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The Short Story Sweet Sixteen is an online writing contest. It was created by Samuel Otten and Sean C. Fountain based on the idea that athletics represent only one dimension of skills, talent, and abilities on college campuses. Another dimension can be found along creative lines.

This website borrows the bracketology of March Madness to bring a dual short fiction contest -- one half consisting of stories commissioned from authors across the country and the other half open to online submissions. There are two prompts (see them here and here) from which the authors craft stories, and then readers vote for which story they wish to see advance to the next round.

In the invited contest, only excerpts of the stories appear (as the full stories are to be anthologized in the future) -- the first 64 words of the story as well as an extract that contains the prompts. In the open contest, full stories will appear (after first-online publication rights are purchased from the submitting authors). The winners from each bracket will take home a cash prize and face off in the invited vs. open finals.

This year, the prompts come from actual cell phone calls, recorded on the campus of Michigan State University. Two portions of cell phone calls were selected and have to be incorporated into the stories in the manner stipulated on the prompt pages. Readers of the story, therefore, can judge which writer launched from the prompts most creatively and incorporated them most interestingly.

So, if you're a writer, feel free to take a stab at generating a story from the prompts and submitting it for the open competition. If you're a reader, you can start voting here or here.