A Raven’s Guide to Writing Battle
Last year, I entered the fast-paced world of online writing contests. I started with the Writing Battle Autumn 2025 Short Story Contest, a peer-judged competition with entries up to 2000 words. I would absolutely recommend the experience — psst! There’s another Battle starting soon! — but there are a few things to consider before diving in.
Top Tips for First-Time Ravens (i.e. entrants)
Read the whole Rules page and scroll to the bottom for the FAQs
Learn about trophies
Learn about Swiss-style judging
Catalogue your peer judging feedback
Review Debrief etiquette
I know, I know, it’s already confusing! I’ll explain it all in detail, and there is also a Terminology section at the bottom, where you can find all starred* words. You will need a Writing Battle account to access some of the links, like Forum posts.
What you really need to know is that Writing Battle includes 5 basic phases: writing, waiting, judging, reading, and results.
Writing
When the Battle starts, you write! You will be given three prompt cards, one of which will always be Genre. The other two will depend on the competition; for Autumn 2025 Short Story, the other two prompts were Setting and Character. For Summer 2025 Nanofiction, they were Character and Object.
You have some number of redraws available to you on your Battle page. You have 1 or 2 genre redraws available, depending on your Class.* You have 6 other redraws for the other two prompts combined.
But wait - before you use any redraws, decide whether you’d like to earn a special trophy! Using 0 redraws or all your redraws each produce a different trophy.
The amount of writing time varies by word count. In 2026, 1000-word flash fiction stories have 5-day writing periods, and 250-word nanofiction entries are given only 48 hours with the prompts.
If you want to preview the submission format, head on over to the WB Tavern tab, where you can see the exact text box you will receive on your Battle page at the start of the contest.
Here’s a screenshot of the Tavern text box with formatting options as of 2025. The Battle submission page is nearly identical.
Save your submission early so you don’t run out of time!
You can submit as many times as you want, so there is no risk to submitting early. Plus, you can preview your story, which will give you time to adjust spacing for readability. (Most Ravens add an extra space between paragraphs; see here for an example.)
If you want early feedback on your story, you can post in the Beta tab in the Tavern during the writing period. The Beta tab will be restricted to people who are allowed to see your story. This is important for fairness; in a Raven (peer-judged) battle, you can only beta-read entries within your same genre.
Waiting
After the submission deadline, you have a few days until the next phase of the Battle. In a Raven (peer-judged) contest, you are waiting until the first round of Duels* to judge. In an Owl (pro-judged) contest, you are waiting for Debrief to open.
During Debrief, lots of folks — but not all — include cover art with their stories. The dimensions of cover art are 625 x 1000 pixels, or the equivalent ratio of 1:1.6. You can use some of the waiting time to design or source some cover art! (Of course, if you’re not DIYing it, please support artists instead of generative AI. You wouldn’t want your writing replaced by gen AI, so let’s give the same consideration to visual artists!)
A new Debrief feature is a link to an audio recording of your story. If you want to, you can record your story being read aloud and then include a publicly available link during Debrief.
You can also waste countless hours on the Forum with all the other writers who are itching for the next stage of the Battle.
Judging
This phase only applies to Raven (peer-judged) battles. As a first-time battler, you will only judge duels in the House* round. (Experienced Ravens may be invited to judge some entries in the Final Showdown*, but this is completely optional.)
Duel matchups are determined by Swiss-style ranking. This is an important concept to understand before you sign up for Writing Battle. There is inherent randomness in the format, so don’t take your final score personally! Also, it is likely that as you get to the end of the House duels, it will become harder to pick a winner, because the stories are more likely to be evenly matched.
When a duel opens, it will be visible on your Battle page. You will see links to both stories that will open in new tabs, much like previewing your own story. At the bottom of each story in the duel, there is a feedback form.
Feedback is a hot topic on the Writing Battle forums. Many people take great pride in the feedback they provide. There is even a Panda trophy* to recognize great feedback. Keep in mind that giving good feedback is labor-intensive, and a skill that improves with practice. Take a peek at this forum thread for some examples of what people consider good feedback.
No matter how much feedback you provide, keep in mind that the person on the other end of the screen is someone who likes to write. Be kind, and help them make their work better — don’t just tell them how to make their work more like yours.
After reading both stories and leaving feedback in both boxes, you have to select a winner on the main battle page. Make sure you know the title of the winning piece, because you will not see any part of the story on the Duel winner selection page!
Some dedicated Ravens catalogue their feedback in a separate document and track the titles of stories they judged in duels. You will lose access to your feedback as soon as you select a winner. I plan to save my feedback elsewhere next time, so that if I think of any other feedback later on, I can leave a comment in Debrief without risk of repeating myself.
Reading
In my humble opinion, Debrief is what knits together the Writing Battle community. After peer judging is completed in a Raven battle (House and Spartan* rounds), or during the whole judging period in an Owl battle, you will have the option to share your story and/or read other stories in Debrief.
My guesstimation is that 75-80% of stories get shared during Debrief. So in a 2000-word contest with 1000 entrants, you might have access to about 1.6 million words. That’s like 20 full-length novels. You could spend every waking moment between writing and results reading Debrief stories and you probably wouldn’t get to all of them.
If you want more feedback, Debrief is your chance! On the Debrief share page, you can put in your cover art and/or audio recording, and you can select what type of feedback you want (positive only, light criticism, or ConCrit.*)
A preview of the sharing options for Debrief. This screenshot is taken from the Tavern, but it’s almost identical.
You can also leave a message to readers requesting specific feedback, or priming them for your story in some way. (A pet peeve of mine is when people state how little time they had to work on their submission, or anything else self-deprecating. Please don’t do that! Writing Battle is open to writers of all levels, and what you can write in your sleep may be beyond a baby Raven’s best effort.)
After you share your story, you can get more eyes on it by posting in the Forum. There are usually themed threads by genre, subject matter, anti-heroes, etc. There is also usually at least one ConCrit swap thread where you can offer your time and effort in exchange for someone else’s.
Keep in mind Debrief etiquette; return reads are good practice, and it’s important to respect the author’s feedback type request. In general, people are quite positive during debrief. Sometimes this leads to disappointment when stories don’t do as well in Duels as the author hoped.
Why might you choose not to share your story in Debrief?
If you don’t have time to do return reads, you may feel bad if your story gets thoughtful comments. If it’s not your best work, you might not want it to be attached to your pen name. Or you might wait until House duel results are revealed, and only share if you make it to Final Showdown.
It’s common to see “Debrief Faves” threads in the Forum. Sometimes this can start to feel like a popularity contest, when many of the frequent forum posters (and some past winners) get shoutouts. That can be a bummer. And some people will say “my favorite entry from House Duels isn’t shared in debrief yet!” Which is another good reason not to share, so you can secretly think to yourself: they’re talking about my story!
Results
Writing Battle releases results piecemeal. First, House Duel results roll out over the course of an hour, updated every 15 minutes. This is a great way to drive yourself nuts as you calculate how many remaining duels you would need to win to make it to the Final Showdown. I recommend waiting until the end of the hour to save yourself some stress.
Final Showdown results roll out similarly, with each stage of the bracket getting resolved every 15 minutes. It’s actually an impressive technological feat that the website stays live when everyone presses the refresh button at the same time. You can track your own story, or your favorites, through each level until the final round winners are announced.
You can also just wait to receive a summarizing email that may include a handy-dandy graphic for social media! Here’s the image I received after all the results were released from the Final Showdown:
Feedback
After the conclusion of the results rollout, you will have access to the anonymous feedback from your House duels.
Personally, I was not prepared for how spicy some of my feedback was. There were common threads of constructive feedback that I really appreciated. And there was a distinct tone from one of the judges that was, well, harsh. It made me reconsider whether some of the feedback I left during Duels was too spicy as well. I plan to be kinder and gentler next time, now that I’ve been on the receiving end of spicy anonymous feedback.
Community
The Tavern and the forums are always open, even outside of active Battles. Even over the holidays! Some people share heartfelt stories, GoFundMes (with permission from admins), and data analysis. There is lots of discussion about other contests, too; check out this calendar of 2026 writing contests compiled by Lisa Vitale! Participation on the Forum is voluntary, but if you don’t have many writers in your life, it could be a great community for you.
Terminology
Class: A new Writing Battle concept in 2026, explained here!
ConCrit: Constructive Criticism
Duel: Two stories go head-to-head in Duels and only one story can win. This determines points in the House round or advancement in the Final Showdown.
Final Showdown: The single-elimination tournament phase of the Battle, composed of stories that advanced from House
House: A grouping of up to 40 stories within a single genre, used during the Swiss-style tournament phase
Max Bjork: The creator of Writing Battle, who is active on the forums and often invoked mononymously: “Max”
Panda: A Raven who has been recognized, in the form of a trophy, for giving outstanding feedback
Raven: A Writing Battle writer / community member - not an admin or a pro judge
Spartan: Experienced Ravens who judge extra Duels in the Final Showdown, after the House round
Trophy: A cute icon displayed on writer profiles and overlaid on profile pictures in the Forum. Trophies are earned via Battle participation, and/or specific Battle achievements: Trophy Guide
