Hi everyone! Thank you for your patience as I scored each piece submitted for this year's Writer's Jam. This is a long post segmented by different announcements and information I want to share. If you're just here for the winners, scroll to the end of this post!
Statistics
Between the Discord and my DMs, we got about 135 entries this year! That makes this year our largest yet, and it's not even that close. When I first started doing this several years ago, I capped participants at 100, but would only ever get around 30-40 completed submissions, so we've grown a lot!
We had about a 1:1 ratio of people who showed interest in the competition and people who followed all the way through to submitting. For a weekend-only competition, that's really solid! I'm really glad so many people have found this competition and look forward to it each year :)
Changes for Next Year
This was the fourth Writer's Jam, and I really want to refresh the way I manage this competition for the fifth year in 2027. While this may change and I'm not going to break down everything I'm changing here, there's a few changes I want everyone to know about ahead of time so that it won't be too big of a shock next year:
- The Writer's Jam will be changing names to The NG Writing Jam! I've been concerned for a year or two now that having "writer" in the name gatekeeps people who don't have experience from even bothering to look at the event (I also took it as a hint that, since people have consistently referred to it as the "writing jam," it just sounds a little smoother too).
- Awards will be done in a bit more of a "game show" style. Instead of a straight-forward top 5, I will be breaking up winners into several categories. There will still be a top "best submission" category with the grand prize, but I will be incorporating other prizes like "community choice," "best short piece," and so on to give more pieces a chance to shine! This is the change I'm most excited for.
- I will be reducing prompts from five to three. I think this will compartmentalize stories in a really interesting way and will force participants to think really creatively about the prompts! This also means that there will be a "best of" award category for each prompt.
As I said, there will probably be a few more changes, and I'd love some feedback on these changes to see what else I can do to make this event more exciting for its first big milestone.
WRITER'S JAM 2026 WINNERS
Here are the top five pieces of this year's Writer's Jam!
1st: STUMPED by @TheFulvousFox - $210
A really great example of how a straightforward short story can still do a ton! Everything here wraps up perfectly and is paced wonderfully. Just overall fantastic in every way!
2nd: LOST AND BLIND by @Luizo0 - $130
While art is, as mentioned in the rules, not what narratives are scored off of, the (very unique) structure of this piece justifies how the stories is written and serves as formatting moreso than art that is simply there for visual appeal. On its own, the story is very strong and really gives you a sense of the paranoia and absence of information the narrator is afflicted with. Great stuff!
3rd: DERMOGENSIS by @Marek1shtar - $100
An insane, disturbing, freaky metamorphosis story that does a great job making the reader wince. That said, it's really hard to put down! Top-tier prose, Great pacing, overall fantastic!
4th: GREEN GROUND by @JayLeeAugust - $75
This is really cute story with very expressive characterization that I wish I could read more of. While the world and scenario may not necessarily be happy, this is definitely still one that left me with a smile! Great stuff!
5th: HELP IS AVAILABLE by @RationaLess - $50
This is a very raw, ironically fun, and depressing look at isolation, as well as how technology and bureaucracy really don't help those in a crisis all that well. Another excellent example of how straightforward storytelling can really pay off!
Winners, please DM me with your PayPal within the next week or two so Tom can pay you out.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The quality of y'alls pieces seriously improves so much every year! It makes it harder and harder to choose just a handful of winners when so many excellent pieces are out there. I genuinely had, like, 15 or so pieces I was comparing for about a week and I wish I could highlight them all! Unfortunately a 15-way tie would be pretty hard to split up, but just know I totally would based on this year's quality of submissions.
I highly encourage everyone to read through each other's pieces if you haven't already! It wasn't intentional or anything, but most of the winners this year weren't previous winners. There were tons of hidden gems in here and I hope everyone's pieces get the attention they deserve!
Finally, thank you so much once again to this year's sponsors! It means the world and really helps me encourage people to participate when there's something to win. With so much money involved, I was extremely careful with how I scored pieces and how I adhered to my own rules, and I will continue to do so in the future, whether more or less money is involved. Please check out all the sponsors and give home a big thank you!
@FluxyShark: $250
@AdlaiN3d: $50
@ABlueGhost: $30
@Arsonist: $30
@DallyDEF: $5
jamriot: $50
Newgrounds: $150
