Sunday, 7 April 2024

8th Mini Saga Contest: Voting now open

The time has come for us to announce the finalists of the 8th edition of our Mini Saga Contest! We've had dozens of submissions and have carefully read and marked them all until we reached 15 semi-finalists. Thank you to everyone who entered; we have really enjoyed reading your stories!

Help us choose the 7 finalists by reading the 15 mini sagas below and voting for your favourite story here. Public voting will be enabled until April 15th.The jury, who will be composed of members from the teaching staff of the English department, will judge the 7 stories that receive the highest number of votes and award 3 prizes based on their originality and linguistic quality. Winners will be announced on April 23rd.

Asking for Help to Write a Mini Saga

This time, you must write a dialogue.

“Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

“Her whose foot the glass slipper would fit”.

“Goodness, what a big mouth you have!”

“Off with their heads!” said the Queen.

Who the fuck said that Chat GPT was intelligent?

A Scene of War

The helicopters, vigilant, circle the area time and again. On the ground, the blasts follow one after the other, faster and faster. The earth trembles with the explosions. Relentlessly, the noise intensifies; the people’s shouts can no longer be heard. Smoke fills the place. It’s the mascletà in the Fallas.

Carroll’s Playing Card

They should have listened; they never listen. Alice was everybody’s favourite. The pleasant, well mannered and sensible blonde girl. The unbearable girl, I’d say! This time my husband will not be able to prevent it, this time they will have no option but to indulge me. Off with their heads! 

Case Closed

The mystery was almost solved. The bait was set up. The cameras were hidden, ready to film. “Tomorrow, we will reveal the identity of that elusive criminal mastermind”. I went to bed with a huge smile, which vanished when I started watching the tapes and saw myself committing the crime.

Get off on the wrong foot

A famous chiropodist. Happy at work. All the morning up and down the hospital with a cracking noise at every step. His feet started hurting, then his legs and eventually his hips. Worried, he wondered “what can this be?”. When he got home he got off shoes that were mismatched!

Just my luck!

I’d gotten her number at last! I couldn’t stop looking at her, so gorgeous she was…After a couple of gins, I approached immediately. Before we said bye, she’d written it on my hand. I didn’t know whether to call her or wait. I dialed and heard: “sorry, wrong number”

How to Write a Mini Saga in Less than Three Minutes

She’d been encouraged to participate in a mini saga contest. Remaining time for submissions: three minutes. No stories came to her. No inspiration. Only two minutes left. Nerves. Her reputation was at stake. Panic! Suddenly, she found her way. Indeed, just two words were enough. Just an acronym: AI. Done!

Long-term relationship

I used to be obsessed with you

Dreamt about us all time

Now, you’re not my kind

Gotta get rid of you

First ‘twas happiness, delight

But after few years of joy

Your demands rose too high

I’m nothing but a toy

Stuck in this mortgage

That only bankers enjoy.


May the fog be with you

Like a snake through the city it crawls,

Scales entangled in the corners

Conquering every inch of the walls.

Misty people wandering like mourners,

Foggy ghosts returning home

Walking as robotic performers.

Under the shadows of the stone,

Wrapped in sherds of fog,

A bell rings: “You are not alone”.

Pain over pain

All alone in the woods, before dawn. A sudden sharp pain announced that her baby was about to be born. Paloma could smell in the air that something was going wrong. Feverishly, she tried to gore a lurking shadow behind her but she failed to do so. The wolf won.

Run like clockwork

Desperate, she opened that website to check the date once again. The clock was only a few seconds from striking midnight. She waited, terrified of her own predetermined destiny. Midnight. She felt relieved: she was still alive, safe and sound. Suddenly, she realized she wasn’t alone in her bedroom anymore.

The Cohesion Family

-‘I hate when Reference uses Anaphora and Cataphora for the fun of it!’ said Substitution.

-‘How dare you! It’s you who’s always replacing nouns!’ replied Ellipsis.

-‘At least, I don’t make them disappear altogether!’ Substitution shouted.

-‘Help me, guys! They want to delete me ‘cause I don’t collocate!’ yelled Lexicon.

The Silence Conspiracy

The time had come when the poison of collective silence started killing me. I could find no antidote or vaccine; I could not move forward and avoid responsibility. Each attempt was like a huge burden on my back, impossible to shuffle off… May anything be felt more acutely than injustice?

The Worst Nightmare

When the plague began, just some species were infected and withered. Pests, they concluded, and so assumed, as they always did, that pesticides would solve it. But after only a very few years, all kinds of trees were dying. Forests succumbed, jungles disappeared. And they didn’t have a planet B.

Waiting for My Beloved

Every morning it's same old, same old. A promising smile, a door that closes and my heart starting to ache. Another gloomy day without her. Time goes by sleeping on the sofa and standing up just to drink. Suddenly, my beloved’s voice wakes me up: “Time for a walk, Toby!”.

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