SAWG Halloween 2026 Writing Contest

This contest is simple: we would like you to write your best Spooky Story in 1,000 words or fewer.

As spooky season approaches, SAWG would like to get the hair on the back of our necks standing on edge. We want to be locked in a haunted house with terrible frights without the key in sight, chased around by ghosts and goblins, ghouls and vampires. We want to find ourselves in a desolate graveyard where the air is thick with death and the ground is soft with freshly dug graves. We want spooky, we want horror, we want an exciting time full of Halloween hijinks.

Now, it doesn’t have to be scary, or gory, or gut-wrenching; we only ask one thing: that you use all five senses to create whatever spooky means to you.

Rules:

• Entrants must be current members of the San Antonio Writers Guild; non-members must pay a $10 entrant fee to be considered for the contest
• Entrants should paste their entries into the body of the email
• Entries should be sent via email to sawgcontests@gmail.com
• Entries that exceed the word count will be cut off at the world count limit
• Entries will be scored by a panel of three judges who will not know the identity of the contributing authors whose works they are judging. Judges are not to confer with other judges regarding the scoring of the entries
• Judges will be appointed by the SAWG Board of Directors
• Judges are not permitted to enter the contest
• The entry with the highest score will be deemed the winner

Prizes:

The winning entry will receive a cash honorarium in the amount of $100.

The second-place entry will receive a cash honorarium of $50.

In the event of tie, the prize will be split evenly with entrants tied for the highest score.

Judging:

Your stories will be judged on four (4) criteria:

• Originality – Original idea, clear and consistent voice, profound/engaging.
• Prose – Well written, great sentence structure, profound voice.
• Structure – Fluid story, well crafted, all scenes/characters/dialogue made sense.
• Incorporation of the theme / prompt – Well thought out, used expertly/originally, made us want to read it again.

CONTEST STARTS: October 1, 2026 | DUE DATE: October 15, 2026 – 11:59pm

Winners will be announced at the November Monthly Meeting on Thursday, November 5, 2026