Have you ever found yourself peering over a nearby stranger’s shoulder to see what’s on the phone’s screen? In a recent study, researchers at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich analyzed findings from a survey and found that “shoulder surfing was mostly casual and opportunistic” and was “most common among strangers, in public transport, during commuting times, and involved a smartphone in almost all cases.” Write a short story in which your protagonist peeks over the shoulder of a bystander and catches a glimpse of something unexpected on the person’s phone. Is it something vaguely suspicious that captures your main character’s imagination or is it something downright implicating?
Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.