*See all of our writing contests

Purpose: Have fun, enjoy the competition, and become a better author by participating in our peer critique process for this contest.

Who Can Enter: This contest is open to all authors. All submissions must be posted and assigned critiques completed by March 31, 2009. Stories must be 3000 words or fewer. You may post additional stories to this site for critique, but only one story  will be eligible for the contest.

Subject Matter: You choose. The short story should adhere to our content policy.

Prizes: The winner of this contest will receive $50.

How to Enter: It’s pretty easy

1. Create a free account or sign in for existing members.
2. Upload your story; make sure you select “March Short Story Contest” as the category.
3. Submit your story for peer critique.
4. Complete your assigned reviews, this is discussed more below.

Decisions: There will be 2 rounds of judging.

1. Authors from the Review Fuse staff will select the 3 best stories for Round 2.
2. Of these 3 stories selected, Review Fuse management will select the winning authors based on who gave the most detailed and well thought out critiques to their peer’s.

Entry Fee: There are no entry fees or purchases of any kind required to enter and win the contest. After you submit your story to the contest you will be required to complete assigned critiques of other authors (4 for free members and 3 for premium members). You will receive 3 critiques of your story in return. Those who do not complete their critiques will not be eligible to win the contest.

Rights: All stories remain the sole property of the author. After we have selected the winner we will seek permission from the author to publish the winning story on our blog. The author is under no obligation to allow this.

Notification: The prize winner will be notified by email on April 4, 2009. We will announce the prize winner on our blog on April 6, 2009.

*See all of our writing contests

Purpose: Have fun, enjoy the competition, and become a better poet by participating in our peer critique process for this contest.

Who Can Enter: This contest is open to all poets. All submissions must be posted and assigned critiques completed by March 15, 2009. Poems must be 50 lines or fewer. You may post additional poems to this site for critique, but only one poem will be eligible for this contest.

Subject Matter: You choose. The poem should adhere to our content policy.

Prizes: The winner of this contest will receive $50.

How to Enter: It’s pretty easy

1. Create a free account or sign in for existing members.
2. Upload your poem; make sure you select “March Poetry Contest” as the category.
3. Submit your poem for peer critique.
4. Complete your assigned reviews, this is discussed more below.

Decisions: There will be 3 rounds of judging.

1. Authors from the Review Fuse staff will select the 10 best poems for Round 2.
2. Of these 10 poems, Review Fuse management will select the 5 authors who gave the most detailed and well thought out critiques of their peer’s poetry for Round 3.
3. The winner will then be selected by 3 creative writing and poetry professors.

• Find out more about what our judges think great poetry is.

Entry Fee: There are no entry fees or purchases of any kind required to enter and win the contest. After you submit your poem to the contest you will be required to complete assigned critiques of other poets (4 for free members and 3 for premium members). You will receive 3 critiques of your poem in return. Those who do not complete their critiques will not be eligible to win the contest.

Rights: All poems remain the sole property of the author. After we have selected the winner we will seek permission from the author to publish the winning poem on our blog. The author is under no obligation to allow this.

Notification: The prize winner will be notified by email on March 21, 2009. We will announce the prize winner on our blog on March 23, 2009.

*See all of our writing contests

Since our December Short Story Contest was such a success, we’ve decided to sponsor another holiday-themed contest. This time we’re tackling the polarizing holiday of Valentine’s Day, or “Singles Awareness Day” to some. The winner will receive a $50 Amazon gift certificate. 

Based on feedback from our first contest, we changed a few things, so be sure to read the following instructions for joining the contest and submitting a qualifying story:

Joining the contest

1. If you haven’t already sign up for Review Fuse. You only need a free membership to join the contest.
2. Upload your story. When you upload your story, be sure to choose “Valentine’s Contest” as the category.
3. Submit your story for peer critique. You can do this directly from the upload confirmation page or from the “my account” page after you’ve uploaded the story. Remember, if you’ve already submitted a work for review in a separate category, you’ll need to complete your assigned reviews before you can submit any new works for peer review.
4. Complete your assigned reviews. When you submit your story for peer critique, you’ll be assigned to critique the work of four other contest submissions (three if you’re a premium member). Be honest in your reviews. The scores you give other stories won’t influence our judging, but if it comes down to a tie, we might see who gave the most helpful reviews to determine a winner.

Qualifying Story

1. To qualify, Valentine’s Day must play a part in your story. This does NOT mean your story has to be a romance, but it can be if you want. Remember, the winner of our December contest wrote a sci-fi Christmas story, so anything goes.
2. Stories must be 3,000 words or less.
3. The story must be your original work.

All stories must be submitted and assigned reviews completed by Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2009. The winner will be announced the following week on February 21st, 2009. You maintain all rights to your submission. If you plan have it published elsewhere, be sure to keep the privacy settings to “Allow only assigned reviewers” when you upload your story.

Good luck. Post any questions in the comments or use our contact us page.

To kick off the New Year, Review Fuse is offering a free writing contest to our members. The winner will be awarded a $50 Amazon.com gift card. In order to qualify for this contest you must have:

• Joined Review Fuse on or before January 5, 2009.
• Submitted at least 2 works for review any time before January 5, 2009.
• Completed all of your assigned reviews by January 15, 2009.

To enter the contest, write a critique of Review Fuse following these guidelines:

1. Include your overall thoughts and impressions about Review Fuse.
2. Talk about what you like most about the site.
3. Most importantly, tell us what needs the most improvement at Review Fuse? What areas are we lacking in? Which pages are hard to use?
4. Your critique must be posted on your blog and the link to your critique emailed to contest@reviewfuse.com by January 17, 2009 with the subject line: Review Fuse Review. If you don’t have a blog, don’t fret. You can easily start one and it’s a great way to practice your writing. We suggest Blogger or Wordpress.

The winner of the contest will be determined by the following:

• Was this review helpful to the Review Fuse Team?
• Was the review phrased in a constructive manner?
• Did the reviewer provide sufficient detail to justify their review?
• Did the reviewer provide new ideas or insights to the website?
• Did the reviewer explain their ideas and critiques in a manner that is easy to understand?

We are not looking for endless praise, although some wouldn’t hurt. We are primarily looking for ways to improve the website. There are just a few days before this contest starts, if you join Review Fuse now you can still qualify.

Jacob

We know the holidays can be a busy time, so we wanted to give you some extra motivation to keep writing. We want you to write a holiday-themed short story. Write the best one and you’ll get an extra present for Christmas: a $100 Amazon gift certificate.

The contest is free to all. To participate:

1. Create a Review Fuse account if you haven’t already. It’s free!
2. Join the newly created group named “Holiday Story Contest“
3. Submit your story to the group
4. Review 3 other stories in the group

The winner will be picked by a panel of judges comprised of the founders of Review Fuse. Why do we get to be the judges? Well, it’s our $100.

Because this is a Review Fuse contest we want to emphasize reviews. Make sure to be helpful, thorough, and honest–we’re all trying to be better writers, not just win money. The scores you give other stories won’t influence our judging, but if it comes down to a tie, we might see who gave the most helpful reviews to determine a winner.

To keep things fair and ensure that everyone writes a story specifically for the contest, we’re implementing a few rules:

1. Your story must be an original work of no more than 3,000 words.
2. You must include the line of dialog, “What do I look like, some sort of djinn?” somewhere in your story. Why “djinn”? It was the first word that came up on my word-of-the-day screensaver while drafting these rules. Extra points if you can make it sound natural.
3. Your story must be holiday themed. It doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus or some combination of them all, just make sure it deals with this great time of year.
4. You must submit your story and complete your reviews by Midnight (MST) of December 20^th, 2008 so we have time to read all the stories and argue about which one is the best.

The winner will be announced on our blog and the prize will be awarded on Christmas Day.

If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments or use our contact us form. Good luck and happy holidays! We look forward to reading your stories soon.

Jacob, Steve, and Clark