Истории Opennovellacontest

The Open Novella Contest is back for 2026! Join fellow storytellers and plant the seed of a tale that will blossom into a 20,000+ word novella within 12 weeks! Your epic quest begins February 1st, 2026, so mark your calendars with this date!

This space is created especially for writers participating in the Open Novella Contest 2026 Writing a novella is exciting... but also confusing, lonely, and full of self-doubt. ❤️ Is my story good enough? ❤️Is my opening strong? ❤️Will readers understand my characters? ❤️Am I even on the right track? You don't have to figure this out alone. This book club is a place where contestants can: ✔ Share their entries ✔ Get genuine reads ✔ Receive honest and helpful feedback ✔ Improve their chapters ✔ Support fellow writers Here, we don't compete. We grow together. If you are writing for the Open Novella Contest and want readers, reviews, and real feedback - this circle is for you. Let's help each other write better stories.

Do you have an ONC? Wish to get feedback as well as discover other ONCs? Then stop by and join our ONC book club!

She wakes with missing hours, a burning imprint carved into her shoulder, and no memory of who put it there. Nyxara Blackvein is an assassin who survives by control. Control over her body. Her blades. Her choices. But the mark beneath her skin has a will of its own, pulling her toward Stillreach-a city protected by an impossible shield and a power no one dares to name. Torin Cross was never part of the plan. A half-elf bard with a charming smile and secrets of his own, he's headed in the same direction for reasons that don't quite add up. When violence forces them to fight side by side, trust forms before either of them is ready for it. Whatever waits in Stillreach is already watching. ONC 2026 Prompts used. 32. Two assassins from rival organizations are sent on the same secret mission, only to realize the assignment holds a much bigger truth. 86. A wasteland hides pockets of thriving communities protected by mysterious shields. 99. You wake up with a strange mark on your skin after a late-night encounter you can barely remember, and its meaning grows more unsettling by the hour.

A slipstream in time. A cloak of eternal night. Something stirs in the dark. [ ✶ ] Upon returning from a weekend getaway to celebrate their last time together before college, a group of friends discover the residents of their hometown have vanished without a trace, leaving behind a shroud of mystery, sunless skies, and an unshakable horror. [ extended summary inside] original novel / all rights reserved olivia siobhan © 2026 onc prompts #97, #44 and #24 [ ✶ ] open novella contest 2026 round 1 winner

Adventure, friendship, explosive action (and diarrhea), this book has it all! Blending surreal comedy with soft, psychological sci‑fi, "Local NPC discovers dreams" feels like Inception meeting meme culture. The result? Dream travel gone wrong. Two strangers accidentally meet in a shared dream and get stuck there - one a sarcastic girl who never asked for a sidekick, the other a lost NPC-like guy who doesn't even know how he got here. Their differences in character aren't even the worse things they'll have to overcome... « Do you see it? - What? - There. Right behind that tree. He squinted at the green uniform mass of bushes. Nothing particularly shocking around them, except perhaps a bald head poorly hidden between two shrubs. Great, another bald head. But this one was probably trying to put them back in jail.» Welcome to the nightmare they never asked for. 🏅ONC2026 Round 2 Qualifier

Book Two Evie O'Doyle didn't come to Oxford to fall in love. She came to build a life that was hers, away from where she grew up and the parents who told her she wasn't worth much. She's done that. Against every odd, she's done that. Archie has spent his whole life stepping in front of his father's fists and taking it. It's the one thing he knows how to do. But this time his father is taking it too far, and messing with the one thing Archie won't back away from. For the first time in his life, he's going to have to fight back. Evie has survived harder things than a man in an expensive coat who doesn't think she's good enough. She knows how to hold herself together when everything is falling apart. She's been doing it since she was a kid. What she doesn't know how to survive is watching the people she loves most pay the price for who she is. Some storms you can outrun. Some you have to stand in.

Celia Jones can talk to the dead, but getting on with them is a different story. She always has at least three spirits following her around, complaining about their relatives, or the inadequacy of their funeral arrangements. The latest is a murdered actress, Maude Domby, but she's less interested in denouncing her killer than in accusing the understudy of stealing her favourite pearls. When the charming but utterly fraudulent medium Stanley Winter holds a séance to contact Maude, Maude insists she and Celia should attend, to see people mourning her 'properly'. But the séance ends up implicating an innocent woman, and now Stanley Winter is banging on Celia's door, begging her to help him find Maude's real killer. Unfortunately, helping Stanley Winter could lead Celia to confront her other power - the one that's both lighter and infinitely darker than talking to the dead. ONC Prompt: 72. A real necromancer sits in on a fake séance.

Tristram Wald likes to spend his days daydreaming about all of the magical things that he wishes would transpire in his lowly, humble and mundane existence. As an orphan, he was taken in by his Uncle Giacomo and forced to endure hardship and cruelty, and is eventually put to work in his Uncle's celebrated shoemakers shop. But now Tristram Wald is eighteen years and he has big ideas of his own Tristram wants his own success and fortune. A chance encounter with the beautiful Princess Oriana Aureum cements the idea of escape from his humble beginnings in Tristram's mind. Desperate for riches, so that he will be eligible to marry the princess, Tristram allows himself to be coerced by a mysterious Goblin named Grimalkin who claims he can weave straw into gold. But Tristram will soon find out that putting his trust in a renowned trickster can have sinister consequences. The Gold Weaver of Goblin Wood is a dark fairy-tale, horror.

Beth Reynolds is running on three hours of sleep, a dying phone, and a very precarious subway coffee... until the train lurches and she dumps the whole thing on a ridiculously hot stranger. Then she shows up late to the biggest callback of her modeling career and realizes the "coffee guy" is Chris Martinez - her co-model for the shoot. The one she has to get half-naked with. Maybe kiss. For the camera. On set, the chemistry is real enough to make the photographer cry. Off set? Chris is sweet, steady, and somehow still sends mixed signals that make Beth feel like she's losing her mind and her oracle cards aren't helping. So Beth does what any anxious romantasy girl with catastrophic impulse control would do: she buys a love spell on Etsy. And after that... everything she's been dreaming about starts happening. Except now she can't stop wondering: did he choose her... or did she pay for him?

Ginevra Sognatrice has a routine. Every night, after a "sleep experience," she documents it, adds it to the pile, and hands them out as stories in her English essays whenever she gets the chance. Anything to get the scenes out of her mind. Anything to forget. But what she has been desperately trying to ignore becomes inescapable when the substitute teacher reads one of her stories - and thinks it's about her. Because it is. It's always about someone real. And, unfortunately for Ginny, the teacher dies in this story. And Ginny knows all too well that her stories always come true.

In his forty-three years of life, Ahsan Kabbo had survived more than most. From an ordinary human to a manufactured superhuman. From a man paraded as a trophy to one who dared question the system that built him. From loving the wrong person to marrying the one who mattered. He thought he had learned how to endure anything. He was wrong. Because nothing could have prepared him for being dragged into his brother-in-law's love life- Or for facing the Red Veil again. As the virus resurfaces, so does the fear: the fear of losing the people he loves. And this time, the cost of saving them might be far greater than he's willing to pay. Does every mistake deserve forgiveness? Is friendship worth risking his family? ---- In Wonder Allan's 268 years, he had faced wars, monsters in human skin, and more odd people than he cared to count. He met at least ten of them every day. His sister and his best friend-who also happened to be his brother-in-law-probably counted as six on their own. So noticing something off about the team's medical head should have been easy. It wasn't. Emily Silver was precise, private, and painfully professional, which made the dark circles under her eyes, the short temper, and the way she seemed to be slipping just out of reach... unsettling. Wonder never meant to find her alone in a bar. He never meant to stay. And he most definitely never meant to say yes when she asked- "May I have this dance?" One night. One dance. One kiss. And suddenly, nothing was the same. What followed wasn't just scandal-it was consequence. Soon, Wonder finds himself dragged into something far more dangerous than just chaos: Hope. Was he surprised? Not particularly. Was he mentally prepared? Absolutely not. And especially not when his treacherous heart dared to skip a beat again, despite the bitter aftertaste love had left behind once before. Not when his friendship and family were on the line.

Luna Thalorin lives a simple life as a shepherd in the quaint town of Everfall, sandwiched between the mountains and the river. Her world shatters when her mother goes missing, entwined with the enigmatic Founder, the town's mythical creator. Her fractured path intersects with Crown Prince Soren Falstaff, who also vanishes under the same mysterious circumstances as her mother. Banished to the forest with her brother, Luna must confront the mountains that hold the secrets of her family and the prince. Their quest leads them up perilous paths, where magic is both a guide and a trap. On top of that, the bioluminescent wolves, the Founder's choice of guards, run rampant through the forest, constantly on their trail. Captured by the Founder, Luna discovers many shocking truths and horrifying secrets. As Luna battles the Founder's dark magic, she fights for her mother, her name, and the heart of a prince. All those years ago, when her mother disappeared, Luna was the only one who saw the mountains cry. And she is the only one who can help. --- ONC 2026, PROMPT #16: "And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul." John Muir

Five years. Five failures. One broken promise. When Hari leaves Samastipur for the jagged skyline of Mumbai, he thinks he has already lost everything. He is wrong. To survive the "city of illusions," he must lose his ego, his past, and his privacy. In the dark belly of a warehouse, amidst the smoke and the steel, he encounters the people the world forgot and the one man who leaves footprints on his heart that change the path of his life forever. A tale of sacrifice, struggle, and the search for a foothold in a world that never stops moving. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ -•-•-•-•-•-•-•-• -•-•-•-• Written for ONC 2026 Prompt No. 29 :-- You'll meet many people in your life. Many will come and go, but some leave footprints on your heart.

The sirens scream but we don't move, With nothing left to fear or prove. In the hollow dark of a world undone, Your pulse is the only war I've won. Two young souls finding meaning and life and discovering their relationship admist the burning town and black clouds.

ONC 2026 Round One Qualifier❤️ Natasha is a young, published author whose book never quite found its audience. At home, her words are dismissed, her dreams met with silence instead of support. Slowly, she learns a truth that no one ever taught her-that before asking the world to choose her, she must choose herself. Her journey of self-love begins small and unremarkable: solitary café visits, writing without seeking validation, doing things simply because they make her feel alive. Like planting a single seed, she nurtures herself with patience, light, and time, watching her confidence grow in quiet ways. On a train journey meant to be nothing more than an escape, Natasha notices something unexpected-a stranger reading her book, smiling as if the story was written just for them. The sight moves her deeply, proof that her words mattered, even if the world never applauded. She gathers the courage to speak, but the stranger seems distant, uninterested, and the moment slips away. Fate, however, isn't done with her yet. When their paths cross again, Natasha realizes that her book has already spoken on her behalf. Through the story she once wrote in loneliness, she finds connection, understanding, and love-only after she has learned to give all of it to herself first.

Lights, camera, action. When an Alien gets curious, too curious, things go... south. Calliope is from the species Llanci, and when her fascination to mankind grows, so does her list of major crimes. Her thirst for knowledge never wavers, quickly snowballing to a dead corpse of a human in her space station. No one can find out the truth. She shifts into the humans appearance, completely replacing the human with herself and taking on its life on Earth. All she has to do is play the part, just like all those humans she sees on those pixel light boxes, and make sure no one finds out. Easy, right?

(First draft - unedited) Evangeline Winterbourne thrives on the unknown. Driven by an unrelenting curiosity, she has spent her life chasing what history tried to erase. Unearthing ancient knowledge, deciphering forgotten languages, and dragging buried civilizations back into the light. Discovery is what she does best. It has never failed her. Until one expedition does more than leave its mark. Deep within a dense forest, Evangeline and her team uncover an ancient temple tied to a lost civilization. What they find inside refuses to stay buried. Whatever stirred there follows her home, settling beneath her skin, awakening something long dormant. Because Evangeline is not entirely human. Drakonian blood runs through her veins, a fractured legacy passed down through generations. Heightened strength. Accelerated healing. A heritage she never fully understood. Until now. As strange coincidences begin to stack and ancient artifacts whisper of memory and chaos, Evangeline realizes the past isn't finished with her. An ancient presence is stirring, one bound to her blood and to the choices her curiosity keeps leading her to. And it wants to be found.

Tayla's life should have been full of adventure and battle, and it would have been had she not failed her Crest Champion test a year prior. Now she's stuck at her aunt's herbalist shop, selling potions to the very ranks she once dreamed to join. And her town has just become a hot spot for Crest Champions everywhere. The once-bound dragon Zyrel has awakened after a century of slumber, and he draws dangerous monsters to his cage. The Crest Champions must kill him before he can finally be freed. Tayla plans to keep her head down and avoid the constant reminder of her failed dream, but that changes when an alicorn appears in her garden, claiming they must join forces and release Zyrel before it's too late. There's something wrong with the story of Zyrel's imprisonment, and to uncover the truth, Tayla must join a familiar-and loathsome-face from her Academy days. Dangers await, but the greatest threat she finds in the woods won't be the prowling beasts. It will be herself. -- Shout out to @raizelrose3 for the absolutely amazing cover!!

ONC2026 Entry. Sidharth is Parvathy's safe place. He's her best friend, her winter comfort, and the one person who makes Canada feel like home. But he's also off-limits, dating someone else and firmly placed in the "friend zone" to protect her heart. When her mother introduces her to Jithin, a stable, kind potential groom, Parvathy agrees to give him a chance. It's what her family wants. And maybe, just maybe, it will finally help her move on. But dating Jithin doesn't erase her feelings for Sidharth. And when Sidharth's relationship starts to fall apart, the careful boundaries of their friendship begin to blur. Caught between keeping everyone happy and following her heart, Parvathy has to decide: Will she stay safe in the life others chose for her? Or risk everything for the love she's been hiding all along? Tropes: Friends to Lovers | Slow Burn | Unrequited Love