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I really enjoyed these stories. Each one had a compelling premise, good narrative drive and strong writing. All were serious contenders. In these circumstances picking a winning comes down, in part at least, to personal preferences.

I’ve added a few editorial points in my comments in the hope these are useful if you’re going to be developing the stories further. They’re only my opinions. As always with feedback, take what’s useful and ignore what isn’t.

The winner I’ve chosen is New Day by @johnalty. There’s such an atmosphere of history and anticipation in a few lines. I loved the sense of place and the feeling of a world, or in this case a nation, beyond the page. In the final paragraph Daniel’s character starts coming to the fore. I felt this could be a complete story or the beginning of something longer

If I have any quibbles they’re only that I couldn’t picture the ritual handshakes – a case here for show rather than tell – and the bracketed translations of amandla and awethu broke the spell a little. I can see the words need explanation; weaving clarification into the narrative would, I think have worked better. But these are small qualifications. The piece jumped off the page.

Taking the other entries in order, in Sandra’s @sandradavies entry, I was hooked by Luke asking when he’d get to see the wedding present. My curiosity remained piqued throughout this scene. There was a good sense of place too. As an aside, I’m always keen on mentions of big A roads – the combination of the mundane and the specific that we’re all familiar with in real life. And this story comes across as subtle and well capable of depicting complicated relationships and emotions. Occasionally I felt the narrative became a little too cryptic, perhaps because this is part of a longer story.

There’s more wonderful world building in Enter the Darkness by @raiine. There’s a clear sense of a whole society, and the descriptions are so evocative that this piece could be a poem. I loved the premise – an event which is familiar but which, because of its significance, heralds a new period when happenings could be dictated by darkness. Who knows what might occur before they see the sun again. ‘We watch the horizon bleed,’ is wonderful. It captures the essence of the piece and conveys the point of view of a whole group of people, or the adults at least. I thought such a key phrase would benefit from being in a sentence on its own so the reader can savour it for a moment. Overall, there’s both a quietness and a sense of psychological complexity in this story. The writing captures the surface and the depths of life in one short piece.

The protagonist in A Spill of Tea by @janette is immediately attractive and I was rooting for her right from the start, whatever the story was going to be. The style is relaxed but gets its points across in pithy phrases such as, ‘I came to hate tomorrow.’ Lovely, economical writing with a sharp moment of change and character development, and depiction of a ‘baddy.’ I also liked the title a lot. It has a sense of movement, of something problematic happening. As such I thought it made putting ‘Of tea’ in its own paragraph unnecessary. In general the whole thing felt very satisfying. As a small point, I thought the final sentence wasn’t need as the previous one made a very good ending to the story

Shades of the Prison House – what a great title @janeshuff – was such a touching tale. The young boy was so well portrayed, there is a very effective twist at the end and the sentences were pleasingly tight too. The third paragraph in particular is so well written. The point that having no control of the pace of the day being a worry for a young child – well, anyone really – is an interesting one. If there’d been space I’d have enjoyed seeing that fear explored a bit more. But there was plenty to keep me interested – the unsympathetic mother, for instance. A very effective insight into a young child who loves nature more – presumably – than his fellow humans.

Finally Hilary’s @hilary novel extract is wonderfully assured. The painful gap between Rachel’s grief and Gail’s inability to help her is so well portrayed, so life-like. I was with Rachel every moment as she tried to cope. In addition, the sensory details are excellent. I could smell the funereal lilies and feel the rush of fresh air when she went outside. A very small quibble is that I thought ‘Yelled’ was unnecessary and perhaps an exclamation mark at the end of ‘I just want it not to have happened’ would have marked the loss of control more emphatically. It could, perhaps, portray Rachel’s teetering on the edge of this awful abyss in a slightly more distinct way. But a very sensitive and restrained scene overall, beautifully written.