No, we’re not joking. For our December pop-up, we need you to bring some Swift to a post-apocalyptic world. Trash Cat loves Taylor’s music and is often inspired – she is a bit of a storyteller, after all.
How Does it End? is absolutely not a call for fiction about Taylor Swift. We don’t want her popping up in the post-apocalypse, zombified or otherwise.
If you don’t like her music, that’s ok, you can still be inspired by a song title, right? A thread of lyric? The tone/meaning/intent of the song? You’re a writer, you can be inspired by dust.
We’re going up to 2000 words for this pop-up – use them well
LET’S TALK POST-APOCALYPSE
Post-apocalyptic stories take place after some kind of catastrophic event and often show characters struggling to survive in a dangerous new world without electricity, running water, law and order, or societal structure.
Genres can include horror, humour, sci-fi, mystery, dystopia, soilpunk, cyberpunk, action….or a blurring blend of several
SOME EXAMPLES OF A WORLD-CHANGING CATASTROPHE
- alien invasion
- astronomical-related – asteroids, solar flare
- environmental – climate disaster
- medical – outbreaks, pandemics
- technology uprising
- natural disasters – earthquakes, floods
- nuclear war
- supernatural/ paranormal influence
- loss of resources – electricity, water
- mass fertility issues
- zombies
- anything else you can conjure!
WHAT WE WANT
We want to feel immersed in this New World post-catastrophe. It might only be days since it happened – but could also be months, years, decades.
Show us characters forced to change, cope, survive, thrive. Their limitations, their strengths, their community. What they search for, what they long for.
Give us horror and hope, mystery and magic, fear and friendship, love and loss.
Give us a story grounded in everything it means, or should mean, to be human – even in an inhumane world.
NOW TO THE SWIFTY PART!
We want you to start with inspiration from a Taylor Swift song – could be just a title, or several, could be a lyric or mashed-up bunch of them. Don’t use lyrics in your story though – that is some copyright invasion, and that’s not an invasion we consider post-apocalyptic. We don’t expect you to immerse yourself in her discography, unless you want to. We really don’t want post-apocalypse stories that literally feature Taylor – this is not fanfiction, it’s about using music and songwriting to find inspiration.
Some lyrics…
Some song titles…
anti-hero, bad blood, castles crumbling, death by a thousand cuts, dancing with our hands tied, forever winter, false god, haunted, I forgot that you existed, the last time, jump then fall, look what you made me do, mad woman, midnight rain, only the young, a place in this world, the prophecy, run, snow on the beach, treacherous, wildest dreams, you’ll always find your way back home
Submission Guidelines
- We ‘re looking for Flash/ Short Fiction only (no CNF or poetry) between 300 and 2000 words (excluding title)
- One submission per writer – new and unpublished stories
- All post-apocalyptic subgenres considered – but don’t rely on shock and excessive gore, we need Character and Story
- Use simple formatting – 12pt, easy-to-read-font, double spaced
- No name etc. on the story doc – the filename should be the title only. We do not want to see Shunn formatting please.
- Submission is via the Google Form linked below.
- For our Ts & Cs please refer to our Submissions Page
Ready to Submit?
This link goes live on 27th September at 9am (BST)
TRASH CAT LIT 