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Micro-Fiction Texts

The SF3 & Spineless Wonders Best Adaptation Film Award

Are you a short filmmaker on the lookout for great plot ideas for our SF3 Mini Category? Or do you want to try adapting one of our longer texts for our Gala Finals? You are in luck. Publisher, Spineless Wonders has curated a selection of micro-literature and short stories for our Best Adaptation Awards. These texts are written by contemporary Australian writers; fully-rounded narratives packed with interesting characters and themes. They’re mini-stories just waiting for you to turn them into engaging short 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 or short story text from the list below.
Adapt it into a screenplay for either our Mini or Gala Categories.
Shoot your film. Remember all films for SF3 Mini must be 3 minutes or less and all films for our gala Finals must be 20 minutes or less.
Enter it into our SF3 Mini or Gala Category by midnight September 1st, 2025 and be in the running for amazing prizes.

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

I’m jerked awake. Metallica. It’s shaking the caravan it’s so fucking loud. Oh, Jimmy. He’s three doors down. Old Sam and Eileen are going to have a fit, you know they are, but he can’t help himself.

aftermath by Shady Cosgrove

That year, I went back to the city alone, me and all my noisy solitude. I remember the way we’d gossip stories into night, along those roads, Glebe Point Road, Darlinghurst Road. Or walk to the harbour, listen to the wharves, what’s left of them. Or get wasted in a loud pub to the south, towards Botany, where the planes almost drown.

All That Shudder by Jill Jones

Heat shimmered off the road. Even if her dad still lived in Brentwell Street he mightn’t be home. He could have a job, hah-hah. Not once in ten years had he mentioned work. Ten years since he’d left, kicked off the steelworks for constantly turning up pissed. Kicked out by her mum. His phone-calls and letters, always muddled and rambling, grew less and less frequent. Until they stopped.

anchor by Susan McCreery

My friend Jam once told me it can’t be sunny every day.

It was just something she said while we were down the creek, waiting for the bell. Clarks discarded on the bank, we laid top to tail on a rock midstream, our legs dangling off the edges.

Down the Creek by Susan McCreery

Jeannie liked her men a little different, and so Jesus was perfect for her. In the flippancy and vagaries of online dating a man like Jesus got a lot of clicks, some drunken repartee, but rarely any interest. After all he dressed like Jesus, wrote like one of his apostles, and thought he actually was that other man. Yet, his imposture was too studied even for those who loved the real one. For Jeannie, an atheist, he was curious enough to warrant a chance.

jesussaves82 by Matthew Gabriel

A cloud of damp grey misogyny rose from the dark streets and floated into my big fuck off car’s windows as I saw the dame standing on the side of the road. She had a scarf over her hair and a body so hot that if you pissed on her, she’d still be steaming in the morning. Despite the fact that I had bourbon to drink and a problem with the camera guy, who kept filming the less pleasing side of my face, I pulled over.

Killer Night by Jude Bridge

Every spring my mother drags us to the koi pond in the Chinese Gardens in Darling Harbour. We sit on the rocks with a bag of embarrassing green pellets that look like mouse droppings.

Koi by Karen Whitelaw

Not a pretty sight, his feet, thought Alan. Pale toes bristling with ginger hairs. Nails in need of a clip. His coffee arrived a few seconds later. Alan couldn’t quite believe the luxury of sitting in a café on a Thursday morning. It was all thanks to China. Cheap manufacturing. He’d never been to China. Never been anywhere.

loose ends by Susan McCreery

he told his dad he was taking sally for a walk, it’s a bit late isn’t it? mumbled his dad, but he said nah, not really the streetlights are on anyway and his dad grunted into his beer and flicked the remote, so he didn’t take sally but sprinted up the road not looking back until he came to the bush, the air was tinder hot and crackled his blood, above him the trees whispered in the barely breeze and in the distance a truck braked,

outlet by Susan McCreery

Somewhere between the laundry aisle and the junk food section, my favourite track from my favourite album by my favourite ’90s post-rock outfit starts playing over the PA, and it’s a banger, it’s the best twelve and a half minutes of my life. Suddenly I have six boxes of Cadbury Favourites in the trolley and I don’t know how they got there. I’m about to reach down and put two of them back on the shelf and then the droning guitar in the extended seven-minute bridge gets louder and I think, what the hell, why not, you only live once, don’t stop believing!

The Rock by Bella Li

I was born in a shack next to the beach. Fibro, sepia-coloured. My parents used milk crates for chairs and washed their clothes in the shower. I have a photo of my very pregnant mother hosing down our ute on a patch of grass, Norfolk Island Pines in the background. You can’t see the bright shock of the ochre-orange headland or the grey scrub rising behind the roof but they’re there, solid, holding the sound of the ocean close in a bowl of craggy rock and sand.

sea-womb by Chrissy Howe

LONGER SHORT STORIES FOR GALA ADAPATION

CARPARK by Tanya Vavilova

Best friends Stace and Jarred hang out on their balcony overlooking a carpark, making up stories about everyone they see. But Stace knows something about Jarred that he doesn’t know she knows, and it’s about to confront them in the most violent way possible.

2. LANDLORD IN THE ATTIC by Tanya Vavilova

A pseudo-science fiction story about a group of roommates surviving in a dilapidated apartment complex in Redfern threatening to collapse. Ellie, Nikki, and Jim Beam struggle their way through owning several cats, fixing various holes in their ceiling, and resisting the urge to murder their landlord.

3. LIKE CLAY by Julia Prendergast

A contemporary “downunder” story in the social-realist tradition—rich in everyday detail about a family, behind-closed-doors, in unexpected turmoil: childbirth, sex, postpartum psychosis—surf, sea, Safeway; the everyday of a mental-health ward.

4. The Last Wilkie’s by Jon Steiner

An ambitious young liquidator is sent to repo the last branch of a defunct fast food chain, but is astonished to find it open. Though she admires the resourcefulness going into keeping it running, she has a job to do – but her life may be in danger!

5. THE PAPER BAG by Michalia Arathimos

A middle class woman discovers that an elephant has appeared at her doorstep. As she tries to accomodate for its needs, she struggles with the imminent arrival of her mother-in-law, her housework-neglecting husband, and a women’s Facebook support group facing a case of domestic abuse.

The submission deadline for the 11th Annual SmartFone Flick Fest is 11:49PM AEST, September 1, 2025.