Submit

Micro-Fiction Texts

Introducing the SF3/Spineless Wonders Microlit Film Award

Are you a short filmmaker on the lookout for great plot ideas for our SF3 Mini Category? You are in luck. Publisher, Spineless Wonders has curated a selection of microliterature for a brand new SF3 award. These half-page texts are written by contemporary Australian writers. These fully-rounded narratives are packed with interesting characters and themes. They are mini-stories just waiting for you to turn them into engaging mini-films.

Each author has given permission for their work to be included in the SF3 awards. The film you create could be an adaptation which sticks closely to the original text or it could draw on aspects of the text as inspiration. The only requirement to use one of the texts is that you include the author and title of their piece in your film’s credits. For instance, ‘Adapted from…’/ ‘Based on…’ / ‘Inspired by…’.

If your film is judged best entry in this category, both you and the author will receive a prize generously donated by SF3’s sponsors and the Spineless Wonders Team.

Steps:

Pick a micro-fiction text from the list below.
Adapt it into a screenplay for our Mini Category.
Shoot your film. Remember all films for SF3 Mini must be 3 minutes or less.
Enter it into our SF3 Mini Category by midnight September 1st, 2024 and be in the running for amazing prizes including our brand new Micro-Fiction Awards.

“What do we hold onto? What gets left behind? How can the scraps and the leftovers tell us a story?

A remnant can be an idea, object or event that is part of a larger whole. Fragments. Slivers. Stories are themselves remnants that we piece together to create a narrative, memory, party anecdote or way of explaining something to others. The possibilities are endless.

These microfiction pieces all use various remnants, real or imagined, in a way that is experimental, playful, thought-provoking and at times subtle.”

Here are our micro-fictions. Click on each link to read the full story:

‘Our bodies are all we have, all our defeated bodies. Settling for a Holden Barina City after selling off a very nicely appointed Holden Rodeo Ute, roo-bar but petrol guzzler.’

All we have by Sandra Renew

‘Gas mask in hand, satchel over her shoulders, Ruth climbs out of the air raid shelter. Emerging into the daylight, she blinks. She and her classmates have been in the bunker under the playground for hours while the bombs dropped.’

Green Velvet by Rosemary Stride

‘The garbage trucks will come next week, early in the morning with their monstrous hunger, their loud devouring. I take what you left behind out to the curb. These items include:’

Hard Rubbish by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

‘Avril heard the call and knew instantly it was special. Something like coooo-rok with a falling inflection, coming from over near where the big trees had been felled.’

Loss by Richard Holt

‘Suddenly the temperature dropped. Must be 4 am. He raised his head to glance at the digital clock. Just as expected — 4.10am. This was his daily mystery.’

Out of the attic by Linda Carr

‘The name of the cafe bristles with Z’s. Coffee is a million Zlotys, the extravagant pile of notes tastes bitter in my throat. The Old Town Square glows perfect in the pale sun. War-torn, resurrected, brick by identical brick, scars of lost life tucked neatly away.’

Shadows of Warsaw by Danielle Baldock

‘The story is missing. It disappeared a while ago and, despite an extensive search, remains unfound. Some say the story was a work of genius.’

Short story by Ben Cameron-Smith

‘Back then, the river would take one of us every year. Always in summer, when the heat was an omen pulling us to the water. Children were warned: it’s the season of Signos, when the river would sigh, beckoning to the lost.’

Signos by Ronald Arana Atilano

‘The old Queenslander house Matilda bought in Northern Rivers was haunted. Some thing/one wanted to get back at her. To move her out. Turning in a room, opening and closing a door, Tilda caught sight of some thing/one stilled momentarily, a shadow, a black smoke plume, a body embraced in black cloth, a monolith.’

Stained by Moya Costello

‘Outside the cottage a rabbit chews on grass. The wind ruffles the paddocks that blanket the hills down to the creek. Pop is mustering on his horse in his battered trilby and Driza-Bone coat, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips.’

The ghosts of crooks park by Lili Paquet

‘OLD-GROWTH FORESTS of Australia’s tallest tree—the Mountain Ash—are still being logged in Tasmania. This threatens species habitats and leaves behind blackened patches of napalm-scorched earth. Profits are put before the preservation of these majestic eucalypts.’

The money tree by Jonathan Cant

‘In 1964, heady with recklessness and resolution, Andy Warhol was in no mood to compromise, and impatiently hatched an idea, worked on a vision, had the avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas train a camera on the Empire State Building from the forty-fourth floor of Time-Life in midtown Manhattan, and waited’

Eight hours and five minutes of eternity by Charles D’Anastasi

The submission deadline for the 10th Annual SmartFone Flick Fest is 11:49PM AEST, September 1, 2024.