We’re happy to announce our sponsorship of NYC Midnight’s 2025 Short Story Challenge. Our participation in this prestigious literary event has proven fruitful year after year. We’re excited about what 2025 will bring too.
Since 2002, NYC Midnight has organized Inspiring Challenges for Storytellers. Writers receive prompts and must complete stories within specific time limits, ranging from 24 hours to eight days, and word count restrictions. NYC Midnight’s challenges start and finish at 11:59 PM New York time.
As a sponsor, iA will award the top 10 finishers a copy of iA Writer for iOS, macOS, or Windows. This year, the top three finishers will also receive their very own iA Notebook.
About the Challenge
Now in its 19th year, the Short Story Challenge (SSC2025) offers writers across the world an opportunity to compete with peers, receive professional feedback, and win great prizes.1
How it works
Writers are randomly assigned into groups and given a genre, subject, and character to work with. At the end of each round, judges select the top five writers from each group to advance to the next stage. Here’s a quick overview of the contest:
- In the first round, writers receive a first assignment for a story of a maximum of 2,500 words to finish in eight days.
- In the second round, advancing writers receive a new assignment for a short story of 2,000 words, written in three days.
- The third round comes with new assignments and a two-day deadline to write a short story of 1,500 words. Judges then select the finalists.
- Final assignment: A story no longer than 1,250 words, written in just 24 hours.
The 2025 Challenge kicks off on January 24 and ends on September 10, 2025 with the results of the final round.2
Why enter and write?
Developing and maintaining a regular writing habit is just one of the many reasons to participate in NYC Midnight’s SSC2025. Writers can also:
- Get feedback from the judges for every submission
- Gain access to the NYC Midnight writing community
- Keep the rights to the stories they write and submit
- Have their story published on the NYC Website
- Win great prizes, from thousands of dollars to industry-leading writing tools, like iA Writer
Registration for this year is open until January 23, 2025. For full details please check out the NYC Midnight website.
How iA Writer helps
In a contest with tight deadlines, it’s important to manage time and be focused. Writer is made for writing and nothing else. Here is how it can help you:
Focus Mode
iA Writer’s signature feature allows you to focus on one sentence or paragraph at a time. How does it work?
Style Check
Easily spot fillers, redundancies, or clichés that creep into your text. Cut it down to the essentials. You can also create your own custom patterns to highlight expressions that you want to avoid.
Syntax Highlight
Pinpoint awkward verbs, repetitive nouns, or excessive use of certain parts of speech. How does this help?
Using Markdown allows you to keep your hands on the keyboard and quickly format your work as you go. You can even speed up formatting using shortcuts. Word count will come in handy, too.
No AI!
SSC2025 rules ban use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for submitted content. With iA Writer, you can keep track of what you wrote and what you pasted from external sources. iA’s Authorship tool is available on Writer for Mac, iPhone and iPad. With Writer, you have a reliable ally that tracks the origins of your text, helping make sure that you submit only your own words.3
Ready to jump into the SSC2025? Head on over to the NYC Midnight website and register today. Good luck!
Download your free iA Writer trial for SSC2025
-
The full list of the prizes is available here: SSC Prizes. ↩
-
NYC Midnight, like iA, was among the first to step back and carefully think about the use of AI in writing. In March 2023 they updated their official rules to prohibit the use of AI in their challenges. ↩
