Author's Preface
The Minkly Writing Contest 2025 was our very first official writing competition, created to give authors a chance to showcase their work.
The contest started at October 2025. With a total prize pool of $3,000, writers could submit original fiction across genres including romance, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, slice-of-life, and more. It was a true free for all writing contest with mix of novels and oneshots. We received over 100 entries. After the submission period ended on December 31, 2025, entries went through judging and community voting before the winners were selected.
Winners
First place: "Midnight Locker: Whispers of the Rift Book 1" by Raine Whitlock.
Second place: "Crimson Reverie: Echoes of Seraphine" by Celine Liyan
Second place: "His Debts, My Chains" by Selune Rael
Third place: "The Shadowed Path of Lyra" by Kali Rae
Why are there two second-place winners?
Some may notice that this contest has two second-place winners. This was a deliberate decision made to keep the results transparent.
During the contest period, Celine Liyan joined the Minkly staff team (and eventually became co-founder). Since staff members are involved in the platform and community, the founder wanted to avoid any concerns about potential bias or favoritism.
To maintain fairness, the placements were adjusted:
• Celine Liyan's original second-place result was recognized.
• The original third-place winner was also awarded second place.
• The original fourth-place winner was awarded third place.
This allowed us to celebrate the achievements of all winning authors while keeping the contest process as fair and transparent as possible. Afterwards, all winners have been contacted and prizes have been distributed.
What We Learned From Our First Contest
Every first attempt comes with lessons, and the Minkly Inaugural Writing Contest 2025 was no exception. As our first official writing contest, we learned a lot about what works, what could be improved, and how we can make future contests better for both authors and readers.
The goal of the writing contest has always been more than just awarding prizes. We want to support authors, but we also want to help build a library of stories that readers can discover and enjoy. Based on feedback and our own observations, we have made several changes for future contests.
Focusing on Longer-Form Stories
For our first contest, series and oneshots competed together. While this allowed more flexibility for writers, we noticed that longer stories created a better experience for readers who wanted something they could continue following.
Starting with future contests, series and oneshots will no longer compete in the same category. We will focus more on series because they allow readers to spend more time with a story and help create a stronger long-term library on Minkly.
More Ways for Authors to Win
Previously, the contest had three winners based on an overall ranking of judging and popularity (votes, views, bookmarks, likes). For future contests, we are separating the judging process into different categories:
• Judging-based winners: Selected based on writing quality, storytelling, characters, overall execution and more criteria. (The details are always showcased on the contest page.)
• Popularity-based winners: This is votes based only. Readers have to at least vote 3 of their favorite series for the voting the count. This is to avoid gaming the system to win.
This allows more authors to be recognized, increasing the number of possible winners from three to six.
Supporting Self-Made / Commisioned Cover Art
We want Minkly to be a place where self-made or commissioned cover art are more encouraged. AI art is still allowed, but to showcase the author's work better, for all future contests, we put part of the prize pool towards commisioned cover art for winners. We hope this encourages authors to create or commission unique covers instead of relying on AI-generated artwork.
AI-Generated Stories Are Not Allowed
To protect the effort and creativity of writers, fully AI-generated stories are not eligible for future writing contests. There was no hard rule (more like unspoken rule) for this on the first writing contest, so we had to point this out from now on in our rules.
Creating a Better Experience for Readers
One of the biggest goals of the writing contest is helping readers discover new stories. Because of this, we want contest entries to remain enjoyable even after the competition ends. Future contest requirements include:
• A minimum wordcount requirement.
• Stories should provide readers with enough content to properly enjoy them beyond the contest period. So we encourage ongoing stories more than completed ones.
• Entries should not be uploaded only for the purpose of winning and then removed afterward.
The writing contest is not only about a prize. It is also about helping authors grow their audience and expanding Minkly's collection of stories.
More Specific Themes and Genres
The first contest allowed many different genres to compete together. While this gave authors freedom, we found that having a more focused theme was better to balance the platform for genres it's lacking. We want Minkly to be a well-balanced platform that welcomes all genres. We hope to achieve with themed contest to also target the right audience/readers that can easily find their favorite genre.
Improving the Judging Process
The first contest taught us that judging needs clear guidelines. For future contests, judges will be required to review a set amount chapters of the story instead of judging only from the first chapter. This helps ensure stories are evaluated more fairly and gives authors a better chance to showcase their full storytelling ability.
Thank you
Overall, we learned way more and added here and there more improvements and rules for the contest. These were the highlights, mostly thanks to the suggestions and feedback from our community. The first Minkly Writing Contest was a learning experience, and we are grateful to every author who participated.
We are excited to continue improving, and we hope future contests will become even better opportunities for authors to share their stories with the world. Thank you for reading/listening.