A Crime Writing Competition That Marks the Plot and the Person
Quick answer: Writory's crime writing competition accepts original crime, mystery, detective and noir stories of 100 to 3,000 words, judged blind against a published five-part rubric that scores fair plotting and the people caught in it, not the cleverness of the trick. Entry is $8, the deadline is 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100.
Crime, mystery and detective stories of 100 to 3,000 words enter Writory's short story contest for $8, with a deadline of 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and every entrant receives a certificate and a five-part score out of 100.
How the rubric reads crime fiction
A crime story is judged as a crime story, which means the panel expects a plot and marks whether it plays fair. Storytelling & Structure (25) is scored on whether every scene causes the next and the ending pays off the opening, and in a mystery that translates directly: the clue has to be on the page before the reveal, and the reveal has to change what the earlier scenes meant. A solution the reader could not have reached loses that mark; a solution planted in plain sight collects it.
Character & Emotional Impact (25) is where crime entries most often leave points on the table. A detective who only wants the answer is a mechanism; a detective who wants the answer for a reason, or is afraid of it, is a person. The same applies to the criminal, whose logic should be legible even when it is monstrous. Originality & Voice (20) rewards the angle, not the gimmick. A locked room is not original; the voice that describes it can be.
One crime, one turn, 3,000 words
The classic detective story fits the contest's length exactly. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" invented the form in 1841 and "The Purloined Letter" perfected it, both in a few thousand words. Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and "A Scandal in Bohemia" run one case each. G. K. Chesterton's "The Blue Cross" solves its crime through a trail of small absurdities. Each has a single crime, a single turn and an ending that is consequence rather than explanation.
Crime fiction is wider than the whodunit. Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers" is a story about two women deciding whether to hide evidence, and the reader knows the answer long before the men do. Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind" is a mood as much as a case. You may tell the reader who did it in the first line; the question then becomes whether they will be caught, or whether they should be.
Craft notes for entering crime, mystery or noir
Plant the clue in a sentence that seems to be about something else. Give the investigator a private stake, however small: a debt, a shift ending, a memory the case keeps touching. Make the reveal arrive at the four-fifths mark and spend the last fifth on what it costs someone. Cut the scene where the detective explains everything to an admiring listener; the reader was there. Let the criminal be right about one thing. Stop the story one scene after the answer, not three.
Language & Craft (20) in crime fiction is mostly about pace: short sentences when the door opens, longer ones in the interview room. Impact & Resonance (10) is the moral weight left after the case closes, which is why Glaspell's story is still taught and most puzzles of its decade are not. Story prompts at /short-story-prompts include crime seeds, and the free Story Craft course at /academy/story-craft covers structure and point of view at this length.
Fee, deadline and what comes back
The first contest runs from 1 September to 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, with results and certificates on 30 November 2026. From December the contest is monthly: entries close on the 25th, results on the 30th, and the next round opens the moment they land. Entry is $8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five, each judged and scored separately. The top story of the round takes $100 and free entry to the next round. Every entrant receives a certificate and all five marks out of 100, and writers keep all rights, so a story scored here is still yours to sell, expand or serialise.
The published rubric, 100 points
- Storytelling & Structure (25 points): Does every scene cause the next, and does the ending pay off the opening?
- Character & Emotional Impact (25 points): Do we want something with your character, and does the story make us feel it?
- Language & Craft (20 points): Clean, deliberate prose: rhythm, precision, and nothing wasted.
- Originality & Voice (20 points): The angle only you could write, told in a voice that sounds like nobody else.
- Impact & Resonance (10 points): What the story leaves behind after the last line.
How it works
Submit an original story of 100 to 3,000 words by 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST. Every story is judged blind against the rubric above, and results arrive on 30 November 2026: every entrant receives a certificate with their name and a score out of 100. Writers keep all rights. Monthly winners earn free entry to the next round. Enter at https://writoryofficial.com/submit-story.
Common questions
Is a straightforward whodunit eligible, or does the contest want literary crime?
Both are eligible on identical terms. The contest accepts any genre, and the rubric scores structure as fair plotting, character as the people in the plot, and craft as the sentences. A clean puzzle with a real detective and a planted clue collects marks; so does a noir with no puzzle at all. The rules are 100 to 3,000 words, original work, age 13 and over.
How much does it cost to enter a crime story?
$8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five, paid online at /submit-story before 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST. Each story receives its own five-part scorecard, so a whodunit entered beside a noir tells you which kind of crime writing you handle better.
What do I receive if my story does not place?
A certificate and a score out of 100 on 30 November 2026, split into the five published marks. For a crime writer the telling pair is Storytelling & Structure against Character & Emotional Impact: a high first and low second means the plot works and the detective is still a mechanism.
Is there a word limit, and can a mystery be solved in 3,000 words?
Stories run from 100 to 3,000 words. Poe, Conan Doyle and Chesterton all solved cases inside that range, usually with one crime, one turn and a small cast. A mystery that needs five suspects and three locations is a novella; the version with two suspects and one room is the one to enter.
Do I have to reveal the solution, or can the ending stay open?
Either can score. An open ending earns Storytelling & Structure marks when the story has built toward that uncertainty, as "A Jury of Her Peers" does. An open ending that exists because the writer could not close the plot reads as a fragment and is marked as one. The judge can tell the difference.
Can I write my crime story in my own language?
Yes. Stories in any language are accepted and each is read in its own language, in one pool with everything else. Detective fiction has its own traditions in Bengali, Japanese, Spanish and Hindi, and a story written inside one of them is judged on the same five dimensions as an English entry.
More story contest pages
About Writory
Writory (writoryofficial.com) is an international monthly poetry contest founded in 2025 by Shivay Mehra. Poets from 31 countries have entered, readers come from over 150 countries, and every submitted poem is judged and scored out of 100 across five criteria: creativity, emotion, structure, language and impact and resonance. Every entrant receives a certificate; winners receive cash prizes and are published by name. Entries close on the 25th of each month and results are announced on the 30th. Writory is listed by Duotrope, Poetry Kit, Christopher Fielden's competition list and Creative Writing NZ, among other organisations. Past results are public at past winners and the leaderboard.