Dead Silence, Flickering Shadows, and a Race Against Time: Unveiling the Shocking Winners of the WritersWeekly.com Spring 2026 24-Hour Short Story Contest
COMMON THEMES SUBMITTED
Here are our notes about common themes that emerged with this topic:
- We received several Adam and Eve-themed stories.
- Lots of deaths from coughing and dust.
- There were countless spaceships (both alien and man-made),
space pods, space communities living on ships, etc. Of those,
there were escapes to other planets, aliens escaping to Earth, or
trying to save Earth, etc. The space angle was, by far,
the most common theme. - There were lots of stories about healers (many of those Native American), medicine men and women, etc.
- It was interesting how many participants blamed “data centers”
on the Earth’s woes. (And, in our opinion, that doesn’t seem so far fetched!) - Numerous stories blamed solar flares, nuclear war, meteors,
and other big natural and man-made events. - Lots of stories feature colonies (both on Earth and in space).
- In many of stories, someone had been missing for a long time, and that was who showed up and knocked on the door.
- And, numerous stories mentioned one of these terms: “single blade” or “single stem” (when the plants started coming back).
- And, we received NUMEROUS historical fiction stories about the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.
As with all contests, some common themes come back again and again, no matter what the topic is.
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