a summary of a longer story. A flash fiction story should be a whole story with a setting, character(s), plot, conflict, and resolution.
  
• We don't want fan fiction or stories based in another author's universe.
  
• We don't want your blog posts. Keep those on your blog.

Read our Tips from the Editor for more information that will help you be successful.

Method

Stories can be submitted online as plain text via our submission form (at the bottom of this page). We don't accept any submissions by mail or as email attachments.

Rights

Here are the basics of our contract:

When you submit a story to Free Flash Fiction, you agree to let us publish it at freeflashfiction.com indefinitely, with exclusive rights for one year. (This means that we can show the story on our website forever, but after one year you're free to submit it elsewhere.) You also agree to let us include the story in a digital anthology. You state that you are the owner and author of the story. You state that the story has not yet been published online. Read the full contract.

Payment

Free Flash Fiction is not currently offering payment, but submitting your story here is a great way for new authors to get their work published. The stories here are provided free to read, so there is no barrier in place that will prevent readers from seeing your stories. You can include one URL in your author bio, so you can choose to link to your own website, your book on Amazon, your Twitter account, etc. All that being said, we would like to offer payment and might be able to in the future.