Writers are free divers.

There is the world of the surface. Trash-filled debris. Humans going nowhere fast.

And there is the bottom of the ocean.

The creatures down there are not metaphors. They are memories. Observations. The specific detail that cracks a story open. The deeper the diver, the darker the water, the more dangerous what they bring back up.

Most writers never leave the surface. They describe the trash. They call it the sea.

Not these two.

In one corner:

The son Vito dreamed of. He writes from a Europe that he makes to feel like Queens. Two battles. Zero losses. He has never come up empty.

And facing him:

The writer lives between languages the way a seal lives between worlds. Never fully surface, never fully depth, always translating. The stories rise through Hong Kong like escalators through open wounds. You think you are reading a commute. You are being dragged further underwater.

The Battle Begins:

Sunday April 12th, 10:00 am EST

The moderator, will lead the crew in the prepping of the three-part prompt equipment. Though he may bow out and find a replacement :)

The Reading and Vote Begins:

1:00 PM EST

Three hours later, the stories will be revealed. Only those inside the chat will vote. Only one story returns to the surface.

Watch writers search deep quickly.

Enjoy their panic.

Find out who comes up for breath.

See ya there, or be square!

Greetings, Greetings, Greetings! Fellow word worms and pulse punchers!

Every writer is a magician.

Not the birthday party kind. Not the Vegas kind. The kind that makes you look left while the real trick happens on your right. The kind that puts something in your hand and walks away before you realize what you’re holding.

The best fiction is sleight of hand at the sentence level. You never see the move. You only feel the thing that’s gone.

This battle features two of the most dangerous hands on Substack.

In one corner:

Practicing occultist. Horror novelist. Resident of a spider-haunted tower at the edge of a forest. He does not write toward the supernatural. He writes from inside it. You think you are reading a story. You are already in the trick.

And facing him:

Atlanta’s poet of the analog world. Archivist of Old Spice and Cutty Sark and fathers who never delivered. His magic is quieter and just as dangerous. He makes you grieve something you never had.

Two magicians. One prompt. Three hours. Five hundred words.

Only one makes the other disappear.

The Battle Begins:

Tuesday, March 17th at 3:00 PM EST

The moderator, , will lead the chat to craft the sacred three-part prompt.

The Reading and Vote Begins:

6:00 PM EST

Three hours later, the stories will be revealed. Only those inside the chat will vote. Only one story survives.

Drink the ink. Watch both hands. Choose your illusionist.

See ya there, or be square!

Flash-Style fiction battle is a fiction contest created by to provide friendly and respectful competition to the short fiction space with the hopes of innovating the genre to provide visibility to its writers and more relevancy to short form fiction as an art form.

Flash-style is flash fiction written on a time clock with the express purpose of dueling another fiction writer.

The writers are given 3 hours to create content with 500 words or less that tell a story. There cannot be alternative versions of various lengths published and available for consideration.

The content can have a visual, audio, animated, and or artificial intelligence component.

This publication will start a chat thread for each battle. There will be a moderator assigned for the contest.

Fighters are allowed and encouraged to invite their supporters, but all supporters will have to subscribe to Flash-Style and join the chat to vote.

The Moderator leads the discussion to help the chat come up with three specific things to set the prompt:

Time (this can be as abstract as Pre-historic times, or as specific as Christmas 1972)

Location (can be as abstract as North America, or as specific as a beach in Dakar)

Random (anything random to make the stories unique. This can be as specific as a pink barn, or as abstract as sadness in times of strife)

This conversation should be 15 minutes between the moderator and whoever joins the chat. The chat will take considerations for prompts for a set amount of time.

After that time expires, all the moderated accepted prompts will be put into a survey and voted on by the chat. The winning prompt will be given to the two writers.

Then the writers take whatever is remaining in the 3 hours to write a 500 or less word story using the prompt.

The moderator starts the chat again 3 hours from the start of the chat.

The writers have to have cross-posted (or posted) their story and pasted the link to the post into the chat by the deadline.

No exceptions. Not making the publication deadline is an automatic forfeit.

The moderator helps facilitate a discussion of both works.

The discussing of the best flash-style piece shall consider three criteria.

• The way the writer considered each word provided in the prompt

• The quality of the story

• The quality of the prose

I will do an anonymous poll only voted for by people in the chat to pick the winner of the Flash-Style Contest.

The Moderator in a Flash-Style Battle is required to do these functions:

1. Ensure a timely start to the battle. The faster the prompts are created and chosen by the chat, the more time the writers have to battle.

2. Decide if any prompt is too boring, one-sided, or uninteresting to be included as an option (should be used sparingly and can be refused by one of the writers).

3. Ensure the writers submit their stories into the chat by the deadline.

4. Put an end to the conversation about the stories and start the vote.

5. End the voting period.

6. The moderator announces the winner.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Support the Battles

Every writer is part cult leader.

Fiction is the silent sermon. The writer shapes imagination into belief, bending reality until the reader forgets they ever had one of their own.

The truth becomes glue, weaved into tall tales, binding the audience inside a world so vividly rendered it outshines their waking life.

Fiction is no longer just a craft. It is a broadcast.

And this Wednesday, two of the most dangerous minds on Substack will transmit competing scriptures—each one no more than 500 words, each designed to convert, seduce, and possess.

Only one voice will be canon. The other will be erased from the signal.

In one corner:

Prophet of despair. Founding lunatic of Graphomania.
His stories do not ask for belief. They seep through the walls.
You do not read him. You get infected.

And facing him:

Architect of Killstarter.
Fake reviewer. Failed inventor. Unlicensed preacher of the uncanny.
His stories arrive like scams, mutate into jokes, then linger like scripture you can’t scrub from your spine.

The Battle Begins: Thursday, July 31st at 3:00 PM EST

The moderator, , will lead the chat to craft the sacred three-part prompt. Three hours later, the stories will be revealed. Only those inside the chat will vote. Only one story survives.

Drink the ink. Bow your head. Choose your prophet.

See ya there, or be square!

Flash-Style fiction battle is a fiction contest created by

Andrew Robert Colom

to provide friendly and respectful competition to the short fiction space with the hopes of innovating the genre to provide visibility to its writers and more relevancy to short form fiction as an art form.

Flash-style is flash fiction written on a time clock with the express purpose of dueling another fiction writer.

The writers are given 3 hours to create content with 500 words or less that tell a story. There cannot be alternative versions of various lengths published and available for consideration.

The content can have a visual, audio, animated, and or artificial intelligence component.

This publication will start a chat thread for each battle. There will be a moderator assigned for the contest.

Fighters are allowed and encouraged to invite their supporters, but all supporters will have to subscribe to Flash-Style and join the chat to vote.

The Moderator leads the discussion to help the chat come up with three specific things to set the prompt:

Time (this can be as abstract as Pre-historic times, or as specific as Christmas 1972)

Location (can be as abstract as North America, or as specific as a beach in Dakar)

Random (anything random to make the stories unique. This can be as specific as a pink barn, or as abstract as sadness in times of strife)

This conversation should be 15 minutes between the moderator and whoever joins the chat. The chat will take considerations for prompts for a set amount of time.

After that time expires, all the moderated accepted prompts will be put into a survey and voted on by the chat. The winning prompt will be given to the two writers.

Then the writers take whatever is remaining in the 3 hours to write a 500 or less word story using the prompt.

The moderator starts the chat again 3 hours from the start of the chat.

The writers have to have cross-posted (or posted) their story and pasted the link to the post into the chat by the deadline.

No exceptions. Not making the publication deadline is an automatic forfeit.

The moderator helps facilitate a discussion of both works.

The discussing of the best flash-style piece shall consider three criteria.

• The way the writer considered each word provided in the prompt

• The quality of the story

• The quality of the prose

I will do an anonymous poll only voted for by people in the chat to pick the winner of the Flash-Style Contest.

The Moderator in a Flash-Style Battle is required to do these functions:

1. Ensure a timely start to the battle. The faster the prompts are created and chosen by the chat, the more time the writers have to battle.

2. Decide if any prompt is too boring, one-sided, or uninteresting to be included as an option (should be used sparingly and can be refused by one of the writers).

3. Ensure the writers submit their stories into the chat by the deadline.

4. Put an end to the conversation about the stories and start the vote.

5. End the voting period.

6. The moderator announces the winner.

Subscribe now

Greetings, Greetings, Greetings! Fellow word worms and pulse punchers!

Our two writers for our sixth battle are both seasoned drivers.

has made one of the most audacious Substack entrances of 2025, dropping his novel, The WayBack Machine, as a serial for Paid Subscribers on his Substack. He then dropped a four-part series about an expat in Moscow who spirals from alienation into uneasy integration. And his latest series of visually framed rap performances of disses of literary figures has revved up the combative energy on Substack. His record breaking diss of another Substack writer crystallized the metaphor most clearly.

Meanwhile, , one of the most diverse genre and literary writers on Substack, has been writing this year like a drag racer who rebuilt his engine out of grief, duct tape, and dream logic. A few examples of races are his recent story, “Insomnia”, his “Riot in His Veins” series, the dark humor jewel, “The Future is Cancelled”, and his ‘Ever Dream this Man’ series. His writing grips the wheel of absurdity with white-knuckled precision, flooring it through surreal landscapes and careening into cosmic metaphors at 300mph. His stories launch off the line with humor but redline into heartbreak, each session a quarter-mile of confessions wrapped in fire. He doesn’t flinch when the engine rattles—he thrives on it.

The date:

Friday, April 25th

Vs.

The prompt: 3:00 PM (EST)

This is when the moderator starts the chat and helps the chat come up with the prompts that are then voted on anonymously.

The story vote: 6:00 PM (EST)

The Moderator will be

Andrew Robert Colom

You have to be subscribed to Flash-Style and part of the chat to vote.

Both writers’ camps have read the rules and agreed to the details.

The more detailed rules of engagement for the fight to be found in this post.

See ya there, or be square!

(break in normal schedule programming)

Flash-Style Flash Fiction Battle Founder Rants about:

• Fake Top in 100 Fiction List

• Slow Writers

• Writer Cliques

• Writers as manipulators

• The Battle is Honest

Leave a comment

Share

Support The Race!

Greetings, Greetings, Greetings! Fellow word worms and pulse punchers!

En garde!

Fencing fans like to say their sport is physical chess; many writers would claim the fable of fiction requires the same mental dexterity and attention to detail as the greatest sword swinging.

Lunge!

An writer is no more than a flick artist. Touché. Maybe more a meat grinder. Some accuse Substack writers of mere button mashing, attacking the mass of hack and slash writers, ignoring the delicacies of the feints; when the truth is the Substack universe has every foilist and epeeist you can imagine, if you know how to look.

Both writers fighting in this next battle know how to parry-riposte with the best.

, the winner of the 2nd Flash-Style Flash fiction battle, has returned to the ring to accept the challenge sent to participate in the next Flash-Style Battle.

Counterattack!

is no writers piste gremlin, having started 2025 with an epic run of poem songs that have elevated the landscape of the artist on Substack.

This fight will challenge his pen to adapt to defeat , a hungry veteran and well known Point Shark within the Substack fiction Community, who is ready to take over the sport.

Disengage!

will have to master the one-light touch move of the maestros before him. will not be a turtle fighter, but more like a double-touch addict, able to make saber hugs to create the elements necessary for victory.

No matter what he tries, I predict he will find in someone willing to go full send in a second’s notice to claim another victory.

I fully expect this to be the most masterful match of the sport’s history thus far.

I have decided to moderate to prevent any ref whispering.

The date:

Saturday, February 22nd

Vs.

The prompt: 10:00 AM (EST)

This is when the moderator starts the chat and helps the chat come up with the prompts that are then voted on anonymously.

The story vote: 1:00 PM (EST)

The Moderator will be

You have to be subscribed to Flash-Style and part of the chat to vote.

Both writers’ camps have read the rules and agreed to the details.

The more detailed rules of engagement for the fight to be found in this post.

See ya there, or be square!

Leave a comment

Share

Support the Sport

Greetings, Greetings, Greetings! Fellow word worms and pulse punchers!

There comes a moment in every writer’s life when the passions of their self-confidence is tested. Like a Page, who watches his Lord manage the household, who learns to hunt, to shoot, to protect themselves with a sword, but dreams of becoming a Knight one day themselves.

Writers evolve from careful readers into hesitant Squires. Once a writer becomes a Squire, the obstacles of writing become real. They have to master the 7 skills it takes to make compelling art from the manufacturing of words.

Voice, style, character, plot, pace, innovation, universality. These attributes make the timeless works that hold value as cultural artifacts long after the death of their authors.

A writer cannot be a smart reader forever in the same way a Squire must pass his dubbing to become the noble hero that protects his kingdom. His works, his stories, his emotions, his sinew of truth, the last self left after he becomes ashes.

A writer like a Knight must at one point stand alone. Face his demons. Conquer them and make them into a tool, of a tool.

The Inaugural Flash-Style Champion, , sent a dove to the challenger, , after these two strangers had an heated exchange over James by Percival Everett.

This argument lead to a challenge of a Flash-Style Flash Fiction battle by the champion, , and that challenge was immediately accepted by .

After the heat simmered, there were offers sent from the camp of to the camp of to make this a gentleman’s match but that request was also promptly denied.

has now promised this will be the first truly bloody Flash-Style Flash Fiction battle in the history of the publication.

This will be ’s Fiction Debut.

The date:

Friday, January 31st

The prompt:

4:00 PM (EST)

This is when the moderator starts the chat and helps the chat come up with the prompts that are then voted on anonymously.

The story vote:

7:00 PM (EST)

The Moderator will be .

You have to be subscribed to Flash-Style and part of the chat to vote.

Both writers’ camps have read the rules and agreed to the details.

The more detailed rules of engagement for the fight to be found in this post.

See ya there, or be square!

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Support the Publication

Greetings, Greetings, Greetings! Fellow word worms and pulse punchers!

The writer lives a burden dedicated to the shaping of words. They have barns filled with dictionaries, front lawns covered in idioms, basements backed up in grammar and style guides.

The wood is the words growing from the writer’s imagination at a rapid pace or a slow stream, but the wood is just the raw material, it isn’t until you start cutting, editing and shaping, like a lumberjack at work, that true art can be mastered and presented.

Both writer today bring a commitment to the craft of writing that would make Paul Bunyan give the winner of their battle Babe, his Blue Ox.

They are more persistent and deadly in short battle than a woodpecker.

Their final products are totem poles to their dedication to the burden and magic of storytelling.

In one corner, we have , an experienced professional script writer, bursting out of the structural limitations of acts and beats and pacing to enjoy the wide open road of short flash fiction story-telling.

In the other corner, sitting comfortably with a cocky smile on his face, we have , a published author with a juicy novel out about his gutter friends willing to do whatever it takes to assist in his victory.

The date:

Sunday, November 17th

The prompt:

2:00 PM (EST) / 11:00 AM (Los Angeles) / 7:00 PM (Bristol)

This is when the moderator starts the chat and helps the chat come up with the prompts that are then voted on anonymously.

The story vote:

5:00 PM (EST) / 2:00 PM (Los Angeles) / 10:00 PM (Bristol)

You have to be subscribed to Flash-Style and part of the chat to vote.

Both writers’ camps have read the rules and agreed to the details.

The more detailed rules of engagement for the fight to be found in this post.

See ya there, or be square!

Subscribe now

Greetings, Greetings, Greetings! Fellow word worms and pulse punchers!

Our next battle consists of two writers who carry immense skill and power into the ring when it comes to writing.

They are sharper than the knife Brutus used to stab Caesar.

Their words bite harder than Mike Tyson did Evander Holyfield’s ear.

In one corner we have, , an experienced and widely published writer, with a new novel available for purchase on Amazon.

In the other corner, the writer, : youthful, righteous, mysterious, a force with words, a carrier of wisdom beyond his years.

The gracious warrior queen and inaugural gladiator, , will be moderating the 2nd Flash-Style flash fiction battle.

Both writers’ camps have read the rules and agreed to the details.

See ya there, or be square!

The date:

Saturday, October 26th

The prompt:

1:00 PM (EST) / 10:00 AM (PST) / 6:00 PM (GMT?)

This is when the moderator starts the chat and helps the chat come up with the prompts that are then voted on anonymously.

The story vote:

4:00 PM (EST) / 10:00 AM (PST) / 6:00 PM (GMT?)

You have to be subscribed to Flash-Style and part of the chat to vote.

The rules again below:

Flash-Style flash fiction battle is a fiction contest created by to provide friendly and respectful competition to the short fiction space with the hopes of innovating the genre to provide visibility to its writers and more relevancy to short form fiction as an art form by using a widely used phenomenon from Rap, free-styling and battle rap.

Flash-style is flash fiction written on a time clock with the express purpose of dueling another fiction writer.  

The writers are given 3 hours to create content with 500 words or less that tell a story. There cannot be alternative versions of various lengths published and available for consideration at the time of voting.

The content can have a visual, audio, animated, and or artificial intelligence component.  

This publication will start a chat thread for each battle. There will be a moderator assigned for the contest.

Fighters are allowed and encouraged to invite their supporters, but all supporters will have to subscribe to Flash-Style and join the chat to vote.

The Moderator leads the discussion to help the chat come up with three specific things to set the prompt: 

Time (this can be as abstract as Pre-historic times, or as specific as Christmas 1972) 

Location (can be as abstract as North America, or as specific as a beach in Dakar) 

Random (anything random to make the stories unique. This can be as specific as a pink barn, or as abstract as sadness in times of strife) 

This conversation should be 15 minutes between the moderator and whoever joins the chat. The chat will take considerations for prompts for a set amount of time.

After that time expires, all the moderated accepted prompts will be put into a survey and voted on by the chat. The winning prompt will be given to the two writers.

Then the writers take whatever is remaining in the 3 hours to write a 500 or less word story using the prompt. 

The moderator starts the chat again 3 hours from the start of the chat. 

The writers have to have cross-posted (or posted) their story and pasted the link to the post into the chat by the deadline.

No exceptions. Not making the publication deadline is an automatic forfeit.

The moderator helps facilitate a discussion of both works.

The discussing of the best flash-style piece shall consider three criteria.

• The way the writer considered each word provided in the prompt

• The quality of the story

• The quality of the prose

The moderator does an anonymous poll only voted for by people in the chat to pick the winner of the Flash-Style Contest. 

The moderator sets a time for voting. The moderator closes the voting window.

The moderator announces the winner.

Subscribe now

Greetings, Greetings, Greetings! Fellow word worms and pulse punchers!

Our inaugural flash-style fiction contest awaits you.

The first contest consists of no champions!

The challenger, , sent out a missile, daring anyone on Substack to a Flash-Style Fiction Battle.

, the worthy and dangerous competitor, was the first to declare herself willing and confident of her victory.

Saturday, October 12th, 1:00 PM (EST), check it out, read the work, pick a winner.

How it works:

Flash-style is flash fiction written on a time clock with the express purpose of dueling another fiction writer.  

The writers are given 3 hours to create content with 250 - 500 words that tell a story.

The content can have a visual, audio, animated, and or artificial intelligence component.  

This publication will start a chat thread for each battle. There will be a moderator assigned for the contest.

The Moderator leads the discussion to help the chat come up with three specific things to set the prompt: 

Time (this can be as abstract as Pre-historic times, or as specific as Christmas 1972) 

Location (can be as abstract as North America, or as specific as a beach in Dakar) 

Random (anything random to make the stories unique. This can be as specific as a pink barn, or as abstract as sadness in times of strife) 

This conversation should be 15 minutes between the moderator and whoever joins the chat.

Then the writers take 3 hours to write a 250 to 500 word story using the three prompts. 

The moderator starts the chat again 3 hours later. 

The writer presents their story to the chat.

The moderator helps facilitate a discussion of both works.

The moderator helps facilitate a poll on the winner of the Flash-Style Contest.   

Saturday, October 12th, 1:00 PM (EST), check it out, read the work, pick a winner.

Join at 11:00 AM (EST) to help the moderator pick the three prompts